Ability to Downgrade Elemental Crystals into Shards.

[Magnesium02]

The Dev's did not give a precise reason as to why we cannot downgrade Clusters into crystals and crystals into shards. This VERY same method was used in 1.0; the early version of Final Fantasy XIV and they opted to remove it. Why?

Unlike in Version 1.0, each type of crystal has been re-designed to be their own unique and individual item. Shards are shards, crystals are crystals and clusters are clusters. As such there are no plans to add a feature to downgrade from one type to another.

If I think I understand the lore of this argument, then it is something like this:





Here we have a nice large juicy tomato, some slim roma tomatoes and a bunch of cherry tomatoes. They are all tomatoes, but they are all unique and individual items. If you cut a tomato in half you do not get 2 roma tomatoes. And if you smash a tomato to pieces it doesn’t turn into little cherry tomatoes, it’s just a mushy tomato.



Clusters, Crystals and Shards are all described as “crystalline manifestation of aetheric elemental energy”. The reason we use them to craft is that we kind of “break” them to harness the energy. Like the fire energy of fire crystals heats our anvil so we can forge. The static electricity from lightning can aid fibres sticking together as we spin thread. But in all of these occasions, once the crystals are used and the power converted into energy for our crafts, the crystals disappear. I am not sure if they dissipate or if the crafting process grinds or shatters them or if they turn into blank shells like deaspected crystals. But once they have been broken they don’t seem to be able to retain their energy. So that is why I think they explained it as such. If you were to shatter a cluster, instead of turning to a bunch of shards, each with their own charge of energy being a fragment of the whole cluster, you would only get chips of crystal that would bleed out their energy and become blank and worthless.



As for non-lore reasons why they removed the shard breakdown, I can only guess it has something to do with how they want the game balanced. I don’t understand it, but that is what they have decided to do.

So what was the "converting ratio" in 1.0? And what is your suggesting ratio?

Yes, back in 1.0 alchemists did have the ability to break down clusters into shards and crystals. They also had the ability to get crystals and shards out of fish. For those that were wondering, the receipies usually invovled some kind of grinding powder and the quality of the powder effected the result. Examples for ice are as follows;

Ice Crystals + Fine Sand = 16 Ice Shards
Ice Crystals + Ice Moraine = 24 Ice Shards
Ice Crystals + Radiant Ice Moraine = 32 Ice Shards
Ice Cluster + Ice Moraine = 16 Ice Crystals
Ice Cluster + Radiant Ice Moraine = 24 Ice Crystals
Earth Cluster + Astral Moraine = 32 Ice Crystals
Water Cluster + Umbral Moraine = 32 Ice Crystals
(using astral or umbral moraines changed the aspect of the crystal either forwards or backwards on the elemental wheel)

So with the lowest quality 1 Ice cluster = 256 ice shards, and at the highest quality, 1 Earth Cluster = 1,024 shards. I can’t find much information on Moraines, because the receipes were made outdated a long time ago, but I vaguely recall that they might have been rare drops from elemental sprites, so they weren’t easily farmable like Fine Sand. And also be aware that we did not have quick synth back in 1.0 so the time taken to obtain that 1:1024 ratio would have taken a while. See This Video for an example of 1.0 crafting. Grinding out my ALC luminary back then literally took hours and hours and hours.