not enough magic crystals!?

[fruithead]

hi, playing for the first time as mage on normal diff (loved the original ^_^) and i cleared Debir, Scarlet Wind, and about 50% of Bolo, and i perpetually seem to be out of magic crystals!

and it's not like i spend them frivolously; i have spells in my book i never scribed because of my crystal crisis! i'm not sure what i am supposed to do to get more, it's not like i can afford to buy every junk artifact i come across to break it for the one or two crystals i can get from them, and yes i use treasure hunt ability to get the occasional bonus one or two but still.

i have order magic two, and i probabaly haven't upgraded even half of my order spells. !_!

so where/how can i get more?

thanks all for any help!

EDIT: i know there is a skill alchemy, but A) it seems like a steep price to pay for a 15% reduction, and besides, most spells to get to lvl 2 are like 5-7 crystals, is the reduction really going to help that much?
and B) there are seemingly crucial skills that i need, and it's not like i have a lot of mind runes either >_<

[MaroonMaurader]

You can get a lot from breaking down lvl 1-3 items with the Neatness skill... although that requires gold to buy those items, which is often in short supply early in the game.

[fruithead]

Originally Posted by MaroonMaurader

You can get a lot from breaking down lvl 1-3 items with the Neatness skill... although that requires gold to buy those items, which is often in short supply early in the game.

yes but it requires sooo many green runes to get to neatness >_< well i geuss i can get it eventually

ty for the response!

[Petwin]

Treasure hunting can yield up to 5 crystals per chest.

[fruithead]

i get 2-4 once out of every maybe 30 chests if i'm lucky *_* and i have treasure hunting level 3

mostly it's gold or useless scrolls (although i did get phantom this way so !)

is there a limit to how many stuff you can have in ur backpack? if not i can just save stuff till i can eventually afford neatness i geuss

[bukimi]

There is no limit of backpack so keep all stuff if you have a feeling you may ever need something.
If you REALLY need gold, you may sell something but poor artifacts are good to be kept until you get Neatness.

[Petwin]

i get 2-4 once out of every maybe 30 chests if i'm lucky *_* and i have treasure hunting level 3

mostly it's gold or useless scrolls (although i did get phantom this way so !)

I reload if the treasures are useless. When you change the way your units move before you turn the target hexes green with the treasurefinding skill of your dragon (you don't have to really dig, just make the hexes go green), you get different results. Within 2 reloads I mostly get crystals, runestones or a wanderer scroll. After the second reload I usually get bored and settle for whatever I get.