how to get shards from crystals?

[Eltaire]

They're level 1. As soon as you unlock Miner or Botanist you can start gathering them. (Then, as a couple other people have mentioned, at level 20 there are skills that help with getting them slightly quicker.)

Sorry, perhaps my post wasn't clear - and for that I apologise.

The gathering points are levels 5 and 10. I am not sure if the level 15 gathering points have Crystal Shards in them. From experience, I don't recall that they do.

You are correct that in order to extract a Crystal Shard from a level 5 gathering point, you only need to be on par with the level of the item, which in this case is 1.

Thanks for clarifying.