Quote Originally Posted by PandaMonium View Post
I got my Protean Crystal drop when was already lvl 15 but it didn't stop me from doing any quests or leveling.
First time you need this specific crystal is on the lvl 17 quest, when you have to insert one Protean and a bunch of Anemos to make some mechanism working. And only after this quest I was able to start to convert Anemos -> Protean.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I wasn't able to talk to Geralt before finishing that lvl 17 quest.
You are. The very first quest in Eureka is to hand in one Protean Crystal. You can't do ANYTHING quest wise until you do that. That means no magicite, no materia board, and no conversion from Anamos crystals. All the NPCs are "setting up" before that.

The level 17 quest is to turn over 99 Anamos crystals. If you couldn't talk to Gerolt until then, you must have done all the quests at the same time.