So, you just discovered RAID: Shadow Legends and are thinking of getting started, but don’t know how to proceed since the game has already been out for a few years? Fret not, as most of the things that were relevant back then are still valid nowadays, which makes it really easy to get into this awesome gacha RPG. But how can you know what things are relevant or valid if you’ve never played before? That’s where this guide comes in. In the following paragraphs, you’ll find everything you need to know to get a good start in RAID: Shadow Legends: From the best starter champions in the game, to the things you should work on from the beginning.

Whether you’re an old player coming back from a long hiatus, or a newbie looking to get a good start in RAID: Shadow Legends, this starter guide is for you.

RAID: Shadow Legends Best Starter Champion

Right off the bat, you’re thrown into the game immediately upon starting, with a rather humorous cutscene involving our four starter champions breaking and entering into a vault guarded by a few soldiers, as well as a fierce dragon. It’s apparent from the very beginning that our heroes bit off more than they can chew after the dragon casually grabs and eats Elhain, one of the four. Sadly, a few moments later, they are all incinerated by the dragon’s breath attack. An unfortunate outcome, obviously, but the good part is that our adventure begins right after.

Right after this fateful encounter, we’re presented with a choice to choose a starter champion for our adventure. You can’t reverse this decision, so it’s important to choose wisely, as this hero will most likely be your strongest asset for a great chunk of the game, unless you get EXCEEDINGLY lucky and manage to score a good Legendary or Rare from the gacha. But since it’s probably more likely to win the lottery, we wouldn’t count on this fact, and would instead choose an adequate starter champion for our purposes.

The four starter champions in RAID: Shadow Legends, are the following:

• Kael

A Dark Elven powerhouse that can conjure up powerful spells to rain destruction on his foes. Kael is excellent at melting bosses later on due to his excellent poison debuffs. Moreover, he also has formidable AoE capabilities, which makes him an adequate choice for farming campaign stages when you upgrade him enough. His skills are the following:

Dark Bolt: Deals damage to a single target, with an 80% chance of inflicting a poison debuff on the enemy that deals significant additional damage each turn.

Acid Rain: Deals damage to all enemies, with a 15% increased probability of inflicting a critical hit on each target. For every enemy killed with this skill, Kael’s turn meter is filled by 25%.

Disintegrate: Attacks 4 times randomly. Each attack has a 40% chance of inflicting a 5% poison debuff for 2 turns.

• Elhain

This is the first character to get defeated by the dragon in the prologue, though this doesn’t mean that she’s the weakest—far from it, actually. Elhain is one of the best choices for starter champion in RSL, along with Kael. This is due to her superior AoE capabilities. However, Elhain lacks that extra punch needed for defeating bosses with ease since she doesn’t have any debuffs to fall back on. Still, if you’re looking for a good champion for farming stages, this one is a solid choice. Her skills are the following:

Keen Shot: Attacks a single enemy, attacking twice if the first hit is critical.

Lightning Arrow: Attacks a single enemy, immediately followed by an additional attack that hits all enemies. This ability has an extra 15% of inflicting critical hits. Elhain gains a 30% crit rate buff if this skill defeats at least one enemy.

Valley of Death: Attacks all enemies twice.

• Athel

Has the potential of rising to be one of the strongest champions of the bunch, but she’s inevitably the one that will give you the toughest start. Athel is great because of her buffs and debuffs, though she lacks the punch of the previous two champions. In fact, she has the weakest ATK of all four. Nevertheless, she’s a great choice for patient players who like to play the long game, though we personally don’t recommend her as a starter champion. Her skills are the following:

Strike Down: Attacks an enemy three times, with a 75% chance of inflicting a weakening debuff for 2 turns on the third hit.

Divine Blades: Attacks all enemies. This skill has a 15% increased chance of inflicting a critical hit.

Higher Blessing: Athel buffs herself, increasing her ATK by 25% for 2 turns. This skill also places a 30% DEF buff for 2 turns if her HP is lower than 50% when used. Athel gains an extra turn when using this skill, effectively making it free to use at any moment.

