September 2022 Version Update

I didn't see this mentioned on the forums yet, but the textures for the 'final' (?) forms of the Prime weapons were included in the .DATs with the September update, despite not being obtainable in game. Here are some images if you'd like a sneak peak at their appearance (spoilers, obviously):


Nothing surprising really, we all knew they'd be a black/purple re-skin of the relic weapons, but interesting to look at nonetheless.

Some of those look a lot less cool than I would've imagined with the prime palette swap. A couple are outright ugly honestly

a few look ok, like the scythe and kunai, but still, ick

I hope that's not real, cause they're ugly af

Super generic, relics at least look "ok"

I mean they're identical dats, they just look like crap with dull purple and matteblack. They need to shine.

I get that they're going for the opposite so they're flat instead of shiny but it's a bad call. Use like an obsidian instead of spray painted steel.

Was there a "dark aura" dat added as well?

I have no idea how to look for this sorry, I still don't know how to view afterglow or pulse weapon effects in Altana View. Someone more experienced than me will have to look and see.

And yeah, agreed, most are pretty ugly.

I'm curious what they're going to do about ammo for the gun and bow. Will this make RNG have to get another two ultimate weapons just for ammo?

we're all gonna be running around with giant blacklights, maybe there's a follow up quest you can only start when you find a certain 'spot'

I can't help but feel like this will be the 2nd to final phase... or maybe that's just false hope.. probably false hope.

Looks exactly like relics just purple, but I would expect a black or purple glow, and a blur like Sagasinger to hide how hideous some of those weapons look. I wouldn't mind a blur effect.

I kinda liked some of them... but a few lost their charm. The Scythe just looks like any old Scythe now, like "Death's Scythe" or whatever from the 75 era.

The (Nin)Katana really is meh, Don't hate the shield and Mandau though, kinda digging em. They look very "Shadowlord/Kindred" Themed with those color schemes, just wish they'd of taken a bit more care on /some/ of them.

They're only paying the interns to work on new login points t-shirts. Ain't nobody wanted to pay them overtime for Odyssey gear and prime weapons, too.

Purple strikes me as “still draining your soul”
My wild guess will be base > purple > black ( like the goblins’ ) > white/gray/silver? ( like the promo art )

I highly doubt we'll get any new looks for the higher tier versions. No rema tier weapon has ever had changes the model from the base version to its final form. They get afterglows sure, but the model itself is never altered. You'd first need to develop the designs, then create them as separate .dat files for each weapon variant, and then repeat the process for each race. Too much work for too little benefit on their part. You can be sure new weapons are going to stay exactly as they are in their final form...ugly. There might be an evil glow to go with them though.

I do have to hand it to the devs. They've done a lot of work with repainting old things over the past few years. The odyssey bosses and the new mobs in crawlers nest have some radical palette swaps that I very much like, and a few of the oddy armor sets are pretty nifty. But whenever they try and pallete swap a set to purple it just turns out bad. Malignance, nyame, and now these weapons. It feels like they want to turn this game into "purple fantasy XI", and it's not very inspiring.

Malignance looks great wdym (also very old, it's from WotG)

Just wait until you find out how they intend to have us upgrade the new weapons to their final form. The're going to add a new instanced BCNM area to kahmir drifts. The cost to enter will be 50K gallimaufry, and the fight will be on a 3 day lockout, forcing you to run sortie daily so you can pay the entry fee in time. To reach the final stage you'll have to do the fight 100 times, so if you never miss a cycle you can upgrade to the final version in just under a year. In the process they ensure their shiny new event doesn't suffer a lapse in player activity when people finish their armor and realize the high quality earring drop rate is too low to justify running the event just for them alone. Then you can have your new shiny ultimate REMA tier weapon within one year, and they can have their continued subscription fees for another year. Everyone walks away happy!

