Raid Shadow Legends: The Complete Beginner's Guide
What Raid Shadow Legends Actually Is
Raid: Shadow Legends is a turn-based collection RPG built by Plarium, set in the dark fantasy world of Teleria. You're not controlling one hero — you're assembling a roster of champions (currently more than 800 of them, spread across 16 factions) and sending five at a time into battle. Every fight is decided turn by turn, with each champion acting according to their Speed stat rather than your reflexes, so the game rewards planning and team-building far more than quick fingers.
If you've played a gacha collector game before, the shape will feel familiar: you pull champions from summons using Shards, level them up, gear them out, and throw them at increasingly nasty content. What sets Raid apart is how deep that content goes. There's a story campaign, a rotating cast of raid bosses, a PvP arena, and a genuinely massive endgame that can occupy players for years. None of that needs to intimidate you on day one — it's simply where the road eventually leads. The game has been running since 2018 and is still updated aggressively; 2026 alone has already brought an Assassin's Creed crossover and a seventh-anniversary event that added a new faction, so the version you download today looks noticeably bigger than it did even a year ago.
This guide walks you through that road in order, explaining every term the moment it first comes up, so you can read it start to finish before you've even opened the app.
Platforms and the Free-to-Play Question
Raid runs on Android, iOS, and PC through the Plarium Play launcher (it's also on Steam). Your progress syncs across all of them through a single Plarium ID, so it's entirely normal to farm the Campaign on your phone during a commute and switch to the PC client in the evening. There's no wrong platform to start on — the interface is identical everywhere, and PC mainly wins on convenience for players who eventually spend hours a day juggling clan activities and tournaments.
Raid is free-to-play, and the early-to-mid game is entirely clearable without spending a cent. Paying primarily buys speed: Gems (the premium currency) let you expand building slots faster, refresh the Market, or buy Energy for extra battles. Plenty of committed free-to-play players reach the game's toughest content — it just takes patient farming measured in months rather than the days it might take a heavy spender. If you do decide to put money in later, the community's general advice is to favor a small, repeatable purchase like the Ruby Mine (a building that passively generates Gems over time) over one-off champion packs, since it keeps paying you back rather than giving a single burst of value.
Your Lord's Base: The Buildings You'll Use Every Day
After the tutorial you'll land on your home screen — your base, laid out as a set of buildings, each tied to a specific system. Don't feel pressured to understand all of them immediately; several stay locked until your account reaches a certain level, so you'll grow into them naturally.
The Summon Portal sits front and center — it's where you spend Silver or Shards to pull new champions. Next to it is the Market, which sells champions and artifacts for Silver or Gems on a rotating daily stock; how many item slots you can see at once depends on how much you've invested in expanding it, and experienced players warn against leaving slots closed, since 5- and 6-star Legendary artifacts do show up there at reasonable prices from time to time.
The Great Hall is where Arena Medals go to work — you spend them to permanently boost the base stats of every champion of a given affinity, or across the board if you invest in the shared nodes. This is a foundation-level buff, not a percentage bonus from gear, and it's worth feeding a little every day from the start, since the gap between a maxed-out and a neglected Great Hall becomes enormous by the late game. The Forge is where you upgrade artifacts — raising their level and rank, and reforging them if you want to reroll their random secondary stats (more on this in the gear section). The Training Camp levels up champions using XP elixirs; a detail new players often miss is that a champion gains the most experience from an elixir that matches their own affinity, and the elixirs are color-coded so it's hard to mix them up once you know to look. The Mine passively generates Gems over time and is worth unlocking early, since it takes real pressure off ever needing to pay for premium currency.
Finally, there's the Vault — essentially storage for champions you're not actively using but don't want to feed away. A useful habit from day one: keep a handful of leveled Common and Uncommon champions parked there. Events that ask you to level up "any champion" will eat through your dedicated cheap fodder eventually, and having a small reserve saves you from scrambling.
The Four Affinities of Teleria
Every champion and every enemy belongs to one of four Affinities — Force (red), Magic (purple), Spirit (green), and Void (yellow). Three of them form a closed loop: Force beats Magic, Magic beats Spirit, and Spirit beats Force, the same rock-paper-scissors shape you'd recognize from a pocket-monster game, just with three sides instead of two. Void sits outside that triangle entirely — it's neutral against everything, dealing and receiving standard damage with no bonus and no penalty either way.
When your champion attacks an enemy of the affinity it's strong against, you get a real, mechanical edge: a noticeably higher chance to land a critical hit and to successfully apply debuffs like poison or a defense shred. Attack into the affinity that beats you, and the opposite happens — your hits tend to land as glancing blows, with crits and debuffs failing far more often. Against Void, or against a champion sharing your own affinity, everything runs on standard odds with no thumb on the scale.
In practice this means team-building isn't just "who's strongest" — it's "who's strongest against what I'm about to fight." Dungeons and Arena opponents show you their affinity ahead of time, so it pays to keep at least one built team of each color in reserve rather than pouring every resource into a single-affinity squad. A team built entirely around one affinity is tempting early on, since it lets you farm one type of XP elixir efficiently, but it becomes a liability the moment an opponent fields the color that counters you.
One thing worth flagging specifically: newer players tend to overlook Void champions simply because they're rarer pulls. That's a mistake. Void's neutrality is a feature, not a weakness — a Void champion performs consistently against any opposing lineup, which is exactly why they're so heavily represented among the game's best Clan Boss and Arena champions. Don't feed away a Void champion early just because nothing about their color jumps out at you.
