What Are Legendary Shards in Destiny 2

In their previous game Bungie had Exotic Shards, Glimmer, Legendary Marks, and Strange Coins. Now, you’ve probably noticed that many of these currencies aren’t around anymore. In fact, the only one that remains is Glimmer. Now we have Legendary Shards as well. Many people have heard of Legendary Shards, but what exactly are they?

Legendary Shards are a purple crystal that is described as “remnants of powerful items” in the description that Destiny provides. Obviously, this probably means that they can only be one thing: leftover materials from powerful gear. You can obtain them by dismantling Legendary and Exotic gear, and various other methods. If you want to start farming them now, here’s how to get Legendary Shards.

Now that you know how to get Legendary Shards, what is the point of having them? They’re a currency, obviously, but they’re also a consumable. We have two ways that we can use these shards: Xur, and infusion.

Many of us have been anticipating the return of Xur since we found out he’d be back in this article we recently published. As mentioned in this post, Xur is no longer accepting Strange Coins, and instead is accepting these Legendary Shards for his shiny wares. His prices are pretty low, between 20 and 30 shards for items.

Besides turning these in to Xur for his powerful gear, we can also use Legendary Shards to infuse our own gear and make them stronger. Much like back in the original Destiny, we can continue to infuse our more powerful gear into our favorite, less powerful gear. This makes it easier to keep gear that fits our setup, instead of having to work around it and hope that new chest works just as well as the old one. Of course, back in the original Destiny this cost materials, and sometimes Exotic Shards when we needed to power up that Exotic gear. Now, it costs Legendary Shards.

Now that you know what Legendary Shards are, and how to get them, it’s time to figure out for yourself how to use them.