You can have a crafter do it for you. You can buy the weapon off the AH, buy the 2 materia off the AH (and 2 grade 5 carbonized matter), and find a crafter willing to help. Then click that person to bring up a menu that includes something along the lines of "request meld". Easy and 100% chance of success.
There is also a pretty concise guide to the steps of that quest floating around. Easy to find via Google.
Well, I bought the weapon yesterday, since it was a slight upgrade anyway. Took a look at savage aim 3's on the auction house....and they are asking for 30k apeice on those....
I have like 32k total, since I don't do crafting, and havent put any of the gear I've random'd out of dungeons up for sale.
Heck, even if i did sell all my excess gear, I'd probably still be pretty short on what I need for 2 of those things. I'm going to have farm some money somehow if I want the artifact weapon, for sure.
on another note, I started farming CM for tomb's last night. Well, when I say I started farming, I went though it 1 time. That 100 tombs was enough to give me 500 (had 400 for the random dungeons I'd done up to this point). So, I actually have enough for 1 accessory. And, that's what needs the upgrade the worst. I'm sort of halfway tempted to keep saving, and replace my visible armor first though (that's how much I dislike the looks of my current armor).
I also ran 1 instance of wanderer's palace. I liked the dungeon, but 30 tombs for 1 run means I probably wont be farming that one. Especially since I haven't seen a single piece of general dow gear drop since like the early 40's.
I did a rough calculation in my head, and figured it would probably take, what, 7k tombs to get a full set of the starter gear, if you started at 0? Thats 70 CM runs. I realize most people probably just get enough of that gear to start running hard modes and primals, and then stop collecting it...but, seriously, this is what I don't like about end game for mmo's. Doing the same thing over and over again, forever and ever.
And considering that I have to wait anywhere from 15-45 minutes for 1 run...I have lost all motivation :\