The void shard system was introduced with the release of The Shadow Odyssey expansion pack in late 2008. A void shard is an item used in the form of currency or traded to certain merchants for items such as Armor, Jewelry, Weapons, Charms, Mounts and so forth. To earn these shards you need to complete Quests or kill certain mobs within TSO instances. You will typically earn between one to four shards per instance per day. There are over 20 instances from which you can earn these shards. Some are more difficult than other zones. 

The concept of using shards as a currency that is used for purchasing rewards is not completely new to Everquest; many of the recent world events like Frostfell began using a form of shards as quest rewards, which are then used as a form of currency. A similar system was used in the original Everquest expansion Lost Dungeons of Norrath. Some love it and other despise this system. This is due to the nasty fact that you will have to grid these instances over and over and over, especially if you have alts. The good thing is that shards are Heirloom so you can trade them to your alts as long as they are on the same account. It takes quite a bit of shards to get some of the better gear in this expansion. With this expansion pack more that the previous it is important to progress your gear. For example some of the higher level instances can be difficult to complete even for a fully Veeshan’s Peak geared raider. This is because Sony added Critical damage to the mobs in these instances. This means that you can be one-shooted much more regular. Once you obtain your tier two armor you begin earn gear that mitigates this Critical damage. This opens you up to get your fabled TSO armor that allows you to progress in the content which leads to better gear which in turn leads to better survivability in tougher zones.

Armor and jewelry are the main focus for most players when spending shards so let’s go over some of those concepts. The Shadow Odyssey has two main sets of armor. A Legendary set and a Fabled set. These sets are broken down into tiers between these sets. Tier 1 and 2 armor sets are Legendary while Tier 3 and 4 are Fabled. These sets are also shared between archetypes and sub-classes. If that was not confusing you also have 4 generic sets; Plate, Chain, Leather and Cloth that are used by their respectable classes. The other types of armor are the Class specific ones such as for Sorcerers or Clerics. That means the Warlocks and Wizards use the same armor and they can use the cloth vesions as well if they choose too. Now this is why you need an abundance of shards to fully gear out a character. A full set of tier one armor will cost you 44 shards. Now here is where it gets expensive. Tier 2 armor will cost you 126 Void Shards plus you Tier 1 Piece. You can get these slightly cheaper if you can find a shard armor crafter which I will go over later. Now for Tier 3 armor you will once again need to trade in your tier two shard armor along with an armor pattern and some shards. To get these patterns you need a mold which drops from boss mobs within the X2 raid zones. This will cost slightly more shards than the tier one costs. For Tier four the great news is you do not need to trade in any gear to get your armor; however you will still need a number of shards as well as plat. This works similar to past expansion packs where the boss mobs drops patterns found in the highest level raids zones of TSO. Now don’t think you are going to just skip tier 1 – 3 and hop into these zones in VP gear. Maybe avatar gear but many don’t have that. This gear should not be confused as a progression from tier three just because it is called tier 4. It’s not a direct progression from tier 3 shard armor but more of a progression from Veeshan’s Peak Raid armor from RoK. Also it’s fair to mention the new black market vendors added with Game Update 53 sell many fabled items that come from all of the TSO zones for a bargain price of 150 shards. This is a controversial topic for many hardcore and veteran players. Some feel this is another step in making EQ2 easy street. Clearly though is you have the time and many alts you can gear you characters very well with out ever raiding. However to be the best you need to raid to get the best gear in the game.

For more on the Shard System see the upcoming Show 13: The Shard System.

Tags: EQ2, The Shadow Odyssey, TSO, Void Shards