The path of GemCraft continues, bigger and meaner than ever with the latest version of the game "GemCraft Chasing Shadows". Test your might against these 16 Quests.
Fire in the Hole Destroy 3 monster nests in the same round. Hardness: Easy
Tome Raider Open a previously opened tome chamber. Hardness: Easy
Blizzard Kill 25 monsters with frozen corpse explosion. Hardness: Easy
Self Defense Strengthen your orb by dropping a gem on it. Hardness: Easy
Connected Build an amplifier. Hardness: Medium
The Messenger Must Die Kill a shadow. Hardness: Medium
Almost Ruined Leave a monster nest at 1 hit point at the end of the battle. Hardness: Medium
Extorted Harvest all mana from 3 mana shards. Hardness: Medium
High Stakes Set a battle trait to level 7. Hardness: Medium
Amulet Fill all the sockets in your talisman. Hardness: Medium
Mist Fell Down Select the Glaring difficulty. Hardness: Medium
Not Worth It Harvest 9.000 mana from a corrupted mana shard. Hardness: Hard
Rageout Enrage 30 waves. Hardness: Hard
Senior Grade Create a grade 12 gem. Hardness: Hard
Ice Cube Have a Maximum Charge of 300% for the Freeze Spell. Hardness: Hard
I've been there... I understand your frustration. This is, at least for me, the worst quest on AG by far.
You can do what you're suggesting and add +2 to each battle trait, but, again, you may not get a talisman fragment at the end and you've just wasted shadow cores. Also, I would only recommend you spending 100 SC on the drop rarity range if you're playing a harder level; in easier levels, well, it may not be worth it.
This is like a lottery and I don't have any good advice for you. I farmed harder fields (with and without battle traits) and nothing... Then I farmed easier fields (less waves, less time wasted, you know) and nothing as well. In the end, I gave up and continued playing (and enjoying) the game. Eventually, I got it, but it took an awfully long time.
Sorry I can't be more useful. You can ask this in the game comments. Maybe somebody has better tips :|
thanks for all the tips @kegaumongo
after 5 days of insanely farming i finally completed the ice cube quest
this is how i did: completed ever single stage i could on glaring, then started farming SC's on J3 (for some reason there are a lot of apparitions and stuff there), and then started playing initial stage with the maximum battle traits i could, i noticed a slightly increase in talisman drop there, but it may be just luck
so good luck to all other quest hunters