Shh, stop. I haven’t lost it. I know everyone in my Twitch community is already judging me for going so full tilt into crafting and gathering, but listen… I’m enjoying my life.
If you’re here, chances are you craft a lot and potentially you’re trying to make a lot of Gil in the most efficient manner. I mean, realistically I’m not even trying to make Gil in the most efficient manner, but a couple Million a day is something I’m genuinely not upset about.
While most players only think about Crafting Shards, Crystals and Clusters when they are a full-time Crafter and are running low on resources, the reality is that this is a multi-million Market and if you genuinely want easy Gil with very little effort, this might be your route.
My initial purpose for writing this guide was to help other Crafters who are in my position. If you’re a full-time Crafter, then you understand my pain, but if you’re a Casual Crafter or someone who focuses on Levequests and Beast Tribes, chances are you’ve never run out of Shards, Crystals or Clusters and thus have never run into the frustrating moment where you really need more of a specific type and are biting your nails questioning if you should simply buy more or mass buy the intermediate component you need for your craft next time.
Although it might not be the whole reason, I think a massive reason you can get away with making heaps on the Market board as a Crafter no matter whether you are crafting components or a full item is because of the heaps of Shards, Crystals and Clusters you need.
Realistically gathering the core components of an item is ridiculously easy and most players wouldn’t bat an eye at this, but when you’re mass crafting a single item for a Relic or a product that is selling well, you tend to get stuck midway through unless you have a stockpile of Crystals. I’ve personally gone as far as stashing “rainy day” Shards, Crystals and Clusters in each of my Retainers so if I’m running extremely low I can break into those before I head to the Marketboard and buy them.
Now, I play FFXIV quite differently than most players. I have a semi-Ironman approach, meaning that I refuse to buy anything on the Marketboard that I can gather or craft on my own. The only time I will buy things on the Market board is if I do not have the Mastercraft Recipe for it or the Tomes of Regional Folklore and I don’t see myself getting the Scrips to purchase them anytime soon (as I only get Scrips through Custom Deliveries since I don’t have the time to farm out timed nodes currently.)
Most players are smart about how they utilize their time and will simply buy items they need, even when they are higher priced as it will allow them to get back to what they really want to do. I bring this up since if you look at the statistics for Shard, Crystal and Cluster sales you’ll quickly find that among the 18 types, the weekly value ranges between 1.1 million to a whopping 26 million on the average server during low-crafting seasons. This obviously increases with expansion releases and Crafting updates and as a player can obtain thousands of this resource in minutes, it ends up being one of the most profitable Gathering resources to collect since there’s always a demand.
So, given this information, this guide will be covering all of the methods a player will be able to get Crafting Shards, Crystals and Clusters. I will cover passive and active ways in hopes of making this beneficial to both the Crafters who need them and the Gatherers who want to make Gil.
Note: If you have any questions about FFXIV that you want me to cover feel free to leave them in a comment below, you can also ask me while I am streaming on Twitch, YouTube or in our community discord.
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SHARDS, CRYSTALS AND CLUSTERS?
There is no real hard rule for what Shards, Crystals and Clusters are used for as there is a bit of overlap here and there, but generally, I like to think about it this way:
Shards are used for crafts that are under level 50 or ARR content.
Crystals are used for content that is above level 50.
Clusters are used for Master or Expert Crafts over level 50.
Though it might seem like players would never need Shards due to their “obsolete” nature of being for old content, players will sometimes need older resources in order to complete newer content or craft newer resources and more simply, there are always new players joining the game and servers meaning that older Crafts will always be in demand even if they are cheaper when selling.
WHAT ARE THE BEST AND FASTEST WAYS TO GET SHARDS, CRYSTALS AND CLUSTERS
Each type of Crafting Crystal has an ideal way of farming it, this being both for the Element and the type of Crystal that it is. Although I will be splitting up each category by the method of gathering the Crystals I will make sure to clarify which types are best farmed in this manner. That being said, I would strongly recommend that you choose the method you are most interested in or one that helps you complete multiple tasks at once.
