Not 100 percent sure if this will happen but

I think the solution is simple: make nebulite crafting a mini-game.

A repeatable minigame that requires user input, and the more you do it, the more your crafting level increases. The higher your crafting level, the higher your chances of getting a higher rank nebulite.

That way botters are completely cockblocked, players have to work for the nebulites and it's a fun new thing to play with. Plus it's an easier way of getting nebulites than what we have now.

I think the solution is simple: make nebulite crafting a mini-game.

A repeatable minigame that requires user input, and the more you do it, the more your crafting level increases. The higher your crafting level, the higher your chances of getting a higher rank nebulite.

That way botters are completely cockblocked, players have to work for the nebulites and it's a fun new thing to play with. Plus it's an easier way of getting nebulites than what we have now.

Except there are still programs that would allow hackers to go through several parts of a minigame automatically, which is likely one of the reasons why no minigames today reward any items. This would just cause them to move from botting to strictly hacking, making it impossible for GMs to ban them as there's nothing to catch.

Yeah... no thanks.

All they need to do is:
- Make the boxes farmable again, but at a much lower rate (10-20 an hour with no drop multipliers would be reasonable I think).
- Bring Alien Cubes back and get rid of this Gachapon and Fusion only garbage.
- Release S Rank Nebulites.

I don't think a second socket is necessary since you can get 20-30% main stat with just 2%s. Think what that would be if 4-6%s become more common.

Couldn't have said this more perfectly.

The boxes would still drop at a low rate and all people would have to do is try and collect some B's and A's and just work on cubing those. Gachapon and fusion was like the mark of death for nebulites. Even now in windia people buy hordes of garbage B rank nebs to fuse them into higher ranked ones that actually count. This in addition with not much nebs resulting from gach lately means extinction is inevitable unless something is done and THIS is that something.