Crystals & Shards No more

What I'd like to see is a way to break down a Cluster into multiple Crystals, and a Crystal into multiple Shards.

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Originally Posted by Angellos

1. Most of the gil bots spam ephemeral nodes to gather crystals in order to sell them on the marketboard. Since they're bots, they can do this all day every day. This is their chosen method of making gil. If you get rid of crystals and shards - they have one less venue for making gil to sell in RMT transactions.

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I'm not sure whether removing crystals would help anything on that front. The bots used to farm them would still exist, so wouldn't they just move onto selling something else?

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Originally Posted by AbelArchaniEA

Disagree because it fits with the plot of the game. You craft magical items with crystals made from Aether. GG

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That's also because the crafting system was taken directly from FFXI (right down to being literally called 'Synthesis') which also required crystals to be used as a catalyst when crafting - only difference being you didn't use tools to craft, you basically just selected the required materials and crystals from your inventory and selected 'Synthesis' from the menu.

But you are totally correct about the lore specifically stating the reason why crystals are needed in crafting. Because you are not actually making the item the normal way despite using tools to do so. You're actually initiating a magical reaction by drawing on the aether in the crystals to change the raw materials into the desired object based on your thoughts (the tools you use are just a conduit to focus the aetheric energy, just like how mages in the game use their weapons fo focus the aether into the desired spell).

This is incidentally also the reason why the game can get away with the old meme about using a frypan to make orange juice for instance. ;)

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Originally Posted by Jimmymagic

umm..hmmhrrmm ah retainers?

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Yield is too low and there are higher value things that a retainer can be sent out for to be worth it.

[QUOTE=aesteval;5262110]Yield is too low and there are higher value things that a retainer can be sent out for to be worth it.[/QUOT

60 shards an hour is not to low and I can focus on collecting other things or do dailies and getting thing s of value is subjective server to server player to player.
even with just two default retainers that's 120 an hour while im doing raids. leveling or whatever I want.

If you have a house, you can get shards from gardening as well. They take a day to grow and give 50 shards per plant. Granted there are some high-value crosses that can be done in a garden as well but for someone not obsessed with getting the most value out of everything gardening for shards is a very low-effort option.

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Originally Posted by Jimmymagic

60 shards an hour is not to low and I can focus on collecting other things or do dailies and getting thing s of value is subjective server to server player to player.
even with just two default retainers that's 120 an hour while im doing raids. leveling or whatever I want.

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And with current abilities you can get 100+ shards or crystals from a single node once every 3 minutes or so. Meanwhile the retainers could be going for RNG minions that are worth millions of gil. The value of shards and crystals from retainer ventures has stagnated vs what else retainers can bring back.

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Originally Posted by tdb

If you have a house, you can get shards from gardening as well. They take a day to grow and give 50 shards per plant. Granted there are some high-value crosses that can be done in a garden as well but for someone not obsessed with getting the most value out of everything gardening for shards is a very low-effort option.

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They can be grown in flowerpots as well. The various grades of Shroud topsoil increase yeild. G1 = 65, G2 = 75, G 3 =100.

If we aren't going to care about depth why not just reduce the whole thing to a browser game with numbers, I mean that's really all we need. If you actually play the game and put in the tiniest bit of effort, I know crazy idea, it will pay off. I'm surprised no one is asking for crafter jump potions yet. I would also like to add, it's valuable because it's hard, it takes time, effort, you take that away and it's no longer valuable, it's no longer worth doing.

HEY HEY HEY CLOSE THIS THREAD HORRIBLE IDEA and if anything WE NEED CRAFTS WITH MORE CRYSTALS/CLUSTERS REQUIREMENTS get rid of the shards I agree but not the crystals.