• Galek

This strapping young orc is one of the strongest champions for single-target encounters, which makes him great for dealing with bosses, but not so much at farming and clearing stages. Still, there’s a point to be made from his strong damage output and superior speed, which grants him additional turns as the fight goes on. Nevertheless, our goal with our starter champion is to choose a hero that can farm stages with ease, and Galek isn’t really built for this purpose. His skills are the following:

Cross Slash: Attacks an enemy twice.

Hellraiser: Attacks all enemies. This attack has a 15% increased chance of resulting in a critical hit. Increases Galek’s SPD by 30% for 2 turns when used.

Cursed Blade: Attacks 4 times randomly. Each hit has a 30% chance of placing a 30% decrease DEF debuff for 2 turns. Additionally, each hit has a 30% chance of inflicting a 60% decrease DEF debuff for 2 turns if the enemy has more than 2 debuffs.

Due to the differences in their skill sets, more so than their stats, the best RAID: Shadow Legends starter champions are either Kael, or Elhain. Personally, we prefer Kael currently, just because he’s more versatile, being able to both clear stages with his AoE, as well as have a decent shot against bosses with his poison debuffs. It’s possible that Athel is actually better in the long run, but by that point, you’ll probably be able to easily farm and clear stages with the other two, which is essentially the purpose of your starter champion.

Starting Out In RAID: Shadow Legends

At the very beginning, the only game mode available to you is the campaign, though this will change early on as you’ll unlock others very quickly. Regardless, most of your time in RAID at the start will be dedicated to progressing through the Campaign. This is because you can farm tons of resources like silver and XP from these stages, as well as many useful gear sets. Additionally, the availability of these gear sets varies according to the chapter of the campaign, as well as the stage that you’re playing.

Blazing Through the Campaign in RAID: Shadow Legends

The campaign in this gacha game is divided into 12 chapters, with 7 stages in each. Each stage drops a specific piece of gear:

• Stage 1: Weapon

• Stage 2: Helm

• Stage 3: Shield

• Stage 4: Gloves

• Stage 5: Chest

• Stage 6: Boots

• Stage 7: Randomized. Can be any of the items from the other stages.

Furthermore, each chapter in the campaign is geared towards a certain set of gear. They are distributed in the following manner:

• Chapter 1: Life

• Chapter 2: Offense

• Chapter 3: Defense

• Chapter 4: Critical

• Chapter 5: Accuracy

• Chapter 6: Speed

• Chapter 7: Resist

• Chapter 8: Lifesteal

• Chapter 9: Destroy

• Chapter 10: Retaliation

• Chapter 11: Fury

• Chapter 12: Curing

Farming good gear is a pivotal aspect of powering up your characters, along with leveling them up. A good set of armor and weapons can help you to farm more efficiently by increasing your stats, but more importantly by bestowing special bonuses upon equipping multiple pieces of the same set. This is without mentioning that the campaign is the best place to level up your champions, either to increase their potential, or to level up the ones that you’ll be using as “food” for your higher tier characters.

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Regardless of your focus, you should always try to blaze through the campaign as much as you can, as this will give you access to more types of gear. 

Campaign VS Dungeons For Gear Farming

Speaking of gear, you’ll get access to dungeons pretty early in the game. These dungeons are a different type of content, though in practice they’re similar to the campaign levels. The main difference here is that you can farm a variety of materials and items from dungeons, including the best pieces of gear. However, the bosses in these dungeons are much harder than the ones in the campaign, so you have to prepare accordingly before challenging these levels. Moreover, the energy cost is also higher, which makes dungeons difficult to farm.

There are many dungeons in RAID: Shadow Legends, though the ones we care about here are Spider’s Den, Ice Golem’s Peak, Dragon’s Lair, and Fire Knight’s Castle, which give different pieces of gear on completion. 

Just like with the campaign, each dungeon has a number of stages. However, instead of dropping specific pieces of gear on each level, each stage can drop ANY PIECE OF GEAR FROM ANY SET, each with a different star level range. Obviously, the pieces with 6 stars are the best in their respective categories, but they’re exceedingly hard to farm. Add to this the fact that you get a RANDOM piece from every level, and suddenly it’s easy to see why farming dungeons for gear is an uphill battle.

