How many points to fill up Fate Meter

According to this interview on RPGamer.com, you can do all the faction quests in a single playthrough:

The player can make a lot of choices about the main character's story, but how much can we affect the world around us?

There aren't a lot of destructive branching paths in the story that lock the player onto a certain path or close off things in the game. Rolston used to think that forcing characters to make these kinds of choices was innovative game design, but he now sees them as too limiting. There are lots of choices in the game, but the consequences of the choices won't lock the player out of content. Players will be able to complete all the faction questlines in a single playthrough of the game if they so choose.

This speaks to the game's replayability as well. The game was designed in such a way that the player can replay it if they desire, but can also experience all the game's content with a single character. The ability to respecialize at will even allows players to experiment with the different Destinies and combat abilities on a single character.

Shards effectively have quality levels. Instead of adding more ingredients like Alchemy and Blacksmithing, increasing one's Sagecrafting skill allows for the use of more advanced shards.

Sagecraft by the Numbers

Three quality levels:

• Cloudy
• Lambent
• Pristine

Seven shard types:

• Fire
• Ice
• Lightning
• Magic
• Physical
• Poison
• Protection

Four gem categories:

• Weapon
• Armor
• Utility
• Epic

Skill Progression

All characters can combine Cloudy Shards into gems innately. At level 2, you can combine Lambent Shards into gems. At level 6, you can use Pristine Shards.

Reaching level 3 in Sagecrafting lets you fuse identical shards into a higher tier, much like Diablo II's Horadric Cube, or Torchlight's Transmuter.

Reaching level 8 unlocks the epic gems recipe category.

Reaching Level 10 allows a master Sagecrafter to extract gems from equipment, with no harm to either gem or armament.

Every time you increase your Sagecrafting skill you also increase the chance of finding shards in the first place.

Gem Recipes

Like Alchemy, there are set combinations to create certain effects. Unlike Alchemy, you get a preview of the results of the transmutation before performing it, so you're never sagecrafting blindly.

There are 196 different combinations (7 shard types, 2 shards per gem, 4 categories), but there is some overlap; For instance, Fire + Protection and Ice + Protection both give + Physical Damage when used as a weapon gem.