Where are the Deadly Shards?

For months I've been trying to collect 12 Deadly Shards from the Cold Minions of Death on the Ocean of Bones, to complete the Cloak of Power Quest.
Many players have told me how aggravating it is not to find them for ages.

So, what's the secret? Why are they so hard to find? What does it take to get them?

 

It took me a day ... Come on. Just farm the knights solo or with a friend. It's easy. Trust me the frags in m2 are harder.

 

There is also this thing that you and I don't have, and it is called "Luck." There are just some people like you and I who the PRNG hates.

 

I have only 1 of those and i got it 4 months ago...

As for you, Mrcroww...you're very lucky indeed, in one day..wow
But in m2 i have almost half, in just 11 runs...105/16/6

 

I gave up trying to get them, for months I keep clearing out that area over and over and no drop, all I got was 2, so decided it was not worth the frustration

 

I've been trying for my last shard solo for a while. But I've noticed all the items for this quest have an extremely low drop chance for me solo. :/ even in map2 I can't seem to get anything without a full group.

EDIT:Scratch that. I recently changed my talants up to give end game pvp another shot and just found my last shard just now. XD

 

I'm glad you found your last shard, but there's no magic formula (group/no group, talents you use, etc). It's just a matter of luck. Lucky streaks, unlucky streaks... streaks in my underwear... oh, whoops, NM that last one

 

Now that you've found your last shard, get ready for more mind numbing grinding to get those dark cloth drops in h.o.d.

BP seems to know that once you've invested the time to get started that you'll continue until it's done.

The power cloak quest is enough to make you question why you play the game. So far it has taken me 5.5 full runs to get 1 dark cloth drop. That equals 165 full runs to complete the quest. That is ridiculous.

Maybe some people are lucky and get them quickly and maybe some are unlucky and it takes longer. I've done both groups and solo and the drop rate has been consistent so far.

 

It pretty-much takes everyone a long time for the map1 and map2 rare pieces. I remember getting two dark cloths in one run, then none for about 12 runs... which supports your 5.5 runs/cloth estimate, approximately.

Funny story: I remember the very first run I made for the map1 shards. I joined two guys in town. Did two runs with them and ended up with three shards. They got nothing, and couldn't believe I got that many. They had been on the quest for a while, I had just started. I logged out thinking, "This quest won't take as long as everyone says". Well that was apparently first-day beginners luck, because four weeks later I still only had three shards in my pack

Moral of the story: Believe people when they say it takes a long time. No, the quest isn't broken if you go many, many runs without a drop. That's just a streak of bad luck. With the low drop rate of these (both deadly shards and dark cloths), it's easy to have bad-luck streaks.

 

For now I am the record holder.
Finishing the Cloak of Power quest in 8-9 months.

 

I took some advice and started grinding the death knights; it took only 2 weeks to get the remaining deadly shards, about 80 hours of searching.
A couple of observations:
1. Not all instances are equal. Some have fewer knights, more ghosts, etc. Some maps seem empty of minions, some are packed. The drops vary as to type, but the overall value of the items remains about the same.
2. Some deadly shards drop directly from the knights. Forget the icy minion of death stuff; that must have been a few dozen releases ago.
3. Give or take a few feet, the shards always dropped for me in 1 of 3 locations on the map: the left loop, a left border below that loop, and on the right side near the bottom, before you get to the super boss. The positions change a little with the map coordinates, and DSO may have changed it all by now, or in the future.

Good hunting!

 

I've been working on that quest for a while now. I'm still 9/12. I basically farm it solo and groups. Haven't seen a change in the crappy-ness of the drop rate