Two Shara fights, 5 tenderplates and two gems. Not too shabby. This time I went with a lower DPS weapon (+ Elderseal, although I doubt it had an effect) and focused on the head until the scalp broke off. Then I carved it immediately the next time I KO'd it. I wasn't letting it disappear on me again.
Still a shit fight otherwise. Glad I have the materials for the arm piece, two of its weapons and plenty of tenderclaws for the other ED weapons.
If Shara living underground is going to present problems for its boss fight, then the obvious solution would be not designing it as living mostly underground.
And even then there were plenty of opportunities to do something different with it. The Guiding Lands would have been a perfect stage for a boss fight (with some alterations perhaps) with plenty of environmental interaction for player and final boss alike to work with. It would have been sense from a story perspective, too, since the corpse of Zorah Magdaros could still be a prime target for a monster that destroys (new?) ecosystems. Lastly, fighting it in the Guiding Lands first would have been a perfect bridge to opening the Guiding Lands for expeditions, thus establishing the endgame.