Unfortunately, most forms of Crystal farming are very boring and while some will yield extremely high amounts of Crystals and profits, this is a big reason why players refuse to do it.
GET YOUR RAKE AND YOUR HOE AND START GARDENING
Not to get significantly political, but this is a moment where the rich get richer and the peasants who cannot afford a house or can’t seem to win the lottery in FFXIV stay… well… homeless since there are more ways of making Gil than Gardening.
Unfortunately for players, only the Shards can be Gardened and while players may feel like that is useless, players actually burn through these quite quickly and they are regularly being bought from the Marketboard.
By far, Shard Gardening is one of the lowest-effort ways of farming Gil and though you will not make as much Gil as you could with other Gardening Resources, you are almost always guaranteed regular sales for these versus the items that sell for more.
Now, this isn’t to convince everyone to take up gardening and for Shards in particular as in my opinion, it would be one of the crops you grow if you simply do not know what else to grow. If you’re a crafter who burns through Shards, this is going to be your best bet, especially if you already have a house, but if you’re a money-maker take a look around your Market Board first to see how frequently Shards are bought and whether or not it is worth getting into the business.
For a while, I actually debated Gardening for Shards, but given the fact that many of the crafts I currently get up to only use Crystals I ended up going a different route with my gardening.
If you’re someone who doesn’t have a house, doesn’t want to spend the Gil on a house or is on a very congested server that leads to you constantly losing the lottery, there is still hope for you.
While nowhere near as profitable, players can also garden inside of apartments and I’ll cover how shortly.
To begin the process of planting Shards players will need a Garden Patch and/or Flowerpots. It is strongly recommended that players get a Deluxe Garden Patch which is purchased from the Housing Merchant in each district for 48,000 Gil. That may seem like a lot, but it pays itself off extremely quickly if you figure out what to sell.
Deluxe Garden Patches will allow you to plant 8 crops in them, allowing a player to plant each element of Shard if the player wants to.
Otherwise, players in apartments or players who want to maximize their gardening in houses can place two Flowerpots indoors for maximum efficiency. If your goal is merely self-sustaining, I would recommend grabbing yourself an apartment and simply using the Flowerpots as the amount of Gil you’d need to make back to pay off even a small house is much more substantial.
You’re talking about a difference between 500k Gill to 3 Million Gil at minimum, skyrocketing to 50+ Million.
As for how to get started, players will need seeds based on the element of Shard they want. These include:
Earthlight Seeds [Earth Shards] – Botanist in Lower La Noscea (X:26.6, Y:22.4)
Firelight Seeds [Fire Shards] – Botanist in Middle La Noscea (X:22.5 Y:18.9)
Icelight Seeds [Ice Shards] – Botanist in Western La Noscea, northwest of Swiftperch (X:32.3 Y:29.6)
Levinlight Seeds [Lightning Shards] – Botanist in Central Thanalan, The Clutch (X:25.2, Y:20.3)
Waterlight Seeds [Water Shards] – Botanist in Western Thanalan, south of Horizon (X:23.9 Y:20.0)
Windlight Seeds [Windlight Seeds]- Botanist in Central Shroud, next to Bentbranch Meadows (X:22.0 Y:24.0)
Players can also get these seeds from Retainer Ventures as long as they have a Botanist, but I will cover more about this in the next section.
Shards will take 18 hours to fully grow, meaning that players will actually never need to tend to these crops. This is great for players who can only log on once per day or think that they won’t be able to log in for a few days as when the crop is completely grown there is no risk of leaving it there as it won’t expire.
Though I wouldn’t recommend it, players can decrease the amount it takes for these to grow by using Fertilizer. Fertilizer can be used once per hour and will reduce the growth period by an hour. This means a player can get a yield of Shards within 9 hours if they fully optimize, the only issue is… it’s going to be expensive and not worth the cost of Fertilizer.
