Silksong asks more of your health bar than its predecessor and hands out extensions less freely — which makes the early mask shards disproportionately valuable. Below is every shard obtainable across the first three regions, ordered roughly by earliest availability. Region names are used sparingly to keep spoilers gentle, but stop reading now if you want a blind first act.
The mossy beginning
Shard one hides above the main thoroughfare — look for a breakable ceiling near the region's bell shrine, reachable with a simple wall-jump chain. Shard two is a purchase: the wandering merchant you meet after the first boss sells it for a modest sum of rosaries. Buy it before anything else on the inventory; nothing there beats health this early.
The bone spires
Shard three sits behind an optional mini-boss in a side chamber west of the region's main lift — the fight is a skill check on your dash timing, and honestly good practice. Shard four requires the sprint tool: return to the long corridor with the collapsing floor and clear the gap that was previously impossible. Backtracking with new tools pays off constantly in this game; this is the first lesson.
The city above
Shard five is a quest reward — a grieving bug near the stag equivalent asks you to retrieve a keepsake two rooms below; the detour takes five minutes. Shard six is the trickiest: a hidden alcove behind a waterfall of silk on the city's eastern wall, requiring a precise needle-bounce off a lantern. If you are struggling, come back with the next traversal upgrade and it becomes trivial.
General advice
Four shards make a mask, and reaching your first extra mask before the second major boss transforms that fight. Prioritise shards over rosary caches whenever the map forces a choice — currency reaccumulates; deaths to a one-hit shortfall do not. And check back with every merchant after each boss kill: inventories refresh more often than the game admits.