Fine sand?

Does Fine Sand still drop from monsters? Or is the only way to obtain it the ridiculous Culinarian> Alchemist route?

If it does drop, whats the best place to farm it from? If someone wants to divulge their secret hunting spot.

Guess you're leveling off of it? It doesn't drop in quantities like you'd want - it'd be a lot easier to just do a different route for getting shards/exp in the 10-20s (I saw you were 17 at the time of this posting)

Check on moraines (in masons - gems on the wards), see how they're priced, and the lodestone has a few fish alternatives in the 10-20 range instead of going through fine sand. http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...d=2&rtgt=0&p=1

Since I don't see FIne Sand listed as "Items no longer dropped by enemies" from planned changes of patch 1.19, I assume they're still dropping. I read Chigoe type of enemy (Djigga and such) drop Fine Sand. But I do not know how good the drop rate is.

They've made a lot of oversights with the changes to crafting this update. I don't understand why they would remove the synth that allowed you to produce shards with crystals, it's nice having that option rather then having to use lightning shards to make them. While I guess Fine Sand can still come off mobs, why remove the synth to produce Fine sand?

The other oversights that I'd also like to bring up are pretty much the inability to complete Blacksmith/Armorer and Leatherworker Class Quest unless you're lucky enough to have a retainer who's selling the items needed. I was severely dissapointed that I had to pay a lot of gil for an item that I could make for 1/100 of the price. The items in question are Bronze nugget, the buffalo leather spetch and buffalo leather strap. To me that just seems like sloppy work that they didn't look into each item to see if it was connected to a quest or not, where they could have prolly easily found it out if they looked. I looked around to see if I could buy it from somewhere but no place was selling it. Unlike the clothcraft quest where you could actually buy the red cloth I found myself unable to buy the 3 items in question unless I was lucky enough to find it off a retainer.

But ya, o_O hopefully they reintroduce sea sand and river sand in a future update, I really don't understand why they would remove those unless they plan on making a "simpler" synth for making shards out of crystals lol.

Not really an oversight, they just haven't gotten to the Alchemy revamp yet. Nor goldsmith or cooking. As to the quests, it was mentioned in the patch notes that there would be some difficulty. You should see those fixed in 1.20 as well. Overall, 1.19 was a patch to get as much of the in progress crafting changes out to the public, with the second half of the patch coming in about a month.

I'd expect some major changes to alchemy coming up, and folks who want it to stay the way it is now will probably be rather disappointed (i.e. raging on the forums).

Bumping this and hoping that our community reps are still logged in, and/or care. Just give us an answer already. We want to know the future of Fine Sand in regards to obtaining it, and using it to break down clusters and crystals for use in ~80% of all synthesis recipes.

Guess I'll bump this one too... C'mon devs, let us REAL players efficiently produce shards!