Crafting going away?

Ok so heres what I am looking at and I may be wrong so please correct me if I am. NPCs no longer sell Fine Sand, so it is now a crafted item. Here is the possible combonations.

1 Sabre Sardine + 1 wind shard= 1 Sea Sand or
1 Brass Loach + 1 wind shard= 1 River Sand

(yes there are more combos for the same sands but still require 1 shard)

6 sand (sea or river) + 2 lightning and 2 wind= 1 Fine Sand

So if my calculations are correct that is 10 shards and three crafts and 1 gather craft to get 1 Fine Sand. I believe this whole games revolves around Lightning period. As Crafters we rely on Lightning shards in one way or another, whether it be by the crafter that turned the Lightning Crystals into Lightning Shards, or Lightning Shards into other types of shards.

I do believe we will see a decline in crafters leveling their crafts due to shortages in shards. The prices of shards will sky rocket as will all the crafted items in the game because supply will be less than demand. Prior the patch where S.E. took the Fine Sand out of the game shards were on average around 100 gil, and I have seen them as low as 50 gil. Now I cannot seem to find them for any less than 150 on the low side, and I presume they will only go up from there.

Like I said I may be way off base here but, thats what Im thinking.

Sand was removed because they changed it to use fish when breaking crystals.

Why would you turn your fish into sand, sand into other sand, and then sand into shards, when you could just turn your fish into shards? 1 brass loach = 8 free lightning shards (costs 4, makes 12).

Local leves and being able to pool leves up to 99 has reduced the need for grind crafting to rank up. However, I do agree the ability to get shards is a little bit more problematic when you can't buy fine sand to bust up those crystals.

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Originally Posted by Raldo

Sand was removed because they changed it to use fish when breaking crystals.

Why would you turn your fish into sand, sand into other sand, and then sand into shards, when you could just turn your fish into shards? 1 brass loach = 8 free lightning shards (costs 4, makes 12).

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not even close....

i dont know why sand was removed exactly, but using fish DOES NOT turn crystals into shards like sand did


thats the whole issue here, with fish you can....
turn shards into more shards
turn shards into crystals

but you cant backtrack



now, as for the issue the OP brings up, no, shards will NOT be in shortage, there are still so many people who just do not craft that they sell tons all the time.

my concern is moreso how little use crystals and clusters now have that they have been taken out of most recipes. while im sure when we get a cap raise we will see many more uses of these, but til then they sit, and they stack up even moreso since its not worth the time to break them down since we have to go through so much crap with sand recipes to do so.


the shards cost being lowered was nice...but when they took away the crystal cost and made it low shards, it just killed the use of crystals in general(im looking at you gems, ore, and yarn recipes!)

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Originally Posted by TheVedis

not even close....

i dont know why sand was removed exactly, but using fish DOES NOT turn crystals into shards like sand did


thats the whole issue here, with fish you can....
turn shards into more shards
turn shards into crystals

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True, but the fish synths create lightning shards/crystals out of thin air (fish guts, rather). You can turn around and turn those lightning shards into other shards. It achieves the same thing, except you're not blowing up crystals/clusters, you're blowing up fish.

The OP is just doing it wrong, unless he's making that sand in order to level CUL He could end up with the same shards that he wants without wasting any shards/crystals if he'd just blow up the fish into shards/crystals.

Sand was removed because fish needed a reason to exist, and until sand was no longer an easy option, people wouldn't really care about fish.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raldo

True, but the fish synths create lightning shards/crystals out of thin air (fish guts, rather). You can turn around and turn those lightning shards into other shards. It achieves the same thing, except you're not blowing up crystals/clusters, you're blowing up fish.

The OP is just doing it wrong, unless he's making that sand in order to level CUL.

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theres that too

in the end, we need to see what they do with the cooking and alchemy reforms like they did with the other classes before we really sit down and think over something being done wrong with it

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raldo

Sand was removed because they changed it to use fish when breaking crystals.

Why would you turn your fish into sand, sand into other sand, and then sand into shards, when you could just turn your fish into shards? 1 brass loach = 8 free lightning shards (costs 4, makes 12).

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I stand corrected :) I fished up some brass loach and it works great! Thanks for the help! /humbled