When you hit the end game of Guild Wars 2, it’s all about getting the best possible gear so that you can run various Meta events and even try your hand at Raids. However, getting this gear is a long and tedious process, made more complex by certain materials that need to be collected in unconventional ways. Spirit Shards are needed to craft both Ascended and Legendary weapons and armor, and these are the best ways to farm them.
Food and XP boosting items
Foods and boosters can increase your amount of experience gained by quite a bit, and they’re easily purchased from the Black Lion Trading Post or crafted by a Chef.
PvP and WvW
While these two modes are certainly challenging and often annoying to play, there are many instances where they prove to be a very good method for generating Spirit Shards. Spirit Shards are gifted to players once they’ve hit the level cap of 80, Mastery notwithstanding, and every level you gain above this grants you a singular Spirit Shard.
When completing various PvP reward tracks, you’ll gain Tomes of Knowledge and Writs of Knowledge that you can spam consume to gain Spirit Shards if you’re level 80. WvW is similar in that you can choose which reward track you’d like to run and from there obtain many Tomes of Knowledge; however, it’s more tricky you’ll need a good group to run with, or you’ll make no progress.
Halloween
Festivals in Guild Wars 2 are by and far the best way to generate XP, gold, and resources. The Halloween festival is one of the best for this, as it offers access to the Labyrinth. In this mode, you run through a haunting maze led by a Commander, or anyone really, and farm the mobs of enemies who spawn for XP and items.
Meta Events
Doing Meta events such as Dragon’s Stand or the Heart of Thorns meta train run can generate a massive XP in a relatively short amount of time. Completing the Dragon’s Stand map meta also grants you Spirit Shards instantly.
Certain Map and Map Events
Running the Veteran Stonehead Farm, which is found on the Verdant Brink map during the day cycle, is another good way to farm Spirit Shards, with XP granted based on how well you perform in the event. Gold tier grants you a total of 26,670 XP and some Karma and copper without any stacked XP boosters.
You can also run events in Crystal Oasis for a lot of XP, there are a lot of different dynamic map events that occur on this map, and it’s easy to generate a lot of XP in a short time.
One such event is held in the Free City of Amnoon, and is called Casino Blitz, which has players run around to gather Casino Coins, and if enough are collected, there is a Choya piñata to fight. The coins can also be turned in for various items at the casino or consumed for small amounts of XP.
Completing Story Chapters
There are a lot of different story chapters that you can play through, but in certain ones, you’ll earn certain guaranteed items like Black Lion Chest Keys, or in this case, Spirit Shards. At every race’s Chapter II and Chapter III, you’ll gain Spirit Shards after completing the chapters. To access Chapter II and Chapter III, you’ll need to be level 20 and 30.
