At least Ugdenbloom farm can be easily combined with other farming to make it less tedious. Like Ancient Grove, Bargoll, Avris or even just Kubacabra. That way you’re not just clicking crystal formations all day.
But sure would be nice if the other “rare” materials were useful, and not just Udgenblooms. I have like 500+ of the others (like Ancient Heart), because I almost never need them for anything.
You can always convert hearts into bloods and make keys?
Well sure, but I have 500+ of the bloods anyway. Making it a 1000 doesn’t make much difference.
Both drop like candy. Just one Bastion of Chaos usually pays back a Skeleton Key five times over.
Well, this is why I like SSF. Everything that drops is at least notionally useful.
I figured many of these are outdated. Speaking of which, I plan on trying to fully update the thread.
I am full clearing each difficulty for my ssf first char, and I still run out frequently. It’s absolutely not a speed-leveling issue. Though that means speed levelers feel it even more so.
For problem clarity, what causes them to run out quickest / the most?
Chthonic Seals of Binding at Chthonic totems please and thank you.
But? But what? Don’t leave me hanging! 
It does seem logical to me that if Aether Crystal demands are too high, making supply higher/more accessible is not the solution.
There’s nothing in your proposed suggestions that I think is inherently a bad idea, but to me it just seems like you’d shift players from one tedious farm (Warden’s Lab) to another (TBD).
I for one would like a solution similar to the Chthonic Seals of Binding. Someone with the ear of Crate complained and 2 things happened:
A combo solution here would seem warranted. It is not uncommon for me to burn through 300 of those things crafting lvl 75 components - Spellscorched is especially egregious.
Oops, edited my incomplete thought. I’m also not adverse to some of the recipes that cost 3 aether crystals coming down to 2 or what have you, either. But again the problem with just adjusting recipe costs is that it doesn’t address that the methods to get aether crystals are kind of dull. I don’t see how opening it up to crucible, SR and totems is a bad thing.
But I think that having more than one tedious farm to choose from is a good thing for the game, as players who aren’t us might find some of the other methods to be not tedious, less tedious, or more enjoyable.
Note that I also advocated for just increasing the amount that drops on greater difficulties, which would alleviate this.
I’m hoping FoA’s altar has modifiers that boost material drops.
It’s also worth noting that another reason I felt strongly enough to make this thread is that having to return to the main menu to reset instances is a bad user experience imo. But your main sources are aether crystal clusters, and those simply don’t respawn. Having a generous enough amount of aether crystals drop in SR would allow me to farm without having to close my game. As for Crucible players, would be just a nice gift for the rare ssf crucible players.
Been trying Deadman’s Gulch, which was indeed a more fun route. Valbury is nice, but it is gated behind skeleton keys.
Not sure if it’s technically possible, but a respawn of cystals upon leaving area would be great
You can also just do Valbury Outskirts. That’ll net you like 20 crystals. There are actually less in the actual dungeon I believe.
The Immolation is the best though.
I usually just do all, to get as many crystals as I can before having to go back to the main menu, since that’s kinda annoying (as @adoomgod noted).
From statements like this (and the ones about the Altar mechanics preceding them), it is not an unreasonable guess to think that crafting materials (and specific types of them) might be a thing that can be influenced in the expansion, maybe indirectly.
Reread this and if crafters tend to end up with a surplus of shards, then there should be a way to convert them to crystals. Even if at a poorer ratio. I’d break a shard into just 2 aether crystals if I was sitting on hundreds of them.
If you’re full clearing, you should have absolutely no need to farm at all ever.
What are you spending such large amounts of crystals on? Are you making new components every time you change your gear? You know you can take them off right?
The problem is if you have a Legendary that is not BIS – then you find the BIS but want to keep the original Legendary… You get to recraft the components. And if one of them is Spellscorched you need a fresh crapload of crystals. And that kind of holds true for any of the lvl 75 components.
I already save components from old gear. I am crafting the higher-end components. I will likely have to craft multiple divine conduits. I did craft some gear for defense when I needed to. I might end up trying to craft my entire set and rerolling its pieces off the helm if my rng isn’t good, so that will be a lot of crafting. Some people just craft more ig. And some builds require fewer aether crystals.