Rarity, Alliances, and Factions
Champions come in five standard rarities — Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, and Legendary — plus a rarer Mythical tier that's usually tied to special events and crossovers (Raid's Assassin's Creed collaboration added Mythical champions this way). Rarity sets a champion's stat ceiling and how many skills they eventually unlock, so a Legendary will typically outclass a Rare all else being equal. But "all else being equal" is doing a lot of work in that sentence — a fully geared Epic with well-rolled artifacts regularly outperforms a Legendary sitting in your roster with empty slots, because gear contributes more raw power than rarity alone. Don't hoard an unbuilt Legendary while ignoring a usable Epic; equip what you have.
Separately from rarity, every champion belongs to a faction — essentially a cultural or national group within Teleria's lore. There are 16 factions total, organized into four alliances. The Telerians cover the Banner Lords, High Elves, Sacred Order, and Barbarians — mostly noble, light-aligned peoples. Gaellan's Pact groups the Ogryn Tribes, Lizardmen, Skinwalkers, and Orcs — the wilder, beast-kin factions. The Fallen brings together Demons, Undead Hordes, Dark Elves, and Demonspawn, the grimmest of the four alliances. And the Nyresian Union unites the Dwarves and Sylvan Watchers with the game's newest faction, the Argonites, added during the seventh-anniversary celebration in 2026.
Faction membership isn't just flavor text — it directly gates access to Faction Wars, a mode that demands single-faction teams (covered in its own section below), and certain Great Hall nodes and time-limited events also key off specific factions or alliances. It's worth glancing at a new champion's faction, not just their rarity, since it'll matter more the further you get.
Champion Roles
Beyond affinity and faction, champions also fall into functional roles that shape how you'll actually use them in a team. Attack-role champions carry your damage output and lean on a high Attack stat. Defense-role champions soak hits through high HP and Defense, and often provoke enemies onto themselves or shield allies. Support champions apply useful buffs, strip debuffs from your side, or speed your team up. HP-role champions — commonly just called healers — are a permanently scarce category capable of restoring your team's health; the community consistently points to names like Coldheart, Bad-el-Kazar, and Vrask as standout early healers worth keeping if you pull them. Coldheart in particular has an unusual reputation for a Rare-rarity champion: her kit — a burst attack that both drains the target's turn meter and deals heavy damage based on the enemy's max HP, plus a combo that can apply a hefty Heal Reduction debuff — punches well above what her rarity would suggest, making her genuinely useful against Spider's Den, Dark Fae, Iron Twins, and Fire Knight's Castle. If she drops for you early, don't feed her away just because she's "only" Rare.
A well-rounded team almost always mixes roles rather than stacking five attackers. Without a healer or a defense-oriented tank somewhere in the lineup, you'll consistently lose long fights even while out-damaging the enemy turn for turn — worth remembering once you get to the team-building sections further down.
Choosing Your Starter Champion
Early in the tutorial you'll pick one of four starters: Kael, Athel, Galek, or Elhain. The choice matters less than it feels like in the moment — you'll unlock the other three eventually anyway, and none of them stays your best champion forever — but it does shape how smooth your first couple of weeks feel.
Kael remains the community's default safe pick. He's a Fire-affinity Warrior with an attack that hits the whole enemy team at once, which is exactly the kind of skill that makes early Campaign farming fast, and he holds up reasonably well against the Clan Boss on its lower difficulties too. Athel and Elhain are both solid alternatives for the same reason — they also carry team-wide attacks, which matters more for a smooth start than raw single-target power. Galek breaks that pattern: he's a fast single-target fighter who rarely gets outsped, which makes him resilient rather than efficient, so most guides steer first-timers toward Kael or one of the AoE options instead.
If you're on the fence, take Kael — it's genuinely hard to go wrong with him, and story events will eventually hand you the other three regardless, so this pick doesn't lock any door permanently.
Who to Keep and Who to Feed
You'll pull dozens of Common and Uncommon champions in your first days, and most of them are destined to become fodder for ranking up better champions — that's fine and expected. But don't feed away everything; keep a small reserve of leveled Commons and Uncommons in the Vault for events that ask you to invest in "any" champion, since the cheap fragment-based fodder the game hands out for that purpose eventually runs dry.
Rare-rarity pulls deserve more thought. The community regularly calls out champions like Coldheart (covered above), and a handful of other Rares worth holding onto if you're lucky enough to pull them: strong early options tend to include speed-focused supports and champions who can shred a tanky boss's healing or armor. If a Rare drops that a tier list or a guide specifically calls out as good, resist the urge to feed it — Rares punch far above their rarity in this game more than in most gacha titles.
The one rule the whole community agrees on without exception: never feed a Legendary or Epic champion into another champion's rank-up, no matter how useless they seem right now. Cheap dedicated fodder — Common and Uncommon champions, plus a purchasable Silver item usually called Chicken by the community — exists specifically so you never have to make that trade. A Legendary that feels dead weight today can become exactly the piece you're missing for a Faction Wars crypt or a Doom Tower boss a few months down the line, and there's no way to undo a feed once it's done.
Level and Rank: Two Different Power Scales
Every champion has two independent progress tracks, and new players frequently mix them up. Level climbs from 1 to 60 through battles and XP elixirs fed directly to the champion. Rank — commonly called Stars — sets the ceiling on that level and defines the champion's overall stat scale. A freshly summoned champion starts at a rank tied to its rarity: Common at 1 star, Uncommon at 2, Rare at 3, Epic at 4, and Legendary straight in at 5. The maximum in the game is 6 stars and level 60.
