I recently started again (level 20) and I've been reading a lot about the weapon tiers. I hear the weapon system is pretty awesome but very grindy so I am trying to learn about it now. I can't find a good guide explaining what it is or how it works though. Anyone have insight or a guide for me?

It's something you won't mess with until you hit 50. You can do a quest to get a relic weapon, then upgrade it to a version called Zenith fairly easily. Recently they introduced a way to further upgrade your weapon, which is the grindy bit you've seen. You have to keep doing fates and hope for items called atma to drop. Some people have had luck getting them quickly, others have gone 10s of hours only to get one or two. I believe you need nine, and they have a pretty low drop rate

You will be switching out gear quite frequently until you get to level 50. Once you get lv 50 you can acquire your relic weapon. You have the option then of upgrading you relic through multiple stages. So far the progression goes Zenith -> Atma -> Animus -> Novus with more to come in later patches. You do however have a few other options as it pertains to weapons.

It's also worth mentioning that the whole relic upgrade thing is totally optional. If you don't have the time or the desire to do the grind, there are other ways to get weapons that are just as good, or better. I'm mostly doing it because 1) it's something I can do all by myself, and 2) I figure I might as well keep up with it, because if I don't do it and then decide I want to opt-in later down the line, I'd have to go back and do the earlier steps regardless.

I stopped playing because the game ran like poop on my laptop, but since I'm probably building a PC soon I might get back into it.

I have a relic +1 in the game, the BRD one, what exactly can it be upgraded to now and is the end result still the top tier weapon?

Apparently there is a duplicate thread. My response that I did in the other thread

So when you get to 50 the first thing you should do is start working on your Relic weapon. This is a multistage process and will allow you to get one of the better weapons in the game once its upgraded. There are a bunch of other weapons you can get until you can complete the quest chain though and most of those come from the Primals.

Once you get your relic then you need to do dungeons until you get enough tomes (900 of them) to upgrade the relic weapon to a Relic +1 or Zenith. Once you get that done you can begin working on your Zodiac weapon which is a huge grind for an item called Atma. Once you get all the required atma and upgrade your weapon you begin grinding tomes again to get books to upgrade to your animus.

The zodiac weapon grind is 100% grindey and completely sucks. Getting a relic is relatively easy though with the exception of the Hard modes. Those can either be extremely easy or extremely frustrating on your group dynamic.

Thanks for the help guys. This makes a lot more sense now. Sorry about the duplicate thread. The school computers always give me a 404 when making a thread and I can never tell if it went through.

Prior to level 50 you can pretty much pick up a moderate weapon anywhere. Whether it's from the marketboard, dungeon drops, or even having someone make you a high quality version (if you're in the Free Company, that's basically a non-issue), weapons on the way to end game shouldn't cause you too much concern because you won't have to worry about stats...

...then you get to 50.

And depending on what you're looking in terms of your class you may have to plan out multiple builds for yourself to accommodate stats for specific raids/fights/etc. Usually this manifests to most people in the form of accuracy concerning The Binding Coil of Bahamut, as a higher than normal accuracy standing is required to consistently hit the creatures in there.

You do still retain some options in terms of end-game weaponry but the primary one you'll have available to you is your Relic weapon, which most people have already explained. It's an iconic weapon meant to go with your artifact armor (what your class is most known for wearing). Throughout the patches, they've expanded on the weapon so it may be upgraded to last even in the most high-end encounters in the game. Most people go for the relic because Yoshida and co. specifically put the weapon in the game for people who don't want to do endgame raiding to constantly stay geared. The relic can mostly be obtained on your own time, it's just extremely tedious to upgrade in the later forms. The base relic is standard and pretty easy to obtain but once you start the Trials Braves of the Braves questline, you'll begin putting some serious time into upgrading it in the following order:

• Atma: 10-20 hours of FATE fights in which a random number generator will determine a crystal drop you need, of which you need 12.
• Animus: A book given to you with a list of things to do in the game (kill certain creatures, do specific dungeons for a certain boss kill, or do a certain fate). The major grind for this is that each book costs you 1500 mythology tomes (meaning a lot of dungeon runs to acquire that amount of currency) and there's 9 total books.
• Novus: Lets you customize your animus weapon by using materia and special crystals given out in the game for doing certain things (maps, fates, hunts, etc.). Not as grindy as the prior two, but may end up costing a pretty penny as materia can become expensive FAST.

And they intend to keep adding to this line as more patches and expansions come out. Eventually it will become a Zodiac weapon at which point they may introduce another weapon entirely, who knows.

Outside of the relic, there's about two or three formidable coil weapons you can acquire for yourself (the best of which is typically going to be the best in the game for your job as it's locked behind the hardest content) and they're starting to introduce elemental weapons that summons/primals/eikons drop (Ramuh, Leviathan, etc.).

It really depends on your play-style that will determine the weapon you should go for. Most go for the relic because relatively speaking, it's the easiest to get unless you're in a hardcore/focused static group or something. You can pretty much grind the relic out at whatever pace you choose to and eventually end up with a third or second-best weapon in the game perfectly tailored to the exact stats you find most desirable.