Gathering shards takes to long.

[Penguinmayhem]

The more crystals ability could definitely stand to be better. But generally speaking you shouldn't waste your time farming them in the first place. Buy them on the ah, craft your stuff and profit. You don't need to do everything yourself.

But the problem with that is all the shard sellers are bots. So just resorting to "well buy them duh" means we're just feeding more gil to gilsellers. You're solving one problem by not actually solving it at all, but also causing a whole new problem.

[kaya_suzumiya]

timeworn boarskin maps give like 90-220 shards and only takes a couple minutes to get. a lot easier then spending hrs gathering shards. even if u buy the maps u still earn a profit from them mostly

[WellFooled]

Personally, I think shards should just be removed entirely. They don't add any value in terms of gameplay...

I don't think I could agree more with this. Shard's existence wastes hours of my time every week in empty, boring grind and the game doesn't gain anything from having them, not that I can tell. I would love to see them cut altogether.

[Gethyn]

I honestly think it's now easier to gather shards/crystals than ever before. Just make your retainer go do it for a few hours.

[Shori]

I don't think I could agree more with this. Shard's existence wastes hours of my time every week in empty, boring grind and the game doesn't gain anything from having them, not that I can tell. I would love to see them cut altogether.

To immerse in the world / story... :P
Crystals, and the elements, are a big part of final fantasy so without them its just yet another MMO

[NaliaBrown]

But the problem with that is all the shard sellers are bots. So just resorting to "well buy them duh" means we're just feeding more gil to gilsellers. You're solving one problem by not actually solving it at all, but also causing a whole new problem.

Not all shard sellers are bots! I make most of my gil by selling shards. I gather them on my Botanist, I get them from completing treasure maps, I get them from levequests. I sell them on the MB because it's a great source of income. Yes, the people selling large quantities (stacks of 1000) of shards are probably bots, but look for the people selling in stacks of 50-500. Many of them are folks like me.

[Bruiser_Cruiser]

I agree. I'm really surprised that you can't break down a Crystal into, say 25 shards like you suggested.

Then you could just mine the Crystals and break them down to use for more expensive recipes.

In 1.0 I'm almost positive that as an ALC you COULD convert crystals down into shards. I dont remember the amount though.

Not all shard sellers are bots! I make most of my gil by selling shards. I gather them on my Botanist, I get them from completing treasure maps, I get them from levequests. I sell them on the MB because it's a great source of income. Yes, the people selling large quantities (stacks of 1000) of shards are probably bots, but look for the people selling in stacks of 50-500. Many of them are folks like me.

Which shards do you feel turn the best profit? I was thinking of a way to make some gil and i have always loved grindy stuff so farming shards might be the way to go for me.

[CodeCass]

I honestly think it's now easier to gather shards/crystals than ever before. Just make your retainer go do it for a few hours.

I didn't even think of having my retainer do it for me! Would you happen to know off-hand how many they can gather in one trip?

[NaliaBrown]

Which shards do you feel turn the best profit? I was thinking of a way to make some gil and i have always loved grindy stuff so farming shards might be the way to go for me.

I assume it depends on your server, but lately it's seemed like Fire and Lightning sell the best. Water does all right, too. The market is pretty good for shard sellers right now, though. I say check your market boards. Hopefully your server is as good as mine is for us shard gatherers!

[Itseotle]

As someone who got all crafts to 50 as a fresh 2.0 player, I can honestly say that shards are fine as they are. The only time you require massive amounts of shards is if you are leveling via grinding without leves, and even in this situation you CAN profit if your smart about what you make. Once you hit 50, you won't need piles of shards to be productive as a crafter, as much of the higher level items require some crystals and even clusters to craft, and less shards.

Gathering shards in the numbers necessary for significant crafting work becomes astronomically tedious and drawn out as you approach level 50. Most things in the last ten levels of crafting recipes require several multiple-tiered material crafts each, pushing shard requirements for something like, say, a full set of Patrician's crafting gear (which is only five items for the main gear slots) up to a grand total of 179 shards.

179 shards for 5 pieces of equipment is not an issue at all. As others have already stated, it only takes an hour to gather 1,000 shards, and with 1,000 shards you can craft 25 of those items you shown as example. It takes about 5 mins to mine the electrum, 5 to harvest the flax for the linen, and probably 20-30 minutes with travel (and rng) to get the fleece and snurble tufts for the Wool and Felt. Your looking at less than 2 hours to make 25 pieces of lv50 equipment, and you think it takes to long? To me it seems pretty balanced as far as time<>reward, considering you can create those items using a single finger on your keyboard while watching tv (ie. it doesn't take any effort at all, just some time)

EDIT: if you listed Patrician gear as an example of something you would level off of, then this is why you are having issues. Level off of an easier recipe instead. I highly recommend leve quests for those last 10 levels.