Gems! Everything about Crystals

Gems! Everything about Crystals
Note: This guide is still a work-in-progress and will be completed over the next few days

Table of Contents:

 * 1) Introduction
 * 2) What are Crystals?
 * 3) Different types of Crystals
 * 4) Crafting Crystals and obtaining Mixtures
 * 5) Crystal Manufacture
 * 6) Usage of Crystals
 * 7) Crystal Durability (Craftable Crystals only)
 * 8) Grades of Crystals (Craftable Crystals only)
 * 9) Stacking of Crystals
 * 10) "PG" Crystals (Craftable Crystals only)
 * 11) The Crystal Bug
 * 12) Q&A
 * 13) Conclusion

1. Introduction
One of the lesser known features of the game is the enchantment of a player's equipment through the usage of Crystals. I receive questions often about crystals, about their effects, about stacking, et cetera, so I figured I would explain everything that I know about crystals in this forum guide.

If you have any questions after reading this guide, feel free to contact me and I'll do my best to explain

2. What are crystals?
Crystals, sometimes referred to as Artifacts, are items that can be crafted and, once created, inserted on equipment. The crystals will then provide enhancement to specific stats as long as that specific piece of equipment is equipped on the player. Crystals have a certain amount of durability that needs to be restored to prevent destruction (in other words, they are not permanent). Different kinds of crystals can be equipped on different types of equipment and will provide different kinds of effects.

That's in essence quite simple right? Let's dive a little bit deeper:

3. Different Types of Crystals
There are 3 different types of crystals in this game. All of these can be found under "Crystal" in the Game Info:

1. Craftable Crystals

Description: These are the crystals that can be crafted by the player. In the Game Info, these are all Crystals that have a mineral and a grade on it (like Ruby Crystal [F], Diamond Crystal A and Sapphire Crystal [S2])

Features: - Can be crafted by the player which will increase the Crystal Manufacture skill - Stat increase upon usage is random - Stat obtained upon usage is random - Stats can not be stacked on top of eachother, nor with other pieces of equipment - Stat increase can be more than the game info mentions - It is possible to create "Lux Crystals" (will be discussed later) - These crystals can be equipped on Helmet, Armor, Belt, Shoes and Weapon

2. Accesory Crystals Description: These crystals need to be bought off the Item Mall and can be equipped on Accesory. In the Game Info, these are all "Up" crystals (like Intelligence Up Crystal, Weapon Skill Up Crystal, etc.)

Features - Can not be crafted and need to be bought off Item Mall - Stat increase and stat obtained upon usage is always the same - Stats can be stacked on top of eachother - Stats will stack with other accesories - These crystals can be equipped on Made Ring, Necklace and Cloak. The skill up crystals are exclusive to necklace and the stat up crystals are exclusive to rings and cape

3. Utility Crystals Description: These crystals can not be equipped on items, but provide utility to work with Craftable Crystals. There are currently three different utility crystals:

a. Slot Up Crystal: Increases the amount of slots on equipment to add Craftable Crystals to (for example on weapon or on armor). The Slot Crystal [S] is a quest reward and is not tradable, but acts the same as a regular Slot Crystal. Note that if you use a Slot crystal on items that have existing crystals equipped on them, these will be destroyed! b. Remove Crystal: Removes a Craftable Crystal from your equipment. Upon removal, the maximum durability gets reduced by 10. The current durability will also be recharged back to full c. Recharge Crystal: Recharges current durability of a Craftable Crystal to the maximum. Upon recharge, the maximum durability gets reduced by 5

4. Crafting Crystals and obtaining Mixtures
Obviously, this is only for Craftable Crystals. Let's talk about how you create Crystals. There are 4 different things you need: Crystal Additive, Minerals, Element Powder and Crystal Mixtures:

a. Crystal Additive Easiest to obtain: Buy as many as you need from Angelet for 15.000[M] each. Done

b. Minerals Just like with most materials for manufacturing, buy them off market or hunt them yourself. I don't think it needs explaining that you need Diamonds for Diamond crystals, Pearls for Pearl Crystals, etc. Relatively simple as well.

c. Element Powder This is where it gets slightly more complicated. It is possible to Dissolve weapons at NPC Cindy (will be shown later), similarly to Tintinning equipment. However, instead of being returned a percentage of the base materials, you get mixtures and element powders instead. For Element Powders: there is a very simple system:

Level 1-31 items give you Strange Powders Level 32-63 items give you Mysterical Powders Level 64+ items gives you Illusionary Powders

