I think the 3-6 moonstones a day estimate thrown around in the linked thread a couple of pages ago was an overstatement. I haven't been a casual player, I spend hours and hours on this site grinding activities and professions, and within 7-8 days I've earned 13 moonstones (I may be lucky to earn another today, but I think it'll be a stretch). One and a half of premium currency a day for a lot of gameplay I'm actually fine with, it's a premium currency! But because it's so difficult to get, I'm not going to spend it frivolously.

Which of course means I'm going to focus on progression in gameplay before anything else! At this rate, unlocking just one expansion for either Cooking or Mining will take 16 days or over two weeks. Fully upgrading both will take over 8 months (if it's 25/50/100 for both, that's 350ms). If I want to sink moonstones into patterns, I'll be damaging my experience and progression with gameplay. I also can't participate in the player economy of buying wolves or custom apparel with moonstones for the same reason. I'm very quickly running out of sinks for my pebbles already though, and I'll probably have every crafting recipe/companion/apparel/wolf slot before I make my first 25 moonstones. The Flea Market for exchanging currency and buying wolves will be my only pebble sink from then on.

If it has to stay a moonstone sink, at least lower it and make subsequent costs lower (like 20/40/60 or 15/30/45) to make the time cost more manageable (11 weeks or 9 weeks) or tie it into the profession like handing over a certain amount of bars/dishes or reaching certain levels. EDITED: Math and Timing correction.

Tbh, I didn't know it changed to pebbles for a short bit. I didn't play during EA, and they were all for moonstones in Beta.

I have no strong opinions on cooking expansions since I have been absolutely fine with the space I have on that, so it's more a “luxury” for/to me and I don't know if I'll ever spend moonstones on it, but mining?

I think we should at least have one pebbles expansion on mining (and speaking as someone who immediately bought a mining expansion because trying to do the activities section with mining is awful with only 15 slots, glad at least there are no chances to get gold that early anymore), because that is something that's pretty much required as you level. It shouldn't be locked behind moonstones… or should at least cost less in moonstones. I can't imagine how bad it'll be if you have 15 slots and get to the second row of levels.

I've already replied in support of this on another forum post, so I'll just copy paste my reply here to show more support for this change. It needs to happen. I wish the developers would say something about it too.


As someone who played pre-launch, I highly support bringing back pebble expansions for professions. Right now I don't see myself expanding even apparel slots for months, which is ridiculously long in my opinion while I'm sitting on hundreds of pebbles and less than 10 moonstones.

It simply isn't worth it when expansions are so costly. Grinding in games is a good way to increase playtime, but there's a fine line. Premium currency shouldn't be more used than the game's main currency. That's how you make the economy frustrating to deal with, and make the game become pay to win, which people do not like.

Posting my support fully for all the comments from everyone who has graciously commented before me.

For me personally I came over from FR as this looked fun/up my alley. On FR I have ZERO problems making gems as I can sell dragons/eggs/other things that are fairly easy to collect. Example…I can grind a LOT in the Coliseum and I end up always getting something valuable (whether that is a gene, an egg, an eliminate) etc! The point being I can easily make 200+ gems normally in a day or two. I can sell my stuff for Treasure or gems…and when I expanded my lair I was able to do so with “items” for a vast majority of them and what I couldn't sell I did glimmer and doom to make the treasure I needed for the lair expansions.

Over on FR I haven't had to spend premium currency as a casual player and I really appreciate that and DO spend a lot of time over there. After upgrading my COOKING with moonstones I literally got FOUR slots and quite honestly it felt like a slap to my face and I deeply regret spending it for just four slots! If I had gotten an extra 12 slots besides my inital slots I'd have been ‘okay’ with it.

But I agree with a vast majority here….a lot of stuff is locked behind “pay” to play and I'm not sure how much time I'll spend over here if things don't change as its not really that easy to earn shards. I think I've maybe earned like a total of 8 or so in like 6 days which really isn't that many. Also, everything is just really click happy all the time/everywhere (especially grinding for WW) and quite frankly my carpal tunnel is just screaming at me so after we get to 6 digit WW I'll probably just let this game cool off for me personally and check back in a handful of months. It's kind of like that expression is the bake worth the cake? For me its not currently not worth the bake on LW though I hope that changes in the future. I'll be playing on my FR to increase my gems there :)

Hopefully soonish they have started to take users suggestions and implemented the pebbles OR Moonstone option…. I don't like feeling like I can't advance in a game if I have to “pay” to play.

Support! I haven't touched the expansions because I've been saving MS to buy custom clothes. I think custom clothes are a good enough MS sink. Removing MS expansion would allow more users to support custom artists.

bumping because this needs to be addressed still!

A lot of support for this!! I haven't upgraded anything yet, because at this point it seems so costly that it's not even worth it… which is a bummer, I would love to upgrade my cooking pot eventually :D

$10 to upgrade my stuff is insane. If there were easier ways to make MS, maybe… but currently? I will never do that.

Still in huge support of making the expansions pebbles instead of MS!