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If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
10/18/25 Feedback/Discussion: 'Reagents' (Gem Polishers, etc)
Azherae
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
This post is just gonna be a ton of rambling examples all to basically say:
"Please come up with processing reagents that drop from Mobs, even if they still have ridiculous prices at the vendors when in a region without a high supply of them."
So, the problem with trying to bring other examples is that both of the games that 'do this well' use Crystals, and they have similar-sensibility types of Crystal economy. In FF11 Crystals are part of the core economy loops but have limits on how to get large amounts of them. In Throne and Liberty they can't be sold to other players at all usually (they have 'more of them' in specific ways, a few of which can).
Glint
Bias here, I still hate Glint. It has too many tiers, the value is too tied directly to money, the better conversion rates are locked behind progression but not properly tied to economy state (drag), and the related systems are all bad for casual players. Rather than talk about TL or FF11 in terms of 'you should do this', I'll instead talk about things that those games shouldn't (and so far didn't) do, and use those as parallels to things my group considers problems with Glint.
Pre 2010s FF11 didn't create a way for high level players to easily or consistently get more Crystals (or higher grades of Crystal, which functionally don't exist) than lower level players. Lower level players were learning the world and grinding more instead of doing things like shopping, planning, crafting, or 'raiding' (Dynamis, 'Sky'). So they generated more crystals.
TL is largely the same, if you're pushing to get gear progress in terms of actually getting the gear, or spending time doing PvP progressions/maintenances, you're not generating the 'generic Crystal'. Events, if played well, might grant 12 (non-tradeable type) Crystals at a time. They were nice and made it a choice, RP-ers can decide 'This Event dropped Red ones so I can temper Weapons now' (or Alchemists can make a specific potion). You can get higher Grades of crystals, but these are infrequent enough for most content that thinking 'I'm going out to gather these' is pretty silly.
In terms of NPC currency value, FF11 did not allow Crystals to have a high one, therefore they are a genuinely insignificant currency faucet, even with the massive amount of them that 'people just playing the game' generates. I like to believe this was a purposeful decision, that someone understood, back then 'oh we absolutely can't let people just sell these for good money, these are for crafting'.
TL interestingly does allow these to have a pretty high relative currency value, but the currency in question is a Progression Currency, and the incentives work out as normal, still.
Since Glint is for multiplying money and not for Crafting, Glint is not equivalent to Crystals.
"Gem Polishers"
FF11 would not separate out the Economy framework by making Gems require something other than Wind Crystals to cut. Everyone needs them, everyone uses them, everyone understands them. The reason why I can't treat 'Crystals' as being part of the Macro-Slots is because of this. They are just 'Crystals'. Without 'Crystal Drops' you need to compensate, because if Wind Crystals drop, half the Artisans in the game need them for something, but if 'Gem Polisher' drops, that's one set of people. This should still work if they sell and your ecology isn't terrible.
I personally think this should still work out, 8 different Crystals wasn't too much because of Knowledge Paths. I'd bet you can go up to 10 or 12 things, the problem is intuitively naming those things, for most people.
Glint is not Crystals. Glint does not belong in this slot. Currency does not belong in this slot. Top level players and those who rush to endgame will destroy your Casuals if you do it that way. There must be Processing Reagents that drop at reasonable rates from mobs, that can be sold to other players, but don't sell well to NPCs.
I'd argue that TL has 'proven' that depending on the currency they 'sell for', you can 'sell them' (trade for Reputation or some nontradeable currency point like $whatever_node_currency_is_called_now) to NPCs, but there should be no easy path to currency. Settlement stuff seems fine, but I, at least, am talking about things that players might get 6 per hour (or 50/h if funneling all to one person in their Adventuring party that is in an ecosystem/weather condition that favors this drop).
The problem then is, how optional are these? And the secondary issue of course is...
"Rarity Grade"
So we've got one game where the item used for Processing and the Econ flows around that doesn't even have a Macro-Slot, far less a Rarity (note BDO is basically like this too, though I don't think I've ever seen a Gem Polisher drop there, I could easily have forgotten), and another where that 10->1 Conversion applies to most of them but only a few can be sold.
In both cases, they drop from mobs, or can be received from Contracts/Guild Work in TL's case. Roughly speaking, these both work, though neither is optional for their purpose. Here's the thing I personally see as the problem with having meaningful Rarity Grade on these though, in Ashes specifically:
You'd be better off making more unique items in 80% of cases.
Doing otherwise is technically...
"Padding Incorrectly"
Whether Design treats these items as something external or as ArtP(N)-Reagent isn't super important as long as they aren't also CuP(N)-$MobDrop.