Unranked items give you Unattributable Powder Fire enchanted items give you Fire Powder Water enchanted items give you Water Powder Land enchanted items give you Land Powder Wind enchanted items give you Wind Powder

To illustrate this: A level 1 Bamboo Spear that is not ranked will give you Strange Unattributable Powder A level 44 Iron First that is rank 1 fire will give you Mysterical Fire Powder A level 65 Spirit Cane that is rank 10 land will give you Illusionary Land Powder

You might be wondering: Is it worth to use a higher grade/rank for dissolving? and the answer is absolutely not. I compared a rank 1 land normal grade Hermits Cane with a rank 10 land PG Hermits Cane and the PG r10 gave me about twice as many mats as the NG rank 1 did. Or in other words: 2 NG rank 1 items give the same amount of powders as 1 PG r10 item.

So if you are planning to dissolve weapons for mixtures: Use NG unranked (or rank 1 if you need a specific element powder) items - any higher is a waste.

d. Crystal Mixtures Element Powders have the advantage that it is very easy to farm for - if you want Illusionary Fire Powders, you dissolve weapons/armors above lv64 that are Fire Element and you WILL get what you need. For mixtures, this rule does not hold, and that makes it far more tedious to farm for.

The reason for this will be clear once you see the level ranges of the specific mixtures: Level 1 - 47: Lithium Level 16 - 63: Argon Level 32 - 79: Selenium Level 48 - 95: Rubidium Level 64 - 100+: Strontium Level 80 - 100+: Cadium Level 100+: Fradium

You probably already noticed that some of these level ranges are overlapping eachother. What will happen then if I dissolve a Level 65 weapon, will I get Selenium, Rubidium or Strontium? This is determined at random and there is NO way to influence this - You need strontium? You might get Selenium instead: tough luck, try again. From my experience, if you can get 3 different mixtures, the ratio is about 60% for the lowest possible option, 30% for the middle option and 10% for the highest option, which means in this case that you will probably end up with far more Selenium than you would get Strontium. Good luck farming that.

This system is the sole reason why there aren't plenty of Crystal manufacturers around - it is an absolute horror to obtain the correct amount of Mixtures and more often than not you will end up with Mixtures that you don't need. Fradium is in this case by far the worst because it is only given out by level 100 weapons/armors which are far more costly than their lv85 variants and only have a very small chance to be obtained from Dissolving.

5. Crystal Manufacture
You have gathered mats, now it's time to manufacture crystals. Here's all you need to know:

- Crystal Manufacture costs skill points to learn (important) - Crystal Manufacture is quantity based (see my manufacture guide for more information on what this means) - Every crystal (at least the s1 and s2 ones) cost 300 seconds to make, no matter the quantity. This makes it the slowest manufacture ability in the game to max out - Crystal is the ONLY manufacturing ability that is perfectly combinable while hunting for mats/exp

Other than that, you manufacture as usual.

6. Usage of Crystals
Created some crystals? Time to start using them! Here's how you do it.

1. First, make sure your weapon/armors have slots on them. If they don't, use Slot Crystals to expand the amount of slots on your equipment. Note that the maximum amount of slots that you can have on your equipment is based off your level - 5 is the maximum and should be allowed on all level 100+ equipment 2. Go to NPC Cindy 3. If you haven't already, unequip the weapon/armor you want to use crystals on 4. In the first tab, place the weapon in the top. All available slots will appear, as well as any crystals already equipped on it 5. Place a crystal in one of the slots. You can place it on an empty spot, as well as a currently equipped one. Do note that this OVERWRITES your current crystal if you do this with Craftable Crystals! 6. Press the button at the bottom to add the crystal 7. Wait 5 seconds 8. Done.

If you followed these steps, congratulations! Your crafted crystal is now equipped on your item

7. Crystal Durability
You might notice you have two numbers next to your crystal, both in NPC Cindy as well as in your inventory (like 100/100 or 82/90). The number on the left is your current durability. When it reaches 0, the crystal will be destroyed. Note that you will not get a system warning if your current durability is low. You will also not be notified when your crystal is destroyed, so pay close attention to your current durability at all times and recharge on time The number on the right is your maximum durability. This is the highest allowed value at that time and will decrease for every time you remove or recharge the equipped crystal. The lowest max. durability you can get is 5, after which your crystal is doomed to be destroyed.

Crystal durability however is very generous and, depending on the amount of hours you hunt or manufacture, can last you for years real time.

How do you lose durablility? - Hunt with the equipped crystal on - Manufacture with the crystal on

As simple as that. As far as I know, other activities, like farming, do not increase crystal durability, but I yet have to confirm this.

