Quote Originally Posted by DarkDedede View Post
For recipes that require shards, there should be an option to substitute in crystals (depending on the number of shards originally required).
A request for the ability to "break" Clusters into Crystals and Crystals in to Shards was asked for by the community way back, years ago. It fell on deaf ears then, I have no confidence in the SE dev team that it will change.

My apologies if I sound terse about this topic. I have been annoyed by this problem for a very long time. My attitude is not directed you my fellow community members, it is directed at SE.
SE gave us Aetherial Reduction to help but intentionally omitted shards.