It is very, very hard to get aged catas in festivals. Like almost impossible. And with the supplies needed to get one going up, it is getting even harder. I am proposing a flipper of themes, from old to new, or new to old.

I don't know whether an Aged to New is a workable idea, given the overall game economy. But I totally agree that it would be good to have some kind of agent that could turn a New catalyst/fressence/seed, etc. into an Aged one. Some players just get rid of Aged ones, not realizing that there are always a few people who are desperately looking for certain Aged. We could totally use an "Aging" agent.

Maybe instead of finding aged at all have only this aging agent that people who don't want aged can put on the broker for people who do. Having it drop at a 10% higher rate than the boosting dust would probably be enough along with having it as one of the rewards for a daily task.

Edit: To put a fine point on this, if there had been something like this I would have been able to get all of the Icy Cave Fae fress I was hoping for and I wouldn't have had to use 8 melted fabled fress to get my aged Aeri fresses. I could have just traded for the new catas and aged them.

I think if every fest had an exchange place like winter fest does it would eliminate the need to have something like this. If it was a branch off in the fest shop for instance and you can buy all the types of catalysts/ fressence/ seeds for melted catas/fest currency. If there was an agent to do it i can promise some people will mistakenly use it on the wrong thing xD

it'd be nice to say, have an item (that's maybe only slightly rarer then an expedent item (those rush-cooldown between additives thingies) for something like this for sure. I remmeber one year I was only going for orca qits and I did get a lot but I'd say more then half were essences I traded for or got gifted and when I don't focus on stuf like that I tend to get less aged themeds.

Aged Catalysts are intended to be quite a bit more rare than the year's active Catalysts. We do specific balancing to end up with specific amounts of Themed Pets per cycle. The drop rates and everything are calibrated to meet these pre-determined amounts.

However, every Festival, we always have the Aged Catalysts available for purchase from the Diamond Shop as an option for players who are specifically searching for the previous year's Themed. It is important though to limit the amount of Pets for a Theme so that they can retain value longterm as players complete breeding projects.