Just joking.

I have heard much about this and, as a gatherer myself, I also have problems with minigames. I will try to explain why it is problematic and the small advantage you get from them.

I have heard that mini game does not take into account mastery, and I cannot say whether or not that is true, but I can say that a x-min roll with no rare mats is a devastating loss of 10 energy. One can argue a max roll, even with fairy powder, is the same.

The only thing you gain from the minigame is time. If you have a large energy pool and can actually gather a full hour without using gourds, and you don't really like gathering, I could see why you'd use minigames.

There is, as far as I know, no situation where the resources are so limited (given server swap) that you NEED x10 gathers. You don't get hedgehog x10. You don't get 10 separate rolls for rares. You miss out on chest rolls (someone said chests aren't worth because of how expensive keys are. I heartily disagree.) The only thing you lose is TIME and yes, time is a big thing for grinding, but ENERGY is worth more than TIME. You use TIMED COOLDOWN consumables to replenish your energy. I don't know what the max energy is, but you would have to be approaching that to even consider worrying about time, imo.

In short, the most buried lede, this is broken. Rolling just mats, especially low mats, and losing all that energy affects you. Even if you have to gather for 30 min longer (o no) you still get more stuff and are able to sustain with regular potting.

FYI, max energy is currently 700 (knowledge plus titles etc.), with another 20 available from crystals, and another 50 from millenial wild ginseng, for a buffed total of 770.  Is there more from something else?

Well I can say that minigame is a blessing for irridescent coral farming at Papua for the sailing dailies..

These boxes should be a reward, not a punishment. Gold key costs about 20m. One box gives you about 20 shards worth a total of about 30m and a few fruits (sometimes almost none at all). Theoretically, we have over 10m of profit here, but for me there is no profit because I don't need shards, I have over 12k of them. This is not a reward for me because catching 100 silver keys to get 1 gold key for free takes a huge amount of time! So we have to buy these keys, which means we have to spend money, which means we lose it.

Conclusion: these chests should be opened with silver keys, and gold keys should be used for those rare chests that sometimes (very rarely) appear in the game and can give us rewards worth hundreds of millions. Also since the day these boxes were added I have been feeling a big nerf shards (and caphrases) from gathering loot.

The best way to get gold keys is fishing.

That's what I just mentioned. Catching 100 silver keys for one gold key takes many days of pointless fishing because fish are too cheap for it to make sense. Also relics require many more hours to "exchange" them for memory fragments.
This is all pointless when you can earn 10-20 times more from trash from mobs. I have been saying for a long time that life skills need to get a huge buff, not a drip, because currently they are too far behind the profit from grinding mobs.
The funny thing is that all those who focus solely on mob grinding need life skills players because if it weren't for them, market would be empty.

What would be true QoL would be to offer using 10x energy to get 10x drops for the attempt.  If you get a bum RNG roll, well that's what you get for gambling with energy.  If you get a good roll, you're lucky.  Do that 7 times, it might average out to doing it 70 times.  To have to spend time doing mini-games doesn't feel much like a QoL deal...

OR give us options: minigames give you better rewards, or you could just do the simple method if you don't have time to play minigames with 15 other characters........

It should roll 10x. The only problem is with certain things it would overfill the box, but chest chances, free energy gathers, etc... opposed to just rolling one thing and doing it x10. That would fix everything. That is my conclusion haha. I dunno what they would do if the stuff overfilled the box, but I am sure they could find a way to cut something off and keep the important parts.

@ coral, yea maybe lion meat, too? Those are the only things I can think of.