RAID: Shadow Legends is a lot friendlier than its reputation, but it is not friendly at the start. You're handed a starter Champion, a wall of stats you don't understand yet, and a home screen with more buttons than a cockpit. Most new players make a few quiet mistakes in week one that cost them weeks later. Here's how to avoid them and build an account that actually snowballs.
Pick Kael, and get him ascended fast
Your first real decision is your starter Champion, and the community consensus in 2026 hasn't budged: pick Kael. He's a poison-based attacker, and poison in RAID deals damage as a percentage of the enemy's max health — which means he keeps hurting even the giant bosses that shrug off flat damage. Every major tier list still parks him at the top for new players, and he carries you deep into the mid-game.
The other starters aren't traps, but they don't age as well. Elhain is a fast campaign farmer and an early Arena nuker thanks to her double area-of-effect kit. Galek hits hard early with AoE and a self-speed buff but falls off in late PvE. Unless you have a specific plan, take Kael and don't look back.
Whatever you pick, your first project is getting that starter to Ascension Tier 3 at the Sacred Order altar. Ascension unlocks the rest of a Champion's skills and boosts their stats — an ascended starter is a genuinely strong carry, while an un-ascended one stalls out fast.
Grab the free Champions before you spend anything
RAID hands out surprisingly strong Champions for free if you know where to look, and several of them are more useful than most of what you'll pull early. Before you drop a single Energy or dollar, collect these:
- Warmaiden — a Rare who applies AoE Decrease Defense, which multiplies your whole team's damage. She's a staple in early clan boss and campaign teams.
- Coldheart — a Champion whose damage scales with enemy Turn Meter, brutal against bosses and one of the best free Champions in the game.
- Apothecary — a healer and speed buffer who keeps early teams alive and moving.
- Frozen Banshee, Bellower, Armiger — solid Rares that do real work in specific fights well past the tutorial.
You'll pick these up through starter progression, login rewards, promo codes and events. A team built around Kael plus a few of these Rares clears more content than a bench full of random pulls, so don't feel pressured to chase Legendaries early.
Learn gear before you drown in it
Gear is where new accounts live or die, and it's the part RAID explains worst. A few rules will keep you out of trouble:
- Speed is king. In an early team, going first and often beats hitting harder. Prioritize Speed sets and Speed substats on almost everyone, and get your buffer or debuffer moving before the enemy does.
- Don't waste upgrade materials on grey and green gear. It's filler. Save your silver and your good pieces for rare (blue) and above, ideally 6-star gear once you can farm it in the Dungeons.
- Match the set to the job. Life sets for survivability, Offense/Cruel for damage dealers, Speed sets for supports. Full 4-piece sets give the bonus; mixing halves your value.
- Feed, don't hoard. Duplicate and low-tier Champions are food. Use them to Rank-up the Champions you actually play instead of leaving a full vault of 1-stars gathering dust.
Focus all of this on one team of six first. A single well-geared squad that clears Campaign Brutal and the early Dungeons will farm you the materials to gear everyone else. Spreading thin gear across twelve half-built Champions leaves you unable to clear anything.
Farm the right content in the right order
RAID has a dozen game modes, but early on only a few matter, and they feed each other:
- Campaign (12-3 on Brutal/Nightmare) — your bread-and-butter XP and silver farm. Auto-repeat it to level Champions and gather food.
- Dungeons — the source of your good gear. Push Dragon, Spider and Ice Golem as high as your team allows; the drops here rebuild your whole account.
- Clan Boss — join an active clan on day one and chip at the Clan Boss daily. It pays out gear, shards and Clan Boss chests over time, and clan activity gives you more free rewards than any solo grind.
- Faction Wars — leave it for later, but keep a spread of Champions from different Factions so you're not locked out when you're ready.
Do your daily and monthly quests every day. They hand out Energy refills, XP boosts and — critically — shards and Champion Training currency that quietly builds toward your next big pull. The players who stick with dailies are the ones with deep rosters three months in.
The short version
Take Kael and ascend him to Tier 3. Collect the free Champions — Warmaiden and Coldheart especially — before you spend anything. Gear one team of six around Speed, feed everything else into it, and farm Campaign for XP, Dungeons for gear, and Clan Boss for the long haul. Do that patiently and RAID stops being an overwhelming menu and starts being the grind-and-grow RPG it's actually good at.
