A Blood Shard
Blood Shards are an alternate currency in the Adventure Mode of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls. They drop from Horadric Caches, Rift Guardians, and the Blood Thief variety of Treasure Goblin. They can only be used to buy items from Kadala, through gambling. They can be picked up by simply walking over them, just like gold.
Rift Guardians on Normal through Torment I will drop the same amount of Blood Shards, but the amount will increase with every difficulty above Torment I. In Greater Rifts, the amount also increases with rank, and is generally higher than in normal Rifts on comparable difficulty. Greater Rifts are therefore a more reliable method of farming Blood Shards (at cost of foregoing normal item drops).
Blood shards are shared by all characters of the same type (Seasonal and Hardcore status) on an account. A player has a base maximum capacity of 500 Blood Shards at any one time. Any excess cannot be picked up, although if a stack is on the ground, a character will automatically take shards out of that stack up to their maximum, leaving the stack smaller. The capacity is increased based on the highest Greater Rift level completed (as of patch 2.2.0). Each rank of Greater Rifts beaten successfully increases this limit by 10, stacking infinitely, for all characters of the same type on the account. This leads to the following capacities:
| Greater Rift Level | 0 | 20 | 40 | 60 | 80 | 100 | 120 | 140 | 160 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blood Shard Capacity | 500 | 700 | 900 | 1100 | 1300 | 1500 | 1700 | 1900 | 2100 |
Lore[]
Some believe they are shards of the Worldstone, still others think them fragments of trapped demon souls, while a few are sure they are the crystalized blood of the ancients themselves.
It is implied that Blood Thieves steal Blood Shards from Kadala.