i bet you dont even craft or gather thats why you are posting comments that make my points invallid (Fishing Doesnt count You dont get Shards from that)
Anything else you post is now invallid
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I think around lv 30-35, instead of 4 shards, a recipe should start requiring 2 crystals. At least crystals are worth decent exp. to gather.
Back in 1.0, you could take Crystals and break them down into shards with Alchemist. If memory serves (mind you, it's been a LONG time), it was 1 crystal and a pinch of Fine Sand. You could also break down Clusters into Crystals with Alchemy as well... again, if memory serves.
Beautiful thing was, you could get Fine Sand with cooking by boiling clams... so it was an entirely self-sufficient method for getting shards. All you had to do was go out and kill sprites/ele's for crystals and then break em down.
I wonder whatever happened to those recipes....
Less yeah, but still some. I'm also leveling WVR, and if you haven't tried it you don't really understand. My wind shards for CRP are steady at about 1.7k (no idea how I got that much but they're not going down), my earth shards for LTW are holding steady at about 200-300. I've never had to gather or buy shards for these classes, I'm just using what I get from leves and quests. For WVR, I've bought about 600 lightning shards. I've also been given 700-800 by a friend in exchange for crafted gear. I'm about to move on to diremite web, and will need another 540 to craft all I need, which I don't have yet.
Now, I do aim to craft all the items in the log, but I normally only do each once (or twice, if my friend wants one). Compared to the other crafts I've tried, WVR is insanely shard intensive.
If I make a stack of 99 food on cooking in the 45-50 range each synth takes 5 fire and 6 water. That means just for 1 stack of food produced I'm using 500 fire and 600 water so 1,100 total shards. F*ck my life. Cooking currently has the highest shard use from my view point as you only have to make a piece of gear once. Cooking once you eat the food its gone and you need to replace.
Shards are to slow. But the fact that so few mid level recipes if any use crystals is what hurts more.
I have a 36 Miner and 20 Botanist. I also have a 45 GSM, 32 BSM, 30 ARM, 30 WVR, 23 CRP, 22 LTW, 15 ALC, 15 Cook.
Out of all that the only recipe that I have seen use crystals is dyes in my gold smithing. But when I hop on my miner to farm what do I want to farm... things that at least make a contribution to my leveling as well. Why do something for one reason when I can do it for 3. If I had to at least use crystals for mid level stuff and clusters for high level stuff before 50 there would be a nice progression. But as it is all the Level 40-45 Electrum Ingots I crafted took a ridiculous 5 shards each, Not crystals at L41-L45, not clusters, but freakin shards. I burned through 1200 wind shards in the span of 2 hours.
Then add to that on my server that wind shards go for 40 gil a unit on average. When I looked at the AH price for an electrum ingot I made mabey 2% profit until it got undercut not 20 minutes later to less than what I could have made selling the shards and the ore.
I kill sprites for shards. Those low level wind sprites in La Noscea will drop up to five shards at a time.