Would increasing the number of shards per strike work without bringing back RMT bots?

For a while now, shard prices have been quite high (80+ gil on my server). My guess is SE did a good job of wiping out RMT bots. However, this hasn't really encouraged miners to provide as steady a stream of shards as before. Very few will sell them in 1,000 packs, which is typical for high-volume crafting.

I'd like to see if SE can pull off increasing the number of shards per strike without drawing the bots back. increasing it tenfold would be risky but threefold would make things a bit quicker for those who want to do some large-scale crafting.

Bringing bots BACK?

You mean they left? Sorry they didn't. The bots drove other gathers out of the shard business, and now they can jack the prices.

I can still make way more gil / hour mining or harvesting other things than shards.

on behemoth there all hovering around 80-100 last I looked as well... and I don't care, I have little need for shards now but even if I did I would still buy them or just go get them, which as stated I wouldn't do as there's other things I can make more gil on quicker, which is where all the gatherers have gone.

I haven't collected a shard or crystal in the last month at all. clusters I do get though,. mostly.

but yeah we don't get stuff that takes hours and hours to get to make 50k when if you know what your doing you can spend 10mins and get the same amount of gil.

if they increased the amount gathered I would probs just get my own all the time as once you have 1000 you'll not need more for a long time unless your still levelling this applies to crystals aswell

even crafters don't need that many, (I'm also a crafter)

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Originally Posted by Shadygrove

The bots drove other gathers out of the shard business, and now they can jack the prices.

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Jack the prices? Nah, RMT will never do that. If they do, players will eventually get back into action, and RMT doesn't want that. It's not like real-life monopolies, where people are ruined when Big Business (onoes!) decides to lean on a market; in FFXIV, whenever DoL becomes unprofitable, folks can just quit for a while and do other stuff until it comes back, and when it does they can jump right back in.

Not to mention, even if regular players are out of the biz, RMT still has to compete with OTHER RMT for business. They're not all one big happy family, after all. So, no, prices will stay low as long as RMT is controlling the market.

This is a problem i'd have to agree. As a Mass 3star crafter i run through 1000 shards quicker than most would. X Stat potions where added to the Alch recipes and even though every other 2star craft uses Clusters, for some reason SE decided to make these x-potions require an obsene amount of shards (17 per craft).

Don't get me started on Luminary achievements or spiritbonding via quick synth. I used to gather all of my shards/crystals however lately it just seems so tedious. However the only other alternative is to purchase them from the AH for an insane amount which personally i refuse to do. (1000 shards = 300k are you kidding me!?)

One thing i have been doing lately is have my 4 retainers bring back 120 shards every 40min (30 per retainer). This may not seem like alot but it allows me to stay productive while Raiding or mass crafting rather then wasting valuable time gathering them at such a slow rate.

Its quite obvioust that something needs to be done here. Either allow DOL's to gather higher volume of shards or allow us to obtain them by some other means where BOTs dont have access. Gate it behind a level 50 sidequest or something along those lines.

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Its quite obvioust that something needs to be done here. Either allow DOL's to gather higher volume of shards or allow us to obtain them by some other means where BOTs dont have access. Gate it behind a level 50 sidequest or something along those lines.

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Timeworn maps drop very healthy amounts of shards, I'd assume that serious crafters do at least Goatskin/Toadskin/Boarskin once per day? Granted they are random, but you get a few hundred shards for 5 minutes work.

Having trade/field craft to dish out the 28~60 shard reward more often than ventures isn't so bad of an idea (Giving a single venture from leves are kind bad idea tbh when people can just trade the easy 1k seal for 5). I don't think bots would spend their time on doings leve but most average player like me would. Reshuffling leves for the high shard reward are my kind of shard farming method for now until they decided to allow us to yield more shards in any way via gathering.