I got two ascendant shards and one ascendant energy from doing a few public events yesterday (4 or 5?). Also got one ascendant shard for completing the daily heroic and two more as reward for it. So 6 shards in a matter of 2 hours. Not bad Too bad my gear is maxed out already... Will come in handy once Bungie allows more exotic gear to be worn? It's bound to happen...
Also maxed out my primary weapons (Suros and Red Death and a legendary auto rifle ) and got a legendary rocket launcher and fusion rifle too.
We finished the nightfall and weekly strike at 28 with Rage187 and another friend on Tuesday, so there's really nothing else to do besides running around and hoping for ascendant energy to upgrade my guns. Got the blue sparrow too, so waiting for Xur to show up to upgrade it to purple. Also got my my cloak with a coyote on the back - looks really cool
@Skel: The exotic guns have one special upgrade - for example the fusion rifle will insta-gib everything once you unlock the full auto upgrade I got a huge grin the first time I fired it with the upgrade There's also a really cool sniper rifle called "Patience and Time" that will put you into stealth each time you look through the scope and it keeps the radar displayed too. Rage187 has a rocket launcher that destroys everything - missiles lock on target and after exploding, spawn like 10 smaller missiles that also lock on everything around. Kinda crazy