The Empty Crystals of Light

For anyone who's played through the role quests, at the end of those battles we are rewarded with a empty and broken crystal of light that belonged to the Warriors of Light from the First. In fact, it's because of these crystals that are able to continue on through the MSQ of ShB.

So if you've done all the role quests then that means that you managed to gain four of them, but whatever happened to Ardbert's crystal? As of right now our character is holding onto the crystals, but what will happen to them? Will they end up collecting Ardbert's crystal at the end and reunite the set? What will we do with them? Bury them in a kind of memorial service or keep hold of them as a memento?

Honestly, the memorial service (only available once you have all 5) sounds like the best idea to me, but I wouldn't be surprised if we did end up keeping hold of them as a memento. I mean, we already are technically.

I wonder if Cylva had one as well, and if she still has it if she did. After all she was a warrior of light, though the question is, will it be one from 13th or from the 1st
thinking back to the early stages of 2.0, there were crystals of dark that ascians used to possess bodies. One of them exploded into aether. We haven't seen them since. Presumably the unsundered ascians didn't need them, but the weaker ones do

Lastly...what are our crystals even for? The last point I remember we saw them was when middy shut them off for heavensward. I presume by his dialogue of shattering his barriers that we reactivated them but we haven't heard since about them

I thought Grenoldt used the damaged crystals from Ardbert's friends to craft your AF5 sets? Or at least used them for the 'inspiration' he was previously lacking.

As for our Crystals, they still play an important role past HW - they're how you manage to store the corrupted Light aether you absorb by killing each Lightwarden during ShB (or at least, the Blessing does, which is powered and sustained by the Crystals). However, not even the full eight Crystals can hold the combined corrupted Light essences of all six Lightwardens, at least until Ardbert rejoins his soul to yours, and then helps you expel it by using the corrupted Light to form an Axe of Light to punch a big hole through our Ascian bff. ;)

The Crystals definetely are still an important part of the story, they power the Blessing of Light which is a very important part of the WoL's powers.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

The Crystals definetely are still an important part of the story, they power the Blessing of Light which is a very important part of the WoL's powers.

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Maybe?

One of the biggest issues with the crystals is that this many years later we still have no idea what they do or what they're for. They've just never been explained. They're probably important, they seem like they should be important, but we really have no clue.

The Crystals of Light put us into direct contact with Hydaelyn. When you pick up your first one, a water crystal of light, she speaks to you and you see the meteor shower. In the base for ARR, every time you overcome a big occasion, you receive a crystal of light.

Do battle alongside your city-state scions against problem = Get water crystal.
Defeated Ifrit story mode = Get fire crystal.
Rescue Sylph elder = Get lightning crystal.
Defeat Titan = Get earth crystal.
Defeat Isgebind = Get ice crystal
Defeat Garuda = Get wind crystal

Canonically they grant us power. Lahabrea says in the ARR story that they have pushed us beyond mortal limits. Midgardsormr seals their power from us, but we still retain the power we'd gained, and add to it as we essentially lift soul weights to climb to new heights through HW. Our Blessing of Light is stronger than anyone else's as a result, making us the least susceptible to Ascian powers.

Crystals of Light also have a prodigious quantity of Aether on demand, as evidenced by when Ysayle uses one to fight the Imperial Dreadnought over Azys Lla. That has tons of implications for the WoL's aetherpool.

As for the faded/damaged crystals of light from SHB... The first is used to inspire Gerolt to craft that light-up tree that the Sahagin desire. I can't remember whether the crystal itself was an ingredient or not, though. As for the others, yeah I would assume we're holding onto them.

As for Ardbert's Crystal, it's entirely possible that it remains undamaged and uncorrupted. It could be in Elidibus's possession even. Though it's also equally likely that since the crystals are sort of stored in our soul, though they are able to be produced in hand at any time, that we absorbed Ardbert's crystal when he rejoined his soul with our own.

I've been wondering... in the 5.3 patch art we see the Exarch holding a crystal of light, which is entirely different to the ones we see him experimenting with in the cutscene before.

Just a thought but it might be interesting if we have to use the WoL's crystals of light to take the Scions back - we have six of them, so five for the Scions and the sixth for the Exarch's memories... it might also leave us in an interesting situation power-wise before the "final battle" so to speak. Probably nothing but I thought it was interesting to think about.

I had been wondering about this since in the artwork it looks nearly identical to our 'water crystal', which apparently we used up back in HW when we gave that power back to Hydaelyn like with the other WOD. So I assume that our crystal is drained of power to but it looks like it may be going to be filled up again with power? In 5.3 do we regain all six crystals?