Quote Originally Posted by Ksenia View Post
It's completely unreasonable to to use me as the base standard for obtaining crystals and shards but don't point to me for that, point to the company that made the game. To be truthful I saw my worker empire as an adventure and setting it up was just content I created. I didn't do it with malice or intent and never took it close to what I could in size but most of it is passive. I put more effort in to keeping market orders up to date than I do in sending out retainers.

I don't know if Square measure difficulty on getting shards and crystals based on this level of output but the point is, that's the high side of what we are capable of.
High end? Sure. In the extreme sense of the effort involved.

Realistically, how many people do you think make such an effort on a server? You would basically be spending 100% of the time either talking to a retainer bell or farming seals for the huge costs of ventures you'd be burning through. There would barely be any time for you to do anything else.

I really doubt that the shard market is composed of players that take that much effort. Especially those with retainer names that are just a face-roll combination of letters.

But back on track with the OP's concern;

The OP is talking about the difficulty of retaining shards as an reasonably active crafter, and I remember it being tough at one point as well. But as you level up crafting and gathering (mostly gathering), SE opens up very efficient methods of getting shards and crystals. Be it through beastman dailies, retainers, or Aetherial Reduction, it's not really a problem unless you completely loath all three of those methods. And at that point you're just being picky.