Two days into the Zodiac Weapon quest start, and I find myself with five Atma pieces obtained. The grind continues, but if my luck holds, I can finish by the end of the weekend. Screenshots and thoughts inside.

First of all, let me be clear about the Atma of the Maiden: it drops in Central Shroud, not Central Thanalan as the quest log suggests.

Second, the drop rate can be awful. For the first three or four Atma pieces I found, they took roughly 1-2 hours apiece to find. The current fifth took roughly 7-8 hours total. On the other hand, one good friend of mine picked up an Atma of the Fish after the second FATE he cleared, while another friend picked up three Atma pieces (Maiden, Leo, Scorpion) after clearing the first FATE of the area.

RNG is a harsh mistress.

And that’s considering the fact that you can clear the FATEs in the first place. In many cases, you’ll be stuck soloing the FATE; if you’re lucky, it happened to be a low level FATE, and your synched equipment can handle the boss fairly well.

Still, it would be an unsatisfying end if the Atma pieces had good drop rates; despite all the complaining I have done about not finding anything, that moment when it does drop gives back a great feeling.

As for which FATEs drop it, I can confirm that even if every other type of FATE does not drop it, Boss FATEs will. Among myself and my friends, we have all gotten our Atma pieces from Boss FATEs. While many other guides say that every FATE will drop the Atma piece, I have yet to receive one from anything other than a Boss FATE, but that could just be a coincidence.

In the meantime, don’t burn yourself out hunting for those Atma pieces and good luck!