Suggestion - Increase the Quantity of Shards in Higher Level Nodes

Due to the increased demand for mass crafting thanks to Desynthesis, I think it's about time the Dev Team looks at the amount of Shards a single person can harvest per hour. Crystals are fine where they are, and Clusters are readily available, but Shards... Why can we only harvest 4-15 Shards per node? I can understand low level nodes having that few, but why can I not pull more from a level 50 node? It seems needlessly time consuming, and drums up inadvertent support for the RMT bot farms that mindless toil beneath the hills of... wherever.

Agreed. If I didn't have thousands of shards from 1.0, I'd have gone mental by now.

An easy fix would be to make all nodes give additional shard yield like they do now in certain sets, not just one.

Back in my day mobs dropped shards.. and a lot of them to boot!!

I'd love for a change like this to be made, would get me back into the crafting game being that shards are the only thing keeping me out of it. I just don't have the gil to spare for the large amounts on the market board, and I don't have the time to gather them for hours and hours. I'm so for this.

I organized a FC event where every member farmed shards for one single hour. Our crafters were supplied with 2-3 thousand of every shard. We did a 2 hour materia farming event that netted 2.5 million gil, we could have bought plenty of shards for our crafters that way. I see no reason to change anything, except to try and urge people in this game to start thinking of ways to work together. You'll find that almost nothing will stand in your way of progress.

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Originally Posted by Ricky

Back in my day mobs dropped shards.. and a lot of them to boot!!

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This used to be the main way to farm them. Mining was too iffy. At least you knew what type would drop from mobs.

Signing this with so much vigor.

I concur... Shards are currently the limiting factor for crafting numerous items. If I gather my own materials, I spend more time farming shards than the actual mats. If I buy the materials, the shards are often the most expensive ingredient.

Since I don't like to complain about anything without providing suggestions, here are a few

• Increase the number of shards obtained by ventures
• Shards from treasure maps go to all party members
• Include the ability to break clusters to crystals to shards as part of alchemy desynthesis
• Introduce a FC action to reduce shard usage for items above a certain level
• Dramatically increase shard drop rate from sprites
• Reduce GP cost of the various gathering "Ward" abilities
• Add a level 50 passive trait to each craft that occasionally returns shards/crystals/(maybe clusters?) to the crafter's inventory unused after a craft
• Add shards as a random dungeon loot drop in chests that typically give potions

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Originally Posted by PixelPirate

I organized a FC event where every member farmed shards for one single hour. Our crafters were supplied with 2-3 thousand of every shard. We did a 2 hour materia farming event that netted 2.5 million gil, we could have bought plenty of shards for our crafters that way. I see no reason to change anything, except to try and urge people in this game to start thinking of ways to work together. You'll find that almost nothing will stand in your way of progress.

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2-3 thousand wind shards would last about... 30 minutes. its 100 per jewelry set.

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Originally Posted by Ricky

Back in my day mobs dropped shards.. and a lot of them to boot!!

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I remember those days and miss the mobs dropping shards. I wish they'd bring that part of 1.0 back. It's such a pita to farm them yourself one or 4 at a time depending on the node u hit and your retainer can only farm what? 30 at a time?

i agree as well. maybe should toss this on the general discussion for more traffic. I'm sure a lot of people would agree. its not bad using retainers for crystals, getting clusters yourself or buying, bc u only need 1 or 2 per craft, but damn, shards going for 500 a piece sometimes when they used to be 18. somethings definitely wrong with that

Would like to see some kind of change also to shards. It mind numbing to farm up a decent amount just to craft. I do enjoy gathering but when it comes to shards, forget it. Even if I farm up 500-700 shards an hour, that still not even a decent enough amount when it comes to leveling a craft or doing desynthesis.

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Originally Posted by Kimura410

its not bad using retainers for crystals, getting clusters yourself or buying, bc u only need 1 or 2 per craft, but damn, shards going for 500 a piece sometimes when they used to be 18. somethings definitely wrong with that

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Well, the price was so low because there were a number of bots farming shards.
And people bought them because they were cheap and because, and that's the important part, they are a pain to farm.

I also agree that gathering shards needs a boost.
Maybe a passive trait for gatherers which increases the yield of the ward skills by 10 for shards and 5 for crystals, giving a total of 11-12 shards per hit insead of 3-4.
I also like the idea of bringing back the ability to break clusters into crystals and crystals into shards.
And Elementals should get a slight increase in crystals and have clusters added to their possible drops (only the high level elementals of course).

Gathering shards is just a mind numbing activity, even for low level gatherers.
Whenever I gather them for more than 10 minutes I almost fall asleep because it's so boring.

Why did they not add a ward for Ice and Earth shards? Water, lightning and fire have this, so what gives? My baby seems to like the music in the game, so if I'm playing and she gets hungry. I will usually go mine shards. I have mastered using the PS4 controller with one hand. Usually by the time she s done eating I'll have around 400 shards, usually ice, always running out of them.

It would be nice f the retainer could gather more than 30. Some items take way more than that just to craft them. Atleast as the retainer level gets higher give them a higher yield.

