Random is random. I got three shards yesterday in my five tips, and I got no shards in the previous three days on my five tips/five tips & morality.
Note that you only get threads in incarnate content so if you're expecting them anywhere else, "ur doin it rong".
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Originally Posted by Dispari
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Daily repeatables. 10 threads a day, plus anything that might drop while doing them.
i personally feel at this point shards are fairly superfluous since they are only useable on the alpha and doing incarnate level content your not gonna see any anyway
i think the original reason we went to threads in the first place was to slow down the poeple who were stockpiling hundreds or thousands of shards prior to i21 when we got the other incarnate powers (it didnt really slow anything down for them and its kind of pointless now lol)
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Originally Posted by Necrotech_Master
i personally feel at this point shards are fairly superfluous since they are only useable on the alpha and doing incarnate level content your not gonna see any anyway
i think the original reason we went to threads in the first place was to slow down the poeple who were stockpiling hundreds or thousands of shards prior to i21 when we got the other incarnate powers (it didnt really slow anything down for them and its kind of pointless now lol) |
I don't feel that shards have become completely redundant.
Unlike threads, which drop from Incarnate-level content only, shards can drop from pretty much anything. And 10 shards + 1 million Inf = 10 threads once a day. Or, you can not pay the 1 million Inf and still get 5 threads from 10 shards.
It's helpful if you're trying to craft that last piece of iSalvage and find that you're a few threads short.
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Who're you calling a few threads short? |
Originally Posted by NaoGal
...and find that you're a few threads short.
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Shards have higher chance of dropping from Lts and bosses. If I were to farm shards, I would run missions that has easy to kill mobs and where I can force lts and bosses to spawn. Ex: rikti +1x8, council +1x8. The following mobs are harder, but seem to drop more shards: nemesis, romans, snakes. To save time, skip minions.
Another option is to farm the components you need instead of shards by doing speed Tfs. This is my preferred way of getting T4 alpha.
I have a feeling shards will be used for the omega slot. So ive been saving them just in case.
And if they dont there is always a couple useless alphas to me i could make.
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Originally Posted by Jade Ivy
Shards have higher chance of dropping from Lts and bosses. If I were to farm shards, I would run missions that has easy to kill mobs and where I can force lts and bosses to spawn. Ex: rikti +1x8, council +1x8. The following mobs are harder, but seem to drop more shards: nemesis, romans, snakes. To save time, skip minions.
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On the sewer map I'm on, there are 10 spawns -- that's 30 bosses versus, say, 10 Council Archons in the same amount of real estate.
(Yes, they may be a little harder to kill than Council, but that's a lot more bosses!
)
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Another option for shards, though it's woefully inefficient: Rikti mothership raids.
A decent raid will net you 700-800 Vanguard merits, which can be used to purchase 4-5 Gra'i Matters. They're used as common components in some Alphas, or can be converted to a single shard per component.
The biggest advantage is that you can do them prior to level 50, and thus earn XP toward hitting 50 at the same time you start stocking up on stuff to convert into Incarnate components.
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Honestly shards are pretty obsolete and the devs have even said they're going to start phasing them out now that higher slots are coming out.
The only real use for shards at this point is that it's cheaper to build a T3 Alpha using the Notice from the WST and 8 shards. Or if you're constructing something using Astrals, where it's only 4 astrals for a shard common versus the 5 if you dump to threads.
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Oh, boo. Hopefully, that means stuff from normal content will have a chance to drop threads or allow for some incarnate progress in some way, even if slower than the regular incarnate path...| Honestly shards are pretty obsolete and the devs have even said they're going to start phasing them out now that higher slots are coming out. |
As someone who dislikes trials, shards are great. Lets me craft Alpha while doing any kind of content, which is one slot less I have to care about.
It's a shame. Shards were done so well - rewarding teaming rather than penalizing soloing, using the years of content available rather than hiding rewards behind specific stuff. Plus, come on, "shard" sounds way cooler than "thread".
Yeah, I'm torn on the idea of Shards being phased out. The only way I'll be pleased with it is if normal content starts dropping Threads, which feels odd given the way that's currently sectioned off in Dark Astoria.