Here's the trap new players fall into: if you only ever feed XP elixirs, you'll eventually hit your current rank's level cap — for a 4-star champion, that's level 40 — and further leveling simply stops until you rank up. Ranking up happens in the Training Camp: bring the champion to their current rank's max level, then sacrifice other champions of the same rank, or a cheap Silver-bought item the community calls Chicken, as fodder. The number of sacrifices scales with the current rank — going from 3 to 4 stars costs three fodder champions, going from 5 to 6 costs five.
After a rank-up, the champion's level resets to 1, but their stats jump meaningfully, so you're building from a taller foundation even though the level counter looks like it went backward. The community usually calls this process "painting" a star, and it's tied directly to when accessory slots unlock: the first accessory slot (Ring) opens at 4 painted stars, the second (Amulet) at 5, and the third (Banner) at 6. That's part of why a 6-star champion feels so much stronger than the same champion at 5 stars — it's not just better base stats, it's an entire extra piece of gear.
Skill Books
Separately from level and rank, every champion has two to four combat skills that level up on their own track, powered by Skill Tomes rather than XP elixirs. Upgraded skills hit harder, hold debuffs longer, or proc more reliably depending on the skill type. Tomes are a genuinely scarce resource, which makes where you spend them matter — dumping a rare or Legendary Tome into a low-rarity champion wastes most of its value, since that champion's skill ceiling is modest anyway compared to what the same Tome would do for a Legendary.
A sensible early strategy is concentrating Tomes on the two or three champions you're actually committing to for Clan Boss or Arena, rather than spreading them thin across the whole roster. If a champion has a skill that hits the entire enemy team at once, that's usually the one worth prioritizing first — it tends to be the highest-value skill for both Campaign farming and early Clan Boss attempts.
Gear and Artifacts: Building Real Power
Once a champion is leveled, ranked, and has decent skills, gear is what actually turns them into a fight-winner. There are six base equipment slots split across two rows with different logic. The top row — Weapon, Helmet, Shield — always rolls the same fixed main stat: Weapon gives flat Attack, Helmet gives flat HP, Shield gives flat Defense, no exceptions. The bottom row — Gauntlets, Chestplate, Boots — rolls its main stat randomly on drop; Boots, for instance, might come with Speed, Attack%, or Defense% as their headline stat, and Speed boots specifically are the single most sought-after drop in the game, since Speed decides turn order in every fight.
Artifacts carry their own rarity, separate from a champion's rarity, running from Common up to Legendary, plus a rank you raise through the Forge. Higher rarity means more secondary-stat slots — a Common artifact drops with zero secondaries, a Legendary drops with four already rolled. Upgrading an artifact in the Forge raises its level from 0 to 16, and at certain levels (typically every even level from 4 onward) it either rolls a brand-new secondary stat or boosts an existing one — which one is random, so a disappointing roll is a normal, universal experience, not bad luck specific to you.
Gear Sets: Two-Piece and Four-Piece Bonuses
Many artifacts belong to named sets that grant a bonus once you've equipped enough matching pieces on one champion. Sets split into two categories: some need just two pieces for their full bonus (like the Speed set, which adds directly to turn order), while others need four (like sets that apply debuffs such as Poison or Stun with each hit). These bonuses stack — three full Speed sets (six matching pieces) on one champion triples the effect compared to a single set.
For a beginner, the two most practical sets are Speed (useful in essentially every mode in the game) and a lifesteal-style set like Lifesteal or Bloodthirst, which returns health to the wearer based on damage dealt — ideal for a solo Campaign farmer who needs to survive without a dedicated healer. Once Legendary Lifesteal or Bloodthirst pieces start appearing on the Market at 6-star rank, it's worth actively hunting for them and putting them on your hardest-hitting attacker, ideally one with a team-wide attack skill.
Accessories: The Three Slots Tied to Your Stars
Beyond the six base slots, every champion has three accessory slots — Ring, Amulet, and Banner — but they don't come free at rank 1. They unlock alongside star painting: the Ring at 4 painted stars, the Amulet at 5, the Banner at 6. Each one is a meaningful power jump on its own, which is a big part of why a 6-star champion outpaces the same hero at 5 stars by more than the raw stat difference would suggest.
Accessories work differently from the six base slots in an important way: every Ring and Amulet that drops is randomly locked to one specific faction out of the game's 16, and it can only be equipped on a champion of that exact faction. Base artifacts — a sword, a shield — are universal and fit any champion regardless of faction; accessories are not. In practice this means your Vault will slowly fill up with jewelry tagged for factions you barely use, and that's completely normal rather than a sign of bad luck — it just means prioritizing upgrades for the accessories that match your key champions' factions rather than trying to level everything at once.
Standard Rings and Amulets drop from Spider's Den, floors 1 through 7. Banners are stricter — they only start dropping once you can clear floor 8 of that same dungeon, which requires a noticeably stronger team, so if your third accessory slot has opened but no Banner has shown up yet, it usually just means you haven't reached that floor rather than bad luck. Most standard jewelry doesn't belong to a named set — it's just a standalone piece with a main stat and secondaries. The exception is jewelry from limited-time Temporal Dungeons tied to specific events; those sets carry unusual mechanics, but they're only obtainable while that event's dungeon is live, so it's worth farming them promptly if the faction lock matches one of your key champions.
Glyphs, Chaos Ore, and Ascension
Any piece of gear's secondary stats — base artifacts and accessories alike — can be pushed higher using a material called Glyphs, obtained from Faction Wars. A Glyph permanently enchants one chosen secondary stat, and it works even on a piece already maxed out in the Forge. Each Glyph has its own rank and is tied to one specific stat, and using one is a single, irreversible action — no undo. Better Glyphs drop from higher Faction Wars crypt levels, so your overall gear quality is tied directly to your Faction Wars progress.
