Greetings,

I have returned to the game after pushing master 14 in gathering last year. Seeing changes being made, i was checking drops and rare drops.

4 days ago, i gathered exclusively most of the day on 2 locations with one occation of an alt gathering.

Buffs and tool:
Fig pie, luck 5, hedgehog, lucky shining steel + Edit: life stone at all times

Rank: master 14 into master 15

Estimated amount of gathered items on x day:
1st day ~ 6000 with 18 shards (mostly hards)
2nd day ~ 10.000 with 24 shards
3rd day ~ 10.000 with 21 shards of which a skilled 5 alt gathered 2000 and got 4 shards
4th day ~ 8.000 with 6 shards
5th day (today, live update) 6000 meat with 8 sharp and 8 hard shards

Impression:
Going from 20+ shards down to 6 feels like there is something fishy going on. I checked in game time (horoscope theory) and kept buffs up. For the most part, i was shocked to see my skilled 5 alt find close to as many shards (4) in 1h of gathering, as my main master 15 gatherer in more than 4h of gathering (6).

--> Open question: Is there a hidden soft cap on the amount of shards we can find?

Suggestion:
Due to the state of the game and the missing mastery system (caphras, manos clothes, tools...) shards are the big profit suprises. To satisfy demand of the market, i strongly suggest NOT to "just" put out another shard drop event or other means for players to increase the amount in game, but to incentivice gatherers scaled on their skill level to fill the orders (mostly hards)

Currently, i do not feel incentivised to put in long hours of gathering as the fluctuation of shard drops on a master skill levels is demotivating. It only takes one flawed day to trigger this, as the threshold of profit vs. time put in (tool management, energy management, perfect rotation, travel to location, cook, utensil, stone ...) is quite thin compared to going to a 8000s+ trash drop zone and killing mobs.
--> Therefore i would suggest to take another look at shard drops compared to skill ranks
--> An older suggestion from last year was to increase the dust proc or sell value by at least 2x to counter the shard profit fluctuation. This would be a temporary solution until the caphras update arrives.

- i do not need to find 20+ shards, but rather a constant amount between 10-20 than seeing no shard drop for hours and then getting 4 from a day old alt...
- i do understand that grinding was chosen to be the nr.1 profitable activity and gathering will not reach the same silver/h, but it still feels off by a chunk

Thank you for reading!

Thank you for the suggestion! I will add this to my report, and get it sent up today! :D