Ability to Downgrade Elemental Crystals into Shards.

[Taliph]

It is not difficult to put it into the game. Take a cluster, put some other mat to it, start the synthese and turn it into some crystals. Not more difficult then putting any other new recipe into the game.

Don't have plans to do it =/= Can't do it

Also, this type of recipe got already removed during 1.20. It's more about not to flood the market with shards if the amount of earned clusters get increased in future.
This would be also the reason why normal enemies don't drop shards anymore, leves don't include the needed shards+mats anymore and don't give shards as bonus reward anymore, because the devs thought there were too many shards in the market at the end of 1.23. The shards got thrown at you literally.


You can get 60 - 120 shards each hour while running a dungeon at the same time.

I go thru over 10000 shards in one 3 hour sitting making demimateria... 60-120 per hour is not anywhere near reasonable when one crafter can burn shards that fast.

[HakuroDK]

I go thru over 10000 shards in one 3 hour sitting making demimateria... 60-120 per hour is not anywhere near reasonable when one crafter can burn shards that fast.

This right here is the primary issue. If shards/crystals/clusters were just handy upgrades to the crafting process, I'd just say deal with it. But if you don't have shards, crystals, or clusters, you cannot craft anything whatsoever. Not to mention that most crafts scale the number of required shards required with the level of the craft. So sure, up to Level 20-30 of a crafting class is actually rather easy to get to without having to deal with shard issues. But once you start getting past that, to the mid/late 30s, 40s, and especially at Level 50, shards are in extremely high demand as they go away very quickly.

Just to give you an idea of what's going on, let's take a look at the Patrician's Coatee, something required for the Weaver's Level 50 quest.

Required materials for Patrician's Coatee:

6 Lightning Shards
6 Wind Shards
2 Undyed Felt
2 Woolen Yarn
1 Linen Yarn
1 Electrum Ingot

Now, six shards of Lightning and Wind doesn't sound that terrible, right? Except, we have to delve deeper into the materials made to craft the materials needed to make this Coatee.

Required materials for Undyed Felt x2: (NOTE: Doubling recipes when necessary to reflect the two items needed in the recipe)

10 Lightning Shards
4 Fleece
2 Snurble Tufts
2 Natron

Required Materials for Natron x2:

4 Water Shards
2 Effervescent Water
2 Rock Salt

Required materials for Woolen Yarn x2:

8 Lightning Shards
4 Fleece

Required Materials for Linen Yarn:

3 Lightning Shards
2 Flax

Required Materials for Electrum Ingot:

5 Wind Shards
4 Electrum Ore

Now that we've broken down the coatee into all raw materials, let's add up how many shards it takes to craft one single Patrician's Coatee:

27 Lightning Shards
11 Wind Shards
4 Water Shards

...and that's on top of all of the raw materials. And again, that's for a single item. One Patrician's Coatee. Want to make five? That's 135 Lightning Shards, 55 Wind Shards, and 20 Water Shards. Assuming, of course, you craft everything yourself. Which most people don't because of one or more of three reasons. First is that it takes too much time to craft, second is that they don't have an alternate crafting class leveled, and third is because it takes up too many shards.

Also, when people sell shards, they usually sell thousands of shards at a time for hundreds of thousands of gil all at once. If they sold them in quantities of 50 or 100 at a time, that'd be much better. Part of the reason, mind, why I also wish people could buy parts of a stack off the market boards instead of the whole thing because sometimes, as surprising as it may sound, I don't have 500,000 gil to spend on 20,000 shards of a single elemental aspect.

At least, if we could downgrade, level 50 gatherers could farm clusters, break them down into crystals and shards, using those in crafts. I have MIN, BTN, and FSH to 50. I would love nothing more than to farm clusters, break one down even at a 5-1 ratio to get 25 shards per cluster so I don't have to spend hours farming shards.

Also, as an addendum to people claiming RMT abuse of this system is the reason this will never be implemented, you're trying to fight against all of the nice things just because someone MIGHT undercut you in the free market. The fact of the matter is, RMT already does this stuff. If anything, this will cause the sale of shards to plummet so hard that it will no longer be as lucrative for RMT to sell shards or even crystals. Clusters, sure. But farming 1000 shards and selling them for 1000 gil in total wouldn't be worth it anymore and would just make RMT have to work that much harder to turn a profit.

All this selling of shards for obscene prices is gatherers with nothing better to do holding crafters hostage. RMT isn't nearly as relevant to the discussion as people like to let on in topics like this.

[Ren_Taka]

My question is even more basic:
Why even have shards?

We already have to gather the right mats (usually HQ to do anything decent) which is time-consuming. Adding in having to gather dozens or hundreds of level 1 mats to craft anything is just a time sink. I agree with keeping crystals/clusters for the rare/high level mats....even maybe keep shards for the best low level recipes (for example, the green quality stuff or nice furnishings). But for 99% of the items, it's just a time and/or gil sink that adds nothing to the game.

I have a same guild and I'm the primary crafter for it. I don't mind crafting anything for anyone in the guild and I'll usually go out and even farm the mats as most don't have gathering classes up. However, farming shards is one of the most boring things in the game and I refuse to do that. At least with regular mats, you have the uncertainty of HQ vs. RQ. With shards, you know exactly what and how many you're getting (and no, this isn't a request to add randomness to shards). I'd love for them to just be done away with.

[Sibyll]

I think part of the problem is if they implement a way to go from Cluster>Crystal>Shard (or vice versa) by any means would mean that these items are linked directly to one another. Currently if demand for shards goes up, Crystal and Cluster prices won't fluctuate.

A better solution would be to have the trait that allows Crystals and Clusters to benefit from the elemental wards to increase the lower tiers as well, for example:

Ward of the Twelve I: Increases Shard yield by +4 and Crystal yield by +2
Ward of the Twelve II: Increases Shard yield by +6, Crystal yield by +4, and Cluster yield by +2

This would at least be more in line with the absurd number of shards you go through at higher levels (like the 50 HQ turn-ins for the Artisan Tools). Furthermore something like this could be linked between the class so that a Miner would have an easier time farming Fire, Lightning and Water Shards while a Botanist would have it easier with Wind, Earth, and Ice. Just a little something to distinguish two classes that are lazily carbon copies of one another.

They could also try having perception play a part in it. For example, instead of getting an HQ version (which none exists) it might give a chance to get bonus yield. Something to play off the other skills that are more or less useless when you are farming shards.

These would be better options than simply allowing conversation between Clusters and Shards which is, in my opinion, a band-aid fix at best.

[RakaMaimhov]

Why even have shards?

Because lore.