But when the flow from there is to require rare versions of ArtP(N)-Reagent, you give yourself a ton more tuning or prevent them from being usable as MobDrop at all (and not just limited in their Currency Value), because Mob Drops are 'infinite', and Ashes is moving away from/not using the clamps that protect from Infinite drops. Devaluation of anything below a given tier, complaints and causing lower level players/casuals to skip them, it's a long list. I really hope the team is familiar with most of the list by now...
In such cases, individual items are better in Artisan Systems. Ashes outright 'requires' them due to the World Manager and related concepts around Settlements, but since that's in flux I will just reference TL again. Back to the Housing Update, so we don't even have to discuss Mobs (though note that some items are obtained from them, I'll try to avoid some of those to minimize confusions).
Even ignoring immersion, diminishing the uniqueness of the components of items limits Economic Velocity, which is a factor all three games share as incredibly important. Casuals' interest in your game lives or dies by Economic Velocity in this age, assuming that you are trying to make a Group-Incentivized MMORPG.
While things like 'Not distinguishing Wood you get from Palm Trees from wood you get from Dried Trees or Breeze Trees' is merely 'odd' or 'immersion breaking', having them generally drop Sap differently while not distinguishing them is not great. TL seems to have lost some of the effects that Weather and Time of Day have on drops, but this could just be the state of the new, first pass of Housing, so let's assume those sorts of things return for the sake of discussion so that it functions 'the same as Ashes'.
The current recipe for Quality Lumber is, for whatever reason:
Quality Log x6, (Regular) Lumber x4, Sap x3
Could be AI, could be placeholders, who knows (we know the third ingredient isn't vital because Quality Paper doesn't have a third component).
This is a case where one could argue that Sap isn't a sensible MobDrop, but this isn't true either, FF11 has a roundabout equivalent, TL kinda-used(?) Fruice as something similar though it was a catch-all early on. It could drop from certain plant mobs, instead of being 'incidental from gathering' as it is now. Since those mobs are Open World, and all basically universally easy as things are now, even a small droprate would provide enough (in TL you wouldn't be able to sell it but in Ashes you could).
You wouldn't want 7 grades of Sap though. You wouldn't want 'Mitran Chief' to drop Precious Sap that could be converted/diluted down to 'Rare Sap'. That's just itemization waste. What you want is for the Sap that drops from Mitran/Temitran Chiefs or is randomly obtained from certain trees to have a different purpose, possibly within even the same tiers of crafting.
No 'gatekeeping the Casuals' by making everything that isn't the best Sap 'basically useless except to level up with', nor 'making them gather 100 regular sap to get 1x of it'. Let the pipeline just be:
"I found a cool/better Sap from this boss mob that the High Levels aren't constantly farming/happened to get it randomly some day because I was on a mountain when it rained and hit a tree"
"I seem to remember a recipe very similar to one using ordinary Sap within the same Artisan Knowledge Path but not just a variant, that I/someone I know can use this for"
"I should use this/sell it to that person or the market"
If you homogenize players' ability to access such things even in a game where Free Trade is allowed (or in the case of TL, where Guilds can target specific bosses if one allowed the drops to come from those), they will stop feeling the wish to Interact, the Economic Velocity will become messed up, and grinders/Hardcore players will turn their time advantage into a crushing advantage of every other type without needing to 'waste time'.
TL is currently facing something akin to 'the opposite effect', right now, where people with meaningfully less time have issues decorating their houses because 'all the good stuff' in the first pass ended up locked behind large time investments, but not behind the type of specialization that either comes from Randomness or from the Temporal Drag effect that games are 'supposed to' apply to people with way too much time. They executed 'I want X so I go Y' relatively well, and now need to work on the other half ('I wonder if someone else got X already so I don't need to go to Y').
If you're willing to commit to players needing each other at all, your equivalent of Grand Aelon needs to drop 'Aelonic Sap', not 'Precious Sap', (because in Ashes you could sell this) and it needs to not be 'for making the BIS gear/Furniture chase item that everyone wants'.
In fact the only reason it matters if it is 'Sap' at all is so that it slots into the same mental space for players as other Sap so they can immediately intuit how to use it. It could be anything else that somehow would be easy to remember the purpose of, not even necessarily intuit, because then you can treat it as ArtC6-Reagent, just not necessarily interchangeable with other ArtC(N)-Reagent, since it's so unique anyway, the standard Micro-Slot function doesn't even need to apply.
In case this makes it clearer, if you wanted it to be a component of Books instead it would probably be ArtC6-Glue or I guess maybe ArtC6-Resin, because the key is that the player has already encountered maybe 5 previous forms of Glue or Resin and learned the purpose of that along the Knowledge Path. Crossover then happens too.
"My friend is always gathering/buying ArtC4-Resin, I got this weird drop, I bet my friend would like this too."
In the end, isn't one of the greatest joys of an MMORPG "I bet my friends would like this too."?
As always we wish you luck with the endless complexity that you've decided to undertake for us.
