Can we just remove shards from the game?

[Ultimatecalibur]

What stats/level do our Miner/BTN retainers need to be to bring back 30 shards per venture? I have 4 of them (lv 42 ish) so being able to net 120 shards every 50min would be lovely

I know my level 40 Miner with Gathering 230/Perception 225 can get 30 shards after 40 minutes for 1 venture, but I know she reached 30 shards per venture early on and 40 minutes per venture sometime in her 20s. She can also get 30 Crystals in 50 minutes currently.

Check the Mining/Harvesting level 1-5 ventures and make sure you have checked that shard off in your gathering log.

[Kimura410]

in half 50 gear my botanist still gets 30 shards per 40 min. when i had full 50 gear that my forager botanist wears, i could get 30 crystals for 40 min. in the half 50 gear, it only got 15. so if you want crystals, give your retainer some really good gear. shard numbers stay the same even with less gear.

so glad our retainers can do this mindless activity for us lol

[AerysDarkstrike]

Indeed. I get almost all my shards/crystals from my retainers (and from treasure hunts) these days.

[Xavier_Fanesthre]

I used to think gathering shards was such a chore until a friend in the FC suggested I use the wards while doing it. Prior to that, I thought the gathering rate on retainers didn't justify them collecting shards. Retainers gathering crystals on the other hand is leaving me with a plentiful supply...

[EvianEverdeen]

I used to think gathering shards was such a chore until a friend in the FC suggested I use the wards while doing it. Prior to that, I thought the gathering rate on retainers didn't justify them collecting shards. Retainers gathering crystals on the other hand is leaving me with a plentiful supply...

What wards? I don't have a gathering retainer leveled up yet, so I'm not sure what you mean.

[gornotck]

What wards? I don't have a gathering retainer leveled up yet, so I'm not sure what you mean.

Between leveling Botanist and Miner, not a retainer, you get six Wards that increase their specific aetheric attribute shard collection (and eventually crystal and clusters) by 2 for 400 GP. So it increases the amount of shards you can get from a single node to between 12 and 15 as you get 3 shards per gathering action.

[Kyana]

Why not gate shard farming?
Gatherers can get a new tool and head to increase their stats high enough to farm the new nodes.
A bot won't be able to do that so easy.
Why not put rare "shard/crystal boxes" in these nodes which, once you open them, give you a number of random shards or crystals.
200 water shards and 50 earth crystals for example.

I think high level gatherers should get a bonus for farming shards and maybe even crystals.
But giving them a simple bonus would enable bots to use them too.

[Riko_Futatabi]

I think this has been mentioned already, but in FFXI(And maybe XIV 1.0?) you were able to break Clusters down into a random amount of Crystals(No Shards in XI though).

So for example: I go mine a single Cluster and break it down into 5 Crystals and those 5 Crystals can be broken down into a total of 25 Shards.

All the above example needs is a little randomization with the amount you would receive per break.

It's really that simple of a solution to make shard gathering less of a mind-numbing chore. We don't need a new Crafting Class for this or a new crafting recipe or new gathering abilities.

Keep it simple, as it should be!

[Myrhn]

I think this has been mentioned already, but in FFXI(And maybe XIV 1.0?) you were able to break Clusters down into a random amount of Crystals(No Shards in XI though).

So for example: I go mine a single Cluster and break it down into 5 Crystals and those 5 Crystals can be broken down into a total of 25 Shards.

All the above example needs is a little randomization with the amount you would receive per break.

It's really that simple of a solution to make shard gathering less of a mind-numbing chore. We don't need a new Crafting Class for this or a new crafting recipe or new gathering abilities.

Keep it simple, as it should be!

In 1.0 Alchemist did that. They break cluster into shards or crystals. Also they break down fish into shards too. The problem was that the Wards were so overflow with shards that they cost nothing even comparing to ARR prices.

[Riko_Futatabi]

In 1.0 Alchemist did that. They break cluster into shards or crystals. Also they break down fish into shards too. The problem was that the Wards were so overflow with shards that they cost nothing even comparing to ARR prices.

I don't see shards costing almost nothing as a problem. If my suggestion of reviving an older way of obtaining shards came to be, I doubt people would even care about shard prices. Most would probably be glad that they could gather their own shards relatively quick compared to the current pace.