Crystal System, bit of a rant.

[fefnir3284]

Okay the crystal system stinks.

Ive given up. Too many crystals, no way to sell, tons of worthless junk. IF you slot one, you nearly always get a weapon/armor upgrade and removing a gem turns it into a large 0 purify piece of junk.
So now all I do is smash them til I get a 10 then wait for a 1 size and settle for a 2 size 10 crystal. I am not even bothering with a 1 size anything.

Suggestions:

1. Removing a crystal minuses ONE purity and increases size by ONE. Not this full nuking the crystal. Have a way in game to reduce crystal size or prevent nuking, a mini game, or pay coin, or use mats. Something to make slotting that nice gem worthwhile instead of holding it for the WHOLE game until you get your end game items.

2. Let me sell some of these damn things. I got hundreds of them. OR

3. Let one gem eat another to gain a benefit of some of its purity or reduced size.

[Songbird]

I would guess the game literally does not store attributes like purity and crystal size in the weapon data, and that's why they have to revert to zero purity and become the largest size when removed, and also change down to the last tier that changes the crystal effect (1, 3, 5, or 10). Anything else would let you improve crystals when you put them in and out of weapons. (As is, you can still improve crystals you have fused down to 0 purity this way by making them usable as fuse crystals, when they wouldn't normally be usable in fusion at all.)

The crystals you take out are not at all worthless. You can use them as the second (fuse) crystal in fusion just fine, and they are exactly the same as any other size 3 crystal of their rank for this purpose since purity is not used on the fuse crystal. You can also transfer them to other weapons without losing anything other than their size.

[Strap me to a Missile]

Originally posted by Songbird:

I would guess the game literally does not store attributes like purity and crystal size in the weapon data, and that's why they have to revert to zero purity and become the largest size when removed, and also change down to the last tier that changes the crystal effect (1, 3, 5, or 10). Anything else would let you improve crystals when you put them in and out of weapons. (As is, you can still improve crystals you have fused down to 0 purity this way by making them usable as fuse crystals, when they wouldn't normally be usable in fusion at all.)

The game probably doesn't store the info, but there is no technical reason it couldn't. It isn't like they have to worry about maintaining a certain binary format for the weapon data. It's a game, not a low level network protocol.

Originally posted by Songbird:

The crystals you take out are not at all worthless. You can use them as the second (fuse) crystal in fusion just fine, and they are exactly the same as any other size 3 crystal of their rank for this purpose since purity is not used on the fuse crystal. You can also transfer them to other weapons without losing anything other than their size.

Size 3 is a pretty big nerf though. You basically should be saving all size 1 drops until the end, then use them to buff the ultimate weapons.

[ichlehneab]

The whole crystal mechanic is trash and should be reworked. Right now its not worth the time and energy its needs to get acceptable results.

[astranabeat]

Size should not increase when take it out. you can't do any build until you get final weapon and armor. that isn't fun. I am in chapter 3 right now and all I did was use the same gems for weapons and armors. slot in and take it out for new stuff I got. same size 3 lv5.

[Blaizeus]

Yeah my biggest issue is how fast/often you swap out weapons to direct stat upgrade ones. I can sort of enjoy the crystal system or even sit in the menu tinkering for a few minutes, but it gets obnoxious when I sit at an anvil and slot out 8 new weapons and 8 new pieces of armor with gems, then get direct upgrades the next area over. And my choices are either ditch all the gems I just slotted or dump them all out into trash crystals.

Needs...some work.

[8765409]

Yeah, the crystal system is pretty crummy and is the one major thing I would change about the game. Fortunately it's rather optional and not worth putting effort into until you get the penultimate or ultimate weapons.

[Zalugar]

The game doesn't explain the system the best, but you can use gems all throughout the game; you don't actually have to trash gems (but most are trash effects anyway). First off: Gems can go past rank X, there's just no stat benefit. I'm not sure where it stops exactly, but it leaves a lot of room for future use.
Second off: A combined/'artificial' gem becomes a base/pure gem again once it's put into armor and taken out. That means even if it's purity 0 and 3 in size, you can combine it into another gem.

So I take my ATK Up X out of my sword and now it's a 3 size, 0 purity sad lookin' little fella. I take an ATK Up I (1 size) and combine the ATK Up X into it and get a size 2 ATK Up XI. Takes up 2 slots compared to the original 1 slot it had before, sure, but it's still more than viable to use.

Now I have no idea if it's possible to turn a size 3 into a size 1, so you can't min-max size 1 gems with this method, but it's extremely useful knowledge for using gems throughout the game because you don't have to toss them. Even auto-combine isn't quite as detrimental due to this.

