I made this quick QoL mod to address:

Crystal Shards being abundant but not very useful
Diamonds disappearing
Zephyr and Voidstone being unobtainable (At the very least, I've never found either)

All you need is in the Arcanist's Workbench, under the new tab "Gems"

alt text Each Gem is locked under new tiers:

Tier 2: Zephyr
Tier 3: Sapphire and Topaz
Tier 4: Ruby and Emerald
Tier 5: Voidstone and Diamond

This is done for players who aren't sure where to find each type of crystal shard, the ingredients for each tier give a hint! It also follows the natural progression of exploration mode.

KNOWN INCOMPATIBILITIES:

WorkbenchTierKeeper: This mod overrides all vanilla benches, so my changes to the Arcanist's bench are erased.
I wanted to find a way to fix this, or to keep the functionality, but I'm not knowledgeable enough in modding to understand, so if you do please message me! I'll leave a temporary fix here:
- You can disable the mod, or edit the mod file and remove just the Arcanist's bench file.
  - Hytale > HytaleFiles > UserData > Mods
    From there you open WorkbenchTierKeeper-1.0.0.jar using WinRar or similar.
    - WorkbenchTierKeeper-1.0.0.jar > Server > Item > Items > Bench
      In there you'll find a bunch of .json files, delete Bench_Arcane.json to fix the issue.

Crystals to Gem