FFXIV: Patch 7.31 Relic Progress – Aetherwell Farming
Posted on September 10, 2025 by Aywren
Last week, I talked about the crafting and gathering step in the newest FFXIV relic weapon development. I spent a lot of gil to gear Tad up for his Hand and Land jobs, and really haven’t seen a huge return on investment in terms of what I spent.
However, I did push through the first phase of the Relic being 100% self-sufficient, which was nice. I also finished up melding his gear this week – though the guide I followed wasn’t fully pentamelding stuff just yet. I’m good with what I have, though, especially since I realized I have the stats that’s needed to start crafting my alts level 100 gear for when they finally reach end game. Overall, that’s a big savings across all my characters, so I suppose what I spent might make up for itself later.
The next step in the Relic was one I wasn’t too certain of – you have to run very specific roulettes to fill up 10,000 points in four different aetherwells. These roulettes are alliance raid, high-level dungeons, normal raids, and trails. Of those four, I’ve refused to run three of them for years… so to complete this step of the Relic, I’m being pushed way, WAY out of my comfort zone.
Why I Refuse to Roulette
You might be curious why I refuse to run high-level dungeon, normal raid, and trial roulettes. The answer is simple – I don’t get a whole lot of enjoyment out of the battle content in FFXIV. And after 12 years of adding more and more and more and more of everything, my aging brain and memory simply cannot recall all the mechanics of all the instanced content I’ve ever cleared. To say there is A LOT OF IT is very much an understatement.
Add to this that some of my runs were unsynced clears that I did several years after the content was current, only to see the storyline. So, I may have done a fight once, and done it in a way that we obliterated the fight before I saw any mechanics worth noting.
Basically, that means that running these roulettes is the same as me going in blind to about 75% of the content of the game. The rest of the content I may not have seen in years, which means if I remember much of anything at all, it’s pretty fuzzy.
Additionally, while I’m leaps and bounds better than I was when I started playing FFXIV almost 12 years ago, I still struggle with mild grouping anxiety. I want to play well for my group and not hold anyone back. Therefore, I tend to only play what I know and feel comfortable with in order to be a good team player. I know most of the Alliance Raids fairly well, so those are my go-to for things like healing practice and tome farming.
The rest of it though? I’m flying by the seat of my pants. I told Syn (who is very kindly running all of this with me as my personal Support Healer) that it may as well be the first time I’ve played some of these instances as much as I remember about them.
All that being said… I have to admit that this has not been as bad as I expected it to be. Sure, I’ve died to unexpected mechanics on some things, but overall, I’ve been able to read and respond to mechanics (or at least the ones that provide user-friendly tells) much better than I expected to be able to.
I don’t know if this is because the battle content in Dawntrail expects so much out of a casual player like myself that I’ve overall upped my game without knowing it. I just know that some of the boss fights in the older content (that I remember being a challenge at the time) feel really laid back compared to what I’ve experienced lately.
Case in point, the punishing Critical Engagements out in the Occult Crescent. There, red on the ground is no longer there warn you to move before you get hit, it means you took that hit – because attacks land so ridiculously fast that the tell is often just something there to show you why you died. Having fought so many of those in the first step of earning my Relic makes a number of things I’m running in roulettes feel like child’s play.
I’m not saying I’m a good player by any means. I am saying that I feel like the current content difficulty has trained me to be a somewhat better player than I was before Dawntrail. Still, I’m not sure that I like it all that much.
Anyhow. Roulettes. Yes, I’m running them. No, they haven’t been as terrible as I expected. Yes, that’s mostly because Syn has helped me get through these – I don’t run them solo. In fact, she’s out on a work trip this week, so my Relic progress is at a stand still for now. That does mean that I get a little rest from it a few days.
I’m making progress, though. Almost halfway there! And the Relic isn’t going anywhere, I remind myself. It’ll be there once she gets back and we can play again.
I’ve seen what the Red Mage Relic looks like, and I know it will be worth it. I really like a number of these weapons this time. Thankfully, the roulette running is a one-time step, so I’ll be able to collect a number of glowy weapons with Tomes afterwards.