Gathering & Crystals (Shards)

Edit: Thanks to the information provided by Anikal, it seems the rates of which crystals are dug up by gathering classes are highly effected by your current element resists.

Ex:
Earth: 40
Wind: 50
Water: 40
Fire: 40
Ice: 40
Lightning: 40

With this setup, you will have a higher chance to dig up Wind shards.

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If anyone has tried crafting yet, you might notice that your crystal shard supply can deplete very quickly since the majority of recipes can consume up to 10+ shards per synthesis. Many bazaars can also have them overpriced, so I tend to stay away from buying shards for now.

The most common way to obtain shards that's known to all is killing mobs, but finding what types of mobs drop which crystals & which have high/low drop rates can be annoying, especially when their over camped. Another alternative was to craft the shards with Alchemy, assuming you have it at about level 10+ with the correct synthesis materials.

Anyway, moving on to the main subject, as I was gathering more materials via Mining, I noticed that I was mining up quite a few crystals, enough to supply me a few synths worth without going out of my way to kill mobs or level alchemy/farm mats.

So my question is, has anyone brought up/posted statistics yet on which crystals can be obtained through which gathering class? And also, which types of crystals are most commonly dug up with which classes?

If not, I guess I can start us off. I recorded my last mining session; Its a small data sample, but I'll probably expand it later when I go back to mine.

Note: These results only include successful digs. Digs that were failed have been excluded since there was no final result.

So far, I was able to dig up Lightning, Wind, Fire, & Earth shards from Mining. The numbers (Ex: 9/69) are successful dig ups, not the amount of shards that were dug up.

Mining Shard Rates
Area: Around Camp Bentbrach area (Just outside of Gridania)
Grade 1 Deposits

Lightning: 9/69
(13.04%)

Wind: 15/69
(21.73%)

Fire: 9/69
(13.04%)

Earth: 7/69
(10.14%)

No Shard 29/69
(42.02%)

So far, I was only able to get Fire shards from mining.
Where do you usually mine?

I've been mining around the Camp Bentbranch area on Grade 1 deposits, which is just outside Gridania

Wow, i have over 158 earth shards and 109 fire shards from mining all over. Mostly earth shards.

Ill have to pay more attention for research purposes. I like being on the tip of the spear for things like this. {fun}{excitement}

I've got water, wind, and fire mining just outside of limsa.

Water? That's interesting, maybe the area plays a role in the types crystals that can be dug up, or maybe I haven't been lucky enough to mine it yet from outside of Gridania.

you can get two different shards for grade 2 spots

Just dump your element points into whatever shards you want and it'll increase your chances of gathering that shard.

I made a killing from mining wind shards round Ul'Dah during the first day.

Very nice to know. Grade 2 was designed for around level 10, so by level 50 we should have grade 6 points to gather from, which means it's possible we may be able to gather 6 different shards

Also nice to know. So perhaps all forms of gathering will have the same shard dig up rate depending on your element resists? I believe all of mine were evenly distributed except for two, which explains why I was only able to get 4 of the 6 element shards. Thanks for sharing this

yeah all my elementals are equal, i'll have to swap up for the shard of the week