New World: This is how you get Shadow Shards and what you can do with them

The latest patch 1.3 introduced dungeon mutators and shadow shards to New World. We, from MeinMMO, explain how you get the shadow fragments and how you use them to upgrade your equipment.

What are Shadow Shards for? With the shadow shards from Patch 1.3 you can upgrade your equipment with an armor value of 590+ up to 625, the current maximum value. Whenever you also increase the armor value of your equipment with a shadow shard, you also increase your competence with it.

Shadow Shards were originally intended only for Legendary gear with armor 600. However, the developers decided to include level 590+ gear as well. However, even after upgrading to 600 or higher, this remains an epic item and will not upgrade to legendary unless they are special named items. These will be upgraded.

Where do you get shadow shards from? Shadow Shards come in 3 different ways:

However, the dungeons are by far the best way. For a level 1 mutator and the bronze reward tier, you get 27 shadow shards. At level 10 with the Gold reward tier, you get up to 6,000 shards. However, you need a certain set of equipment above 600 armor and with special perks to complete the maximum level with the best value.

For comparison: You get between 1 and 85 through crafting, and between 3 and 200 shadow shards through the Gypsum system. These values ​​depend on how high your proficiency level is with the respective item (most shards are at 625).

For the last level you need 2,500 shadow shards per equipment type

How many Shadow Shards are needed? For each increase in armor value, you need more shadow shards. To upgrade a slot from 600 to 625, you need a total of 9,164 Shadow Shards.

Our table tells you exactly how many are needed for each stage:

set-up value	Number of Shadow Shards
590-591	2
591-592	4
592-593	6
593-594	10
594-595	20
595-596	35
596-597	50
597-598	65
598-599	90
599-600	125
600-601	1
601-602	2
602-603	3
603-604	4
604-605	5
605-606	6
606-607	8
607-608	10
608-609	15
609-610	20
610-611	25
611-612	35
612-613	50
613-614	65
614-615	90
615-616	125
616-617	175
617-618	250
618-619	325
619-620	450
620-621	700
621-622	1000
622-623	1400
623-624	1900
624-625	2500

In total there are 12 different weapons, 5 armor slots and 3 pieces of jewelry. If you want to bring the entire equipment to the armor value 625, you need 183,280 shadow shards.

How exactly do I upgrade gear? First you need a competency of 600 for the respective piece of equipment. Then you need the right number of shadow shards.

To perform the upgrade, you must then right-click on your equipment and click on “Upgrade”.

When upgraded, the item’s armor value and your proficiency for that slot have increased.

Note, however, that any gear you upgrade with Shadow Shards will automatically bind to the character.

What do you think of the new Shadow Shard system? Does this type of upgrade appeal to you? Or is it still too early? Feel free to write it in the comments.

You can find all of our New World guides in our collection here:

New World Guides: All tips, tricks and builds at a glance