Title: Dont lock materials required for alchemy locked behind grind
Family Name: GreenShadowPT

Region (NA/EU): EU

Correct. The biggest problem with alchemy is that the materials required for it come from too many sources.

Cooking is trivial: mats from nods, water or salt from npcs, sometimes some meat, as a last resort, e.g. onions from the garden or from bonus quests.

Alchemy: gatering from many sources. We need water, then we need to purify water, yes there are nodes on purified water but these are one of the worst nodes in the game and they are too small amounts. We need blood, we need herbs, we need fruits, we need oils, we need mushrooms, we need trace, we need sap, we need powders, we need items like Spirit's Leaf, Monk's Branch and many others.

Most of them are difficult to obtain in large quantities and too expensive to purchase because the final product is worth too little.

Let's say we want to produce manos accessories. We need alchemy for that. Each manos requires 10 essences so: fruit, saps and trace. Also requires 100 pure crystals so we need metal solvent, so we need many trace (but only savagery) and many rough stones. When we add it all up, it turns out that production is unprofitable for these few millions of profit in relation to the time we have to spend on obtaining ingredients. It is pointless even more when event massively gives players a shakatu life box and thousands of manos accessories will hit the market, which lowers their price.

Why lock treasures behind party grind too???