Theres been a lot of talk about amalgamateds, and for good reason imo. So, I want to talk about amalgamateds, their place in the legendary process and give a suggestion.
There are multiple reasons amalgamateds should be changed. Currently, you need 2250 of a random, non purposefully farmable (at least not reasonably) item. This means that farmers cannot increase supply due to price increases. what it means is that it just pushes the new legendaries out of reach. Why? because, like the precursors before precursor crafting, it becomes a moving target gold grind. Precursor crafting was meant to be a way that YOU could gradually work toward a precursor. Map rewards were implimented party to allow material acquisition more directly by the person making the legendary for themselves such as the T6 requirements.
When amalgamated gemstones were added in the amount they were to legendary crafting using items that cannot reasonably farmed, it became just a worse implementation of T6 materials prior to map rewards.
Because they cannot be reasonably farmed and the supply of orbs(and crests and doubloons of course) cannot be reasonably purposefully increased, each person making a new legendary must rely on the fact that others are NOT making these items. Any of them. I understand that legendaries are meant to be a long term goal, but to acquire them yourself, the orb requirement is FAR too long term. In fact, FAR longer than it takes to farm all the mithril, elder wood, T5, T6, HoT map specific ascended items, HoT currencies and everything else. Even longer than the ascended timegates (which have outlived any usefulness other than simple gold redistribution with legendary crafting, and I say that as someone who only uses his own timegates and doesnt buy ascended materials)
As an example, I have nearly everything gathered for HOPE except the mystic coins (just another absurdly long timegate depending on other people NOT making legendaries if you want it to take you less than 9 months per gen 2 legendary), however, over the last 18 months hoarding all the material I get, because I am a hoarder, I still do not have the orbs, crests and doubloons for a single legendary.
in the legendary crafting, amalgamated are a part of “Gift of Maguuma Mastery” yet nothing about them really has anything to do with Maguuma other than the fact that the new orbs can be used in the recipe if you want. On the other hand, there are materials in the new maps that have reproducible supply either far above their actual demand or in supply far above the other limiting factors in the few recipes they are a part of.
For example, barbed thorns and fossil leaves are both used to make a couple sets of inscriptions/insignias, a few runes and sigils and a couple scribe recipes that cost way more than their utility value (10% movement speed for 30 min costing over 9G? lol). As such their value is approaching vender trash.
So, assuming there isnt any planned future uses for these items
Suggestion: Maguuma Orb
Recipe:
2 barbed thorns, 2 fossil leaves, 1 auric slivers, 1 amber binding agent = 1 Maguuma Orbs
1 amber binding agent = 2 Piece of ambrite, 1 pile of flax seed, 1 milling stone, 1 milling basin.
total for 1 legendary, is still a lot of materials, 18 stacks of the 2x items and 9 stacks of the 1x items. However, it is at least a method of purposefully creating orbs and can still be subsidized by the current orbs. It would give some value to some items that have no value now. The total cost of this is currently around 6s on buy instantly per orb and the prices of all these materials will rise.
I know its another use for flax. What I was trying to do was have something that made at least a tiny amount of sense (flax oil + amber powder as a sort of binder/glue). I guess alternatively, salvaging 1 bottle of airship oil into 5-10 drops of airship oil and using 1 of those in the place of the flax seed may work. Or, there may be some way to use mussels instead but I’m not sure how to fit it in any semilogical way.