Mythic Summary:
Stage Zero
Nyzul Weapon: Easy
Runic Disc: Easy
Captain rank: Provided you have two people to help, easy enough; however this takes a minimum 46 days assuming you have 4 tags prior to beginning the climb and are not using them for anything else (Salvage, Neo Nyzul)
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Stage One
Gulool Ja Ja, Medusa, and Gulfurfur the Menacing: Can be problematic due to Besieged and long respawn times.
Salvage Bosses: Easy
Odin: Easy, provided you have cleared it before or have a few people capable of clearing it with you.
Stage Two
Assault Journal: You have to clear all 50 Assaults again. This will once again take a minimum of 46 days to complete if you have 4 tags already saved up and are not using them for anything else (Salvage, Neo Nyzul)
Balhran's Eyepatch: Problematic unless you've already got a lot of Ampoules stored up. Due to Einherjar's wait period between possible entries, this stage can take months of clearing high tier Einherjar wings in order to achieve. Will also require a couple of people to be helping you out the whole time.
Wyrmseeker Areuhat: Problematic as it conflicts with another requirement, and besides that, 150,000 Nyzul tokens will take a significant amount of time to acquire due to the ability to only do one Assault mission per day (not including your possible involvement in Salvage or Neo Nyzul).
Alexandrite: 500,000,000 ~ 600,000,000 gil worth of hard to find blue gold. This is by far the most expensive and time consuming activity you will ever be able to do in FFXI.
Stage Three
ZNM Trophies: Easy
Battle: Easy
Upgrades
Five Kill trials: Easy, same as relics
Kill three ZNM trials: Easy
Kill three chariots trials: Easy
Three Mulcibar's Scoria: Easy, takes a couple of days only yo get three PW pops. Fight is simple provided you're in a good linkshell or can acquire good help by other means.
Estimated time of completion: 6~12 months
Relic Weapon
Stage One
Base weapon from certain Dynamis zone: Easy
Stage Two
Three one hundred ancient currency coins: Easy
Three Auction Housable items: Easy
Wait Time: Japanese Midnight
Stage Three
Twelve to sixteen one hundred ancient currency coins: Moderately easy
Three Auction Housable weapons: Easy
Wait Time: One week
Stage Four
Attestation: Easy, provided you have a person or two to help you out or have BST leveled
Sixty to sixty two one hundred ancient currency coins: Moderately easy to moderately difficult
Wait time: Three days, ten hours
Stage Five
Fragment and Necropsyche: Easy
Seventy to one hundred 100 ancient currency coins: Moderately difficult to difficult. Having a loan for your last 30 coins will cut the effort required toward this stage significantly.
Wait time: None
Upgrades
Five Kill trials: Easy, same as Mythics
Kill five Attestation NMs: Moderately easy, assuming you have a couple of people to help you out
Kill ten fragment NMs: Easy
Five Umbral Marrows: Difficult, however if you're in a good linkshell or have a dozen or so friends capable of helping you, you can pound these out relatively quickly. Can also purchase them.
Estimated time of completion: One to three months, depending on how rigorous your Dynamis schedule is and how much you're able to get on to do trials and other such pleasantries. People who don't do Dynamis often will take longer, however these weapons can be made in a very small amount of time. The longest wait is the time between Goblin forges.
Empyrean Weapon
Stage One
Kill x NM x times Magian trials: Easy, but time consuming
Stage Two
Acquire fifty items from a specific Abyssea NM: Easy, some can be done in a matter of hours while others can be done in a week or two
Stage Three
Acquire fifty items from a specific Abyssea NM: Easy, some can be done in a matter of hours while others can be done in a day or two
Stage Four
Acquire seventy five items from a specific Abyssea NM: Easy, some can be done in a matter of hours while others can be done in a day or two
Stage Five
Acquire one thousand five hundred Heavy Metal Plates: Difficult to very difficult, not all due to cost as it will cost only about one hundred million to one hundred fifty million gil to complete this stage, however availability of plates is in an ever-dwindling state as demand for Voidwatch NMs tapers off.
Stage Six
Acquire sixty Riftdross or Riftcinder: Difficult to very difficult, Riftcinder are rather expensive at the moment, Dross are much cheaper. The biggest issue here is the same as the issue regarding Heavy Metal Plates, except Dross and Cinder are even worse in terms of their lack of availability.
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Your reward for making a mythic: A couple of weapons that potentially outperform their relic and empyrean counterparts and a load of weapons that don't. By outperform, I mean necessitating the need to maintain level 3 Aftermath by having well above average TP gain to make storing and executing a weaponskill at 300TP every couple of minutes possible and worth doing.
You compare these lists and see if you can honestly tell me that the effort to reward ration is properly balanced, and that the excuse of "BUT IT'S THE LAST DIFFICULT THING TO DO!" is actually accurate.
Most of the difficulty behind a Mythic isn't even real difficulty, it's availability of resources and time restrictions based on your ability to enter events only at certain times.
tl;dr Mythics are *** HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE, as is the "They should stay this way because they're the last hard thing to get in FFXI!" mantra.