If a piece's rolled stats simply didn't work out, Chaos Ore — a rare Epic or Legendary-rank material — lets you completely reroll both the main and secondary stats on a single artifact. It can only be used once per item, can't be undone, and there's no guarantee the new roll is better than the old one, which is why experienced players save Chaos Ore for genuinely top-tier pieces (Legendary artifacts in a set you actually need) rather than spending it casually.
Separate from Forge upgrades entirely, there's a system called Ascension, unlocked once your account hits level 38. The first time you Ascend a piece of gear — base artifact or accessory — it gains an extra random stat on top of its normal secondaries, and that bonus stat can never be removed, even by a Chaos Ore reroll. The Ascension bonus itself can be rerolled into a different random option from that gear type's pool, though each attempt costs more than the last until the price plateaus after the seventh try. The materials for Ascension are gear-type specific: Chaos Dust for base artifacts, farmed from Sand Devil's Lair, and Chaos Powder for accessories, farmed from Phantom Shogun's Grove — both dungeons give a steady supply once you reach floor 25, so if you're serious about pushing Ascension, keep those two in regular rotation.
Gear is genuinely the most time-consuming system in the game, and mastering all of it will take far longer than your first week. For now, the essentials are: look past rarity to the actual secondary-stat percentages, and know that Talents and Relics — two more progression layers on top of gear — exist for later.
Talents: A Personal Power Tree for Every Champion
Talents unlock at account level 20 and work nothing like equipment — they're a permanent tree of passive upgrades attached to each individual champion rather than an item you put on and take off. The tree splits into three branches: Attack (raising damage, crit chance, and Speed), Defense (raising HP, Defense, and Resistance), and Support (improving healing output and the buffs and debuffs you apply). Nodes connect in a chain, so you have to invest in earlier nodes before reaching later, stronger ones — no jumping straight to the flashy payoff at the end.
The resource for filling these nodes is elemental potions — of Force, Spirit, Void, and Magic — farmed from the correspondingly named Elemental Citadels (covered in the dungeons section below). If you're short on the specific potion you need and can't get into that Citadel today, lower-tier potions can be combined into a higher-tier one directly in the Training Camp, which isn't the most efficient trade but works in a pinch.
The key limitation: you can't max out all three branches on one champion. At a certain point you'll have to commit to two directions and leave the third undeveloped for that specific hero, so the choice should follow the champion's actual role — an attacker almost always wants Attack plus Defense for survivability, a healer wants Support plus Defense rather than Attack, which they'll rarely use. Certain nodes on the tree act as checkpoints, delivering a noticeably bigger jump than their neighbors, and it's worth planning your path toward those rather than spending points on whatever node happens to be next in line. Don't underestimate how much this system matters — a well-talented Epic can genuinely hold its own against Clan Boss content that would otherwise demand a Legendary, and comparisons between champions on tier-list sites often specify "with Talents" versus "without" for exactly this reason. For a beginner, the practical approach is the same as with Skill Tomes: focus talents on two or three champions you're actually building for Clan Boss or Arena rather than spreading points thin.
Relics: The Newest Layer of Power
Relics are the most recently added major progression system, introduced after gear and Talents were already established, and they've meaningfully shifted the balance in PvP content like Arena since launch. A Relic is effectively another item slot, but with its own dedicated storage, its own upgrade path, and its own sources — entirely separate from ordinary artifacts.
All your Relics live in a dedicated storage space (accessible through the Forge or directly from a champion's gear screen), capped at 200 Relics and 400 upgrade stones total regardless of type. Relics carry a rank that climbs up to 6, following the same basic pattern as regular artifacts: max out the current rank's level first, then rank up using a dedicated material (commonly called Basalt) or by sacrificing another Relic of the same rank.
Relics don't drop from the same dungeons as ordinary gear — they have their own sources. Some are crafted directly in the Forge from materials like Basalt, and one of the most notable material sources is the Chimera clan boss (covered in the clan section below): its chests are the only place to find the crafting material for its namesake Relic group. Developers keep adding new acquisition routes through dungeons, quests, and events, so it's worth checking in-game descriptions periodically rather than treating any single source list as permanent — this system is still actively evolving.
Each Relic carries its own unique bonus rather than a simple stat percentage — some grant boosts like increased healing effectiveness, effects you won't find on a standard artifact set. That specificity is exactly what makes Relics simultaneously exciting and niche: a single Relic might dramatically strengthen one champion for one very particular job (a healer built for Clan Boss, say) while doing nothing useful on anyone else.
Like Talents, Relics aren't something to chase in your first week. Resources for upgrading them are limited and take time to accumulate, so it makes sense to approach this system only once you already have a handful of confidently geared, talented key champions. Early on, it's enough to know the system exists and roughly what it does, so you're not caught off guard the first time a dungeon or event hands you a Relic as a reward — hold onto it and check which of your champions it actually suits before doing anything with it.
The Campaign: Your First Real Battleground
The Campaign is your story mode and your main early income source — Silver, champions, gear, and XP all flow from it. The map is split into 12 locations, each broken into chapters of rising difficulty, and each chapter offered on three difficulty tiers: Normal, Hard, and Brutal.
A detail that removes a lot of unnecessary pressure: clearing a chapter with a 3-star result gives exactly the same reward as clearing it with 1 star, as long as you win at all. There's no bonus for a "perfect" clear, so don't burn time and Energy replaying a stage for a better rating — push forward instead, and only return to an already-cleared chapter later if you specifically need to farm a resource it drops well.
