The Green Thumb gathering needs to be updated. I feel like i'm not actually gaining anything but rather loosing out on the other bonus mats I get like hards, sharps, caph, ect.. The mini games just blow through my energy too fast and I dont get the normal amount of mats I would usually get in 2hrs since I use energy pots for gathering. I just get stuck waiting on the energy pot timer. Either A- have the mini game only use 1 energy and get x2 the mats (so its actually a gathering buff) or B- cut the energy pot timer to under 5 mins

You lose energy becuz it takes a flat 10 instead of 6 or 7 or less depending on mastery. You basically will break even on base mats but you come out way ahead on sharps and hards and caphras etc because you will hit 20 off the game sometimes for 10 energy but you would never get 20 at any point off 10 energy if you turned off the game and gathered 1 at a time. Plus you can 10 proc things like event items or buried traces and legit get to open 20 chests instead of 2. 

It saves you time, it's way more exp and more rare mats at the expense of energy. IF you really think it's not turn the game off

I think instead of spending 10 energy raw, it should roll "spend 1 energy 10 times", and proc based on your mastery, since it makes sense as you're gathering 10x the materials.

As a professional gatherer myself, I personally hate that PA made mastery have NO EFFECT on the minigame. 

Mastery should always matter. 

These boxes are very rare and unprofitable because golden key is too expensive and its price is practically equal to the price of shards and fruits that we get from the box, so there is no profit.

I.e. these mini games are pointless (I've never used them). Mastery and agris doubles/triples amount of mats I collect.

Well, I just take the minigame as an energy dump mechanic, not for-profit mechanic. Getting mastery into the minigame would be nice.

You can turn energy into energy potions. Easy and fast. And then you can sold for nice money.

Great idea! I was thinking it should roll yes/no at spend energy, but this makes way more sense! The fact that it is ALWAYS 10 energy is the reason why it's so detrimental to your energy pool. It's mechanically unsound.

Funny how they finally fixed how you could get like 8 chests tho.

Another problem is the game likes to roll you lowest, like a 130 on the minigame, quite a bit. It's like when you are mass cooking and get a x10. At some point re: mastery, it should DELETE THAT AS AN OPTION.

In regards to mastery, I followed some advice and switched to drop rate, and I think it's good. I don't have enough drop rate to get 3 of something, which is sad. I WANT. I'd probably need one of those OP alchemy stones. If I could get 3 I could see getting around 500 black gem frag, which would be nice! 350 is not bad, either!

They are profitable. Keys are 18m and you get 5-6 sharps 11-12 hards 20+ fruits and can hit 15-19 ancient dust so 3 or 4 caphras. I would open them everytime even if break even for the extra fruits. The mini game are great. Plus you can hit 6 billion ginseng and I've gotten 2 but of course that's massive rng. But don't use mini game or open the buried traces is totally up to you