What are Warframe Archon Shards, and how to use them?

The effectiveness of Warframes can be boosted in various ways with mods. The most basic form of these buffs is multiplicative increments to their durability from Shield, Armor, and Health. In the game's current epoch, however, builds are more geared towards enabling the four abilities the frames are equipped with. This means that mod slots are often a judgment call between making your abilities more potent or including quality-of-life buffs like casting speed.

Warframe Archon Shards were introduced in Update 32 as a new system to pad out these gaps and enable greater build flexibility. Each frame can be equipped with five different archon shards that grant various buffs, ranging from ability strength to parkour velocity. Some of these buffs even extend to weaponry.

---

Where to find Archon Shards in Warframe

Archon Hunts can be accessed from the Navigation menu (Image via Digital Extremes)

Warframe Archon Shards are a guaranteed drop from Archon Hunts. On top of this, the latter provides one other drop from its loot pool.

• Ayatan Anasa Sculpture
• Endo x8,000
• Kuva x12,000
• Forma x3
• Riven Mod (Melee, Pistol, Rifle, Kitgun, Zaw, Shotgun)
• Boosters (Affinity, Resource Drop Chance, Mod Drop Chance)
• Orokin Catalyst (Blueprint)
• Orokin Reactor (Blueprint)
• Legendary Core

This loot table has much in common with Sorties, including the Riven drops. Also, like Sorties, Archon Hunts are a weekly set of trials comprising three missions. The challenge here comes from the elevated enemy levels and the restrictions cast on the player.

Players cannot summon any Specters, Necramechs, or On-call Crew to aid them, and consumables like Squad Energy Restores are put on a three-minute cooldown after each usage. Additionally, they cannot respawn.

This functions differently from the Arbitration permadeath rule, as the player enters the bleed-out stage wherein they can be revived by teammates.

There are three Archons in the game: Amar, Nira, and Boreal. The weekly trial cycles to a new Archon each week, determining not only what tileset the showdown will occur in but also which Warframe Archon Shard you will get.

Archon	Rewarded Archon Shard
Amar	Crimson Archon Shard
Nira	Amber Archon Shard
Boreal	Azure Archon Shard

Each of these Warframe Archon Shards can have a Tauforged variety. Simply put, the Tauforged shards are stronger versions of their regular variant. Every Archon Hunt has a 20% chance to give you a Tauforged Shard and an 80% chance for a regular Shard by default. This chance skews towards the Tauforged variant by 20% every week that you get a regular variant.

---

How to use Warframe Archon Shards

There are five slots for Warframe Archon Shards for each frame (Image via Digital Extremes)

Each Warframe Archon Shard provides one of five potential buffs, selectable when the player chips it in. In the following lists, values within parentheses represent stat boosts granted by Tauforged Shards.

Crimson Archon Shard (Red)

• Melee Critical Damage +25% (+37.5%)
• Primary Status Chance +25% (+37.5%)
• Secondary Critical Chance +25% (+37.5%)
• Ability Strength +10% (+15%)
• Ability Duration +10% (+15%)

Note that the first three buffs are not additive but multiplicative with base stats. The secondary buff affects Mesa's Exalted secondary, Regulators, and its primed variants. This means Regulators can potentially get +187.5% Critical Chance, comparable to Primed Pistol Gambit, with five Tauforged Crimson Shards.

Likewise, the Melee Critical Damage also buffs Exalted melee weapons like Wukong's Iron Staff and pseudo-exalted weapons like Khora's Whipclaw, additive to buffs from their respective stat sticks.

Amber Archon Shard

• +30% (+45%) Maximum Energy is filled on Spawn
• +100% (+150%) Effectiveness on Health Orbs, i.e., Health Orbs grant increased additional health by the value indicated
• +50% (+75%) Effectiveness on Energy Orbs
• Casting Speed +25% (+37.5%)
• Parkour Velocity +15% (+22%)

The first two buffs are additive with the Preparation and Equilibrium mods, respectively.

Azure Archon Shard

• Health +150 (+225)
• Shield Capacity +150 (+225)
• Maximum Energy +50 (+75)
• Armor +150 (+225)
• Health Regeneration +5/second (+7.5/second)

The stat bonuses granted by these Warframe Archon Shards do not increase base values. For example, a Vitality Booster will not take the additional 150 Health into account. Instead, the latter is added to the calculation on top of the modded Health value.

Therefore, the Azure Shards are only good as replacements for mods of its category. They can also often outclass the armor value granted by Metal Fiber or even Steel Fiber for low-armor frames.

There are no restrictions on which Warframe Archon Shard you can slot in on which frame. All frames that you own or craft have the five shard slots unlocked by default. The only restriction is that you need the Helminth system to actually slot in the Shards that you possess.