Your early target should be reaching Chapter 12, Stage 3, on Brutal difficulty — commonly written as 12-3 Brutal. It's something of an institution in the Raid community: drop rates there are excellent relative to the Energy cost, and accounts that are months or years old still return to farm it for Ancient Shard fragments and gear. Getting there takes real investment, not a lucky run — push each chapter's Normal mode first, move to Hard once Normal stops being a threat, and only attempt Brutal once your team survives a few hits without dying outright.
Two features are worth learning early because they turn hours of clicking into a background task: multi-battle, which auto-replays an already-cleared stage without you watching each fight, and background battles, which keep running even while you're not on that screen. Champions strong for Campaign farming tend to share one trait — an attack that hits the whole enemy wave at once — and the community regularly points to strong AoE attackers plus your familiar starters (Athel, Kael, Elhain) as reliable early farmers.
Energy: The Resource That Paces Everything
Almost every activity — Campaign, Dungeons, Doom Tower — costs Energy, which regenerates slowly and caps at a fairly low ceiling early on. That's intentional; Raid is built to be checked in on a few times a day rather than binged in one sitting, which is exactly why login rewards, quests, and events hand out Energy refills so generously.
A useful habit: save Energy refills you earn from leveling up or from events for tournament days like Champion Training or Gear Hunt, when every Campaign battle also earns tournament points — spending Energy on an ordinary day that could have gone toward a tournament push is a small, avoidable waste. Build three daily habits around it: claim your login reward, clear your daily and weekly quests, and spend whatever Energy you have on the best available farming stage rather than letting it cap out unused.
Clan Boss: Your First Team Project
Once you join a Clan, you get access to the Clan Boss — a massive shared enemy your whole clan chips away at using individually purchased keys. Unlike the Campaign, Clan Boss doesn't scale to your team; your clan collectively unlocks difficulty tiers, from Easy up through Brutal and beyond, and everyone fights that same fixed difficulty. A new tier unlocks for the whole clan the moment any single member defeats the one before it, and the boss's health fully resets every day at 10:00 UTC, so the clan can attempt it repeatedly rather than just once.
The fight itself has a defined shape. The boss starts above 50% HP fighting as Void, meaning affinity advantage does nothing for either side during that opening stretch. Once its health drops below half, it randomly switches to one of the three active affinities (Force, Magic, or Spirit), and from that point your team's affinity matchup starts mattering a lot. After turn 10 and again after turn 20, the boss's damage output spikes sharply — an effect the community calls "enrage" — so by that point the fight should either be nearly finished or your team needs to be built to survive the sudden jump.
Each difficulty has its own minimum Speed and Accuracy thresholds; too slow or too imprecise a team means debuffs keep missing and the boss gets extra turns before you land your combo. For the first four difficulty tiers, a fairly standard, widely available team shape works: two champions applying Poison, a champion that strips the boss's Attack and Defense, a healer or a Continuous Damage (burn-style) champion, and someone to extend your debuff durations. Don't try to build the perfect team for your clan's highest available difficulty right away — climb gradually, starting with whatever difficulty your current roster clears comfortably enough to earn at least a mid-tier chest, and remember that if you've already moved up a tier but can't reach the best reward threshold there, it's usually better to drop back and keep farming the previous tier where your effort-to-reward ratio is higher.
Hydra and Chimera: The Other Two Clan Bosses
The Demon Lord isn't the only clan boss — new players frequently don't realize there are two more waiting on the same clan-boss map. The Hydra resets weekly rather than daily: you get three keys per weekly cycle, and the lower your clan drives its health, the better the chests every contributing member earns. Hydra's rewards are genuinely distinct from the Demon Lord's — it's the only source of fragments for the exclusive support champion Mithrala Lifebane, whose unique debuff can petrify enemies, and it's the only place two particular gear sets (commonly called Stoneskin and Protection) drop, both of which scale their bonus with every piece equipped rather than needing a fixed two- or four-piece threshold. Hydra is also the sole source of Mythical-rarity artifacts — pieces that always drop at Legendary rarity with one secondary stat already pre-rolled toward that set's ideal, which pairs particularly well with Stoneskin or Protection. Skipping Hydra shifts extra burden onto the rest of your clan, so it's worth treating as seriously as the daily Demon Lord fights once your clan gives you access.
Chimera unlocks later, for clan members at account level 33 and up, and plays differently again: each attempt, capped at 65 of the boss's turns, has your five-champion team fight through four distinct forms of the same monster in sequence. Like Hydra, Chimera has six sequentially unlocked difficulties and a weekly cycle with a cooldown day while the boss recharges. Its unique value is twofold — it's the only source of crafting material for its own dedicated Relic group, and its chests occasionally drop fragments of a Mythical champion unavailable anywhere else. If you read the Relics section above, Chimera is exactly the kind of source that section was describing.
Classic Arena: Your First Step into PvP
Arena unlocks at account level 6 and is your introduction to PvP — though "PvP" here means attacking a defense team another player set up in advance and left to fight on full autopilot, not a live match. You'll build two separate teams: a defense team that fends off incoming attacks without your input, and an offense team you personally use to attack a rotating list of opponents.
Wins earn Medals — spent exclusively on Great Hall upgrades — and ranking points that place you in a league, from Bronze up through Platinum, each split into sub-tiers. It's worth starting Classic Arena early even if you're not chasing top rank; the Great Hall bonuses those Medals buy compound over time and become genuinely necessary for demanding late-game tasks.
Arena fields four champions per side rather than five, and Speed becomes the deciding stat — act before your opponent and you can knock out one or two of their champions before they've made a single move. That's why experienced players repeat the mantra "Speed, Speed, and more Speed" specifically for Arena; sacrificing other stats for Speed boots is justified here far more often than in most other modes. A Classic Arena team is usually built around one lead champion who either auras the whole team's Speed or grants an extra turn right at the start of the fight — without a champion like that anchoring the lineup, consistent wins get hard to come by.
