Guild Wars 2

The Shards needed apparently drop off mobs when LA was being destroyed. There is a gem store item that allows you to mine it once a day for some shards; however considering the amount of shards needed to craft the Ascended version, I wonder if it’s feasible to do this now.

Any suggestions/thoughts? Or is this one of those items that reward loyalty to the game and thus late-starters like me cannot obtain it easily? I don’t mind if this is the case since I believe in loyalty being rewarded.

As an extension to the above question, is there any item like Tempered Spinal Blades which I should try to get now since it’ll be hard to get it in the future?

Thanks!

If you’re not in a hurry to make it, it’s still very doable. The blade backpack is cheaper than light of dwayna, shadow of grenth, etc. (assuming you gather/collect everything yourself rather than buy) because you can opt to use elonian leather (or the ascended metal) instead of bolts of damask; you just need to have a level 500 leatherworker and to buy the leatherworking Gift of Blades recipe from Miyani.

As for getting the blade shards, you can park a few characters at the Not So Secret JP chest. This will get you a handful of shards every day. Every few days, take those characters into Heart of the Mists, put the shards in the bank, and then drop them back at the chest to repeat the process.

You can supplement it by getting the watchwork pick (the gem store item) and the Gift of Sprockets in your home instance (Gift of Sprockets is 15g and 25 laurels from the laurel vendor, I believe). The Gift of Sprockets gives you the Sprocket Generator Node, which has a chance to give you 0-3 blade shards per day. You could also venture into the Aetherpath of TA or try Fractals and hope you get the paths with Aetherblades. There are also Aetherblades to kill in EOTM and inside the Not So Secret JP, for more chances at blade shard drops. You can also make more blade shards in the forge with sprockets. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blade_Shard#Recipes

I made mine after the world event was done, by transforming watchwork sprockets into shards in the MF.

That said, I don’t think it’s a good investment nowadays. You’ll need 450 or so blade shards, and the mining node gives you 1 or 2 a day if you’re lucky. Sprockets are getting more expensive too.

Mawdrey is cheaper for certain.

That’s a very good advice RoseofGilead, I might give that a go actually

I plan on doing all 3 color. I did the first one during the event and I slowly accumulate shard since. I did the second color some time ago and I’m near the completion of the last one.

I have the aetherpath mining pick on my main and everyday I mine the sprocket node in my home instance. That give me very little shards, but it give a fair amount of sprocket, which I use to multiply shards in the mystic forge. It take a long time to accumulate enough.

You need almost 1000 shards to complete the final back item, which mean between 3 000 and 4 500 sprockets. You can get that amount in between 250 and 780 days by mining the sprocket node (lower if you use more method than just that one) or you can buy them for 90-140 gold.

I don’t mind mining everyday and taking my time because I just want to complete all three and have them in my wardrobe. But, it will be way more efficient to just buy all those sprockets on the market. It’s faster to accumulate that amount of gold.

I just made the Advance Spinal Blades backpack solely on the shards dropped from my sprocket node. It would have been faster using the MF recipe with sprockets but a lot more expensive.

Temporal needs 500 blades, 500 sprockets and a vision crystal. That’s going to take a lot more work.

Only needed 425 blades to get to Advance.