Increase Elemental Shards/Crystals gathering yields and droprates.

[Surian]

It's becomming a bit frustrating that a lot of later level synths require an immense amount of shards and crystals.
For example, even a little platter of tomato relish requires you to throw in 11 Fire shards and 10 Water shards on each synth.

The end result is that people can require up to a 1000 shards an hour if they get really into it.

While that used to not be a problem, it's no secret that the elemental shard/crystal/cluster market is overrun with RMT sellers.

Even the most basic shards are 130 gil a piece on my server, meaning 13,000 gil for 100 of them, or 130,000 gil for 1000.
And still RMT are making a killing on sales, because gathering them up yourself in a legit (non-botting/hacking) way takes an immense amount of time getting them one at a time (with a slight boost every 400 GP).
And there's barely any way to legally compete with them outside of that all other than artificially inflating the supply and thus lowering the prices.

So, to prevent people from having to resort to either buying gil or buying the RMT-tainted crystals on the markets, perhaps we could get a increase in the gathering yield for crystals and shards.
Or better yet, back to 1.0 roots, have all monsters and leves drop crystal shards as well for their element.

Positives:
+ More shards available thus lower in price since legitimate players can compete on the market.
+ The ability to legally obtain your own shards more easily, being less dependant on having to buy them off a RMT seller
+ Happier crafters
+ Less RMT income
+ A reason to kill trash monsters for shards

Negatives:
- None i can think of

You could even have some fun with it by making shards from a gathering node give a random number of crystals between 1 and X (5?) every strike, thus truly shattering what you hit and giving you the fragmented pieces of crystal shards. But really, something needs to be done about this already.

[wicked-one]

I agree, I am atm totally on the limit of wind shards... i get just a few when i take my treasure map,... but removing it from the dailies totally ruined my stock, and by now i finished my (one and only) Novus, theres not much reason to do the Beastmen Quests at all...

Only 5 Shards, running next Spot, 5 Shards... really, this is a game, not work...

so obviously, i have mostly no choice but to buy a stock of the AH, thus feeding some RMT or BOT user, because I don´t know any player who would do this on his own for that reward...

[Surian]

Oh, let us convert clusters to crystals and crystals to shards. That should help tremendously too.

[JustPlainLucas]

Oh, let us convert clusters to crystals and crystals to shards. That should help tremendously too.

They would probably use the broken desynth system. Desynth a cluster, get a crystal. Desynth a crystal, get a shard. You'd be better off just farming shards. But yeah, I agree that the yield needs to be improved. It's such a time sink farming shards, and it would put a massive dent in RMT's income.

[RiverTams]

Shards are fine as is. They provide newbies with ways to make some decent gil if they go out and farm it.

Breaking down crystals and clusters is just going to break the economy a little bit more. Seeing as how shards move a big part of it.

I like the challenge of having to keep my shards stocked. crafting has always been about time and dedication. there are people out there who farm hundreds of shards at a time without rmting or botting. 50min/btn have skills to have you pick up more than just one shard at a time. Either way, the system is fine as is.