Where Do I Get Hero Shards?

Before actually answering this question, you might be interested to know what Hero Shards are even used for. In the game, as soon as you get past the 4th upgrade on a hero, the concluding upgrades will require specific hero shards among its requirements. In a way, they you can view them as necessary ingredients to improve your heroes.

The lower the quality a hero has, the more abundant the shards usually has. Although, this should never be your reason to stick with blue heroes. At the very least, if you cant get your hands on orange heroes, at least make use of purple heroes in the game to get you progressing through the levels more easily. This is also the reason why people sort of stick with orange heroes rather than red heroes -- for it is more likely that you get the shards of their upgrades than that of red heroes.

To get shards, you might want to check the Biography section of the game. Chances to win them though isn't that hard, although your trials for a day are pretty much limited. To get more chances, you can purchase them with ingots.

When you also get the abundance of unusable heroes, you can also sell them in the Hero Shop for Soul Jades. Soul Jades in return are a special currency you can use in the game to purchase specific hero shards. If however you've decided to let go of a hero which you have been using and upgrading for a while, you might want to use "Hero Regeneration" instead - to gain back used up materials on that particular hero.

Additionally, certain hero shards can be obtained through the "Treasure Hunt", Travel, and "Selection" sections of the game. When you're off the game too, you are usually rewarded with items depending on the length of time you were off the game. The upper limit is about 10 hours in order to max out the items you receive being offline (Offline Battle Gains). Most of the the items are hero shards -- ranging from blue ones to orange ones.