"Please come up with processing reagents that drop from Mobs, even if they still have ridiculous prices at the vendors when in a region without a high supply of them."
So, the problem with trying to bring other examples is that both of the games that 'do this well' use Crystals, and they have similar-sensibility types of Crystal economy. In FF11 Crystals are part of the core economy loops but have limits on how to get large amounts of them. In Throne and Liberty they can't be sold to other players at all usually (they have 'more of them' in specific ways, a few of which can).
Glint
Bias here, I still hate Glint. It has too many tiers, the value is too tied directly to money, the better conversion rates are locked behind progression but not properly tied to economy state (drag), and the related systems are all bad for casual players. Rather than talk about TL or FF11 in terms of 'you should do this', I'll instead talk about things that those games shouldn't (and so far didn't) do, and use those as parallels to things my group considers problems with Glint.
Pre 2010s FF11 didn't create a way for high level players to easily or consistently get more Crystals (or higher grades of Crystal, which functionally don't exist) than lower level players. Lower level players were learning the world and grinding more instead of doing things like shopping, planning, crafting, or 'raiding' (Dynamis, 'Sky'). So they generated more crystals.
TL is largely the same, if you're pushing to get gear progress in terms of actually getting the gear, or spending time doing PvP progressions/maintenances, you're not generating the 'generic Crystal'. Events, if played well, might grant 12 (non-tradeable type) Crystals at a time. They were nice and made it a choice, RP-ers can decide 'This Event dropped Red ones so I can temper Weapons now' (or Alchemists can make a specific potion). You can get higher Grades of crystals, but these are infrequent enough for most content that thinking 'I'm going out to gather these' is pretty silly.
In terms of NPC currency value, FF11 did not allow Crystals to have a high one, therefore they are a genuinely insignificant currency faucet, even with the massive amount of them that 'people just playing the game' generates. I like to believe this was a purposeful decision, that someone understood, back then 'oh we absolutely can't let people just sell these for good money, these are for crafting'.
TL interestingly does allow these to have a pretty high relative currency value, but the currency in question is a Progression Currency, and the incentives work out as normal, still.
Since Glint is for multiplying money and not for Crafting, Glint is not equivalent to Crystals.
"Gem Polishers"
FF11 would not separate out the Economy framework by making Gems require something other than Wind Crystals to cut. Everyone needs them, everyone uses them, everyone understands them. The reason why I can't treat 'Crystals' as being part of the Macro-Slots is because of this. They are just 'Crystals'. Without 'Crystal Drops' you need to compensate, because if Wind Crystals drop, half the Artisans in the game need them for something, but if 'Gem Polisher' drops, that's one set of people. This should still work if they sell and your ecology isn't terrible.
I personally think this should still work out, 8 different Crystals wasn't too much because of Knowledge Paths. I'd bet you can go up to 10 or 12 things, the problem is intuitively naming those things, for most people.
Glint is not Crystals. Glint does not belong in this slot. Currency does not belong in this slot. Top level players and those who rush to endgame will destroy your Casuals if you do it that way. There must be Processing Reagents that drop at reasonable rates from mobs, that can be sold to other players, but don't sell well to NPCs.
I'd argue that TL has 'proven' that depending on the currency they 'sell for', you can 'sell them' (trade for Reputation or some nontradeable currency point like $whatever_node_currency_is_called_now) to NPCs, but there should be no easy path to currency. Settlement stuff seems fine, but I, at least, am talking about things that players might get 6 per hour (or 50/h if funneling all to one person in their Adventuring party that is in an ecosystem/weather condition that favors this drop).
The problem then is, how optional are these? And the secondary issue of course is...
"Rarity Grade"
So we've got one game where the item used for Processing and the Econ flows around that doesn't even have a Macro-Slot, far less a Rarity (note BDO is basically like this too, though I don't think I've ever seen a Gem Polisher drop there, I could easily have forgotten), and another where that 10->1 Conversion applies to most of them but only a few can be sold.
In both cases, they drop from mobs, or can be received from Contracts/Guild Work in TL's case. Roughly speaking, these both work, though neither is optional for their purpose. Here's the thing I personally see as the problem with having meaningful Rarity Grade on these though, in Ashes specifically:
You'd be better off making more unique items in 80% of cases.
Doing otherwise is technically...
"Padding Incorrectly"
Whether Design treats these items as something external or as ArtP(N)-Reagent isn't super important as long as they aren't also CuP(N)-$MobDrop.
But when the flow from there is to require rare versions of ArtP(N)-Reagent, you give yourself a ton more tuning or prevent them from being usable as MobDrop at all (and not just limited in their Currency Value), because Mob Drops are 'infinite', and Ashes is moving away from/not using the clamps that protect from Infinite drops. Devaluation of anything below a given tier, complaints and causing lower level players/casuals to skip them, it's a long list. I really hope the team is familiar with most of the list by now...
