The manastone event is an adhoc attempt to compensate for the plumet in drop rates, but it doesn't work on multiple levels.
Firstly, the event rewards are trivial. It takes a LOT of manastones to fill a piece of gear, let alone a set of armor, we are talking about several hundred, possibly a thousand manastones. Perhaps the GM should try it for themselves.
Secondly the devs left the manastone failure chance the same, rather than adjusting it to work with the low drop rates, hence the need for hundreds of manastones.
Crafting is seriously effected by drop rates and low server populations, the recipe for things like recovery potions, aether jelly, are just not dropping. People go to all the work/cost of getting their crafting up to Expert or more, and they have no designs to use with that sill level.