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Originally Posted by Eye_Gore

Why did they not add a ward for Ice and Earth shards? Water, lightning and fire have this, so what gives?.

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Ice, Earth and Wind wards are on botanist and can be cross-classed over

Definitely agree!

Dev Team, please consider increasing the ways we can gain Shards again. It's become a major bottleneck. There are some great suggestions here, and two very simple solutions that are easy to implement are:

* Allow Regular Mobs to Drop Shards Again.

You turned off this drop in 2.0, and it's a simple way to relieve the STRESS of Shards right now.

* Increase Shard Yield on Gathering Nodes (at least Higher Level Nodes)

This is also literally just Changing One Number in your tables. No extra programming needed.

You actively say you're battling RMT / Gil Sellers / Bots, but the current situation actually drives more people to resort to illegal measures (or give up trying to craft). Thanks.

instead of asking for increase shards gathering quantity, how about making a quest for level 50 DoH to grant an ability to occasionally(say 40-50%) spare any shards/crystals/clusters every synthesis.

maybe call it Reclaim II? consume cp, of course.

Inb4 allow alchemist to desynth clusters into crystals and crystals into shards

I agree.

I feel crafting relies way too much on shards and their importance has become too important because the prices skyrocketed.
I used to not care that much when they were 10-20gils each. But now they are ten times more expensive.

I also feel that the skills that increase the yield might be too costly.
It's fine when clusters are involved but not for shards.

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Originally Posted by Velox

Inb4 allow alchemist to desynth clusters into crystals and crystals into shards

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And I like this idea as well :)


I trust you can find a nice and balanced way to help us with that shards issue.

Just have the lv50 gathering gear have a Bonus to gathering additional shards when wearing the outfit.

To the OP, there are actually level 30 nodes where you can gather 16 shards ;)

In any case, It's frustrating that you never bother gathering shards while leveling (because they are all level 1 and provide no appreciable exp) and they don't get (much) faster to gather by the time you're level 50 with all BiS gear and melds. I'm not a big fan of putting them back on regular mobs, but it would do. I'd prefer a tiered system based on node level. level 1-25 nodes, for example, yield 1 as they do now, then 30-45 yield 2, and level 50 nodes yield 3. Possibly in addition to that, change the ward skills to be multiplicative rather than additive (x2, and x3 after trait -- won't affect crystals and clusters at this time because they always yield 1 by default). This way at level 50 you could gather at most 45 shards from the attempt +1 nodes using a wards skill. Other nodes without ward skill would yield 12 (or 36 with ward skill).

Man I'm late to this necro...

I'd rather have the higher-tier Shard items (not Crystal/Cluster) have reduced Shard costs. Mostly the Refined/Component recipes - change the costs to 1/1/2/2/3 instead of 1/2/3/4/5 or something.

It feels like the system was intended for lower tier items to be leveling gear while the higher tier stuff was intended as progression jumping, but currently the shard costs on ~i30 - ~i50 are so steep that you end up getting bottlenecked horribly, even if you're just trying to solo Leve n' Log your DoH. I mean, I cleared my Main Scenario, decided to level up BSM, and got bricked at around Lv 35 because I ran out of shards. Thankfully, at the time the shard farmers were still around, but with shard costs at 10x those times and a swarm of new players due to the free trial...I don't think I want newbies to get spooked by mere leveling.

As most gathers know one can gain a +1 bonus on tier 2(lvl 30 nodes) on crystals.

As OP states, level 50 nodes should have an additional +2 bonus to shards.

I'm not sure about gather's caps, but a further refinement based on skill lvl could give additional bonus to gather(2 and 3 stars)

Barring that, I would like an action that "shatters" crystals and clusters at gp expense. At what cost? maybe 10-25gp cost with a random reward quantity based on tier. For example, tier 2(lvl 30) could grant(1-3 shards) and tier 3(lvl 50) grant 2-4, finally clusters lvl 50 could possibly grant 3-5?

I know this unfairly tilts the game towards higher lvl players as far as selling goes, but honestly lvl 1-30 players shouldn't become millionairs of lvl 1 crystals shards.

Everyone Hates farming cystals Shards(except sadist).

I started crafting heavily after 2.3 was released to progress in desynthing. I also finally got my DOH to have enough Materia to start with iLevel 70 tools in order to be able to craft 3-star items. To make 50 of each item you need for your Level 70 tool (which needs HQ crafting of 50 to 100 other items in advance), it is just insane how many shards I have burned in the last weeks.

500-1000 on a daily base, crystals not included. Although I ONLY run shard ventures with 2 of my retainers and spend an hour daily to farm shards on my own, it is just not enough. It is never enough. Needing 4 or 5 shards from 2 sorts is too much. When the Game was launched, there was no need for so much mass crafting - but now there is so please adjust the system, SE.

If you are spirit bonding, trying to over meld your DOH and DOL, after Level 70 tools (or Level 75 tools through Desynthesis), you need a hell lot of time just because of the shards. And it is ridiculous that a retainer brings back as much shards as crystals. 30 crystals is ok, but I would see 100 shards in 40 minutes per venture as more reasonable. I can gather 250-300 shards in the same time using skills and potions so how lazy are our retainers although they are well equipped?