Shards

Shards are gem-like artifacts that slot into your Relics, Armor, and Weapons. Shards replaced Skill Spheres system and item Passives (while some items with unique passives still drop but have only one shard slot). Shards give your hero or your defenses extra stats or abilities, all green shards can buff only defenses and can be placed only in Relics, while blue shards will buff your hero and can be placed in Weapon and Armor. Shards can be moved between pieces of gear and be upgraded straight from your inventory. A weapon or piece of armor allows to hold up to 3 Shards and can only equip Hero (blue) Shards and relics can hold up to 3 Defense (green) Shards. Blue shards give you hero new abilities or stats while they are placed in any item currently equipped by that hero, but green (defenses) shards strengthen only that tower, where relic containing them is equipped.

## Shards Packs

Shards drop from shard packs obtained from victory chest at the end of every map, you will get Standard shard pack after completing any Campaign and Chaos map, those packs can drop shards associated with Campaign packs. After completing Expeditions on Chaos difficulty, you will get guaranteed Shard pack from that difficulty and one Shard Pack from any previous difficulty (for example, if you beat Chaos III Expeditions, you’ll receive 1 Chaos III Shard Pack and 1 Chaos II, Chaos I or Standard Shard Pack). Once you win 3 consecutive random maps in a row in Expeditions, you’ll activate the Shard consecutive bonus. On your 4th consecutive victory onward, you’ll earn an extra Shard Pack for as long as the streak continues. This extra Shard Pack is a guaranteed Shard Pack from that difficulty. That means once you activate the win bonus, you’ll get 3 Shards guaranteed every victory (2 Shard Packs of that difficulty, 1 Shard Pack from previous difficulties) until one of your crystals break or you leave the game.

Any shard can be purchased from Gran Ma'ster for 1000 Defender Medals or 250 Gems. A shard pack containing 5 random shards can also be purchased for 500 Defender Medals or 125 Gems. These shard packs will give you 5 random shards from a single difficulty (e.g. 5 random Chaos V shards).

## Shard Dust

As of the Protean Shift update, you may disenchant shards (press 's' when hovering over a shard) which will turn the shard into shard dust of the same tier. Ten shard dust can be exchanged with War Recruiter to obtain one new shard pack.

## Standard Shards List

In this category, you will find every standard shard that is usable by any Hero, for specific shards, read : Heroes.

## Hyper Shards

With the introduction of mastery mode, several new hyper shards have been introduced to the game. Shards unlock as you earn stars in mastery mode. Each hyper shard can only be obtained once in Mastery mode.

As of the Prime Incursion Update, completing all maps within a prime region awards a hyper shard. Completing all seven regions awards the last hyper shard. This allows you to obtain a second set of all the shards. Note that the order that you obtain hyper shards in Prime Incursions is different than that of Mastery mode (e.g. the first prime region doesn't award Mass Destruction).

## Survival Shards

With the introduction of survival, several new survival shards have been introduced to the game. Shards unlock as you get in-game reward such as bags and chests.