Thread: An investment in fine sand

As for morraines and clusters etc, I guess we'll have to wait till 1.20.

I've been thinking about the crystal and shard economy.

I bought a ton of crystals a few weeks ago, mostly for leveling alchemist(and then eventually for leveling other crafts). Prices have been lower than ever on my server, so I figured what the hey. Then I bought 1000 fine sand after it was announced that Jenmimi would no longer be selling it at the alchemist's guild. Funny that SE didn't tell us they'd be adding inventory slots for a time, eh? I'd have bought another 10 stacks.

I would guess a significant number of people bought a lot of fine sand actually. Some I think will hold onto it for a bit and then even if you sold it for just 1000 a pop, you could make a ~64,000 gil profit selling a 99 stack.

The shard market is all about crafters who ONLY want to focus on leveling one or more crafts BEFORE they have leveled combat and/or gathering jobs.

If you have two level 50 combat jobs and one level 50 gathering job before you do your first craft, you probably won't need to buy shards or crystals ever. If you are leveling a few combat jobs at the same time you level one craft, you probably won't need to buy shards.

If you are content to just level a craft at the pace that leves let you level it, you won't need to buy shards. The new leve system seems like it'll help with this method. If you log in for just say about 20 minutes a day to collect leves you can pile up leves for when you do plan to play.

Rank 50 crafters who also play combat and gathering jobs are going to accumulate shards even if they make stuff for markets with some frequency. They won't burn through shards unless they start leveling another craft.

So without a lot of people leveling new crafts (PS3 launch) I think the 'glut' in shards and crystals will probably stick around or get a bit worse.

The wild card here is how all the other new stuff and changes affect the markets. It's a much bigger issue than just fine sand. People can only guess and there are so many changes at once so who could really know, eh?

Making items for materia, and making HQ items might happen at a fast enough rate to use up a significant amount of shards but then again, maybe it'll have a barely noticeable effect, or a noticeable but not that significant effect aka make a small 'dent' in the big picture.

But overall nothing is going to burn through shards like when the wave of PS3 launch players hit the servers.