Tip: When equipping crystals, preferably equip them on your armor, as weapon seems to lose durability faster due to more intense usage.

8. Grades of Crystals
Believe it or not, crystals have grades. However, crystal "grading" works differently than other manufacture grades. The biggest difference is that crystal grade is determined upon USAGE of crystals, not on CRAFTING. Remember that this is quantity-based manu, so you can not craft a MG or PG. However, when you open it, there is a chance the stats are higher than usual:

- Most crystals fall under the NG category, which has approximately 100-110% of the base stats, not much more. Examples for S2 crystals are STR +29 - +33, HP% 13-14, Physical attack% 15-16, etc. - Some crystals are considered HG crystals and have approximately 150% of the base stats, more or less. Examples for S2 here are Physical Attack 22%, HP 20%, land attack 16%, etc. - It is extremely rare to create a MG or PG crystal which has over 200/250% of the base stats. Example would be Critical +18% or Wind Attack +28%. Note that I personally have not been able to create one of these yet (opened over 700 crystals so far). I do not know if there is a server notification for this either, have not seen one yet.

9. Stacking of Crystals
This will be a short one, despite the fact that I have received hundreds of questions about this:

Crystals of the same stat type do NOT stack (helmet with physical atk +15% and armor with physical atk +15% does NOT result in physical attack +30%) Crystals with a different grade do NOT stack (helmet with S1 physical attack and armor with S2 physical attack do NOT stack) Crystals do NOT stack on the same piece of armor, nor on other pieces of armor In ALL crystal cases, the highest stat is the one that counts.

The only thing that "sort of" stacks, is Physical Attack with Min. Physical Attack and Max. Physical Attack (same for Magic), as these are 3 different crystals and apply benefits differently because of this.

Tl;dr answer: Do crystals stack? No.

10. "PG" Crystals
If you ever did some research in crystals, you may have heard of 300% crystals or PG crystals, as they are referred to often.

A few years back, there was a major crystal hack available which allowed users to alter the stats of their crystals to perfection, or even exceed it (I've seen screenshots of Physical Attack +255%). Even though the hack is patched, most crystals have not been patched at all and still exist to this date. They are widely considered controversial at least.

It's not possible to tell from the outside if a crystal is hacked, except for when the stats exceed 300% of the base property (Physical Attack +50% is per definition hacked, as is a Ruby Crystal [F] with 45% physical attack). However, there is one thing I would like to state:

'''I am 100% certain that at least 99% of the current existing PG crystals have been hacked. It's very possible ALL PG crystals are hacked'''

In case you wonder why, let me remind you of two things I stated earlier: - "This system is the sole reason why there aren't plenty of Crystal Manufacturers around" - "It's extremely rare to craft a MG/PG crystal" - " Note that I personally have not been able to create one of these yet (opened over 700 crystals so far)"

Yet some people have 11 or more 300% PG crystals in exactly the stats they want. Right.

The only reason this is currently not getting banned is because there is no definitive proof that the crystals are hacked. The only way to find this out is to go through the Luminary Database and look at Crystal records, which I do not have access to, of course. Rest ***ured however, the crystals are very shady at minimum and should be avoided.

11. The Crystal Bug
Last, but not least, a rather important bug that affects crystals and needs to be explained.

While adding crystals, it is possible that you will receive an error message saying "Cannot change. Please try again". No matter what you try, you can't seem to add your crystal to your equipment. This is what we know as the crystal bug and it's very annoying to work with. It means in essence that adding new crystals to your equipment and overwriting existing crystals could be impossible to do.

This is what I know about this bug: - It affects your weapon/armor when one or more crystals already have been added to the crystal and you attempt to add a new one - It's entirely random if it happens - It does not happen when you have 0 crystals on it - If you have 0 crystals on it and try to add multiple crystals at once, it will work just fine

Therefore, try to add all the crystals that you want in one go if possible to prevent this bug from occuring. If you are affected by the bug, the only way to "fix" it is to use Remove Crystals and remove crystals 1 by 1 until it works just fine. Note that this costs 10 max durability to your existing crystals.

What I personally do to avoid this bug is to open crystals on a different piece of equipment, extract all crystals that I need with Remove Crystals and once I have what I need, I add everything in 1 go to the armor/weapon that I want it equipped on.

Is it annoying? Yes Will it be fixed? Most likely not.

12. Q&A
Q: Do Crystals stack? A: No, see section about crystal stacking

Q: What is the best way to get Crystal Mats? A: If you can, ask for them during events where crafting mats are given out (like Celestial Tower). Else, keep resolving. Good luck!