Harmony Shards are an essential part of the leveling process in Lost Ark. You will need tens of thousands of Shards to get your gear to tier 2, let alone to the 600 iLevel threshold for Yorn and the continuation of the storyline.

This is also where you'll face your first serious gate toward progression. Shards are not easy to get. There are various ways to acquire them, but you need to maximize all of them if you want to progress quickly. Here's a guide on where to get Harmony Shards and how you can farm them. Here's a step-by-step checklist for you.

Updated December 19, 2023, by Sean Murray: If you're looking for Harmony Shards in Lost Ark, this guide has you covered. We've given this guide a fresh look to make it easier to find those Harmony Shards, and also a few more tips while you're on your quest. We've also given it a few more links to other helpful Lost Ark topics.

Island Quests

Island Quests are one of the easiest, most reliable ways to get a load of Harmony Shards. There is an ideal route for progression that we cover in our Tier 1 Endgame guide here. After a while, you will have completed all the Tier 1 islands and then move onto the Tier 2 crafting mats - Lifestones.

Yes, you guessed it, these are hard to get as well. We will cover that separately, though.

Grind Chaos Dungeons

Although Chaos Dungeons only give you the fat daily rewards twice a day, you can continue running Chaos Dungeons several more times to get Perception Shards and Disorder Crystals. Both of these can be used to exchange for useful items at the Chaos Dungeons Exchange NPC.

Perception Shards can be exchanged for Harmony Shards on a weekly basis, and you can use Disorder Crystals to exchange for Legendary accessories if you've got a high enough gear score. This exchange is limited to weekly.

Bloodstone Exchange

This is why joining a guild is so important, and it's important that you donate 6,000 Silver daily as well. You should also complete weekly Guild tasks for extra Bloodstones. Bloodstones can be exchanged at the Bloodstone Exchange NPC in North Vern and other major cities.

You can get Leapstones and Harmony Shards from this NPC, as long as your Guild has researched Tier 2 of the shop. These are limited weekly, so check back when the server resets on Thursdays.

Pirate Coin Exchange

Jump in your ship and then to the dock area of any large port town. You will find traveling merchant vessels - in particular, you're looking for the Tea and Libra Guild Vessel - where you can exchange Pirate Coins for crafting mats. These are also limited weekly.

Run The Tower - BUT NOT ON YOUR MAIN

The Tower is a fantastic source of Harmony Shards - we cover this in-depth in our Tower guide, definitely go check this out for more information on the specific rewards - but only if you run it on your alt first. This is because the first run-through awards things like Engraving chests and potions, whereas a secondary run rewards you Harmony Shard Pouches.

This is important because Harmony Shards are bound to the character you pick them up on.

Chaos Gate World Events

Check your alarms in the top left. Head over to any Chaos Legion/Gate events you see and head over to the closest one/the closest event to your gear score. These reward Harmony Shards for completing as well as Treasure Maps (you might have to pay some gold for this in the loot auction) which open dungeons that need to be completed with other players who also have the map. You can complete these every day.

Complete Rohendel Dungeons Again

Were you used to speed-running the entire game and all of its dungeons on normal mode? Go back and check out the Phantom Palace dungeon in Rohendel, for example, as a Hard clear of this dungeon rewards you a bunch of Harmony Shards. Don't worry. This is still extremely easy to complete, especially if you're iLevel is way beyond 460 by this point, it just takes a bit of time to run through again. These rewards are only available once.