Group and Live Arena: For When You're Ready to Scale Up
Once you've built up enough strong teams, Group Arena unlocks, requiring three separate defense teams instead of one. Each group match is a best-of-three, which rewards more than just fast, aggressive lineups — durable, control-heavy defensive teams have real value here too, not only raw-damage offense.
Live Arena is a different format entirely, unlocked at account level 50: you fight a real opponent in real time. Before the match, both players take turns drafting champions from a wider pool, can ban one enemy champion each, and designate a leader — turning preparation into its own mini-game of prediction as much as raw roster strength. A friendly-match option also exists in Live Arena for practicing without risking rank.
Don't chase every Arena format at once. Stabilize Classic Arena first, and only branch into Group Arena once you've naturally built a second and third strong team — jumping in too early tends to produce a string of discouraging losses rather than useful progress.
Dungeons: Where Targeted Farming Happens
Beyond the Campaign, a set of repeatable Dungeons exists specifically for targeted gear and material farming, each tied to specific sets. Unlike the Campaign's straightforward progression, dungeons genuinely reward returning to the same floor repeatedly — sets drop randomly, so more attempts directly speeds up collecting a full one. Each dungeon runs 20 to 25 floors on Normal, fewer on Hard (where enemies are stronger and rewards richer), and enemy affinity shifts as you climb, so it's worth matching your team's affinity to whichever floor you're pushing.
Spider's Den is the single best Silver farming spot in the game, and you'll need Silver constantly — for leveling, Forge upgrades, and Market purchases. If Silver is ever tight, this is where to go. It's also the exclusive source of standard Ring and Amulet accessories on floors 1 through 7, with Banners only starting on floor 8. Dragon's Lair specializes in Speed set pieces — the same set whose importance to Arena and Clan Boss we've already covered. Together these two dungeons cover two fundamental needs (money and Speed), which is why they're the community's near-universal recommendation for a beginner's first few weeks.
Ice Golem's Peak drops Critical Rate, Vengeance, Offense, and HP sets — broadly useful gear for almost any attack-role champion. Fire Knight's Castle specializes in more niche but valuable sets: Immunity, Cruel, Critical Damage, and Stun. Its Hard-mode boss is considered one of the tougher mid-game checks in the whole game; if it's blocking you, the community's standard fix is a team built around a multi-hit, Speed-reducing attacker, a reviving healer, and a booster who grants an ally an extra turn.
Minotaur's Labyrinth is often skipped by newer players since its drops are more specialized than the two priority dungeons above, but it has a quiet practical bonus — it's one of the dungeons that earns points during the weekly Clan vs. Clan tournament, so it's worth saving your farming there for tournament days specifically, to double up on the reward.
Once the standard dungeons stop posing a challenge, the four Elemental Citadels — of Force, Magic, Spirit, and Void — offer a step up, aimed at players with a real roster of affinity-specific champions rather than semi-universal teams; getting the wrong affinity into a Citadel hurts noticeably more than in a standard dungeon. The Citadels are also the primary source of the elemental potions that fuel the Talents system covered earlier. Two more specialized dungeons, Sand Devil's Lair and Phantom Shogun's Grove, become relevant once you're pursuing Ascension — they respectively drop Chaos Dust and Chaos Powder, with a steady supply opening up around floor 25.
Faction Wars: The Test of a Wide Roster
Faction Wars asks something the Campaign never does — instead of rewarding one strong universal team, it demands genuine roster breadth. Each of the 16 factions has its own Crypt with 21 stages of climbing difficulty, and you can only bring champions of that exact faction into that Crypt — no exceptions, no matter how strong an outside champion happens to be. Crypts don't all sit open simultaneously either: they cycle in and out, with several open on any given day and each individual Crypt available roughly once per 7-day cycle, so it pays to check which factions are accessible today rather than assuming yesterday's Crypt is still there.
This is exactly the mode that punishes feeding away every duplicate the moment you get it. Keeping at least one copy of most champions you pull — especially in factions where your roster is thin — means you're not stuck rebuilding from zero the day you finally want to push that Crypt. Floors 7, 14, and 21 of each Crypt guard a boss called a Crypt Keeper, whose skills change as you progress, forcing new team compositions rather than a single set-and-forget strategy.
Clearing every Crypt with a 3-star rating on Normal earns Lydia the Deathsiren, a Legendary Void champion available no other way and genuinely useful across nearly the entire game — from Doom Tower to Clan Boss to Arena, thanks to her ability to block enemy revives. Beating Faction Wars in full on Normal is also what unlocks Hard mode, whose own full clear rewards a second exclusive champion. Beyond the champion rewards, Faction Wars is the sole source of Glyphs (covered in the gear section above), so progress here directly determines how far you can push your gear quality, not just your roster width.
Don't try to storm all 16 Crypts at once. Pick a handful of factions where you already have decent champions, push those steadily, and let the rest fill out naturally as your general roster grows through Campaign and dungeon farming — over time, closing new Crypts gets easier simply because the champions you need are already sitting in your Vault.
Doom Tower: The Monthly Ladder
The Doom Tower is a 120-floor climb across Normal and Hard difficulty, with a unique boss waiting on every tenth floor. Unlike everything covered so far, it doesn't run on Energy — it runs on its own two currencies, Gold and Silver Keys, and you get 10 of each every day at the 00:00 UTC reset. Gold Keys unlock a floor for the first time; Silver Keys let you re-enter Secret Rooms or replay already-beaten Boss floors to farm their rewards repeatedly.