But if you do want to min-max your gear all with size 1 gems for the entire game, you either have to wait for your final gear or inflate your game time by a factor of 6 to do it for each tier of gear.

My personal issue with the system itself is how buggy it is. Size on gems can easy glitch out and show its size incorrectly in the inventory, if it shows a size at all. If it has no size you can't even see it in the anvil menu. Only fix for this is to close the game and open it up again. It happens very easily when managing your gem inventory, i.e. going on crystal runs all over, or tossing a ton out.

[Broso]

Removing a crystal shouldn't increase the size at all. That's just a completely stupid idea. You may spend hours of crystal farming to even collect enough size 1 crystals of high enough rank and purity to fuse one size 1 rank 10 crystal. Why the ♥♥♥♥ should all that work go to waste just because you want to put the crystal on a different piece of gear? I don't care about purity but the size penalty needs to go.

For me, game mechanical wise, the crystal system is the weakest part of the game. The idea is nice but the execution is really bad, held back by bad design decisions and buggyness.

[Nero]

Originally posted by Broso:

Removing a crystal shouldn't increase the size at all. That's just a completely stupid idea. You may spend hours of crystal farming to even collect enough size 1 crystals of high enough rank and purity to fuse one size 1 rank 10 crystal. Why the ♥♥♥♥ should all that work go to waste just because you want to put the crystal on a different piece of gear? I don't care about purity but the size penalty needs to go.

For me, game mechanical wise, the crystal system is the weakest part of the game. The idea is nice but the execution is really bad, held back by bad design decisions and buggyness.

The idea is to have a random system. Other games have best possible gear for stage x in the game.
Crystals with their RNG are a good idea to prevent playing "on rails" (eg everyone using the same builds in Elden Ring) and forces you to work with what you have.

But that's the concept.
The execution is well... meh.
Too many crystals in general (loot), too many useless crystals (stuff like SOS crystals need a buff like they're size 2 at max, sometimes 1)

And there needs to be a way to go all in in the late game.
Eg change size and purity for a high cost (mats + eg skill points)

[Rampage]

Same problem here that I see mentoined by a lot of people.

I never WANT to use the gems because usually the chance is there when you know "im about to head to the next area. they;ll probably have new weapons there"
Id be more inclined to use them at a point where I know I wont just slot them in a weapon that will get replaced 5 minutes later.

Removing them is a hassle, selling a weapon should indeed auto remove a gem.

I have loads of gems but it seems hardly any of the same type so Im just looking at a huge list of junk that I can even combine.

I wouldnt mind the purity and size system if everthing else was easy and fast, now its just an annoying thing you have to keep in mind after already going to the above slog.

All this just makes it so I dont feel like wasting 30 minutes on getting my gems in order and sorted to what I should slot where for what character when its needs to be done anew after every few maps.
The only single time I will use them is when Im stuck on a boss that has an easy way out to the world map or an anvil. Then its still just I cant beat this boss, lets slap on some basic gems without really planning or caring and see if it goes better now.

[Heavenly Archer]

Yeah, it blows. I have Crit Up X, HP Drain V, TP Down X, and Atk Up X I want to equip on Sienna, but can't because I won't be able to equip all of them again when I get new weapons and armor.

[Zalugar]

Originally posted by b12:

- unuseable gems (0 purity size 2) should get auto-destroyed
- a way to delete/sell unwanted gems

Purity 0 size 2 are very usable and you can already delete gems in the crystal inventory (not anvil inventory).

I feel a better tutorial for the system and more streamlined menu-fu for the crystal system would take care of a lot of complaints, but for the most part it's definitely a system that's more enjoyable on a 2nd playthrough once you have more understanding of it. Which I guess is fine since you can beat the game on hard mode without gems anyway.

[phaoray]

I just gave up on it. It's too much work, crystals are too random, and weapons and armor change too quickly in game for me to keep making new ones. It's one of the less fun parts of the game. Now, if they had been smart and added this system in for the Mechs, I would have used it. You don't get new mechs or mecha weapons very often so it would feel worth it I think.

[Brasten]

I also just gave up on crystals. It's not a good design and really doesn't bring any value for the fiddly time sink required to work with it. It also doesn't help that tutorials can't be reread anywhere in-game.

It also seems that the dev is going to dig in heels over this system.

It will be near the top of my list to mod eventually.

[phenir]

Originally posted by Brasten:

It also seems that the dev is going to dig in heels over this system.

Think again
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1229240/discussions/0/3710433479218019740/?ctp=2#c3730700312409222964