Best way to obtain hards and shards?

I'm sure it's been asked before but hey ho

 

I've had my best luck through gathering bloods from sheeps or flamingos, chopping trees, or just through farming.

 

Ok thank you

 

Red battle field, or gathering

 

ONLY on the weekends when double RBF rewards are active. otherwise gathering will always be best way to get shards. Anywhere where there is less travel time between nodes.

 

What are the rewards from RBF? I've played retail for a good year or so and still don't know.

 

sharps and hards, cron stones and RBF tokens

Retail = tokens and silver.

 

in 2 weeks of game i was able to grab a 508 gs... very poor but hey, considering i'm totally new to bd and this is my first mmorpg i can't complain at all...

considered that, 2 question for the pros here:
1) some dudes claim that possible to grab about 50 shards in 1 our of grinding, i've tryed but grabbed only 5 where do i wrong? i'm using a chopping axe level pri, silver gathere clotes (level zero lol...) and i use the worker's elixir too that i can grab from the helms.
2) i was able to build a tet griffon helmet and selling it in marketplace i grabbed more tha 1 billion (my first billion! UUUUUUU)... the price of shards and hard is really high to, so my question now: those stones are putted inside marketplace by people that grind them and sell it in the marketplace or is a feature that server's devs add inside?
3) i've eard that i could obtain shards and hard by melting some stuff? whitch one dudes, and what have i to do to do that?

this server si really greath, as this game... what to say? bdr is a very easy game to learn game, but an extremely difficult one to master... as soon as i'll grab some better gear i'll be able to enter a good guild and finally enjoy the node wars and the siege ones! can't wait for that! peace, duies....

 

Well Gathering skill and gear has an impact on the drop rates from Gathering, which increases the drop rates of the Shards.
Yes, the Shards on the Central Market are all from players.
You can look things up like which items when melted drop Shards on: https://bdocodex.com/us/