An easier way to get shards?

[Maero]

The housing options sounds great, i did not know about it either :/
I just have multiple gathering retainers and send them out, it does add up over time

[Jelly_Baby]

Two words, Ephemeral Nodes!

Yeah but the OP says he already knows about Ephemeral nodes lol, so I didn't suggest it. I was mentioning OTHER ways

[Roth_Trailfinder]

Besides, unless things have changed when I was not looking, Ephemeral Nodes are good for Crystals and Clusters, but NOT Shards.

[Elamys]

The response Ostwar made was to somebody having a hard time farming clusters, so ephemerals are good for that. It wasn't in response to OP (I had to double check too)

[Edewen]

you could always farm something of better value and sell it to buy shards

[swamppride]

Can we not break crystals and clusters?

[Jojoya]

Can we not break crystals and clusters?

No, those can't be broken into shards. You're also going to need a fair number of those before you learn Aetherial Reduction so better to save them as you get them.

Additional sources of shards outside of retainer ventures, gathering and gardening are tradecraft/fieldcraft levequests and some of the Ixali beast tribe dailies. The numbers aren't huge per quest but they do add up.

Make certain to buy low level materials from vendors when you can. Frequently the price of the material is less than the value of the shards needed to craft them from raw materials (depending on your world's market prices). Even if it's slightly more expensive, it allows you to conserve your shards for crafting finished products or for making HQ materials when needed. Housing material suppliers and ARR beast tribe vendors are huge helps for most materials needed below level 35 (leathers, gems and culinarian supplies needed over level 15 being the notable exceptions).