Speaking of expenses, you have a choice in soil when it comes to these seeds. Every time you plant a seed you will have to select a type of Soil to use, these include:
Potting Soil
Grade X La Noscean Topsoil
Grade X Thanalan Topsoil
Grade X Shroud Topsoil
La Noscean and Thanalan Soil are going to have no effect on the amount of Shards they yield, though Thanalan Topsoil is typically used with these seeds when a player is attempting to crossbreed them with another plant.
If a player is not trying to crossbreed and simply wants more Shards they will want to use Shroud Soil, yielding the following amounts:
If players use any soil other than Shroud soil they will always get 50 Shards.
For Grade 1 Shroud Topsoil they will get 65 Shards.
For Grade 2 Shroud Topsoil they will get 75 Shards.
For Grade 3 Shroud Topsoil they will get 100 Shards.
I would never recommend that players use Grade 3 Shroud Topsoil to get more Shards as this tends to be the most expensive Topsoil and can be sold on the Marketboard for a decent profit. If players don’t care about selling Grade 3 Shroud Topsoil and want to use it they can get it relatively reliably by using their Tomestones of Poetics.
If I was farming Shards I’d probably use Grade 2 Shroud Topsoil. This can be found in The Bramble Patch East Shroud (18.2, 24.7), requiring a level 40 Miner. If players do not see the Soil in one of these nodes they can use Luck of the Pioneer to uncover it. It can be rather time-consuming to do this… trust me I know since I’m always doing it for other plants, but it’s the most efficient way to get free Soil if you’re someone who doesn’t want to spend on the Marketboard.
Otherwise, if you don’t mind spending a bit of Gil your cheapest option is Potting Soil, which costs 120 Gil from Merchants in each Housing District, being: Apartment Merchants, Junkmonger, Material Supplier or Tanie who is found in New Gridania. Although it yields fewer Crystals it will take less time out of your day so you can focus on something else. I strongly recommend this option as gathering Grade 2 Soils or even Grade 1 Soils is time-consuming and in the long run tends to be a waste of time and a loss in profits.
No other Soil will cost this little and I can’t say I see many people farming the lower tier Soils and rarely see it on the Marketboard… err at least not unless it’s marked up by ridiculous amounts. For example, at the moment Grade 3 Shroud Soil is on the Marketboard for 1k Gil while Grade 2 is on for 3k Gil.
GET YOUR RETAINERS TO WORK!
By far the most ideal way of getting two types of crystals is by using your Retainers as they can be sent on Missions that either provide you with the actual Shards or Crystals that you want or the seeds in order to plant them.
There are some things you’d want to know when it comes to Ventures though, especially if you want to maximize the quantity of the resources you are getting.
To start off you will need either a Botanist or a Miner as these are the only two jobs that will be able to be sent on Ventures for any of these resources. The higher the level of your Botanist or Miner, the less time these Ventures will take and the higher your Gearscore/Stats the more of the resource you will get.
Time works as follows:
If your retainer is 1-10 levels above the resource the venture will take 1 hour.
If your retainer is between 11-20 levels above the resource it will take 50 minutes.
If your retainer is 21 or more levels above the resource it will take 40 minutes.
The following are the key resources you will want to know about:
ALL ELEMENTAL SHARDS
Upon unlocking a Botanist or Miner players will immediately be able to get any of the Elemental Shards. Players will receive the following amounts of Shards based on the type they select.
60 Shards with no Gear necessary
80 Shards with Perception ≥ 164
100 Shards with Perception ≥ 1350
110 Shards with Perception ≥ 1485
120 Shards with Perception ≥ 1620 500
SEEDS FOR SHARDS
If you are planning on planting Seeds for Shards I strongly recommend having a botanist as your second Retainer since it can grab you enough seeds for almost a full week if you’re taking advantage of all the planting spots in a small house. If you’re in an apartment you’re set for a few weeks.
Note, you will only be able to get these on a Botanist as Miners cannot get seeds. A retainer will need to be level 26 in order to do this.
Again you will only be able to select a single type of seed, but you will get the following amounts:
15 seeds when your Gathering ≥ 65
20 seeds when your Perception ≥ 76
30 seeds when your Perception ≥ 108
40 seeds when your Perception ≥ 119
50 seeds when your Perception ≥ 130
ELEMENTAL CRYSTALS
Elemental Crystals are by far the most consumed form of Crystal that I use and honestly why I decided to get a Gatherer Retainer.