The detail that surprises a lot of newcomers: the entire Tower resets on a 30-day cycle. Your floor progress, your rankings, and the specific arrangement of bosses across the ten-floor checkpoints all reset together, and a new rotation begins — meaning the Tower is less a one-time ladder to finish and more a recurring monthly challenge you re-approach from the ground up each cycle. That resetting structure is actually a plus once you're used to it: it keeps the mode replayable rather than a single wall you climb once and forget.
Named bosses currently include the Magma Dragon, Frost Spider, Scarab King, Celestial Griffin, Eternal Dragon, Dreadhorn, Nether Spider, and Dark Fae, each demanding a genuinely specific team. The Frost Spider, first appearing around floor 40, is a good example of how specialized this gets — beating her reliably requires a Block Revive effect and a Continuous Damage (burn) source on the team, since without both she'll simply heal or revive her way through an otherwise winning fight. The Magma Dragon, by contrast, is generally considered one of the more forgiving named bosses and a reasonable first introduction to how these fights work. If you're stuck on a specific boss, checking a global or clan leaderboard for commonly used team compositions against that exact fight is a legitimate and common shortcut.
The community consistently ranks Doom Tower as the priority right after your daily Clan Boss attempts, and for good reason: a full clear of a rotation reliably nets two Ancient Shards and a Legendary Skill Tome, plus a healthy pile of Energy and Gems on top. Champion fragments dropping on certain floors matter too, feeding into future champion-fusion events. Progress can feel slow at first, especially before your roster has the specialized fighters certain named bosses demand, but the rewards more than justify the daily key spend. A more recent patch also added a background auto-climb option for already-cleared floors, meaningfully cutting down on manual babysitting for routine progress.
Clan Life: Shop, Tournament, and Siege
If you're not in a Clan yet, fix that immediately — regardless of how modest your account currently is. Clan Boss access alone (covered above) makes membership essential, since it's one of the most reliable sources of Ancient Shards, and being surrounded by more experienced players who are usually happy to answer questions beats hours of solo searching online.
Weekly Clan Quests, distributed among members every Tuesday across multiple difficulty tiers up to Elite, earn Clan Gold — a currency spent exclusively in the Clan Shop. Its rotating stock typically includes summon Shards, Skill Tomes, rank-up fodder, champion fragments, and Energy. One important quirk: each Clan Quest can only be completed by one member of the clan, so if you see one you can finish right now, it's worth grabbing quickly rather than putting off — someone else in an active clan may beat you to it.
The Clan itself has a level too, rising through completed quests and achievements, and it hands out passive bonuses to every member at once — extra Silver in the Campaign, more multi-battle attempts in dungeons, more available Clan Quests, and more Shop slots. A high-level, active clan is a real, ongoing resource boost for every individual member, not just a number on a profile page.
The weekly Clan vs. Clan tournament pits whole clans against each other for points earned through special tasks — clearing a set number of dungeon floors, dealing Clan Boss damage, and so on. This is exactly when it pays to save that Minotaur's Labyrinth farming mentioned earlier, since it's one of the few dungeons that counts toward tournament points. Finally, Siege — a full territorial war between clans — unlocks for clan members at account level 45 and runs through four stages: a twelve-day prep period where the clan fortifies its Stronghold and sets up defense teams, matchmaking against an opposing clan, the battle itself (where members attack the enemy clan's defenses while their own Stronghold is simultaneously under attack), and finally a results tally. Clans need to meet activity thresholds to even enter matchmaking — commonly a minimum number of members at account level 45 plus a clan-wide activity requirement from the previous week. It's genuinely not beginner content, but it's useful to know it exists as a mid-term goal your account and clan will eventually grow into.
Silver and Gems: Two Currencies, Two Jobs
Raid runs on two main currencies with clearly separate roles. Silver is the everyday resource — it pours in from Campaign wins, dungeons, Arena, and Clan Boss fights, and it's what you spend leveling champions, upgrading gear in the Forge, and buying from the Market. Regular Spider's Den farming plus staying on top of daily quests usually keeps Silver flowing comfortably; if you're constantly short, it's typically a sign you've ranked up more champions than your farming pace supports, or that Spider's Den has been neglected for a while.
Gems are the premium currency, earned through in-game achievements, generated passively via the Mine, or purchased with real money. They go toward expanding Training Camp and Market slots, refreshing your Arena opponent list, and one-off champion or gear purchases. How you allocate Gems is one of the clearest signals of an experienced player versus a new one — spend them thoughtfully and they compound; spend them impulsively and you'll feel the shortage later.
For a beginner's first Gem purchases, the community's advice is fairly unanimous: invest in the Ruby Mine building first, since a passive generator pays for itself over time in a way a one-off champion pack never does. After that, gradually opening Market slots is worth it — quality 4- and 5-star, occasionally even Legendary, artifacts genuinely do show up there at reasonable prices, and it's frustrating to miss one purely because the relevant slot is locked. If you're considering spending real money on top of that, the same logic applies: a building investment pays forward, while a one-time champion pack gives a single burst that's gone the moment you've summoned it. Either way, it's worth understanding the game's systems first so you're not spending Gems on something that turns out irrelevant two weeks later.
Common Mistakes New Players Make
The single most costly mistake is feeding a Legendary or Epic champion into someone else's rank-up. Every experienced player warns against this, and it remains the number one regret new players voice looking back on their first weeks — a champion that seems useless today can turn out to be exactly what's missing for a Faction Wars crypt or a specific Doom Tower boss months later.
