How to farm Blood Shards in Diablo 3
It’s like gambling, but it’s actually just gambling
Stephanie Roehler 
Image via Blizzard
Gambling has always been a staple of Diablo gameplay, but in Diablo III it came in the form of a new currency: Blood Shards. These are abnormal units that can only be found a handful of ways around the game. However, when you use them to buy gear, you can sometimes win big and those moments are very, very satisfying. To make your gambling game efficient, let’s talk all about what Blood Shards are and how you can get as many as possible.
What are Blood Shards?
Blood Shards are a currency unique to Adventure Mode that can only be used at one vendor: Kadala, the gambling merchant. It’s much like the gambling mechanic in Diablo II, but instead of money you use Blood Shards. You have a chance of getting Legendary items or Set items with each purchase. You can buy different pieces of gear at different prices, which go as follows:
- Amulets: 100 Shards
- Weapons: 75 shards regardless of type
- Rings: 50 shards
- Armor, Off-Hand Items, Etc: 25 Shards, regardless of type
Your Blood Shard inventory is somewhat limited, though. At first, you can only have a max of 500 at a time. The devs did understand how restraining that could be, though, and in Patch 2.2.0 made it so that each Greater Rift completed increases your cap by 10. But, you should still pay close attention to your count so you can use your Blood Shards before you’re forced to teleport back to town just to use them and make space. (Trust us, sometimes Blood Thieves can drop more Shards than you could carry).
How to get Blood Shards?
Blood Shards aren’t exactly rare items, but they don’t just drop from any monster or loot (not in any notable quantity, at least). When you’re looking for Blood Shards, there are three places you can get them:
- Horadric Caches for clearing missions in Adventure Mode
- Killing Rift Guardians
- Killing Blood Thieves (Treasure Goblins for Blood Shards)
Farming strats
For starters, just doing your journey each season is a pretty great way to farm. Blood Shards come with each Horadric Cache you earn in Adventure Mode, after all. Also, your seasonal goals have you exploring maps and fighting rifts, where you can fight Rift Guardians and Blood Thieves.
If you want to be more deliberate about your farming and abuse the Greater Rifts, though, here’s what you can do. First, identify what level of Greater Rift you can do quickly. Even if you can fight things on Torment VII, maybe lower your difficulty to Torment III to be able to clear the Rifts ASAP. You’ll want to be able to finish the rift in under ten minutes so you can use your time efficiently.
One thing to note, though, is that Rifts from Normal level difficulty to Torment I give the same amount of Blood Shards. Torment II and higher, though, the number will steadily increase.
Then, after you pick your Greater Rifts, just get to killing over and over again. That should give you enough Blood Shards to happily horde Kadala’s inventory.
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