Eternal Ice Shards are a valuable item in Guild Wars 2. They can be found in chests and caches, and can be used to create a variety of items. The best methods for farming Eternal Ice Shards are as follows:
- Start by gathering the shards from chests and caches.
- Use the shards to create items such as potions, armor, and weapons.
- Sell the items on the market to make money.
The best methods to farm Eternal Ice Shards include:
Mining them from Eternal Ice nodes Doing Bjora Marches’ 2 meta events Opening Essence and Norn chests
Let’s take a closer look at all of these and see how they stack up.
Method 1: Mining Eternal Ice Nodes
Just exploring Bjora Marches and looking for Eternal Ice nodes makes a very decent way to farm Eternal Ice Shards.
Each node grants 1-8 Eternal Ice Shards per pick swing. Normally you can only hit nodes with your pick 3 times before they break, but there’s a chance that you might get an extra 2 or 3 hits.
There’s also a small chance some swings might not drop any Eternal Ice at all. But this won’t really hinder your mining, since many of the pick hits will give you at least 3 Shards.
Eternal Ice nodes are marked in your compass/minimap, so you can just explore Bjora Marches and look for them.
Tip: Some nodes are hidden behind Roller Beetle walls, or can only be reached by using Raven mastery skills. It’s highly recommended that you level all these masteries up before farming.
Method 2: Doing Bjora Marches’ Meta Events
Bjora Marches is divided into two sections: West and East.
Each of them have their own meta event.
Drakkar takes place in the West section, and a few minutes later the Icebrood Champion event begins in the East section, so you can do both in a row.
You need a decent amount of people to successfully complete both metas, so always join an organized squad/party, or maybe try organizing one yourself.
At the end of Drakkar, 4 chests will spawn. 3 of them are Large Essence chests, so you will need to level up their corresponding Essence Manipulation masteries, in order to open them.
On the other hand, when the Icebrood Construct is defeated, a large area to the north of East Bjora Marches called Asgeir’s Legacy will open up.
You will find 4 bonus Champions inside, together with different Essence and Norn chests, and some Eternal Ice nodes.
Method 3: Opening Essence & Norn Chests
Apart from the ones in Asgeir’s Legacy, there’s several Essence and Norn chests scattered throughout both sections of Bjora Marches.
As you can see, Essence chests are usually the most profitable, and most of them are found in West Bjora Marches.
There are three kinds of Essence:
Resilience (Red) Valor (Green) Vigilance (Blue)
Some of the lower-tier chests might be found in different locations each time you enter the map, but the Large ones tend to always stay in the same place.
As mentioned before, you will need to level up certain Essence Manipulation masteries in order to open higher tier Essence chests.
Also, many of them are kind of tricky to find, requiring certain mount or mastery skills (like the Springer’s high jump, or the Raven Lock mastery). So make sure to train as many masteries as you can before you go treasure hunting.
Below is a map with the areas where you can find Essence chests in West Bjora Marches. Large chests are marked with colored squares.
Eternal Ice Shards are most commonly used by players to purchase Living World Season 4 materials. These are needed for the Skyscale mount’s collections, and can also be consumed for Volatile Magic, which in turn is used to buy T5 and T6 materials.