In such cases, individual items are better in Artisan Systems. Ashes outright 'requires' them due to the World Manager and related concepts around Settlements, but since that's in flux I will just reference TL again. Back to the Housing Update, so we don't even have to discuss Mobs (though note that some items are obtained from them, I'll try to avoid some of those to minimize confusions).
Even ignoring immersion, diminishing the uniqueness of the components of items limits Economic Velocity, which is a factor all three games share as incredibly important. Casuals' interest in your game lives or dies by Economic Velocity in this age, assuming that you are trying to make a Group-Incentivized MMORPG.
While things like 'Not distinguishing Wood you get from Palm Trees from wood you get from Dried Trees or Breeze Trees' is merely 'odd' or 'immersion breaking', having them generally drop Sap differently while not distinguishing them is not great. TL seems to have lost some of the effects that Weather and Time of Day have on drops, but this could just be the state of the new, first pass of Housing, so let's assume those sorts of things return for the sake of discussion so that it functions 'the same as Ashes'.
The current recipe for Quality Lumber is, for whatever reason:
Quality Log x6, (Regular) Lumber x4, Sap x3
Could be AI, could be placeholders, who knows (we know the third ingredient isn't vital because Quality Paper doesn't have a third component).
This is a case where one could argue that Sap isn't a sensible MobDrop, but this isn't true either, FF11 has a roundabout equivalent, TL kinda-used(?) Fruice as something similar though it was a catch-all early on. It could drop from certain plant mobs, instead of being 'incidental from gathering' as it is now. Since those mobs are Open World, and all basically universally easy as things are now, even a small droprate would provide enough (in TL you wouldn't be able to sell it but in Ashes you could).
You wouldn't want 7 grades of Sap though. You wouldn't want 'Mitran Chief' to drop Precious Sap that could be converted/diluted down to 'Rare Sap'. That's just itemization waste. What you want is for the Sap that drops from Mitran/Temitran Chiefs or is randomly obtained from certain trees to have a different purpose, possibly within even the same tiers of crafting.
No 'gatekeeping the Casuals' by making everything that isn't the best Sap 'basically useless except to level up with', nor 'making them gather 100 regular sap to get 1x of it'. Let the pipeline just be:
"I found a cool/better Sap from this boss mob that the High Levels aren't constantly farming/happened to get it randomly some day because I was on a mountain when it rained and hit a tree"
"I seem to remember a recipe very similar to one using ordinary Sap within the same Artisan Knowledge Path but not just a variant, that I/someone I know can use this for"
"I should use this/sell it to that person or the market"
If you homogenize players' ability to access such things even in a game where Free Trade is allowed (or in the case of TL, where Guilds can target specific bosses if one allowed the drops to come from those), they will stop feeling the wish to Interact, the Economic Velocity will become messed up, and grinders/Hardcore players will turn their time advantage into a crushing advantage of every other type without needing to 'waste time'.
TL is currently facing something akin to 'the opposite effect', right now, where people with meaningfully less time have issues decorating their houses because 'all the good stuff' in the first pass ended up locked behind large time investments, but not behind the type of specialization that either comes from Randomness or from the Temporal Drag effect that games are 'supposed to' apply to people with way too much time. They executed 'I want X so I go Y' relatively well, and now need to work on the other half ('I wonder if someone else got X already so I don't need to go to Y').
If you're willing to commit to players needing each other at all, your equivalent of Grand Aelon needs to drop 'Aelonic Sap', not 'Precious Sap', (because in Ashes you could sell this) and it needs to not be 'for making the BIS gear/Furniture chase item that everyone wants'.
In fact the only reason it matters if it is 'Sap' at all is so that it slots into the same mental space for players as other Sap so they can immediately intuit how to use it. It could be anything else that somehow would be easy to remember the purpose of, not even necessarily intuit, because then you can treat it as ArtC6-Reagent, just not necessarily interchangeable with other ArtC(N)-Reagent, since it's so unique anyway, the standard Micro-Slot function doesn't even need to apply.
In case this makes it clearer, if you wanted it to be a component of Books instead it would probably be ArtC6-Glue or I guess maybe ArtC6-Resin, because the key is that the player has already encountered maybe 5 previous forms of Glue or Resin and learned the purpose of that along the Knowledge Path. Crossover then happens too.
"My friend is always gathering/buying ArtC4-Resin, I got this weird drop, I bet my friend would like this too."
In the end, isn't one of the greatest joys of an MMORPG "I bet my friends would like this too."?
As always we wish you luck with the endless complexity that you've decided to undertake for us.
One of the most enduring 'fantasies' of the human spirit, is to either always have people willing to help... or to be strong enough to never need any.
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