I like building Alphas from Shards, Notices and TF components. I spend weeks building the rest of my slots in iTrials - I like having something I can build doing something else. And this is from someone who has literally run thousands of iTrials - I'm not afraid of repeating them a lot. Even so, I very intensely hope the method by which they phase out of Shards leaves us with other options for at least Alpha. If it actually leaves us with more options for the other "early" slots? Big win.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
If shards are dropped then threads will have to drop in normal content and those level 50 TF's should give thread components as an optional award. I assume that means Notices will be phased out too so the WST must give a guaranteed rare. In addition to all that they must make crafting a very rare the same difficulty as crafting a Favor of the Well.
Do all that and I'll be very happy to see shards go. Right now Alpha slots and shards make at least that one incarnate power obtainable by almost anyone. Phase them out without those changes and you automatically cut out folks like my wife who would never be caught dead on an iTrial but might sometimes run a normal TF.
We're honestly not sure how they plan to change the system.
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As it stands the current thread drop rate is too low - its at most, twice that of shards, but you need 5 times the number of threads to make a common component.
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Originally Posted by Agent White
We're honestly not sure how they plan to change the system.
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Originally Posted by Shubbie
Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.
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Mmm I'd have to disagree with that. Well sorta. I wouldn't mind thread rate being increased but I couldn't say it's only twice that of shards. Running my 3 50s through DA's arcs and repeatables I've gotten a fair amount, usually at a minimum of 1 thread dropped per mission if I'm killing stuff and not just speeding. Sometimes as much as like 4 in a mission (but that's an extreme occurrence, 1-2 tops was common) . Doing regular content like tips and arcs to get shards? Uh I'll be lucky if I get a shard per -day- (and this is all running solo on standard +0x1 settings). |
Originally Posted by DarkSideLeague
As it stands the current thread drop rate is too low - its at most, twice that of shards, but you need 5 times the number of threads to make a common component.
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There are also deterministic ways of getting specific amounts of threads. Between the daily repeatable and the arc rewards you can get 20 threads per day, plus 10 per week from the SSAs. Which ends up at 150 threads a week if you're farming, that's enough to unlock Interface (30), Judgment (30) and either Lore or Destiny (50). Or 7 common components (10 leftover) or 2 uncommons and 1 common (again 10 left over). Or y'know, combinations there of.
The closest way to earning a shard via any task is to earn an Astral and convert it or to earn a shard component (via TFs). Shards ARE cheaper, but somewhat harder to come across solo. The 'easiest' way to farm them is the weekly 1 astral merit from SSAs and getting the 2 astrals on the random merit roll award from the arcs.
I do a DFB every day to reload my TIPs. I've been doing so for about a week since unlocking my alpha. I average about 2 shards per DFB run.
I've seen no problems getting shards elsewhere too. I get them on solo content, but seem to get more on task forces than anywhere else.
I tend to get a lot more shards than threads, since threads are on limited content, but I convert 10 shards to threads every day, and never have a shortage of shards.
Positron said on a uStream that they would be phasing out Shards.
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If they do then I really, really hope that they keep the Notice of the Well from the WST. Using that to make your T3 Alpha Slot ability makes the initial Incarnate startup for a character a lot easier.
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Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
Positron said on a uStream that they would be phasing out Shards.
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i feel that shards are redundant because if you are a fresh incarnate who just unlocked alpha, and you want to get alpha but also work on unlocking other slots your not gonna be getting shards|
Originally Posted by NaoGal
I don't feel that shards have become completely redundant.
