So here's a crazy idea

[tdb]

Having them drop from overworld mobs, like they did in v1, would not be even more of a time sink, because the flood of crystals into the market would make them so abundant that even buying them if you just crafted that much would be a non issue. This is how it was in v1. You could easily get 10 shards and 4 crystals from one mob with all kills dropping shards or crystals and you would therefore literally be swimming in shards and crystals at any given time. And you could reduced them down as well, so clusters could be made into crystals and crystals into shards. Crystals also played more into crafting and made more sense since the whole goal was to keep the elements stable.

Well yeah, if they dropped in that sort of quantities it wouldn't be an issue. I was thinking they'd be have droprates similar to other materials in FFXIV where one mob typically drops 0-3 and the average might be less than one.

As of right now they are already mostly a non issue for established crafters who can buy them (from rmt mostly) in bulk, but for those starting out they are a pointless grinding roadblock. So making them easier to obtain by simply playing the game would not really have any effect on the already established crafters outside of saving them a minute amount of gil, but would make it easier for those who want to level their crafters, who would just need materials, some of which are already hard to come by, and be a hit to rmt. I do not see the bad in this.

I don't know if I count as an established crafter since I don't craft "for a living", but I do have all DoH and DoL classes at 80 and well geared. I mostly craft for myself, sometimes for my friends and occasionally I even put something on MB. I get shards from gardening (500 shards in 24 hours per garden patch with very little effort and basically zero cost) and I honestly don't know where I've gotten all of my crystals - probably from quests, because at least the Crystalline Mean quests gave loads of them. Gathering buffs make getting them fairly easy though.