It’s only been 3 days since I restarted my Retainer, but I’m so darn excited because I’ve been practically out of 3 types of Crystals for the past week.
Though this can easily be fixed in other ways, I’d rather spend my gathering time on another resource. I will say, I wish I had known that you could send your Retainers out on ventures for Crystals sooner because these numbers will impress you.
These Ventures can be completed by both Miners and Botanists and will require them to be at level 26.
The following are the amounts of Elemental Crystals you can get:
30 Crystals when Gathering ≥ 90
60 Crystals when Perception ≥ 164)
100 Crystals when Perception ≥ 1350)
110 Crystals when Perception ≥ 1485)
120 Crystals when Perception ≥ 1620)
FARM SOME NODES
Although incredibly boring, farming Nodes tends to be the absolute fastest way to get all three types of Crystals. This is especially true when you have levelled up your Miner and Botanist to level as you will have two Abilities that boost the number of Crystals you can get.
In my opinion, this is most useful for Clusters, though as Clusters are attached to timed nodes players may not be interested in this grind and I don’t blame them.
When I am running extremely low on Crystals from using Quick Synthesis on a number of intermediary crafts I tend to farm nodes. I will use the skills as follows:
The Twelve’s Bounty (unlocked at Level 20) – This Ability costs 150 GP and will give you 3 extra Crystals per hit.
The Giving Land (unlocked at Level 74) is the most overpowered Ability I have ever seen on a Disciple of Hand. Costing only 200 GP this allows players to get a random amount of bonus Shards, Crystals or Clusters per yield, in my experience ranging from 10-30. This means that on a node that has 7 hits, you can get a total of 210 Crystals in one go. While yes, you are not always guaranteed that many Crystals, the fact that it only has a 3-minute cooldown and costs so little to use really makes this worth it.
My Crystal farming method is as follows:
I use The Twelve’s Bounty on every single node, no matter what the bonus is on the node, but I always make sure I have at least 300 GP in my reserve before using it. If The Giving Land is up I will make sure I save 350 GP.
Anytime I see a node that has higher Integrity I make sure I pop both of these abilities and if for whatever reason I don’t have enough GP I always make sure I have enough Cordial to top up.
I personally don’t use Hi-Cordial when farming for Crystals as my supply is generally limited in comparison to Cordial, but if you have a lot and want to maximize your efforts, this is the best way to go as it provides more GP and has a shorter cooldown.
Hi-Cordial is not very expensive, though one of the best ways to get it is White Gathering Scrips which I’m currently saving for the Folklore as many things I want to craft require these timed nodes.
Typically I gather about 1,000 Crystals during these pulls before I get bored. I will also try to plan my gathering routes based on Crystals that I need, never using any yield ability bonuses on the resource I’m gathering as I’m happy simply taking the bonuses that come directly from the node. I will, however, always use any integrity bonuses to get the Crystals on these runs as this somewhat tricks my brain into believing that the process was by no means painful,
AETHERIAL REDUCTION
Aetherial Reduction is a bit of a tedious way to get Crystals and Clusters, though there is no denying that it is one of the most profitable ways of doing so. In my opinion, the only way to make this appealing to me though is if I got on board earlier or had the stats for the most recent expansion’s resources.
Essentially players will have to locate Legendary or Ephemeral nodes that have 2-4* resources in them and get a perfect rating for collectability. Then players must right-click that resource in order to break it down yielding a special resource as well as Crystals and Clusters of a specific type. While the yield is genuinely high and worth it, my issue is that I make the majority of my Gil from Crafting and Gathering and since we are nearing the end of the expansion the Materials I’m currently gathering are much more in demand than these are now.
Now, not every player is going to have something they are regularly farming, especially if you’re someone who would rather buy resources off the Marketboard, so this might actually be something you’re interested in.
