How common are soul crystals?

[Kurando]

It makes a huge difference if you've been maining expansion jobs and now your class only combat retainers can't get close to the level cap.

Though what I'm saying is you could just have a retainer keep their (combat) class until max level, and giving them a job (whether it's old or new expac job) isn't going to give them more of advantages over another (combat) class is it? The only limitation would be the actual player level of the class/job in question.

Well it's going off topic a bit, anyway if it's a QoL feature then there isn't a good reason to not extend it to Squadrons (who would actually use the jobs in combat) unless there is a lore reason for them not having crystals, no?

[Jonnycbad]

I believe wielders of soul stones medidtate their aether on to soulstones to be granted knowledge after immense training. Since we have the echo, we can bypass this and learn skills and spells in days rather than decades. I think deeds are "aetherically carved" on the stone, not literally carved. This means that since we have the Echo, we can view memories of previous wielders and literally watch them casting high-level spells or using special techniques, from the first-person point of view (like how we watch echo memories of prominent NPCs and we can feel/hear/think the same way they can). Through that, we can glean knowledge of forbidden or forgotten techniques lost to time in days rather than decades of training. I think as we fight stronger monsters and perform heroic tasks, the soul crystals resonate with us, revealing more and more memories. The crystal resonates with us for our 30,35,40,45,50 job quests, but 52-58 it doesn't.

The way I see it:

30-50 the soul crystal reveals techniques to us
52-60 we are inspired by events during our quests and various NPCs to obtain new techniques (like BLM quest, Lalai translates forgotten spells from the Book of Thal/Nal)
61-69 we learn new skills in combat completely on our own (these are not "taught" to us by any means. Now that we've mastered the job somewhat, we can create original techniques.
70 we get a special unique sequence where the soul crystal shimmers in our palm and then we learn our capstone 70 skill.


Additionally, aether is to a soul crystal as electricity is to a microchip. Electricity flows through a microchip, which performs a program, thereby turning the electricity into "work". Aether is channeled into a soul crystal, which allows an egi or fairy to be summoned, or for Blue Magic to be performed. That is to say, these feats can be done without soul crystals (as the first SMN SCH and BLU probably didn't have soul crystals yet) but it required a lifetime of mastery, as well as likely some other form of rudimentary components. A Dragoon's soul crystal might better allow a fledgling dragoon to channel his own stores of aether into wind-aspected aether to be able to jump high, as jumping high is a super-human feat.

Remember Oda-san said the reason Eorzea has not been taken over by Garleans with their Magitek is because Eorzea is a land abundant with Aether and its warriors (not Warriors) are adept at manipulating aether in combat. That means they have Dragoons who can use soulstones to aspect their internal aether to wind to jump 200 feet in the air, Bards who weave aether through their crystal to create powerful songs that rouse their allies and damage their foes, Warriors who draw on ambient aether through their soul crystal to add extra force behind their swings, etc. The soul crystal is the catalyst, the land of Eorzea is abundant with aether, the soul crystal helps tells the aether what to do, along with our own will (motherboard? lol)

[Jonnycbad]

I like how the Soul Crystals somewhat resembled the Zodiac Auracites, but now there are much more than 13, so that trope no longer works.