Why are crystals still a thing?

[AlaineIV]

Seriously, why are crystals for crafting still a thing? There is so many crafts, so many compents and to have to worry about a component that EVERY SINGLE CRAFT requires is ridiculous. I burn through 1000 crystals a day..... It's that bad. Please remove the crystals, or make them all just a single crystal of no color. At this point, its just tedious and obnoxious.

[Acesfool]

I agree they should be reduced, by a lot. I'm also not a fan of the number of bicolor gemstones needed. I have to spend all day farming fates then the gemstones are gone in a heartbeat. Feels more like work than fun.

[Ramiee]

I think they can exist just make them more simplified. Maybe have a couple of colours and have them related to certain types of craftables. (Gear, Consumables, Miscellaneous and Quest. For example.)

[dezzmont]

They literally exist to be a bit of a pain, more so than regular materials, to encourage even 'gather it all myself' crafters to use the market board to buy more often as well as selling, to cause more gil to leave the economy. They kinda are perfectly tuned right now as they are not very expensive because they enter the economy in enough ways besides gathering that plenty of people dump them on the market, so your not spending a ton on them (relative to your income, if your the kind of player crafting enough to need so many crystals that you have to manage them frequently... at least hopefully... otherwise your just kinda not a good disciple of the marketboard hand/land), but are juuust fiddly enough that you would rather buy them than bulk gather them yourself.

Once you start thinking about buying vs gathering as a 'time is literally money' exchange, it becomes obvious to stop gathering not just them, but quite a few other things that are not worth it relative to gathering the most valuable item you can that has enough demand to move on the market if you dump it at market value and just buying them, which helps break you out of the 'its free if I gather it' mentality, and goes on to help deflate the economy slightly with market taxes.

[Jonsky]

I'm also not a fan of the number of bicolor gemstones needed. I have to spend all day farming fates then the gemstones are gone in a heartbeat. Feels more like work than fun.

You can send out a combat job retainer to hunt for the materials that you are spending bicolour gemstones on. Depending on their item level, they can get you 5-15 pieces of a material every hour.

[dezzmont]

You can send out a combat job retainer to hunt for the materials that you are spending bicolour gemstones on. Depending on their item level, they can get you 5-15 pieces of a material every hour.

You can also just gather a bunch of materials, maybe craft them into precrafts, sell them, and buy bicolor gemstone items.

A single node's worth of something is often worth a fate's worth of drops, in part because unlike gathered materials non-crafters who just want to make some quick gil sell them. If you get outside of the mindset of 'if I gather it, it is free' and into the mindset of 'anything I gather costs me as much as I could earn gathering the best things I could, is the convenience of not having to move things on the MB worth it?' you will find many (though not all) gemstome items are better off buying and not farming.

[iWaRTuRTLeS]

Eliminating crystals would eliminate a big RMT population. Please do this.

[NegativeS]

I am just now getting around to leveling all my DoH to current content (without MB because poor, also stuck on Dynamis so half of the junk I need isn't even on the board), and I agree that the crystals are the worst part of the process.

I don't even think they need to remove them outright, just make it so The Giving Land doesn't have a stupid 2 minute cooldown. As it is it feels like I'm grinding some awful time gated mobile game where you can only craft X amount of times in X timeframe.

[Vstarstruck]

I agree they should be reduced, by a lot. I'm also not a fan of the number of bicolor gemstones needed. I have to spend all day farming fates then the gemstones are gone in a heartbeat. Feels more like work than fun.

i dont get why people do this (looking at some other threads I commented on) there is plenty of stuff you can do for gil, that costs way less time, then buy the hides and such with gil while using retainers... likkke:

You can send out a combat job retainer to hunt for the materials that you are spending bicolour gemstones on. Depending on their item level, they can get you 5-15 pieces of a material every hour.

I just craft random stuff no one really sells and it gives enough profit margins to manage buying the materials