Cole next to a Blast Shard.
Blast shards are highly charged pieces of earth that were scattered by The Blast caused by Ray Sphere.
When collected, they give an extra battery core for Cole. They are scattered all throughout Empire City and are fairly easy to find, thanks to their signature sparkle and the way they show up as blue circles on Cole's radar after using a Radar Pulse. Cole can collect up to 350 shards but from 270 on they stop generating new battery cores, overall giving Cole 10 extra cores. Each battery core needs about 20-30 shards to create. Each Blast Shard found also gives Cole 5 experience, comparable to defeating a standard Reaper which gives 5 as well, so actively hunting for Shards will give Cole a significant advantage, particularly in the early game.
Climbing..
The Blast Shards are found quite frequently in Side Missions and sometimes are part of a Moral Choice. For example, in two side missions, pedestrians have lockers full of Blast Shards and offer one to Cole as payment for his assistance. Cole can choose to do the Heroic thing and take the offered shard as a reward, or the Villainous Act and steal the whole cache of shards. Simply taking them in some missions can be risky as, for instance, a citizen may have his locker rigged with explosives.
There are three Trophies related to Blast Shards: a trophy called Junior Geologist for finding 25% of the Blast Shards, a trophy called Member of the Mineral Club for finding 50% of the Blast Shards, and a trophy called Rockhound for finding 100% of the Blast Shards. It is important to note that the trophies refer only to shards found on the sides or tops of buildings and other structures. The shards collected (or not collected) as part of side missions do not count toward any of the trophies.
Locations
Blast Shards marked in blue.
Locating all the Blast Shards can be extremly easy to do with a guide. The Radar Pulse ability will also reveal any nearby shards as blue dots on your minimap. Remember, the Radar Pulse can tell you where the shard is, not how high it is, so remember to look up and down if you're on a building. When on a building, go to the side where the shard is and look around using the camera. If you still do not see the shard jump down, keeping your camera trained on the wall. A highly reccommended strategy is to clear a district without picking up any shards and, before moving on to the next district, collect all the shards in that district. This way, if you miss one or two you know what district they're in.
Easy Blast Shards
- Just go to the sections that are divided by the road, and scout and press L3. This way is really easy, and if there's a tall building, then climb to the top, then scan and jump down in the general area of any present blast shards
- Other easy shards are found in the Warren. There are several on the metal constructs over the canal and others are easy to spot in the heaps of trash.
- The north coast of the Neon is abundant in blast shards too. It makes sense as the blast was in the south Historic.
- Start a new game and download a good map that shows the location of all blast shards. Next look at the number of how many shards are in each city, collect as many as you can in the Neon, save your game, then look at your saved data; that will tell you the exact ammount you collected. Then finish the Neon and go to the Warren, in the end of the Warren you will have 282 shards. Go to the next area and repeat.
Trivia
- The color of the blast shards is not based on your Karma (that is, Evil Karma will not result in red blast shards).
- When pressing L3 to find blast shards, note that they may be too high and will not show up. Therefore making the navigation a sphere more than a circle.
- There are no Blast Shards in the Sewers, due to both they are only accessable in missions, as well as it being below ground.
- There are no Blast Shards on Alden's Tower, most likely due to the fact it was built "after" the Blast.
- In inFamous 2 there are Blast Shards and they appear to have a purple colouration like the Blast Cores