One needs 55 Geodes and 15 Avatarites to fully upgrade a single elemental weapon. That's after having done all the weather, elemental killshot, proc effect, and/or pet killshot trials. This is for weapons that, while often powerful, are truly for the common folk to be able to complete. They aren't Empyrean, Mythic, or Relic.

It wouldn't hurt or unbalance a thing for the upgrade items to become more common. While I get that some people farm them for gil, I think that's of a secondary concern to those who're actually trying to collect them to complete a weapon.

And, NO I don't think there should be a test server moogle placed on the live server to hand out free level 99 weapons to everyone, so don't anyone even start with that crap.