I was able to find a fairly dependable farm for crackling shards.
the shipbuilders cave at 64, 20 is the place to go.
the mobs are all normal mobs this is not a hyperspawn. but the mobs have a pretty quick respawn times.
I don’t have exact drop rates but i think i got 1 shard every 200-300 kills. most were under 200 but one took nearly 1000. wowhead lists these at 0.7% drop rate, which is only slightly worse than the rares at 1% and you have to wait for those.
redwing falcons at 42, 74 have a better expected drop rate but there aren’t enough of them up at any given time to farm them efficiently.
My guildy smashed his out super early, i regret not doing this too because the drops seem to be horrible now, to the point i have seen one shard across three characters lol
The cave is the place to go. I was originally just doing a casual farm of all the rares but had little luck. Hit the cave and got my last 3 in as many hours.
I’ve been farming the cave on and off for the last couple of weeks, and it’s pretty hit and miss. One night I got 2 in 2 hours, then the next one took a couple of hours to get, but since then I’ve gone over 2000 3700 kills without a drop which is absolutely pathetic. Blizz needs to stop this crap and respect player time more, I don’t mind grinding for things but there comes a point where it just gets stupid for no reason.
Edit: joined a couple of groups last night, spent a couple of hours farming bees and then cave mobs, three others in the group got shards, one person got two, but I’m now at 3700 kills without a drop. It’s ridiculous.
Been working the cave for about an hour and gotten no shard drops. Seems to not be a hyperspawn spot so much as a minimum number of mobs spot. No matter how fast you kill them new mobs will spawn until their is at least 3-5 there.
Don’t know, maybe that’s what a hyperspawn spot is. Cave entrance around 65, 20.
Best way to “farm” Crackling Shards is to sweep the Isle for rares, as they now have the objectively highest drop rate per kill. It may take you a couple of weeks (unless you spend extra time also killing them on alts), but it saved me a lot of sanity. They nerfed the other hyperspawn farms to the point that attempting to grind it out as fast as possible isn’t really feasible.
All I know is because of grinds like this you are basically forced to fully research upcoming patches in order to not be screwed. Every time the devs appear to be totally “surprised Pikachus” when no lifers immediately grind out things like this and respond with a huge over-nerf which completely hoses normal players. I got 2 shards first week, then NOT ONE since. Same with SI torrential shards, it took a couple hours the first week but after that it took 10+ hours.
I don’t mind things that take some effort, but it needs to consistent throughout the patch. But I guess that would be against Blizz’s motto; “Exploit early, exploit often or be screwed over”.
I got 30 the first week used 10 still have 20, I farmed them during early access week, along with the rare quest drop off that 1 rare, knocked out 2 mounts at once, and since everyone was farming items for the quest mount there where a ton of groups, some even let you afk for a few mins and stuff which was nice, also farmed the bees during early access so that was done in a few hours lol, bees didnt take long at all
