Suggestion thread: Shards, Crystals and Clusters

[Dallie]

Since I still don't see the appearance of a Gameplay general suggestions forum in the Feedback section, I'll post here, for as much good as that might do.

From a crafting and gathering standpoint, we either need to have the ability to toggle Wards as permanent while gathering, or have the random drops re-introduced into nodes as they were in 1.0.

The time consumption is just too great for gathering these, when paired with the time it takes gathering the materials necessary for synthing a block of items. Even with the occasional triple or quadruple gathering node after using a Ward, you'll be gathering shards for the same amount of time if not twice as much (due to the amount of shards and crystals used on higher-level recipes).

[Pandemonium]

Better still, allow Alchemy/Cooking to craft them again - give fish a usage!!

[Jinko]

Better still, allow Alchemy/Cooking to craft them again - give fish a usage!!

This 10000000 percent, why did they even take this away from alchemist ?

[Callaren]

Would be nice if Clusters could be turned into a few Crystals and Crystals into a few Shards. Gatherers could farm the Clusters or Crystals for more exp and be able to get Shards faster, which is necessary around that time when crafting starts using multiple shards per craft.
3 shards per Linen Thread depletes you fast when you have to make a lot of threads -_-