Gathering shards mind numbing

[Itov]

Hi!

I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking it, but gathering shards is a real pain, even at high level. Almost all shards on the market board are brought from bots and it's a real waste of time to try gathering them by ourselves. So if we really want to do some crafting, we're almost forced to buy from bots. I don't think it's the way it should be.

Shards should be way easier to gather (or at least way easier at higher level, like 30-40+), or crafting should need less of it (when crafting just a simple cobalt ingot needs 5 fire shards, and that you need 2 ingots + even more shards for an item, I think it's a bit excessive).

[Itov]

Some solutions I thought of would be :
- to increase the amount of shards gathered by servants depending on their level (like a really big increase, static 60 shards per hour is not enough),
- to increase the amount of shards harvested from shard plants,
- to decrease the amount of shards needed for crafting (at least for mats),
- to offer an automatic way (just like quick synthesis, but for gathering),
- to offer an official "gathering bot", instead of pushing to use a third party program bot

Unless you want to encourage bots from third party programs...

[kidalutz]

Some solutions I thought of would be :
- to increase the amount of shards gathered by servants depending on their level (like a really big increase, static 60 shards per hour is not enough),
- to increase the amount of shards harvested from shard plants,
- to decrease the amount of shards needed for crafting (at least for mats),
- to offer an automatic way (just like quick synthesis, but for gathering),
- to offer an official "gathering bot", instead of pushing to use a third party program bot

Unless you want to encourage bots from third party programs...

Uh yes to everything but the last two. Last two would get abused hard and are frankly the equivalent of getting something for nothing not even token effort.

[QuinceTaru]

They could just put back breaking crystals into shards and clusters into crystals also, at this point in the game it wouldnt be game breaking really.

[Jkap_Goat]

I let my retainers gather shards for me, one is a lvl 70 miner, other one is a lvl 70 botanist

[Itov]

Uh yes to everything but the last two. Last two would get abused hard and are frankly the equivalent of getting something for nothing not even token effort.

I understand why you say that, I just enumerated some solutions I thought of. But I think the most important point is that bots have become too important for shard farming on the market board, and I think it shouldn't be at all. So no matter how we solve that issue, I think it must change.

[Itov]

I let my retainers gather shards for me, one is a lvl 70 miner, other one is a lvl 70 botanist

Retainers only can gather 60 shards per hour, no matter how high level they are. When you use 6 shards to craft a single mat, it's used pretty fast when doing some leveling. I already tried that and got tired of, it's just too slow and when I'm on a crafting mood, I just don't want to waste 3/4 of the time farming shards, and it looks like I'm not the only one, because bots get lots of gils on the market board that way.

[Itov]

They could just put back breaking crystals into shards and clusters into crystals also, at this point in the game it wouldnt be game breaking really.

I love that idea!

[Gemina]

Toss them into roulette rewards. Not only will non-crafters dump them into the MB at low prices, it will combat RMT who makes a killing off of shards. This will also give crafters incentive to queue for their daily roulettes, and considering a certain percentage of them will queue up as tank and/or healer, it will improve queue times for DPS players as well.

I can see no wrong here.

[Akor]

Why not just remove it?