Shard are becoming a problem.

I'm sure crafters all around have noticed. Simply put, there are not enough shard income for all the crafting involved, and a lot of shard sinks that keep getting added.

For example, the i70 crafting weapons alone cost 1050 shards total, without counting prereq crafting or crystals needed. The furniture are also using a ton of shards with the prereqs. A lvl 50 country flooring takes 32 shards to craft from scratch. Crafted minions are also a 99 shard deal.

The effect it has on the economy is very noticeable. On Balmung, a server where a ton of legacy characters had their inventory capped with shards, is already seeing shards being more expensive than crystals. I can't imagine how it is on non-legacy servers.

It's got to the point where a basic mats cost is easily 90% its shard requirement, and the rest the other materials. Most of the low level materials are now cheaper from NPC's than crafting them yourselves. And I'm not talking marginally cheaper, usually its more than half cheaper to buy from NPC than craft yourself, simply because of shards pricing.

And really, the options to getting shards are.. sad. Maps are probably the only real income of shards right now short of gathering bots. Gathering shards, and even having the retainer bring shards, gives so little shards its staggering. The demand is simply too much and the means of getting them far too little.

When Desynth came, I figured it would help the shard situation. Alas, it has only made it worse, since people are now crafting stuff just to desynth it, having another shard net loss.

So please, SE, add more ways of getting shards. For example, you could simply allow us to desynth/break Clusters/Crystals like back in 1.0. Or bring shards from beastmen quests back. Anything. But don't let your beautiful crafting system go sour because of something as silly as shards.

Edit: Sorry for the title messup <_<

The simplest solution would be the following...

For every 50 gathering (stat), increase base shard yield by 1.
For every 100 gathering, increase base crystal yield by 1.
For every 150 gathering, increase base cluster yield by 1.

So offhand, to do the highest tier of gathering ventures, my retainer needs 383 gathering. Throw in some gathering food, and we should be able to hit 400 without much trouble.
This means that a very well geared, lvl 50 gatherer would get (with 350 gathering to make it easier)... +7 shards, +3 crystals, +2 clusters, on top of the current yields of 1 apiece.

This would go a long way in alleviating the shard/crystal issue for 2 reasons.

1. The base rate of obtaining shards would keep pace with the rate of shard consumption during leveling, and at endgame, provided better gathering gear.

2. Bots and Farmers...
They dont mind if you ban them because they can gather shards at lvl 1. Now suppose that we, the normal players could now gather shards 5-6x FASTER than the lvl 1 bots. Their profits would take a significant hit, since the stable value of shards would drop by a factor of 5, and they would now need to grind up to 50 in order to keep up with the new supply rate... and it will hurt a lot more when they get banned at 50 than at 1.

Noticed shards were high as hell on the markets today! Never put 2 and 2 together. Good observations.

I wish they could be obtained in another way.. like in huge chunks when you leveled the first levels of crafting via quest.

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Originally Posted by Kenji1134

The simplest solution would be the following...

For every 50 gathering (stat), increase base shard yield by 1.
For every 100 gathering, increase base crystal yield by 1.
For every 150 gathering, increase base cluster yield by 1.

So offhand, to do the highest tier of gathering ventures, my retainer needs 383 gathering. Throw in some gathering food, and we should be able to hit 400 without much trouble.
This means that a very well geared, lvl 50 gatherer would get (with 350 gathering to make it easier)... +7 shards, +3 crystals, +2 clusters, on top of the current yields of 1 apiece.

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I LOVE this idea! Unlikely to happen though. :(

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Originally Posted by LordPhantomhive

I wish they could be obtained in another way.. like in huge chunks when you leveled the first levels of crafting via quest.

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Treasure maps give about 200 shards of any element every time.

Retainer shard ventures should yield way higher that crystal ventures imo.

As a fellow Balmung crafter, I feel your pain all too acutely. I think I die a little inside every time I look at the market board, but with the sheer amount we need, it's just not feasible to gather them. Breaking down clusters/crystals would help immensely, but only if they gave a large enough gain...as it is, I think we definitely do need some better source of shard income, so long as necessary quantities are so high. I'm all for gatherers being able to make some good gil, but when you'd need to gather the sheer bulk it would take to make a decent amount, and couple that with the fact that shard-bots exist...yeah, it's a painful time to be a crafter. Especially if you're trying to turn what income you make to your FC and other players rather than wanting to put it ALL back into more of the same.

While I don't really craft I do happen to do a lot of gathering and I don't really see much issue, I don't sell my shards I give them to my friend who always does all my crafting (shes burning her desynth levels up at this time so really heavy shard use to mass craft things to break down) but just to give an idea of how much one can obtain... In between duties leveling my monk I would gather and in that time I would get 350-400 shards (lightning in this case) so while that may be a drop in the bucket weighed against all the crafters you to could go out and just mine a couple thousand pretty easily just between doing other things don't even need to level a gathering class since all shards are Lv. 1 (though I think some come from nodes you need to be 5 to mine/botany)

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Originally Posted by Gardes

Retainer shard ventures should yield way higher that crystal ventures imo.

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If you're diligent about sending your retainers out, they're pretty good at supplying you with shards. With that said, since you can't bring back HQ shards, retainers with high level stats should instead bring back extra shards/crystals in place of HQ items they would normally gather.