hey guys,
I will soon have collected my first 10,000 shards from Alchemy Lab
Do you think I should combine them right now, or wait for an improvement of the reward system ?
I’d be pissed to get 50 emblems out of it today, if they make it worth 100 tomorrow…
Opinions welcome please
Don‘t you get a guaranteed 4* ascension material offered?
Or are you at a point in the game where the emblems are worth more to you?
exactly, I already have plenty of 4* mats and maxed heroes, so I’m pretty sure that I’d pick the emblems
Why do you think they’re going to double the outcome soon? Any rumors about it?
Hope is everything we have left 
well, nothing is for certain, but recently there has been a thread started by @MAGS661 asking for a total rework of the Lab, including the reward system, so I’m thinking maybe there’s a chance that SG listen to that ?
no, bboywince, there are always threads like this. Maybe the system will be improved, but not because of a thread.
@bboyvince, unfortunately if you read that entire thread (and don’t - it’s long and there’s very little point) you’ll find that MAGS came in saying they had received responses that gave no satisfaction and seemed final.
It seems pretty clear to me that you should go ahead and combine them. Here’s my logic:
When you started the Alkashard farming process you knew the reward was 50 emblems, so you already decided this is a good enough deal.
Your speculation about the rewards increasing should include some probabilities. Let’s say there’s a 10% chance the reward increases to 100. So there’d be a 90% chance of 50 emblems and a 10% chance of 100. That’s an expected value of 55 emblems. How long do you think it’d take for that improvement to roll out? It’s not being discussed for V28, so a month or two at the absolute best? Would you rather have 50 emblems now or 55 a month or two from now? You can plug in different variables if you want, but the process is the same. Talking about 100 emblems is misguided - you need to address it in probabilistic terms.
When choosing variables in that equation I was pretty generous about increased rewards (in terms of amount AND likelihood) and timing. I think the chances the rewards are improved is far less than 10%. SGG has had plenty of time to change the Alchemy Lab, yet they’ve done nothing about it. This is the case despite it being widely panned. It is pretty clear where their energies are focused from reading the Beta Beat threads. So even if the AL is on the list I think the time frame is long.
Lastly, if the Alkashard rewards are changed there is at least some chance they will retroactively give rewards. I don’t think this chance is huge, but I don’t know that it’s less than the chances they change the reward structure at all. And if it’s non-zero that is yet one more variable in the EV equation that should incline you towards combining now.
It feels like you’re trying to maximize rather than satisfize, which is fine - I’m the same way, so understand that I’m not offering this as a criticism so much as the best analysis I am capable of. If you were a satisfizer you’d go ahead since, as I pointed out, you decided 50 emblems was enough to start farming Alkashards.
But even if you’re an optimizer, the best case isn’t that you hold out, get the timing right, the rewards increase, and you get them (as you imply). It’s that you combine now, the rewards increase, and SGG retro-actively gives you those additional rewards, with you having gotten the usage of the original 50 emblems during the interim.
“Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things.” - Andy Dufresne
Look for rewards to decrease before they increase. And they will not increase. So, maybe just the first part.
thank you all for your replies, you seem to be unanimous…so I’ll just go ahead and combine the shards 
However I’d like to remark that 10k Alkashards required for a single combination compared with the 2 Alk produced by lev1 Alchemy lab (which only purpose is actually generating Alk more than generating items) is hugely too much. So either the Alk produced by alchemy lab 1 (and eventually others that produces less than 20 unit of Alk for a single alchemy) should be increased x10 so at least 20 Alk unit producted in the lower step (2/1,000 wich is 1/500 is pretty high but more reasonable than 1/5,000) or the Alk required for a single combination should be decreased to 1000 units (10x less).
I want to be polite when I say “is hugely so much”, but my personal percepit of this gap is a felt a lot more ugly in my mind. So I think that this is a thing that will require a very heavy revision (like one of the two i suggested)
PS2: also I think is something not so fair having to spend gems in some alchemy lab production levels:
I agree and that’s also what justified my post…I’m thinking that eventually SG will realize that there is absolutely no point in farming shards under present conditions, and that they will either :
either way I was tempted to hold on to my shards for the time being…
Yeah increasing the rewards could be another route. With my proposal I am simply highlighting that every level (starting from 1) should have an actual usage. I was focusing on lev1 (the lower one) also because is the ony one I unlocked (I refused to research lev 2 and I stopped to upgrade AL until it is so useless. Better ugrading Hunter’s Lodge and food storages (my iron storages reached all the max) ).
And level1 currently is nothing useful. It could be a nice way of cycling useless items in order to make shards (the 2* item obtained is more a surplus than an actual result of the alchemy, imo)