Completing Shards of Fate WITHOUT killing Undermother or Flame Prophet

[VDX_360]

Q: Should it be possible to complete the quest Shards of Fate without having to kill either the Undermother or the Flame Prophet?

Discussion: Currently, it's possible to complete the Shards of Fate quest by collecting 12 shards from Rumour Bosses, allowing a player to skip some or all the named bosses that carry the shards, most notably it allows skipping the Undermother and Flame Prophet challenge.

I stumbled across on a current play through as I previously thought there was only a limited number of shards that would drop from rumor bosses, making it necessary to find the ones from the named monsters, including the Undermother or Flame Prophet.

 

[Kimbyssik]

Yeah, on my current playthrough I'm waiting for the Ark quest to trigger and realized I hadn't done The Prodigal Daughter, so I knocked it out for the XP since I already finished shards.
Incidentally, I didn't go after any rumor bosses, but I had 7 shards from the bank and named bosses before I went into the Sewer of Horrors and spent about six in-game weeks farming XP there. I realized by the time I decided to leave the Icemist Underlevel I had 12 shards in my pack! So it turns out that those red dragons are a good way to get them...