More options for gathering shards/crystals/clusters please!

Im sure this has been posted a billion times, but I do have to ask: is there any other way SE could implement another way to get shards? Something like Desynth? Or being able to take Elemental Materia and breaking it down into shards/crystals? Wish they would just let it work like XI did, and shards/crystals drop off enemies. I currently grind them on DoL when I need them, because I refuse to buy them off the AH because it supports RMT. If SE would give us more, easier options to obtain shards/crystals, it would be super awesome. I don't think it would really upset the game balance at all, and the RMT would have to cry as prices plummet. This probably wont happen, but its fun to dream!

There are a couple ways to get them;

- Leve's
- Treasure Chests
- Farming Elementals
- Gathering
- Ventures

I can't say if we really need more ways, since i did not run into trouble yet. I would not mind more ways tho, like breaking down is actually an good idea. 1 Cluster into 12 Crystals, 1 Crystal into 6 Shards or whatever division would make the most sense.

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I currently grind them on DoL when I need them, because I refuse to buy them off the AH because it supports RMT.

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You aren't going to kill the rmt business by wasting hours of your time farming crystals. All you'll do is waste hours of your time.

Just buy them. If you really want buy the smaller stacks since those are more likely to be from legit players.

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Originally Posted by RazeLandale

If you really want buy the smaller stacks since those are more likely to be from legit players.

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Every so often, I sell groups of 200-500 shards. Usually whatever is priced the highest at the time (which can get to 120+ per shard !!! ) or whatever I have the most of (I gather shards while trying to get my daily map; sometimes I can get a few hundred before a Boarskin map drops...). They usually sell within a day.

farming shards are easy as hell anyway can farm 1000 shards in 1-2 hours tops.

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Originally Posted by Yurihyuga

farming shards are easy as hell anyway can farm 1000 shards in 1-2 hours tops.

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Its easy, absolutely, but it's also mind numbingly boring :/

Darkdrover is suggesting more ways for them to be obtained, which I can get behind, but I would much rather see them removed from the game completely. I don't understand what purpose they serve.

I miss being able to get on ALC and turn fish into shards in 1.0.

Let's see... how many fish are in the game now that aren't used to synth ANYTHING? :rolleyes:

Being able to turn fish into shards? Brilliant! I never got to play 1.0, if you could indeed do such a thing, why on earth did they take it out?? My FSH is at 50, and I have stacks of fish im hoping against hope to finding a use for...

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post2133211

This post has me intrigued. What could you get out of de-synthing fish? If this means being able to get shards again or something else useful, then I'm all for it.