Legendary and Ephemeral nodes are all timed meaning that as you get along your day doing the other tasks you want to do, you can slide in and get these done. Each Collectable you break down will provide you with between 1-70 Crystals and Clusters of a specific type and I would strongly look at Gamer Escape so you can make plans of which resource you want to collect.
As I said, I truly believe this is going to be best done when you are at the beginning to middle of an expansion as the other resources you get from the newest nodes tend to be high-value items, but if you’re just looking for Crystals to craft with, this is going to be the lowest effort for time spent if you ignore the waiting around you’ll be doing.
The following are my results from 11 minutes of farming Sophjora Roots with Pentamelded Gear and a Splenderous Tool which provides 60% Intuition Rate instead of 40%.
I use two rotations: Scour > Meticulous > Scour > Meticulous > Meticulous (if not 1,000 Collectability) when I have 700 GP and when I don’t have 700 GP I simply spam Meticulous.
I personally only gather things with 1,000 Collectability since my main concern when doing Aetheric Reduction runs is the sand that comes from Aethrial Reduction.
Numbers will drastically vary for this as it will depend on your luck, but when I reduced the 20 Sophora Roots I got:
728 Fire Crystals
519 Fire Clusters
To be frank, this is a really good yield for 11 minutes and will probably be my method of getting Crystals and Clusters going forward, though it is a bit more intricate than the other methods.
I personally really like that you get Crystals and Clusters since I garden the Shards I need and the fact that you can choose what element you need is amazing. The only downfall to this is if you are trying to get a particular Sand as older ones typically have no value, meaning only the latest two resources will have worth on the Market Board.
Nonetheless, I would still gather old nodes if you’re really struggling with Crystals because the yields are just so high for the time spent.
DO SOME LEVEQUESTS
I have to admit that I’ve been out of the Levequest game for quite some time now and so I didn’t even think about think about this at first, but higher-level Levequests will give a decent amount of Shards and can be used to get multiple things done at once.
I recently covered all the best ways to make Gil and revisited the potential of completing Levequests and to my surprise, you could make a hefty load from these if you maximize your efforts in completing them.
Now, I’m not going to sit here and claim that Levequests are the best use of your time, for either Gil or Crystals, but if you’re working on levelling a Gatherer in particular these will provide you with a net plus versus a negative as Crafting would. Now, this isn’t to encourage players to ignore Crafting Levequests as they provide even more Crystals, jumping into the 100s which should cover the cost of the Crafting you would be doing.
Today I started working towards the Levequest achievements I had been ignoring and I noticed that Old Sharlyean Levequests were providing me with between 40-50 Crystals per completion. Of course, I could get more Crystals from simply farming nodes, but for those of you still catching up on levelling your Gatherers, this is a great two-for-one deal.
As you will only have a certain amount of Levequests a day you won’t feel as sucked into this grind and it can be something you do in your downtime. I would, however, strongly suggest that players do not complete these while they are trying to queue for anything as getting teleported midway through a Levequest can prove to be detrimental to your rewards, so unlike farming basic nodes you will want to optimize your GP and resources.
Still, in downtime, I think these are great when you need a change in what you are doing.
THE DIADEM
I’ve spent hundreds of hours in the Diadem farming the achievements in hopes of getting the adorable Mount that comes with it. Although I feel nowhere close, I’m honestly happy that I’ve gained such an understanding for the area as I’ve learned to min-max the majority of the content and it rekindled my want to become a Crafter.
Typically my goal in the Diadem is to harvest nodes using a Botanist or Miner depending on what I am spam crafting and then I will use my Aetheromatic Auger on Corrupted Sprites.
Now, anyone is going to tell you that this is a mistake and I will admit, I agree. Though this is true, I will probably continue doing this due to my semi-Iron Man approach to playing FFXIV. Although the Diadem has sustained my need for Crystals for the most part, as soon as I got heavy into the Crafting Gil Market, I ended up running out of Crystals immediately, hence my want to hire Gatherer Retainers to speed up this process.
