Running all of the Arcade tiers while farming spikes reinforced something to me that every veteran player knows well: the current distribution of rarity drops is, well, pretty wack. We've more than beaten Radiants to death but a lot of the other items aren't much better. Without having any hard numbers in front of me, here's my vibe-based summary of what drops where as it stands now. (This is all on Elite difficulty, I can't remember if changing it affects level distribution.)

Fire Crystals:

Cracked/Dim: These don't drop for...reasons? Sure, you don't "need" them for anything, but by the same token you don't "need" Warm crystals for anything either. It's really strange to me that new players have to either buy these crystals or craft down later ones if they want to heat their starter gear. Well, them and weirdos like me who have a fully-heated collection of 0* and 1* gear.

Warm: These things are literally everywhere. They start dropping in level 1, and for some inexplicable reason you can find them all the way down through stratum 3 (and maybe rarely into 4?). You'll quickly wind up with thousands of these sitting around, even if you level your 2* gear before crafting it up. They infest half of the Clockworks. No one can escape the Warm Wave.

Glowing: These don't seem to drop as much as I think they should, probably because they're getting squeezed from above by the Warm Wave. I usually only start seeing them most of the way through stratum 3, and then they're gone by the end of stratum 4. This isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things, since if you only want to get your 3* gear to level 5 in order to craft it up, you don't need many of them at all. (Double levels ftw.) But when I'm taking a few 3* items all the way to level 10 in the hope of getting a forge box or two, I drain through them a lot more quickly than I pick them up.

Shining: Second only to Warm crystals in being found in places where they shouldn't. They start showing up in the last level of tier 2, and we all know they infest the vast majority of tier 3. I have literally thousands of them stockpiled at this point, even with the required heating for 4* gear. Easily the most rage-inducing of all of them, since they actively block us from getting what we're really after. There is no reason on Cradle why these things should ever drop at level 28.

Radiant: A decade on and we're still left wondering why they were never fixed. They're the reason why everyone grinds out the same two endgame missions or prays for a level 28 arena in the Arcade, and even then you may only get half as many of them as you should. Enough said.

Orbs of Alchemy:

(What would you call a theoretical 0* orb? Broken?)

Flawed/Simple: Putting these two together because I don't run tier 1 enough to have a good handle on where they drop. Based on my limited experience they seem...fine? You can occasionally get Simple orbs at the start of tier 2, which feels right to me. In any case with energy trade prices so low right now they're not high priority as far as drops go.

Advanced: Honestly it feels like I see these things drop all the time, to the point where I almost never have to pay for a 3* craft. They start right at the top of tier 2 and seem to extend well into stratum 4. Free stuff is great and all, but they almost feel a bit overtuned.

Elite: ...do these actually drop? Real talk, they feel like they're stupid-rare and never drop on levels where you expect them to. Advanced definitely squeeze into the top side of these. Getting even one of them feels like a moment to rejoice. They're the only reason I know the name "Sewer Stash," and it's kind of absurd that running this random rank mission is ostensibly the best way to get them by far. It's ridiculous that they don't extend into tier 3 at all.

Eternal: It feels wrong to complain about getting drops of these, but honestly I have far too many of them. I think I'm currently sitting on over 50 (though 36 of them are reserved for eventual Shadow Lair gear crafts, because I am a crazy person). Sure, part of that is down to Radiants being so rare that I'm disincentivized from upgrading from 4* right away, but even so having them be the only orb drop for an entire tier seems out of whack.

Suggestions: (You know, the whole point of this.)

So what do we do to make things fairer across the board? I think the most obvious answer is looking at the Clockworks as a whole. There are six strata, and six tiers of rarities. (Well, five in the case of orbs.) So lean into that. Couple each stratum with its corresponding rarity, and then create a bit of overlap. It'd probably make the most sense to shift everything up a level or two, since newer players in one tier of the Clockworks are going to need rarities to help them reach the next tier. Just picture a world where Radiants are guaranteed drops across all of stratum 6, or Elites drop in all of stratum 4 and into stratum 5. Glorious.