Gathering shards takes to long.

[JemC]

It's encouraging people to buy bots. Cost of shards on AH are to high. It takes at least 1k any element shards to craft for a day. Having a skill on a timer that lets you gather 3 shards instead of one every five minutes sucks. Why don't you make it 25 shards instead of 3? GATHERING SHARDS IS BOOOOORRRRRINNNNG. It takes me three gd days to get enough shards to craft for one day! Shards from leves, retainers, questing or anything else is not enough.

And housing is to expensive. I was told it would depreciate daily but I'm not seeing it.

[Dreufo]

I agree. I'm really surprised that you can't break down a Crystal into, say 25 shards like you suggested.

Then you could just mine the Crystals and break them down to use for more expensive recipes.

[Valmar]

[Fors]

I agree. I'm really surprised that you can't break down a Crystal into, say 25 shards like you suggested.

Then you could just mine the Crystals and break them down to use for more expensive recipes.

Adding to this, it would also be nice if you could "combine" smaller shards into crystals and crystals into clusters. Perhaps it could be an alchemist ability?

[LordSideKicks]

1 hour to 1.5 hour you can get around 500 shards. I don't think it is that slow. But an increase in amt of 1 and 2 shards will be nice.

[MurakumoMillennium]

Shards are both expensive AND take too long to gather? Well don't I feel silly with all 4 retainers capped on shards.

@OP, your friend didn't dry heave or cry when they saw you only get a couple shards from each node right?

[chocomaid]

It doesn't take me three days to farm crystals/shards to craft. If I really go at it non-stop regardless of GP levels, I can get 1000 shards in an hour-hour&half if I slack.

That saying, I still agree that it is boring and monotonous, which promotes people buying off RMT bots and writing of illegal scripts.

[Umo]

Having a skill on a timer that lets you gather 3 shards instead of one every five minutes sucks.

Cordial.

Why don't you make it 25 shards instead of 3?

What about 37 instead of 25? Wait... 53!!! No, wait... 78! 78 looks cool! -.-

GATHERING SHARDS IS BOOOOORRRRRINNNNG.

What do you expect from gathering? The most enjoyable experience of your life? Hell, I'd love to see you gathering clusters. Would be hilarious.

[Pandastirfry]

and I remember when shards came from practically everything in 1.0, shards and Grade 5 dark matter...eventually I just started throwing them away as it took more time to AH/vendor them, and made not enough money to warrent the effort... I've been lvling all my crafts and still haven't run through the capped stacks I had at the launch of 2.0, heck I can't seem to burn through my earth shards fast enough, no matter how many I use It always seems I have 9999 of the dang things.

[Penguinmayhem]

Cordial is now available from GC vendors because Square realized that having nobody sell it is really incredibly stupid.

Gathering shards in the numbers necessary for significant crafting work becomes astronomically tedious and drawn out as you approach level 50. Most things in the last ten levels of crafting recipes require several multiple-tiered material crafts each, pushing shard requirements for something like, say, a full set of Patrician's crafting gear (which is only five items for the main gear slots) up to a grand total of 179 shards.

Even worse, trying to produce any significant quantity of the higher-tier materials for sale pushes you up to completely ludicrous shard requirements. To get the tier V crafting achievement for crafting 3,000 level 41-50 recipes would require at absolute least a whopping total of eighteen thousand shards. It's not even remotely outlandish to say that the primary source of RMT gil in the game is bots harvesting and selling staggering quantities of shards, because most actual human players simply don't have the patience to do it.

What makes the whole situation more frustrating is that the crystal and cluster requirements for the level 55 and 70 crafts are barely half what the highest tier of normal crafts require in shards, which is, frankly, a much more reasonable level.