Archon Shards: colors, effects, Tauforged
Archon Shards are shards that slot into a Warframe (up to 5 slots) to grant permanent bonuses. There are 6 colors, each with its own effects, and each color has a normal version and a Tauforged version with stronger bonuses.
The 6 colors and their effects
🔴 Crimson
Boosts offensive stats: melee critical damage, primary status chance, secondary critical chance, ability strength and duration. The "all-round offense" shard.
🟡 Amber
Utility bonuses: max energy restored on spawn, better health and energy orb efficiency, ability cast speed and parkour movement speed.
🔵 Azure
Boosts survivability: flat bonus to max health, shield capacity, max energy and armor, plus a small health regen per second. The go-to "tank" shard.
🟠 Topaz
Bonuses around Blast, Heat and Radiation damage: max health per Blast kill, shield regen, growing secondary crit chance on Heat kills, bonus ability damage on Radiation status.
🟣 Violet
Bonus ability damage on Electricity status, Electricity damage on primary weapon, melee critical damage (doubled above 500 max energy), and cross health ↔ energy orb conversion.
🟢 Emerald
Bonuses around Toxin and Corrosive damage: increased Toxin status damage, healing on every Toxin damage tick, bonus ability damage on Corrosive status, and extra Corrosive stacks.
Tauforged version
Every color has a Tauforged variant, visually brighter, with bonuses roughly 50% higher than the normal version. It's rarer to obtain directly, but can also be created through fusion: combining two identical shards (or a dedicated fusion mechanic) lets you attempt to turn normal copies into a Tauforged one.
Fusion: getting Topaz, Violet and Emerald
Only Crimson, Amber and Azure are obtained directly in-game. The other three colors — Topaz, Violet and Emerald — are mainly obtained through Coalescent Fusion: combine two shards among Crimson/Amber/Azure to produce a shard of the matching color.
Where to get them
- Archon Hunts — weekly, one per Archon: Crimson (Archon Amar), Amber (Archon Nira), Azure (Archon Boreal). About 80% chance for the normal version, ~20% Tauforged per run.
- Cavia vendor — one normal shard (rotating color each week) for 30,000 standing, from rank 5 (Illuminate).
- Netracells and Deep Archimedea — Crimson/Amber/Azure as common loot, Tauforged versions as rarer loot.
- Temporal Archimedea — every color, including coalescent and Tauforged, can drop here.
- 1999 calendar and Steel Path (Descendia) — normal shards possible as rewards for certain challenges.
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