What are Souls Shards in Diablo 3?

Every new season of Diablo 3 introduces new, limited-time features to the game that help change up how people play. For Season 24, it was ethereal items. For Season 25, it’s Soul Shards. So, as you start grinding through this new phase of Diablo 3, what are these new Soul Shards?

All about Soul Shards

Soul Shards are basically a new socketable item for the game. Socketable items are things like gems, runes, and jewels that have been used throughout the franchise to buff character stats, but for a price. For example, the Remnant of Pain shard reduces your crit chance by 15%, but any attacks against incapacitated enemies become automatic critical hits. This can be absolutely game-changing for Monk characters built on stunning enemies or Wizards who love freezing foes. Like all Diablo 3 items, though, some of the stats do randomize, so pay close attention to what each of your Shards says in their descriptions.

For season 25, there are seven different Soul Shards that enemies can drop. These are:

• Essence of Anguish: Act I, boosts poison damage
• Dregs of Lies: Act II, boosts pet damage
• Stain of Sin: Act III, supports long fights and extra damage to elites
• Fragment of Destruction: Act III, lets you move through enemies and damage them
• Remnant of Pain: Act IV, boosts crowd control moves and crit chance
• Sliver of Terror: Act IV, decreases cooldowns and increases damage and resistance
• Shard of Hatred: Act V, deals more damage in close-up fights

How to farm them

Soul Shards drop from the bosses of their corresponding Act, so the Essense of Anguish will drop from anyone in Act 1: Butcher, Skeleton King, or Warden included. Now, like any item in Diablo 3, you won’t get the item every time you beat them, so sometimes you have to go around and farm bosses until they drop the item you want. But for a Diablo 3 player, that kind of grinding should be easy. Since you can’t get your season rewards without fighting a decent amount of the main bosses for achievements and bounties, you’ll end up with dozens of Soul Shards in no time. Compared to the Staff of Herding grinding, this is nothing.

Are they reusable?

Functionally, Soul Shards are just like any gem. Because of that, you should be able to go up to the Jeweler, Covetous Shen, and ask him to remove the Soul Shard from your item. This will inevitably come at the cost of your item, but as long as you aren’t sentimentally attached to your helm, removal should only cost a few thousand gold. This way you can use Soul Shards when you get them, but can always take them out and upgrade them when you can. As long as you didn’t waste a rank 0 Soul Shard on the rarest item in the game, you should be okay.