Yo. I am still fairly actively playing.
Coil is by far harder than Crystal Tower, and will always be so by design. CT is meant to be accessed by everyone and over all, not that hard. It has it's own story progression, as does Coil.
Darklight is the current best bottom tier level 50 gear at item level 70, and drops from all level 50 dungeons randomly. Crystal Tower drops i80 gear (armor), and i90 gear can be obtained either via using Tomestones of Mythology to buy gear from a vendor or from the Binding Coil of Bahamut 1 (turn 1 through 5). Extreme Primals (Garuda, Titan, Ifrit) drop i90 accessories.
Hard Mode Primals drop weapons of varying ilvl. I believe it's something like Ifirt = i70, Garuda = i75, Titan = i80. King Moogle Mog XI drops i80 moogle themed weapons, Leviathan HM drops nothing. Ultima HM drops i80 accessories.
Coil Turn 5 last boss drops i95 weapons, the previous best stuff.
After that you reach the current level of End Game.
Tomestones of Soldiery are used to buy i100 gear from a vendor. This gear can be upgraded to i110 after obtaining items from Coil of Bahumut 2, I believe they are Turn 7+, but don't quote me on that as I haven't gotten started on completing Coil 1, let alone 2. We will also be able to obtain these upgradable items from the upcoming second stage of Crystal Tower available in 2.3, yet no word on if they will be a random drop or if they will be one of the once a week items we have to lot on. Upgraded armor sets become dyable, where as you cannot dye the i100 versions.
Leviathan Extreme drops i95 weapons that can be upgraded with a rare drop that also drops from this instance. The upgrade is i100, and adds a particle effect to the weapon.
The 2nd Coil of Bahamut (Turn 6 through 9) are where you can also obtain i100 gear, and like vendor i100 gear this too can be upgraded to i110 from drops within these instances, though I think it's still turn 7 and beyond where you can obtain them. At least I think... it may be they drop already at i110 and don't require an upgrade.. but I think they do require an upgrade. Can't remember.
Beating the final boss of the 2nd Coild of Bahamut nets you an i115 weapon. Current top item level.
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And then there's your relic weapon, once you complete the quest and all of the requirements you get your i80 relic. Obtaining 3 items from a vendor in Rev Toll you can then upgrade it to i90 Relic Zenith and it get's a particle effect glow. Completing another quest and obtaining 12 different zodiac Atmas (from Fate grinding, which can be a very very very tedious process) grants you your Relic Atma, which isn't any different than your Zenith stat-wise, but now it will have a different color pallet and will have lost it's glow. Starting another quest and completing 9 challenge books (also can be tedious, but far more productive.. mostly, than normal atma fate grinding) upgrades your relic to Animus status and now it's stats raise to i100 and it gains a new particle effect glow.
In order to obtain the i110 Novus Relic.. well it requires a few things, after completing a few quests you have to start collecting a new item called Alexandrite, which can be obtained 3 ways (however only 2 are reliable); There's a daily quest that rewards you with a mysterious map, completing the map (which works like Treasure Hunt maps; ie. find location on map, dig, pop chest, fight monsters, clear all monsters within allotted time, open chest) gets you a small amount of gil and 1 Alexandrite. Secondly you can exchange 800 Mythology Tomestones for 1 Mysterious map at the vendor in Rev Toll. And Lastly, there is a slim chance that if you participate in a fate (and I think you have to get Gold ranking) with your Relic Animus equipped, you might get an alexandrite. (though I have yet to see one drop from these means. It seems very, very rare.
You need 75 Alexandrite in total. Alexandrite are used in conjunction with a Sphere Scroll you'll obtain from an NPC you are guided to before the point you can even obtain alexandrites and require materia as well.
With this process you can effectively change your relic's secondary stats to whatever you want. The materia works on a 1:1 ratio no matter what tier materia you are using 1 crit materia will add 1 point of crit bonus onto your scroll. The scroll has room for a total of 75 materia and certain stats have caps on them. Futhermore, the Pld relic is different than all others because it's 2 seperate items (sword and shield) but the concept is still the same and bother items combine to give you 75 extra secondary stat points.
The Alexandrite is used to infuse the materia into the scroll, and materia infusing becomes less and less stable for each particular type of materia the more of that type you place into the scroll (yet not all of the way down, as if it did that eventually it would be near impossible to complete). Infusing materia can fail if you have less than 100% chance and if it fails the materia used will be destroyed, however you will still have your Alexandrite and as long as you have enough materia of the right type, can try again until it successfully is infused.
I use this spreadsheet that someone created as a reference:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...oFu9FCKnbsA2wY7_Zsqp4k66Y/edit#gid=1095419961
One more thing. You have to start with tier 1 materia, you can't put tier 4 materia in until you reach the point where it allows you to and it works per materia type. Basically I have to put in 11 tier 1 crit materia before I can start putting in tier 2 crit materia, then 11 tier 2 crit materia before I can put in tier 3, and 11 more before tier 4 is available. Determination and Piety work differently and have smaller limits, but are different for different relic weapons. You can refer to the spreadsheet to see the differences.
Once you complete the 75 materia infusion on your scroll you take it to the npc that you get your Relic Animus from (I think, not really sure at this point) and your relic obtains those secondary stats, i110 primary stats and gets a new particle effect.
