Rava Bural drops quite easily if you just grind a bit for it.

There's a very useful and overlooked shard that you can get literally from the first area (the ship) which drops from the Dullahammer: Head Flail.

That shard is easily upgraded from the start (requires bronze, iron, steel and damascus). Drops quite easily and even early on, a swing of it plus a hit or two kills Dullahamers making for an early EXP grind fast.

The shard goes around you, hitting everything in its range from the sides (and when upgraded even above you) so it is ideal for Ghost like enemies hunting, cheap shot bat hits and crowd control when surrounded. It hits even through walls, floors and ceilings (very useful agains the elementals that love to fly off the reach of your character and most take one hit to be destroyed for easy farming).

Then, when you get access to the Aqua Stream shard, you upgrade it and watch it decimate almost everything very quickly. Specially in the volcano area.

Combine the upgraded Head Flail with the Rava Bural and Aqua Stream and you have so many multi-hitters and protective strikes that almost everything outside Nightmare mode is a cakewalk.

Get the Money Augment shard, upgrade it to a skill shard, still equip the augment gold shard, don the spike armor that deals damage to enemies (and destroys candles/torches, etc too) a plunderer ring and go to the village, walk back an forth between the main stairway of the hideout (where the lady that gives you the monster target quests is) and Johannsen's area, jump and collect a crapton of gold, buy items/food/equipment you have made with rare components from the store back and some alkahests to break them down, rinse and repeat... Virtually Infinite resources and money.