“ | Crafting Material. Used to craft mounts and items on the Shadowy Market such as Shadow Caches.
A plentiful crafting material found in Delves. |
” |
— Item Tooltip
|
Shadow Shards are key crafting materials used to make Shadow Cache from the Shadowy Market and several shadow themed mounts (Appeased Dream Gobbler and Erimatra, Scourge of the Everdark).
Players can discover shards via 2 ways inside Delves:
- Random Crystal that spread across the Depth will become shadowy version at Uber 9 difficulty. (Around Depth 112, 1 Shard and 1 Crystal)
- Revealing Neon Underground biome's "black block" with Neon Ninja's Shadow Flip buff. (Unaffected by Uber, 5 Shards and 15 Crystal)
The amount is affected by Delve Day (Monday) and Crystal Gathering potion bonus. Vac-matic makes harvesting easier, while also applying the bonus if the module is level 10.
Shadow Shard Farming (SSF)[]
Loop grinding a Neon Underground biome during Delve Day is a more consistent method to grind Shadow Shards (along with Crystals). Since Challenge Delve portal has fixed generation for a week, player will often use it to scout which particular depth is generating said biome to ease shard farming.
Shadowy crystal is hiding inside a golden block, within the center of "black block". Slightly touching the golden block will expose the crystal, but not collecting it. Then the player can use Vac-matic to gather all exposed crystal for level 10 module bonus. Using methods other than Ninja's Shadow Flip to destroy block will only obtain a Gold block.
In the past, these were mainly obtained by defeating roaming World Boss in Shadow Tower, and easier difficulty Shadow Tower Vault. Going to higher difficulties gives Shadow Caches instead.