Oh and btw... the bcnm fight will be a room full of fetters. Nothing else...just fetters. Killing them in the correct order will be the key to winning the fight. What's the correct order you may ask? Well, I'm sure s-e trusts the community enough to figure it out. When the devs get asked why they made the process so monotonous in a live interview their official response will be "Well we DID warn you that wielding these weapons would slowly drain your soul..."

If this upgrades in stages... Every Relic weapon (relic shield, relic horn, etc) would like to know your location. I don't think these "Prime Weapons" will be the end name for every one of them and I feel like there will be an upgrade process which might change the name and model for the weapons like the ergons. Sure they're still going to be called prime weapons en masse but I would think they'd be more creative than throw 14 items in game with the most lackluster names and keep them the entire time (looking at you prime pickaxe).

They haven't been added yet.

I like how most of them look honestly, especially since they match Ody gear.

I hate to tell you but the Gloom Phantom's sword is the same one in the dat pictures we have. The Promo art, ingame and out, is these exact same ones.

Has anyone else noticed that SE didn't just adjust monster spawn locations in Crawler’s Nest [S] and introduced Locus mobs, but also nerfed AoE? I pulled about 10 mobs on PLD, then tried Thunderspark, Aeolian Edge and Circle Blade. All hit for 0 on yellow mobs. Tried diaga first before Thunderspark, still hit for 0 on all yellow.

Guess they want people to spend their entire days going from 30->40 or just say *** it ... and download a bot.

Shield looks decent, instrument and great katana look ok. Everything else look ugly as ***. The resolution on details is just terrible and even more visible than on Relics. Also relics have some nice colors on some of them making them look good. Like "steel" color on Excalibur and Guttler. Gold suites Spharai, Mandau and Apocalypse pretty well too. Imo the only one that looks better than Relic version is polearm, because Gungnir is just the ugliest PERMA weapon in the game XD or was.. now the ugliest is Prime katana...

If you pulled locus mobs then that's what you get. Locus mobs are immune to cleaving. It's the whole reason they added them to the camp in the first place. However, the apex mobs are not. I just went down to the nest to confirm this. This screenshot was taken 5 minutes ago with some trusts for support. The apex mobs remain completely unchanged.

It's kind of funny that SE has to introduce non-organic mechanics into the game to counter player methods, instead of just adjusting the value or potency of said strategy or method directly:

Nuking/MB too strong, create nuke wall to nerf nuke damage
SoulEater too strong, make monster immune to Souleater
Geomancy too strong, make mobs immune/resistant to geomancy
Cleaving too strong, make mobs immune/90% resistant to geomancy
Cruel Joke too strong, make mobs immune to Cruel joke
Blood pacts too strong, implement BP successive nerf
Hybrid/Magical WS too strong, make monsters that resist elements
Savage blade too strong, give everyone a sword that makes Savage blade stronger

I feel like there could have been a mix of EP camps in the game that allowed for CJ, Cleaving, Food-eating, SC-Damage-Taking, Savage Blade spamming, nuke-MBing varieties. i.e. make one camp for cleaving, one camp with enhanced EP resistant to cleaving, but easier for standard parties, make slower EP camp for nukers with enhanced EP gain, etc. could have even lowered the EP of monsters in CN if they had been hit with an area of effect spell or ability, to discourage cleaving. But whatever.

I don't think they thought that far ahead as far as tools. If I recall correctly, I believe a few times they made changes to a mob and it broke many versions of it in the family.

They just have very limited dev tools.

While I think these approaches to exping would be fun, I don't think they see things from this type of perspective.

Take for example a lot of apex and locus monsters have been weak to piercing and darkness. Until recently there wasn't a prime target for blunt damage unless I am mistaken.

It might be they focus more on damage types followed by element.

There was Skeleton and Gargouille Apex camps in Inner Ra'Kaznar since forever.

Are Gargouilles weak to blunt? Never knew this and wiki isn’t listing that weakness, unless I’m reading it wrong.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Apex_Vodoriga
https://w.atwiki.jp/bartlett3/pages/327.html