After Gear level 40ish its just...

[Hans CakeStealer]

Grind flowers and trees to make paper and scrolls......how exciting as this is about the only way to get anywhere for gear

[Nerevar]

dont worry. they actually made the research grind worse for the last tier as the vendor prices got increased for no good reason^^

and lategame you just sit around waiting for tier 2 rifts to finally happen. as getting shards without these is pretty much such a slog its not worth doing it as there is only 1 area where they drop without rift events^^

[goob]

I had the same problem as you did but most people forgot that they can plant those seeds

[theworld]

Bro, You can buy books from vendors.

[Druark]

Yep, I honestly do not get how people can play this game with the default settings, it's an insane amount of grind to progress. It feels like needless padding of content.
Gathering resources is not this game's strong suit and that part of the game often overstays it's welcome when you want to enjoy the good combat and bosses instead.

I will commend them for having so many configurable world options though, few games do and they make up for the issues.

Originally posted by theworld:

Bro, You can buy books from vendors.

They increased the vendor costs. It's rather excessively expensive to unlock research this way. Plus the selection available is random, I've had certain items not come up for days at a time, it's not reliable as a method of progression.

[»' Just GirlPower | Nana♥]

If you think that's bad... wait till you gotta start farming Radium Alloy bars for ages!