RAID: Shadow Legends throws hundreds of champions at you, a dozen overlapping progression systems, and enough currencies to make your head spin. The good news: the early game is far more forgiving than the game's reputation suggests, as long as you avoid the two most common beginner mistakes — leveling too many champions at once, and ignoring Faction Wars until it's too late to matter.
Don't Level Every Champion You Pull
Your gacha pulls will hand you champions across a wide range of rarities and factions, and the instinct to level everyone a little is the single biggest early resource sink in the game.
- Pick a core of 4-5 champions and commit XP and silver to them exclusively until you clear early campaign content. A focused, mid-tier team beats a spread of half-leveled rares every time.
- Prioritize a healer or a champion with reliable sustain early. Campaign and dungeon content punishes teams with no way to recover HP mid-fight far more than it punishes low raw damage.
- Don't ascend (rank up) champions casually. Ascension materials are limited and permanent — reserve them for champions you're confident will stay in your long-term roster.
Faction Wars Should Shape Your Roster, Not an Afterthought
Faction Wars is a mode that specifically rewards building complete teams from a single champion faction (Undead, High Elves, Barbarians, and so on), and it's one of the best sources of long-term account power — masteries, gear, and champion fusion events often loop back through it.
- Check faction distribution across your pulls periodically. If you're sitting on four or five decent champions from one faction, that faction is worth building out into a full Faction Wars team before others.
- Faction Wars teams don't need to be your strongest individual champions — they need to be a complete, synergistic team from the same faction, which sometimes means using a lower-rarity champion simply because no better option exists in that faction yet.
- Ignoring Faction Wars until late slows your gear and mastery progression noticeably, since some of the best farmable gear sets are tied to clearing higher Faction Wars stages.
Gear: Farm Sets Before Chasing Stats
New players often chase high main-stat gear pieces without paying attention to set bonuses, which is backwards for most of the early-to-mid game.
- Complete a full Speed set or a defensive set (like Lifesteal or Resist) on your core team before chasing raw damage gear. Set bonuses often matter more than a slightly higher stat roll on an unmatched piece.
- Speed is the most valuable stat in the game's turn-based combat. A team that acts first and more often will consistently outperform a slightly higher-damage but slower team.
What To Do First
- Pick 4-5 champions, including at least one sustain option, and commit all early XP and silver to them.
- Track your faction distribution and start building toward one complete Faction Wars team as soon as you have the pieces.
- Farm a complete gear set (Speed is the safest default) before chasing individual high-stat pieces.
- Hold ascension materials for champions you're confident will stay in your roster long-term.
RAID rewards focus over breadth at every stage. A tight roster with good faction coverage and matched gear sets will out-clear a wide, unfocused collection every time.
