Summoning and shards, without the marketing language

What a shard is, in one paragraph #

A shard is a summoning token. You consume it, the game resolves a random draw against published per-shard chances, and you receive one champion. The draw is resolved once, it cannot be undone, and you cannot choose the outcome. That is the whole mechanic, and it is the mechanic the rest of the game orbits.

The shard types and what they are for #

Shards arrive from campaign and dungeon drops, daily and weekly missions, event rewards, the clan shop and quest milestones. They are also sold, directly for Gems or bundled into paid packs. There is no separate “free” and “paid” summon pool: a bought Ancient Shard behaves exactly like an earned one.

Rates: what we will and will not tell you #

What we can say without a number: the chance of a top-rarity champion from a standard shard is low enough that you should plan your account around the champions you already have. Players who plan around a champion they intend to summon are the players who end up spending unplanned money.

Fusions, events and the champions you cannot simply summon #

Not every champion is available from a shard at any time. Plarium runs Fusion events: multi-week collection tasks in which you assemble specific lesser champions, combine them in stages, and receive a specific champion at the end. Similar time-limited routes exist for certain event champions.

Two things follow. First, some champions have a closing window, and if you miss it you wait for a re-run that may not come. Second, and more importantly for how you read promotional copy: the claim that “every champion can be obtained through gameplay” is not supportable. Some can only be obtained during a window, and all of them, at some point, involve a random draw.

Mercy and progressive chance #

Plarium operates mechanics that improve your odds after repeated unsuccessful summons, and it documents progressive-chance behaviour for the events where it applies. The precise thresholds for ordinary shards are not, to our knowledge, published by the publisher; the numbers that circulate in the community are player-tracked estimates. We are not going to repeat them as fact.

The safe reading is: a long dry run is not literally endless, but you should not treat a community-tracked threshold as a promise, and you should certainly not buy shards to “reach” one.

Duplicates, fodder and what to do with a bad pull #

Most pulls will be champions you do not want. That is not a malfunction, it is the economy: low-rarity champions are the fuel for levelling and ranking up the champions you do want. Duplicates of good champions have their own uses — arena defence, faction-specific content, or as rank-up material.

Before you sacrifice anything, check whether it belongs to a faction you are short of. Faction Wars requires a bench of champions from each faction, and new players routinely feed away champions they need there six months later.

Five rules that will save you money #

1. Read the published chances on the summon screen before you spend anything, every time — events change them.
2. Never spend to chase a specific champion. The draw does not know what you want.
3. Set a monthly limit before you open the shop, and treat it as fixed.
4. Invest in what you pulled, not in what you hoped to pull. Gear matters more than rarity.
5. Keep faction coverage in mind before feeding champions away.

Read next

• Prices and purchasesWhat the shop sells, and for how much.
• Game systemsWhy gear beats rarity.
• Beginner guideWhat to do with your first shards.