Clusters → Crystals → Shards

I’m sure this was in 1.0 (though I could be mistaken) and I think it would merit bringing it back to 2.0 for a couple of reasons. It’s a handy thing to have, and would give people that don’t gather the option of farming elementals as this would probably bump the price of crystals a little (and shards and crystals drive the economy). Secondly, it would help Alchemy, which is probably one of the weakest DoH there is. Potions in general are not great sellers and besides Grimiores and Wands the job is a bit redundant.

Point of fact: I leveled it (Alchemy) for two reasons: Comfort Zone and (mistakenly) thinking I would be able to make Cordials at some point. Since capping the job I've used it once to meld material to a friend’s Grimoire for his relic quest. Alchemy could use some love.

I’d suggest one cluster could break to five crystals, each of which could break to five shards.

Thoughts?

I 100% agree with this. I don't understand why alchemist cant turn crystal into shards anymore. What was the point of taking that out? Someone really screwed up on that one in my mind.

They dont do this to allow people that dont want to gather or craft and are outta gill to farm 30min lvl 1 shards and make 20k gil. In fact i know at least a dozen players that refuse to craft or gather or do w/e and just farm instances till they are out of cash in which they go farm some shards to sell.

And since high end crafters will not waste their time gathering this stuff everyone buys it from the market. Now if they allow breaking down higher tier elementals to lower ones i could go farm a few clusters with my lvl 50 DoL and i can make with the above schematics 100 Clusters = 500 Crystals = 2500 Shards in like no time afking the spot in Mor Dohna. Hence making shards super cheap and easy to get rendering them useless.

SE has stated the reason is so they can control rates and influxes of each group individually. Clusters becoming too rare? Double their harvest rate while not crashing shards and crystals. When they can be broken down, you lose the ability to control the lower tiers.

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Originally Posted by DukeGr

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I don't completely follow your logic there, if they don't craft or gather, how can they farm shards? I understand your concerns though, which is why I suggested only 5 per break, and it would require a leveled alchemist to complete the break. The idea may need some refinement, granted, it's just a concept!

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Originally Posted by Grundy

I don't completely follow your logic there, if they don't craft or gather, how can they farm shards? I understand your concerns though, which is why I suggested only 5 per break, and it would require a leveled alchemist to complete the break. The idea may need some refinement, granted, it's just a concept!

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Logic is that noone will farm shards anymore cause it wont be efficient, people will either farm clusters or crystals. Low level people that dont wanna bother crafting or gathering will be cut off from a basic cashflow income. There are serious problems with all the solutions even the current implementation favors bots. I am certain this system will change with future patches, for the better or the worst we cant know yet, i just hope its in favor of the players and not bots again.

This has been brought up before and Devs have commented on it: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post1556555

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Originally Posted by Camate

Crystal and cluster breaking
There have been some comments about the feature in 1.0 where you could break down crystals and clusters, but we do not have plans at the moment to implement this. The concern is that it will become difficult to control the prices of individual shards if they can be produced from crystals and such.

For example, in the future if there are requests to increase the cluster yield, being able to break these down into shards would overflow the market, and as a result it becomes much easier to use clusters, but the prices of shards would drop.

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Originally Posted by DukeGr

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It's not efficient now. How efficient is a level 1 gathering item for leveling a gathering class? Those that can't be bothered with leveling a DoH/DoL should be cut off from earning an income relevant to those classes. Those players that just want to run instances still earn gil from killing mobs in those instances, not to mention the coffers and the items (and allagan pieces) they can recieve and then turn around and sell. "Battle class only" players have enough avenues to earn gil.

+1 to the idea of allowing alchemy to break down clusters/crystals as that would make the job relevant.

I like the idea, personally. But if we can't have Clusters splitting into Crystals splitting into Shards, could we at least have an incentive that is kind of similar to it? I'm thinking that Shards gained from higher level nodes should give increased yields (and be more "difficult" to gather while at it). It's a bit silly that a lvl25 node only gives 1 Earth Shard. Couldn't it give maybe at least 2 per hit? And maybe even higher level nodes, such as Ice Shards in Coerthas yielding 3 per hit? From what I see, bots rarely move away from the circles of lvl5 nodes outside Ul'dah and Gridania, so it might give legit players with a few levels behind them a fighting chance against bots. And of course, more incentive to level your Disciplines of the Land and run off into dangerous areas instead of running in circles among lvl2 Ladybugs for the 500 Fire Shards you need.

Or maybe give shards a HQ chance too. Except for HQ, you "crit" and gain some extra Shards for the trouble.

i kind of liked the way alchemist could make crystals and shards in 1.0 as well.
The numbers would probably need to be lowered since fishing is quicker now but the whole x shards + y fish = z shards was a much nicer way to generate them

and the argument that shards should remain needed in stupidly high quantities so people too lazy to participate in the economy can suck money out of it is a pretty weak one imo
Even if all you do is run dungeons you can easily use the philo stones from one run to make like 25k so why leave the system in a way that benefits RMT bots so much more than real players?

This was in 1.0 but with fish. People instead of farming shards/crystal were fishing and we end up with ton of shards/crystals in the market.

There are already tons of shards/crystals on the market, so I don't really see what your point is. Just that now 90% off the supply comes from bots.

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Originally Posted by Freakiie

There are already tons of shards/crystals on the market, so I don't really see what your point is. Just that now 90% off the supply comes from bots.

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That's exactly my point, it would be even more shards/crystals on the market that their value will be dirt cheap.

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Originally Posted by Myrhn

That's exactly my point, it would be even more shards/crystals on the market that their value will be dirt cheap.

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My OP was twofold. I didn't know there had previously been a Dev response on this, so for that I can only apologise for being ignorant of the fact.

The second point was trying to inject some desirability to Alchemy, which seems undervalued compared to other DoH. At the moment, only TotT and Comfort Zone make Alchemist appealing, consequently it's also ridiculous how cheap and easy it is to level.

Breaking down of Clusters into Shard isn't the thing that will make the ALC class relevant, an overhaul to the POTIONS itself will make the class relevant.

Please, don't try fix something that isn't broken.

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Originally Posted by Thorauku

Breaking down of Clusters into Shard isn't the thing that will make the ALC class relevant, an overhaul to the POTIONS itself will make the class relevant.

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I agree with this statement. I don't know what the right effect duration to cooldown should be but 15 sec for 5 min cooldown doesn't seem appropriate. I could see either 2 min effect duration with same cooldown or same effect duration and a 1.5 min cooldown.