Ectos and Shards - farm or buy?

I'm just curious about what the common practice is for getting enough ectos and shards for FoW armor. I've farmed enough ecto for armor without much problem, and it didn't take very long at all. But farming shards seems a bit tedious. The usual recommended builds seem to be fine, but the runs (for me anyway) seem to be not very productive, and the spawns of ancient skale are unreliable enough that at least half the runs end before I even get to the spider cave.

So for all of you out there with one or more sets of FoW armor, how did you get the ectos and shards - and particularly the shards? Did you farm them all? or did you buy them? Just curious, as I am just now of a mind to get a set or two of FoW. I have the money to buy them, but if I could farm them and save the gold, so much the better. Thanks for any input.

Edit: if this should be in the farming thread or Riverside or anywhere else, please let me know. This seemed like an appropriate place for it, but I'm always open to suggestions.

Well, shards are only like 2k right? I know i would just farm the money for the shards, if it was giving me enough trouble.

It is much cheaper now to get FoW armour than it was in the past. Ectos usually at 10K+ each and shards have run from 3-5K in the past. When I got mine I farmed most of the shards and then just bought and occasionally farmed for them.

I can't afford FoW
But if i could, I'd probably farm the ectos and buy the shards by farming a few excess ectos.

I'd do the same

Exactly what I did when collecting materials for my 2.nd FoW Armor!

If you are good at it the fastest way is to powertrade and buy the ectos with the profit you make. I've tried farming ectos but i just have shite luck and end up losing money per run

Gratz on mod status as well yang

Shards are a lot easyer to farm than ectos in my case, I get maybe 1 ecto an hour opposed to like 5+ shards/hour.

I boughty my Shards but if I should get another FOW armor I'd farm the shards, and the money to buy the ectos.

I'm not a big fan of "farming" - I find it boring. So what I do is just quest/mission/vanquish/whatever that I feel like doing at the time. Eventually, I get enough gold to be able to buy the materials I need. I have a lot of time to play, so I have 3 characters with FoW armor.

Some people say "I can't afford "x", so I have to farm it." But, consider this, would you rather "farm" the FoW for 2 hours trying to get 2 shards, or would you rather go out questing (or whatever) for 2 hours and make 4k you can use to buy 2 shards?

Same thing for greens. You can either spend a whole lot of time trying to "farm" particular ones, or you can just play the game and use the gold you get to buy the green you want. You're choice. (I usually go out to try to farm it 5 or 6 times, and then get on with the game.)

If I were you, I would just play FoW normally (grouping for forge runs and what not) and just doing the quests. I usually get 3-4 shards per run doing this which I usually just sell off to the first buyer back in town (or the trader if one doesn't show up in less than five minutes). Along side that I would take all the extra money from the drops and buy some shards in between runs. If you do one run a night getting 3-4 shards and maybe enough money to buy 1-2 more you should have all the shards you should need in a couple weeks.

I got my necro's Obsidian armour back when ecto was worth more, but my method should still be effective, just keep farming ecto and sell the extra to pay for shards.

Thanks to all who responded for the helpful suggestions. I have a good sense now of what I ought to do.

2 shards in 2 hours? I regularly get 3 in a 25-30 minute 600/smite duo run.