I did a 28-minute test run in the Diadem and got 8 charges of Aetheric Auger, though I was only able to get 7 charges off on Corrupted Sprites as once I got the 8th charge the Umbral Weather concluded, leading all the Corrupted Sprites to disappear. Quite frankly, I still think that was good though as when I entered the Diadem there was already Umbral Weather happening and I was able to get one Corrupted Sprite before the Weather disappeared.
The following were all the Crystals I got in 28 minutes, which I must admit is pretty sad:
SHARDS
5 Fire
42 Ice
4 Wind
23 Earth
24 Lightning
24 Water
CRYSTALS
9 Fire
141 Ice
69 Wind
138 Lightning
76 Water
CLUSTERS
5 Fire
56 Ice
5 Wind
33 Earth
50 Lightning
38 Water
I have to say that this isn’t a great pull, especially now that I’ve done the collectable runs a lot more often, though those never give you Shards. I will say, that the biggest downfall do this method of getting Shards is that you have no control over what type you get as it is all RNG.
DECONSTRUCT THAT LOOT BABY!
Listen, you’re not going to make bank by deconstructing everything but getting your Desynth as high as you can before a new expansion can really help boost your income.
While Desynth has gone through a lot of changes since I first started playing the game in hopes of making it a lot more new player friendly, it is still one of the better ways of getting Clusters in particular.
From what I saw in Endwalker, Dysnth was only worth it for Gil for a few months before all the resources tanked in price due to everyone being able to Desynth the newest gear. Now, I can’t be mad about that since I was someone who couldn’t be bothered with being gatekept behind the level of items I was desynthesizing. You see, originally players were only able to desynth items that were near the level that they were at with their desynth, meaning that players would have to regularly farm certain levels of Dungeons in order to level up this skill until they were able to desynth the highest level gear.
Now back to the Clusters. As of writing this post, a player has the chance to get the type of Crystal that was used to craft the item even if their desynth level isn’t as high as the item’s “requirement.” Still, you would probably want to get your level up as fast as possible if you want to regularly farm Crystals this way if you are above the required level you have a higher chance of getting more resources or high-quality resources which tend to be worth it near the beginning of an expansion.
Is this sustainable? No, but given the fact that the only other thing you will probably be doing with Gear is trading it in for Seals? Well, do this if you don’t need the Seals or things that are extremely inexpensive on the Market Board.
MOB DROPS & DUNGEONS
I debated whether or not I wanted to put this on the list as this isn’t really a “farmable” method, but it’s worth noting that you can get Shards, Crystals and Clusters from Mobs and Dungeons.
This is completely random and will often happen when a player kills a Sprite, however, sometimes when players open loot chests they will be rewarded with some of these resources.
I won’t lie, I sometimes shoot Sprites in the overworld when I see them, especially if they are at a low enough level for me to one-shot them. This is never a task I go out of my way to do, but as I’m writing this I saw 6 Fire Sprites and got 8 Fire Crystals out of one shotting them with an AoE. Not remarkable, but extremely low effort.
The main reason I even bring this up is because I have difficulty with planning out what is worth spending my time on, especially when I have so many tasks I want to complete. Even before I became a crafter and had to focus on farming resources like Shards, Crystals and Clusters I found that I had thousands of each in my inventory. As I wasn’t keeping track of where they were coming from or how many I was getting from each form of content, I can’t give you a straightforward answer to how efficient this really was as much as I can tell you it’s a nice passive boost to your collection.
I have seen players get around 50 Crystals from chests which as a whole is not very many, but can really be a nice boost.
WHAT GETS USED MOST? SHARDS, CRYSTALS OR CLUSTERS?
There is no straightforward answer as to which of the three resources gets used most. This is because it will completely depend on what content a player is trying to complete. (Note: that this comment is based on a player’s personal crafting and not Marketboard as I will cover that in a section later on.)
For example, I use Crystals the most, but I do not focus on things like Expert Crafts or Master Crafts since I don’t enjoy the switch in crafting style. Then again, I have also been caught selling things on the market board that are below level 50, thus using quite a number of shards.
