Hunt for the Final Lost Anima Shard

We’ve found 49/50 Lost Anima Shards in Bastion, we need one more!

EDIT: Within hours of posting this document and information to the secret finding discord, Mat#2299 found the final shard! Thank you to everyone who helped track these tiny crystals down.

My name is Zarillion and I manage the HandyNotes: Shadowlands addon. My goal is to put as much useful information and nodes into my HandyNotes plugins as possible, so adding all 50 Lost Anima Shard locations would be a great add. In this document I will explain how we found the 49 shards we currently have and what we know about the 50th.

The First 7 Shards

While filling out the initial wave of treasures and rares in Bastion, we discovered 7 Lost Anima Shard locations by chance. We took note of their locations and quest ids as we collected them:

(61.04, 85.66) quest=61244

(54.02, 59.67) quest=61251

(65.25, 42.88) quest=61271

(31.00, 27.47) quest=61291

(30.61, 23.73) quest=61292

(26.15, 22.62) quest=61294

(24.37, 18.21) quest=61295

We knew we would have to rely on others to find the majority of the locations, but we were hoping one or two of the locations we spotted might be ones others had not yet found. We also noticed that the difference between quest ids 61244 and 61295 is already 51, so assuming there were more undiscovered shards with lower and higher quest ids than the ones above, the quest ids could not be in sequential order for all 50 shards.

Expanding to 44 Shards

In the #shadowlands channel of the WoW Secret Finding discord, Epic#0815 had posted a helpful image with 43 of the shards marked, including one inside the Necrotic Wake dungeon and three inside the Spires of Ascension dungeon. With this information we began adding the shard locations to the addon (along with their quest ids) and cross-referenced them with the seven we had previously found. Of those seven, one was in a previously unknown spot, so that brought our total shard count to 44.

Bastion locations from the 43/50 crystals Imgur link

Epic#0815 spent many, many hours hunting for the shards on beta all over the zone and brute-forced the locations of the majority of them. That hard work would pay off because it made more calculated search efforts for the final shards possible.

Establishing a Search Pattern

Once we had the quest ids and locations for 44 shards, we could start to look for patterns and information that would help us narrow down our search for the remaining 6 shards. We started by analyzing the gaps between the quest ids of the shards we had found, looking up each quest id on Wowhead to see if it was a real player quest or an unknown hidden quest that could potentially be a shard. We included this information as comments between the shards in our addon code:

We noticed that the quest ids ascended as you went from south to north in the zone, and that all shards in the same area tend to have similar quest ids. This meant that the shards were most likely dropped in a path across the zone that could be mapped. If we mapped that path and identified where the unknown quest id gaps occurred, those would be likely locations for the remaining shards. That led to this image:

The path the developer(s) took while dropping the 44 known Lost Anima Shards (south to north)

The white lines indicate sequential quest ids while the black numbered lines indicate the gaps. The number next to the line is the number of unknown quest ids in that gap that could be shards. Immediately, the seven black lines marked with a 1 stood out as the best places to start looking, and we noted their potential locations in the code.

Lost Anima Shards 45-49

Four additional shards were located relatively quickly using the above map. We found one at Aspirant’s Rest on top of the main structure, one in the hills north-east of the Necrotic Wake, one by the Path of Wisdom and one at Kraznir's Exchange. We then updated our map:

Updated map with 44 Lost Anima Shard locations in the Bastion world zone (other 4 in dungeons).

That left two remaining shards to locate. Before looking further in the open world, we wanted to verify that all of the dungeon shards had been located. It seemed odd that the Spires of Ascension dungeon would have three shards while Necrotic Wake would only have one. There was also a suspicious unknown quest id after the final shard in the Citadel of Loyalty and the first shard in the Necrotic Wake (quest=61296).

It was apparent that quest id 61296 was most likely one of the remaining two shards, and that it would be found in the Necrotic Wake dungeon. That would give us 5 shards in dungeons and 45 shards to be found in the open world, a sensible split. Sure enough, we reached out to Epic#0815 and he quickly located shard #49 in the Necrotic Wake.

The Final Shard

With high confidence that the last shard was out in the open world of Bastion, we resumed our search along the remaining black lines in our shard map. We searched the quest id gaps at Aspirant’s Crucible and the cliffs near Sundancer. We also searched the areas north-east and south of Hero’s Rest. The search was in vain however, so we took a break from the hunt.

Some time later, Laria#4812 posted in our plugin discord a link to the DNT spells for all 50 anima shards. Listed on each spell page was the associated quest id for that shard, so we finally had a way of tracking down the exact quest id we were missing.

We discovered that Anima Crystal Shard #21 is our missing final shard, and that it has a quest id of 61264. We can use this new information to narrow our search further.

• We know that shard #20 (quest=61263) is located at (40.04, 59.12) near the entrance to the Necrotic Wake.
• We know that shard #22 (quest=61270) is located on the opposite (east) side of the map at (57.64, 55.67).
• Five additional quest ids were allocated for other purposes between shard #21 and shard #22 being created and placed. That may indicate that they took a break and then resumed placing the shards and that #21 may possibly be closer to the location of #20.

Expanding a search radius around the locations of shards #20 and #22 is the most reasonable approach to finding the shard, but we have not had any luck. Some additional things to note:

• The majority of shards were placed in a neat path, but shards #20 and #22 are quite far apart so the search area is much larger. It could be anywhere in the central area of Bastion. We can at least eliminate the northernmost and southernmost areas of the map as possibilities as it is extremely unlikely they would jump up or down there and then back.
• The largest distance between two shards occurs with shards #15, #16 and #17 where they jump from south of Hero’s Rest all the way to the western cliffs and then back to Hero’s Rest. This appears to be a one-off, but if shard #21 does the same it could be hidden somewhere just outside of our search radius.
• It is unlikely the shard was placed on the uninstanced Necrotic Wake platforms. We have searched there regardless, but it wouldn’t make sense to place them there both in and out of the dungeon.

If you come across this elusive final shard, please let us know! Hopefully the information above will be helpful in the search. The newest version of the HandyNotes: Shadowlands plugin can display the locations of the other 49 shards on the map.

EDIT: The final shard was found by Mat#2299 in the secret finding discord at (38.52, 53.26). Sure enough, it was near the location of shard #20. Our hunt is now over!