Ability to Downgrade Elemental Crystals into Shards.

[Grimmel]

And also the ability to Downgrade Clusters into Crystals.

Given that Elemental Shards are the most used item in Synthesis, wouldn't it be better to be able to downgrade Elemental Clusters into Elemental Crystals and then Elemental Crystals into Elemental Shards?

This would help not only the market for shards, but to combat RMT who bot farm shards 24/7, making millions of gil an hour. Not to mention it's extremely annoying to find a stack of 2,001 shards on the Marketboard by an obvious RMT bot retainer and no lesser amount of shards like stacks of 100 and such.

And then there is the issue of a legit player farming shards. Given the amount we can gather per node; which is obscenely low. Anywhere from 4-15 shards per node; with the 400 GP gathering buffs which we can only use once every 6-7 nodes if we're consistent with jumping from node to node, is really agonizingly slow.

Please SE; give us this alternative to gaining shards, as our current means of gaining them are slim and too far apart.


Some Very Convincing Posts on Needing another source for Shards.

There doesn't seem to be any valid reason for this, especially since it dramatically hinders the regular players and to a much lesser extent impacts the bots and RMT.

Thus, the bots and RMT prevention theory doesn't work.
Honestly, I'd just get rid rid of these damned shards if the reason is bots/RMT.

Furthermore, the devs should never implement something at the expense of the regular players' gameplay. Like many have said before, shards are such a huge limiting factor for crafting, it's just insane the amount of time we have to put into farming them.

The base shard yield should be tripled (3 shards per hit) with 5 shards yielded using the elemental buff.

I don't think people are playing this game for its "shards farming simulator".

I go thru over 10000 shards in one 3 hour sitting making demimateria... 60-120 per hour is not anywhere near reasonable when one crafter can burn shards that fast.

I too don't understand the explanation that 'a cluster is a cluster...' and so it cannot be done. A Hero's Ring of Healing is what it is but I can still turn it into a couple clusters and some gold (or whatever). I feel fairly confident that that was not intended when the item was released over a year ago, but it's been made possible.

Converting downward seems like the best way to both get more shards to players and remove some advantage from botting. Sure they can still bot areas that have crystals, and perhaps more sophisticated bots can even mine/harvest clusters, though there would be more difficulties and limitations on the botter's end there. Mostly it would be a tool to lower the very large demand for shards such that RMT bots make less gil or (ideally) are forced out of the market.

An alternative route to the same end should work as well if they insist on not allowing the conversion. While allowing higher tier nodes to grant more shards might seem like a good plan, this benefits bots nearly as much as regular players, perhaps more. Buffing the shard gathering abilities might be in order, though you can use them so infrequently that they'd have to be buffed a lot to make a difference. Instead, I'd like to see shard (and perhaps crystal, though not necessarily) acquisition rate tied to the gathering and/ or perception stat. Moreover, make it such that the rate of gathering shards doesn't increase significantly until ~350 gathering/ perception, after which point it increases more substantially. This would prevent RMT from gaining much benefit unless they actually outfit their gatherers properly and give the most benefit to gatherers who have put time and money into their class.

The thing is though that it isn't just the gil buyers involved in this.

It's the level 30 crafter who just wants to do their crafting leves.

It's the level 3 Botanist who is getting undercut to hell when they're just starting out.

It's the people who can't put the majority of their play time into gathering shards 1-3 at a time when they are trying to craft their house furniture and run dungeons and still sleep, eat, study/work and actually have friends outside of the game.

It's the level 50 combatant (who has never even unlocked a gathering class nor knows how to gather anything and is not inclined to learn because they're happy playing the combatant) who buys 3000 shards to give 3 to a friend to make something for him (and then resell the shards at a guaranteed loss of 5% if said crafter friend can't take them off his hands).

The shard botting has ripples throughout the entire length, breadth and depth of the game.

And every one of those innocent people who do not gather their own shards but instead buys them from an RMT'er (note though that not all shard sellers are RMT, I frequently sell water shards for example because I get them while map hunting) feeds that RMT'er gil that they can sell, bolstering their business.

As you level crafting, more and more shards are required to craft higher level recipes.. yet as we level gathering all the way to 50 we still can only get one shard, crystal, cluster per strike on a node.

This really needs to be addressed and changed.