As Zsolen said, you cant break clusters and crystals into lower tier catalysators.

But! they've added easy ways to get plenty shards, crystals and clusters by now:

- shards can be grown in flowerbeds and pots. They grow pretty fast, yield up to 100 shards per plant (when planted with Shroud-Soil) and the seeds are really low-level.

- crystals and clusters are given out quite generously when making use of the aetherial reduction of certain items - you'll learn about that once you reach HW

They also added that special buff/trait to botanist and miner that has a random chance of increasing the shard/crystal/cluster yield.

On a general note: The community of this game is actually rather helpful and friendly, so if you're looking for answers, I wouldnt bother customer support but rather make a nice thread here in the forums or, if you can, join your servers Novice Network. I dont know about the situation on Ridill and how helpful the mentors are on that server nor if you're eligble to join the NN (aka: still a sprout or returning player) but it might be worth a shot!