Summoning in Raid: Shadow Legends: shards, odds and the mercy rule

By Barbara Cox, editor · Published 24 September 2026 · Last reviewed 24 September 2026

Shard odds are simple to state and easy to misread. This page explains what the published percentages mean, what the mercy rule changes, and what they don’t promise.

Shard types

The game has several kinds of shard. Their names and odds are shown on the in-game summon screen, and that is always the authoritative source:

Mystery shards: common and easy to earn; mostly low-rarity champions.
Ancient shards: the standard shard for Rare-and-better champions.
Void shards: like Ancient shards, but only give champions of the Void affinity.
Sacred shards: rarer; give only Epic or Legendary champions.
Further special shards (for example for Mythical champions) have been added over time with their own rules.

Bar chart: Ancient and Void shards 91.5% Rare, 8% Epic, 0.5% Legendary; Sacred shards 94% Epic, 6% Legendary — Base odds per shard at the time of writing. Summon events raise some of these temporarily. *Original diagram by teneris.online.*

What 0.5% means in practice

Each shard is an independent draw. “On average one in 200” does not mean the 200th shard is due: results come in clusters and droughts. Using the base rate alone (before mercy), the chance of getting at least one Legendary is:

Ancient shards opened	Chance of at least one Legendary (0.5% base, no mercy)
10	about 4.9%
50	about 22%
100	about 39%
200	about 63%

These are calculated as 1 − 0.995ⁿ. They show why many players open dozens of shards without a Legendary.

The mercy rule

To limit very long droughts, the game raises the odds after a streak without the target rarity. Plarium has a help-centre article on this “mercy system”. The thresholds most widely documented by the player community at the time of writing are:

Shard	Target	Mercy starts after	Increase per further shard
Ancient	Legendary	200 shards without one	+5 percentage points
Ancient	Epic	20 shards without one	+2 percentage points
Void	Legendary	200 shards without one	+5 percentage points
Void	Epic	20 shards without one	+2 percentage points
Sacred	Legendary	12 shards without one	+2 percentage points

Line chart: the Legendary chance per Ancient shard is flat at 0.5% for 200 shards, then rises 5 points per shard to 100% by shard 220 — Mercy for Legendaries from Ancient shards. On these documented numbers, a Legendary is certain by the 220th shard since the last one. *Original diagram by teneris.online.*

Two points are easy to miss. First, each shard type keeps its own counter, so a Legendary from a Sacred shard does not reset your Ancient counter. Second, mercy only caps the worst case. It does not change the 0.5% base rate of the first 200 shards. On the base rate alone, about 37% of players would go 200 Ancient shards without a Legendary (0.995²⁰⁰ ≈ 0.37), so the rule matters more often than many people assume.

Thresholds are described here from community documentation and may be changed by Plarium. Check the in-game information and Plarium’s help centre for the current rules: raid-support.plarium.com.

Summon events

The game regularly runs events that temporarily raise the odds for certain shards or champions, often described as “2×” or “10×” events. A doubled 0.5% is 1%. That is better, but still a long way from certain. Patient players often save shards for these events. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as the countdown timers don’t make you buy more than you planned.

About this page

Diagrams on this page are original SVG graphics created by teneris.online, not game assets. teneris.online is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Plarium Global Ltd. Where this page differs from Plarium’s official information, Plarium’s information prevails. Found a mistake? See our corrections procedure.