So here's a crazy idea

[Bsrking5]

Make shards, crystals and clusters only as open world mobs drops. What would happen if SE actually did this. I doubt the Gil farming bots would have a problem with this, maybe even welcome the influx of easy Gil.

[tdb]

There would be a riot. Do you have any idea how many shards and crystals a crafter can go through in a week?

[Edax]

I would only support this because the market is in dire need of some form of scarcity.

[Tint]

The open world has not enough mobs for this. A handfull of people who are farming them will be enough to prevent story and side mission progress for everyone else. Not to mention that we already have bots wo one-shot kill mobs from underground as soon as they spawn. So a handfull of bots will be dominating the whole shard market and nobody else will ever see a mob in the open world again.

[HardcoreRaider]

We don't need the game to become more and more casual.

[SavishSalacious]

Make shards, crystals and clusters only as open world mobs drops. What would happen if SE actually did this. I doubt the Gil farming bots would have a problem with this, maybe even welcome the influx of easy Gil.

no. They are meant to be mined.

[ElazulHP]

It's too late to fix the economy this expansion. They already screwed it up making the recipes too easy as well as making it too easy to level all the crafters/gatherers to 80. Bots are running rampant gathering in droves and the MB are full of goods listed by bots, made by bots 24/7. Nothing short of a full overhaul can fix it at this point. I've completely given up until 6.0 and see what they're going to do.

[Daniolaut]

I will just leave this here.

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.



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)
.

[DPZ2]

Your thread title is right on.

[Bsrking5]

Your thread title is right on.

Ikr, no clickbait this time.