I would say that Clusters are the least used of the three resources, but realistically this is a biased opinion since I don’t personally use Clusters often. It’s clear that Clusters get used the most during big expansion updates when new Gear is launched especially if new Savage content or Crafter/Gatherer gear has come out.
If you are asking this question to figure out which of the three resources you want to sell, I would strongly recommend looking at the Marketboard to have a better understanding of what your Crafters are doing on your server. Typically, on my server, you see many players crafting Gear at the beginning of every patch and in the mid-to-late portion of each major patch, you will see them spamming food Crafts. Throughout this though, you will see markets for each tier of Crystal selling as many new players will need to spam crafts in order to level their Crafters.
There is no real way to track this as it simply depends on how well FFXIV’s marketing is going and whether or not the new players are joining your server. For example, after the Dawntrail campaign launched we saw an uprise of Shards being sold on the Marketboard as we got an overwhelming amount of new players on our server. We also saw a small increase in Crystal Sales during returning player events, however, this was nowhere near as big as the beginning of a patch or when a wave of new players joined.
WHAT JOBS USE WHAT SHARDS, CRYSTALS AND CLUSTERS
Each Job has a primary and secondary Crystal that it uses. The Primary Crystal will always be used in a recipe while secondary Crystals tend to only be used when crafting an item versus a resource.
What this means is if a player is planning on crafting something like Lumber or Cloth, they will only be using one type of Crystal. However, if they are crafting something like a Bracelet, a Ring, or Potion, they will be using two types of Crystals. The best way to think about it is if you are crafting something to craft something else you will only use one Crystal, but if you are crafting the final product you will always use two.
| Job | Primary Crystal | Secondary Crystal |
|---|---|---|
| Carpenter | Wind | Ice |
| Blacksmith | Fire | Earth |
| Armourer | Ice | Earth |
| Goldsmith | Wind | Fire |
| Leatherworker | Earth | Wind |
| Weaver | Lightning | Wind |
| Alchemist | Water | Lightning |
| Culinarian | Fire | Water |
So as a small breakdown:
PRIMARY CRYSTALS
2 Wind
2 Fire
1 Ice
1 Earth
1 Lightning
1 Water
SECONDARY CRYSTALS
2 Wind
2 Earth
1 Fire
1 Ice
1 Lightning
1 Water
BOTH COMBINED
4 Wind
3 Fire
3 Earth
2 Ice
2 Lightning
2 Water
SO HOW MUCH GIL CAN YOU ACTUALLY MAKE FROM SHARDS, CRYSTALS AND CLUSTERS?
As you may have already guessed, the answer to this question cannot be completely guaranteed. I can say, however, that although the Crystal Market value fluctuates based on expansion and content it is the most stable of all the resources as not a day goes by where a player is not crafting.
The other main factor of this is quite unfortunate… it depends if you have bots on your server or not. While bots are not as big of a problem in FFXIV as they were in other video games I played, such as New World, there are waves of crystal-selling bots that come in, depreciate the Market, get reported and banned after a few months. During these months a player will want to ignore the Crystal business and move on to something else.
I have to say, I don’t see Crystal selling bots on my server, though I do see bots in other parts of the game, in particular the Diadem.
When things are good, you can sell each tier of Crystal for over 50 Gil each, going as high as 200 at certain points. While you are more often looking at sales around 30-40 per Crystal during the middle of an expansion this is still not bad when you can get thousands in a few minutes, especially when you have nothing else to do. Typically Clusters only drop to around 80 Gil each and will sometimes jump to 300, though again the upper half is less common than the lower with some even dropping to 1 Gil.
As players can also hold and sell Crystal stacks up to 9,999, this gives a player a lot of leeway on how much to sell and when to sell. That also being said, players can hoard their Crystals by placing these large stacks in their Retainers until the Market value goes back up, being the thing that takes the least amount of space as it has its own portion of the inventory.
I wouldn’t recommend selling massive stacks of Crystals as it’s not the price that deters players from purchasing these, but the risk that they will not be able to retrieve all the Crystals they just paid for from the Market Board.
