Honestly, I found the concept of requiring an item -only obtainable by either paying or farming specific stratum for days- in every recipe for every item. It's essentially just the same as requiring energy to create gear.

My idea is to have all enemies located in the specific strata to drop Orbs of Alchemy found in that strata. The drops would be as rare of a drop as any other material of the same star (i.e. Simple Orbs of Alchemy would drop as often as any other 2 Star material, Elite Orbs of Alchemy would drop as often as any other 4 Star material), the only exception being Flawed Orbs of Alchemy, which would drop at the same rate as Simple Orbs of Alchemy.

This would make creating armor much easier and more realistic. Having all the materials you need and still having to farm forever (or on Elite, which is basically paying for the orbs in Sparks of Life) seems like a waste of time and money, and is far to difficult in my opinion. Hopefully this method could fix this problem.