Unlike threads, which drop from Incarnate-level content only, shards can drop from pretty much anything. And 10 shards + 1 million Inf = 10 threads once a day. Or, you can not pay the 1 million Inf and still get 5 threads from 10 shards. It's helpful if you're trying to craft that last piece of iSalvage and find that you're a few threads short. |
if you are getting shards your making essentially 0 progress on anything outside of alpha so if you already tier 4'd your alpha then shards are meaningless
i already convert all shards to threads regardless pretty much, 10 shards is much harder to get than 10 threads and you need a LOT more threads to do anything incarnate wise so shards are extremely inefficient along with being pointless post alpha
basically my point is that shards are ok for your alpha only but once you pass your alpha they become more of an annoyance since you dont get shards in incarnate content, and to make progress on non alpha slots your gonna be running incarnate content and the fact you can work on alpha slot through threads too also makes shards redundant. now if you HAD to use shards to progress on the alpha then i wouldnt have anything to say about shards as they still served some sort of a purpose
the only reason i can think of why shards were not used with the other incarnate slots as because the devs wanted to prevent shard hoarders from unlocking the post alpha slots too quickly when we first got them (and even then it did very little to stop hoarders), and since that time has also passed and they just continue to use threads on everything it would simplify the process to just eliminate shards
shard based components from the tfs and stuff can stay (just allow them to be crafted from threads using maybe half the required amount as other thread based components), but the shards themselves serve no purpose except as an extra currency that doesnt really help you post alpha
sorry for the rant lol, but i had to explain myself as you must not have understood my original post
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I don't think it was about hoarders so much as about controlling what content could be used to progress. Think about the complaints regarding BAF and Lambda when they were first released. If people could have just farmed the ITF for shards would they have bothered with BAF and Lambda at all?|
Originally Posted by Necrotech_Master
the only reason i can think of why shards were not used with the other incarnate slots as because the devs wanted to prevent shard hoarders from unlocking the post alpha slots too quickly when we first got them (and even then it did very little to stop hoarders), and since that time has also passed and they just continue to use threads on everything it would simplify the process to just eliminate shards
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Now I'm not going to make any comments on whether that was the right approach for the devs to make but I think that was their reasoning.
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They did not use shards for the other incarnate slots for the simple reason that shards were a kludge in the first place designed to create a relatively easy path to generating alpha slot powers prior to the introduction of actual incarnate content which was delayed and decoupled from the introduction of the alpha slot. The method, frequency, and value of shards for Alpha relative to the same for threads for the other slots were completely different, which made them not directly interchangeable.|
Originally Posted by Necrotech_Master
the only reason i can think of why shards were not used with the other incarnate slots as because the devs wanted to prevent shard hoarders from unlocking the post alpha slots too quickly when we first got them (and even then it did very little to stop hoarders), and since that time has also passed and they just continue to use threads on everything it would simplify the process to just eliminate shards
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The fact that we can convert shards to threads but not threads to shards is a function of that difference: alpha components cost far less to create in shards than threads.
Players have been asking for the devs to merge the two, but I don't think most of them fully understand what they are asking for, because unless the devs decide to go Monte Haul on the incarnate system, there's no way to merge the two currencies that doesn't end up generally forcing players to do more work for the same result.
But then again, how else will people learn.
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It happen to me often, no shards drop, at least since the threads came about. Think on most toons I average about two per toon, no matter what I do. aka the first one ya get for completing the alpha arc. One toon however though managed up to ten after a while, the rest never seen anymore drop. random is very random. I get threads more often so I go that route.
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Originally Posted by Magicka Pride
I have a level 50 plus 3 blaster and a level 50 widow and my widow since becoming level 50 a few weeks ago does not get many shards and threads. i spent days killing everything in sight not one drop. On my widow i have 3 shards and i haven't been able to get another no matter what i've tried. i even teamed up with a friend and she up'd the levels and difficulties with no success. I don't know if this is a result of the new issue coming out or not but i would enjoy it very much if someone could look into it
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Originally Posted by mauk2
Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words.
"Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L! |
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Yeah, I can't really figure what people think is going to happen if the devs replace shards with threads. Unless they up the drop rate by a HUGE amount it's going to be a LOT harder to make Alpha slot abilities outside of the Incarnate content. Not to mention that even for people who run the Incarnate content the WST is often the easiest way to make a T3/T4 Alpha.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Players have been asking for the devs to merge the two, but I don't think most of them fully understand what they are asking for, because unless the devs decide to go Monte Haul on the incarnate system, there's no way to merge the two currencies that doesn't end up generally forcing players to do more work for the same result.
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Personally I always use Notice/Favor of The Well for Alpha and then use the Astral Merit -> Shard conversion to make the other components needed (heck, I often use Astral Merit -> Shard conversion to make T1 Alphas as well since it's fewer merits than converting to threads).
I have a level 50 plus 3 blaster and a level 50 widow and my widow since becoming level 50 a few weeks ago does not get many shards and threads. i spent days killing everything in sight not one drop. On my widow i have 3 shards and i haven't been able to get another no matter what i've tried. i even teamed up with a friend and she up'd the levels and difficulties with no success. I don't know if this is a result of the new issue coming out or not but i would enjoy it very much if someone could look into it