When I would sell these resources I would cap them at 1,000 and only sell one of each type on the Market Board to gauge the current interest. Depending on how fast they sold I would put another stack of 1,000 on the Market Board,
Now, though I say this you will sometimes see players only buying the bigger stacks of Crystals as they don’t want to keep clicking purchase especially if they are crafting a lot all at once, so you may also want to try selling stacks of 5,000 to 7,000. Of course, if you have the retainer space you can list different amounts of Crystals for different prices to maximize your profits and chance for sales and realistically if you are planning on making Crystal selling your main source of income I would strongly recommend this anyway.
Let’s do some quick math for the passive collection though. I will not be doing math on the node or Aetherial Reduction as these will heavily depend on what you have access to, what stats you have, whether you use Cordials and whether you use all of your Abilities or not:
SHARDS FROM GARDEN
At worst, which I haven’t seen in a long while:
50 Shards x 8 Plots x 30 Gil = 12,000 Gil – 960 for Potting Soil = 11,040 Gil per day
The current average on my server based on the month and all types of Shards:
50 Shards x 8 Plots x 60 Gil = 24,000 Gil – 960 for Potting Soil = 23,040 Gil per day
SHARDS OR CRYSTALS FROM A RETAINER
Say you are online for a maximum of 4 hours a day, however, during this time you always visit your retainer meaning that you can get a maximum of 6 Ventures in 4 hours. This means your profits will be around:
Shards & Crystals at Worst:
120 Shards/Crystals x 6 Ventures x 30 Gil = 21,600 Gil
Shards & Crystals at Current Average:
120 Shards/Crystals x 6 Ventures x 60 Gil = 43,200 Gil
THE MOST PROFITABLE SHARDS, CRYSTALS, CLUSTERS
The most profitable Shard, Crystal or Cluster highly depends on what part of an expansion you are on and what has recently been added to the game.
As a baseline Lightning, Earth and Wind Crystals tend to be used more often by players though this is not a hard-set rule.
The reason for this is that Weavers, Leatherworkers and Carpenters tend to be the more frequently used jobs no matter where you are in an expansion while the remaining jobs typically fall off near the mid to end of each major patch.
Now, a player must also factor in things like how often these resources are actually being purchased on the Marketboard as sometimes things that sell for less, sell more frequently allowing for more profit. This will also heavily depend on how many sellers there are for that specific Crystal for example Water Crystals tend to have the most sellers as players will get Water Crystals for each fish they desynth.
At the time of writing this post, the Market value of each stands in the following order:
Wind Crystals
Ice Crystals
Fire Crystals
Lightning Clusters
Fire Shards
Ice Shards
Water Clusters
Fire Clusters
Water Crystals
Earth Crystals
Wind Clusters
Wind Shards
Water Shards
Lightning Crystals
Lightning Shards
Earth Shards
Earth Clusters
These statistics are based on a 7-day period and every single one has a Market Value above 1 million for the week with the highest being 24 million this week.
I personally would never put all of my eggs in one basket, whether it’s choosing to only sell a particular tier of Crystal or a specific Element. Players tend to jump for products that are selling for a lot and if you’re in it for the long haul this is a bad choice.
I’d personally rotate whatever you’re farming, keep the extras in your Retainer and then sell when you feel the price is worth it and always remember, sometimes cheaper things have more profits.
Let’s take Ice Crystals for example. The lowest they sold this week is 26 Gil a piece, but it is the second-highest profit margin for all of the Crystals this week. While yes, if you were gathering these by hard it would feel like poop, but if you choose to send your Retainer out for these instead it will feel a bit more worth it since it will mean a better guarantee on actually selling your product with less chances of being undercut.
CAN YOU CONVERT SHARDS, CRYSTALS OR CLUSTERS?
Unfortunately, no there is no way to convert your Shards, Crystals or Clusters to any other element or any other type. The best thing to do if you have found yourself in a situation where you have the wrong type or wrong element.
The best thing you can do if you have found yourself in this situation is to sell your Crystals in order to get the type that you actually want. Otherwise, there is a -3 Million percent chance that this will be added to the game.
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