What's the point of weak secret relic gear?

[battlelord]

My first attempt at beating the Narvidian dawn didn't end too well. After too many squadmembers died, fleet command pulled the squad away to let them fight another day. But before they retreated, my squad managed to find a special item, the relic incinerator. A weapon that was in all ways better then the Plasma Incinerator, the best weapon a Hydra can wield.

Because of this I thought that all secret relic gear would follow this formula: Stronger gear then you can find in the shop, but you can only get it by exploring these levels even though they are already hard enough normally to complete. Which was perfect since my squad is already fully equiped with the best items that the shop can buy after beating every other level.

So when I was strong enough I tried the Narvidian dawn again. This time my main focus was on finding the secrets hidden all around and getting more of this special secret relic gear. After completing a few levels and finding only honor and xp, I finally found the next hidden weapon, the assault gun. While it was better then the second best gun, the leviathan repeater, it was in all ways worse then the best gun, the devastator gun. Since my squad already all wielded devastator or long devastator guns, this gun was useless to me. I decided to keep it as trophy, but felt a little disappointed by it.

A bit later I found my first special secret relic armor, the scout powerarmor. This armor was even more dissapointing then the previous special relic gear I found. It has the same stats as the second best scout armor, the Leviathan void armor, but with 2 less shielding. Another piece with no use in my fully geared up squad.

This made me wonder, what's the point of these weaker pieces of special relic gear? I don't think many badly equiped squads will try their hand at the toughest level of the entire game? And certainly won't be having the time to search for secrets? Or am I missing something?

[fallen]

Sorry that you were disappointed by the gear balance! We'll keep working to improve. You might find these relics at very different points in the game, notably.

[battlelord]

I found the Relic Neptune now which is a really good gun, so I guess the better stuff is just hiding deeper in the campaign. Which is pretty smart to avoid people just reloading the first missions to quickly get the better guns. So I guess I spoke too soon. Although Scout Powerarmor is still not really worth the effort for me.

[fallen]

Yep! Since you can about the campaigns in different orders, its important not to put the "best in the game ever" right up front. Then the rest of the game feels disappointing!