The second mistake is spreading resources across too many champions instead of committing fully to two or three. A fully leveled, 6-star Epic will beat a roster of half-built Legendaries almost every time, so resist the urge to level every shiny new pull the moment it lands.
The third is ignoring Speed when choosing gear in favor of flashier-looking stats like raw damage. The fourth is delaying Clan membership, which pushes back your access to both the Clan Boss and Doom Tower unnecessarily. And the fifth is running every fight on full auto-battle without ever manually piloting a new champion — auto is genuinely fine for routine farming on floors you've already cleared, but manually playing a new champion for their first few fights teaches you their actual kit and team synergy far faster than watching the AI make decisions for you.
Questions New Players Ask Most Often
"Is a well-geared Epic really stronger than an ungeared Legendary?" Yes, genuinely — rarity sets the ceiling, but gear is what determines actual combat power. A fully equipped Epic with solid Attack and HP percentages on their artifacts can outperform a Legendary sitting with empty or randomly filled slots. Don't hold off building your currently-available champions while waiting for a "worthier" Legendary — gear what you have.
"Does clearing a Campaign chapter with three stars give better rewards?" No — the reward is fixed regardless of whether you clear with one star or three, as long as you win. Don't burn Energy chasing a perfect clear; move forward, and only revisit an old chapter later if you specifically need what it farms.
"How do I tell if an artifact is actually good?" Look past rarity and rank to the specific secondary-stat percentages — particularly the fourth and fifth stat slots, which most often carry Attack%, HP%, or Defense%. A high-rarity item with poorly rolled secondaries can genuinely lose to a more modest item with well-targeted percentages. Boots with Speed as the main stat are close to universally worth prioritizing, since Speed is never a wasted stat on anyone.
"Can you really progress as a free-to-play player?" Yes — thousands of active F2P players prove it daily. Clan Boss on its higher difficulties and a fully-cleared Doom Tower rotation both provide a steady stream of Ancient Shards, the main non-paying path to Legendary champions. Progress will be slower than a paying player's, but it's a question of patience and prioritization, not a hard wall.
"What should I prioritize — Talents, Relics, or gear?" Gear and rank come first, full stop — they're available from day one and give the most visible return per resource spent. Talents open at account level 20 and are worth approaching gradually on two or three key champions rather than spreading points across the whole roster. Relics are the most niche of the three; it's completely fine to leave them untouched for your entire first month. The right order is gear and rank, then Talents on your key champions, then Relics once the foundation is solid.
"What should I do if I only have fifteen minutes a day?" Start with Clan Boss (the best reward-per-minute in the game), then spend your available Doom Tower keys, and only add Campaign or targeted dungeon farming if time is left over. Don't feel guilty skipping activities on busy days — most resources don't expire instantly, and steady small sessions beat rare multi-hour binges followed by long stretches of neglect.
Your First 30, 60, and 90 Days
Week one is about laying a foundation: push through the early Campaign with your starter champion (Kael remains the safest pick), and get familiar with the base — open up the Great Hall, Forge, and Training Camp and see what each does, even before you have much to put into them. Join an active Clan as soon as it's available rather than waiting until you feel "ready" — the sooner you get access to the Clan Boss, the sooner Ancient Shards start flowing. Don't feed champions indiscriminately: keep a few leveled Commons and Uncommons in the Vault, and leave every Legendary and Epic completely untouched no matter how useless they look right now. Start farming Spider's Den the moment Silver gets tight, which will happen faster than you'd expect once leveling starts eating resources in earnest.
By the end of the first month, once your main team has decent gear, open up Classic Arena and start banking Medals for the Great Hall. Begin visiting Doom Tower daily right after your Clan Boss attempt — spend your keys even if progress feels slow, since a full rotation's rewards (Ancient Shards, Legendary Skill Tomes) are too valuable to skip. Start looking at Dragon's Lair for the Speed set and Ice Golem's Peak plus Fire Knight's Castle for more specialized sets, as your champions start running into specific stat gaps you'll now know exactly where to fill. Don't skip the weekly Clan vs. Clan tournament — participating benefits both you and the whole clan. Around this point your account should also reach level 20 and unlock Talents — start investing points into two or three key champions based on their actual team role rather than trying to cover the whole roster at once, and check which of your champions already have open accessory slots from star-painting that are still sitting empty.
By month two or three, your roster should be wide enough to seriously start on Faction Wars — close crypts where you already have usable champions and expand the list gradually from there. Look at pushing your Clan Boss difficulty further if your clan supports it, building a genuinely specialized team rather than settling for the bare minimum. If your account and clan hit the activity thresholds, Siege becomes visible on the horizon at account level 45. This is also the point to revisit the gear section and seriously start rerolling artifacts with disappointing secondary stats — the Chaos Ore you've been accumulating starts actually paying off. It's a reasonable moment to look at Relics too: if your key champions already have solid gear and Talents, the crafting materials and reward Relics you've been stockpiling in storage are ready to be assigned deliberately instead of sitting there unused.
A Marathon, Not a Sprint
Raid: Shadow Legends is built for months and years of engagement, not a fast finish line. Don't let an unlucky summon streak, a string of bad artifact rolls, or a slow week get you down — that's a normal part of the experience even for players who've spent real money on their accounts. The community has a strong reputation for helping newcomers, so don't hesitate to ask clanmates or a community chat when a mechanic doesn't make sense — odds are good someone's already hit the exact same question and will happily walk you through it.
You now have a map of every core system in the game — from affinities and rarity through to the Doom Tower and Siege. From here it's practice: log in, build your first team, and work through Teleria at whatever pace suits you. Good luck with your summons.
