How are people Darth Vadering?

It's from buying packs. There are numerous achievements for unlocking N light side or dark side characters. After I got Sideous I finished the "unlock 10 dark side" achievement and got 2 Vader shards, and now it shows an "unlock 11 dark side" achievement waiting with 2 more. That must be how they are doing it.
The real question is: once you get him, how do you upgrade him?

Yeah, that's another question I have because eventually you will run out of characters to unlock. Unless he is insta 7* but I don't remember what he was from the people I saw with him.

You get the shards from most of the achievements, only the very easy don't reward you with Vader shards. I bought a few packs and filled out a big roster of both light and dark side which helped! The harder the challenge, the more shards. So when you get deeper into the game you'll get more Vader shards to upgrade once you've unlocked. Within a couple of weeks everyone will be running him. It's a pain since he is tanky, can hit hard, over time damage and can improve his turn meter! Squishy Dooku has met his match once he's in common use

he starts 4*. I am halfway to moving him to 5*. Getting him to 7* looks like it could take an extremely long time

Are you kidding me? my monthly shards are TIE pilot... #meh

pretty sure the daily log ins give you the TIE pilot

"Keaven;7177" wrote:
This months daily log in rewards are also vadar shards so a few people may have him close to 5★ come January.

I thought so on December 1 myself but that's not Vader. :)

I'm so close to getting him only 10 away, just not sure how good he'll be.

The only way to get Vader shards is by completing the achievements in game. He doesn't drop from packs as far as I've heard. You need 80 to unlock him so he starts at 4*.

I'm currently only 15/65 shards towards 5* and I figure it will be slow since the achievements are now ridiculous things like "earn 100 million credits for 3 Darth Vader shards" or "complete 100 Galactic War campaigns" :'(

Slushie, that was what I figured sadly, at least I'm on a newer server and am only lvl 40 atm so I might be able to get some use out of him for a little while at least.