Before I turn this into a full blown suggestion (not like anyone higher up is listening anyways), I wanted to speak with everyone about the matter of 5* rarities. I play this game regularly enough to have accumulated 81 5* orbs. But I'm not going to use them because 5* rads are super rare to heat just 1 5* gear. Heating shields? Fugetaboutit.
But what if we could brake down 5* orbs into stacks of smaller orbs like we do with heat crystals?
One part of me says no, it's supposed to force players to play the old levels at lowers depths to have a chance at orbs and appropriate heat crystals.
And that's good.
It recycles the assets and bosses created to populate those areas.
But then that's what heat crystal recipes are for? If only vanguards could farm Stratum 6 all day for 5* rads and orbs so they could stay in their element end game and still farm and grind lower tier levels at the same time. Isn't that what Nick said? We could be able to gather mats and rarities by just being in Haven? It would allow end gamers to diversify their arsenal and have them spend more time making T2 stuff.
If they could craft 3-4* orbs, those recipes starting at that level would increase the UV's on the market, not to mention 1-2* items as well. It would be similar to mist crafting in the old days, except with a heftier price.
Am I only seeing good things?
Are there any downsides to this?
I'm sitting on at least 250 eternal orbs of alchemy. Sure I could run OCH a bazillion times to use up these orbs, but that's not exactly fun to do, but I'll probably find a bunch more along the way.
Crafting down orbs makes the energy market even less of a requirement to work on. It also does make running earlier tiers for orbs less... Well, needed. I think with the addition of difficulty levels it's allowing end-tier players to get into their element even at lower tiers.
Fire crystal recipes were needed in the past because we had an abundance of radiants. Now-a-days? We really don't need the recipes. If we could craft up fire crystals maybe I could put use to my 30k+ collection of shining fire crystals, but alas I don't expect it.
I guess what I'm saying is that orb craft-down recipes are about as needed as the fire crystal ones - which essentially is not needed. However, seeing as we have the fire crystal ones in the game, perhaps this could make it in anyways? Just have it be a 5 orbs = 3 orbs of tier - 1. (5 5* orbs is 3 4* orbs) with a rather large crown fee on top of it.
One thing I would like to see to be able to use these orbs would be a "community crafting station". Essentially what this is is 2 to 4 players all pitch their resources together on a table and will try to craft certain items. This means I could essentially supply the eternal orbs to players who are stuck on the 5-star orb grind. This also means that if I have 2 elite orbs and a friend of mine has 1 elite orb, we could pitch something together and craft a 4-star item.
Thus, crafting becomes a community effort. This means bound items can be crafted up even if you don't have the orbs for it. All bound items have double a crown cost to work on (so if you need 2,500 crowns to craft your item up, 5,000 comes out of your pocket), and the crowns themselves are only taken by the one who is receiving the item.