Meanwhile, farming the campaign is much easier: Not only do the levels cost less energy to access, even in Brutal difficulty, but you’ll always know exactly what piece of gear you’ll get, since these are tied to the stages and the chapters. Additionally, while they’re not as strong as Epic pieces, the gear from the campaign is at least 90% as powerful, and can give you a solid foundation to build your farming squad early on.

In conclusion, dungeons in RAID: Shadow Legends can give you the best gear, period. However, farming them can be prohibitive in terms of energy cost, particularly since you’ll never know what you’re going to get from each stage completion. Meanwhile, campaigns are more straightforward; its stages are guaranteed to grant specific drops, and cost less energy to access. And on top of that, you can also farm XP and silver from completing these stages.

RAID: Shadow Legends Beginner’s Checklist

Now that we know what starter champion to pick, and how gearing works, we want to close this guide by providing a checklist of sorts with some of the most important things to do as a beginner.

1. Work through the campaign. Get as far as you can. Once you hit a wall, go to the hardest stage that you can beat with auto-combat, and farm it until you’re at max level, which is capped at level 60.
2. To aid you in your farming, you can play RAID: Shadow Legends on PC with BlueStacks, and use the Macro Recorder to automate the process of exiting and restarting the stage. You can even set the macro to repeat indefinitely, effectively letting you farm forever, as long as you have energy. This is a great way to burn extra energy without actually having to constantly monitor your game.
3. If you’re having trouble progressing, or with farming, we recommend acquiring a lifesteal set, which will increase the survivability of your champions. Use this until you can effectively one-shot waves of enemies with AoE attacks. At that point, change out of your lifesteal set and switch to another set that favors ATK.
4. The initial idea is to work so that your starter champion can easily solo entire levels with auto-combat, so that you can start using them to farm XP and silver, and to level up the characters that will be sacrificed as “food”.
5. Remember to always do your daily, weekly, and monthly tasks to speed up your progress and obtain valuable rewards for your troubles. The challenges are also a good source of rewards early on.
6. Focus on upgrading one champion at a time. It only takes one good champ to blaze through stages, or to farm for materials and currency in the campaign. As such, it’s much better to have one strong character than to spread out your resources among several of them.
7. In the same vein, don’t sink your resources into random weak characters, as this will severely hamper your progress. Focus only on upgrading your best characters. This includes your starter champion, as well as any other good champion that you’ll get from the gacha.
8. Don’t be afraid to reroll if you’re still early into the game and have wasted resources on a bad character. Check out our reroll guide to learn more about this process.
9. Save your gems as much as you can. If possible, save them for when farming for masteries. You can use gems later on to purchase energy for farming the Minotaur’s Labyrinth, where you’ll be farming all the scrolls necessary for maxing out a character’s masteries. 
10. Regarding the above, it takes 100 basic scrolls, 600 advanced scrolls, and 950 divine scrolls to max out the masteries for a single character. This is, by far, the longest grind in RAID: Shadow Legends, and should be approached with patience. With that being said, the best level to farm for scrolls in the Minotaur’s Labyrinth is stage 13, which has the best ratio in terms of completion time and rewards received. 
11. Another good use for your gems, if you’re willing to make the investment, is to unlock the Gem Mine. Each level of this structure costs 500 gems to unlock. The first tier generates 5 gems per day, which means that it’ll take 100 days for you to get the return on your investment. This structure is absolutely worth unlocking if you’re planning on playing for more than 100 days.
12. Alternatively, as we mentioned above, you can also save your gems for purchasing energy and farming the Minotaur’s Labyrinth. Each set of masteries for a level 60 character will set you back about 800 gems, on average, in energy recharges.
13. The first long-term goal in RAID: Shadow Legends is to get your first five-man squadron with their masteries maxed. This squadron will essentially let you farm every other aspect of the game, giving you complete liberty to play as you want.

With these RAID: Shadow Legends beginner tips, tricks, and pointers, you should have everything you need to start your journey on the right track.