Not everything you can buy with gems is actually worth buying
There are different opinions on how to best use gems as a free-to-play account user, but there are some notoriously bad ways to use them, such as:
- Buying silver, considering that you will get steady amounts of silver through beating campaign stages, and more when you start selling unwanted gear
- Buying Arena Coin Refills, since there is a daily playtime reward of 10 more coins AND a daily quest reward of 5 coins from the get-go. Later on, more rewards will give even more Arena coins on a regular basis as well.
- Buying the Small Shard Pack for 270 gems, while the Big Shard Pack, at 900 gems, costs fewer gems per Shard
- Overdoing it on the Champion vault space. There is no denying that you will (rightfully) feel a need for extra champion slots, and you should go for it, but at some point it’s no worth it anymore. Besides, Champion slots can be bought with silver, which is my recommendation
- Arena Opponent list refreshes – waiting 15 minutes can be annoying, but all these little 5 gems add up.
So what ARE some valid uses for gems spending?
Opinions vary, but most will agree on these:
Unlocking and upgrading your gem mine to max for a steady flow of gems (once you deduct the gems production from the price of upgrading the mine, the 1500 gems cost pays itself back in 100 days). This is widely considered not only a great use of your gems, but also something to prioritize in your gem spending.
Unlocking Sparring Pit slots in your Guardian Ring. While leveling up the Sparring Pit slots for more XP is a grey area, having the slots open for fodder champions to passively level up is a very good idea. Getting champions to 6 stars requires a LOT of fodder champions that need leveling.
This one is more debatable, but the Big Shard Pack, which rewards you with 11 blue shards and the silver required to pay for the summons. At the hefty cost of 900 gems, a big argument for this purchase is simply the dopamine rush of doing a Blue Shard 10x summon, which I entirely understand.
The marketplace additional item slots so each refresh brings you more chances to find great stuff to buy. Every other slot unlock is bought with gems, but it is a relatively low cost for what it gives, considering that the marketplace can have Blue Shards for 200k silver. Trust me, you don’t want to have to leave that Blue Shard behind the gem paywall.
Energy refills to keep playing some more! Although, this purchase comes with a big caveat; an energy refill will cost 40 gems whether you are level 12 or 65, and it only gives you a refill of the exact amount of max energy you can currently have. In other words, the lower your account level is, the less good of a deal this is. I suggest waiting as long as possible before purchasing energy refills for 40 gems.
My gem spending priority advice
- Gem Mine upgrade (3 upgrades at 500 gems each)
- Marketplace full upgrade
- Unlocking the Sparring Pit slots (300 gem per)
At any time, I try to keep a small buffer of gems in case of whatever emergency – just because I said not to buy energy refills early doesn’t mean you won’t be tempted. When you’re missing just a few tournament points for the next reward tier and ran out of energy… I sure spent some gems there myself!
Expensive, but worth it
There is one more thing to spend on gems that I want to bring to your attention. It’s a hefty price of 800 gems, but fully unlocking one champion’s masteries is a serious game-changer.
Time, Energy, and a Smart choice later…
When I first learned that we can spend gems on masteries, I balked at the price. 800 gems is a lot!
…Or is it?
800 gems gives you all the scrolls you need for one champion’s masteries. Warmaster and Giant Slayer (unlocked at 6-star ranking) are insanely useful masteries for big damage. You can only choose one mastery at the 6-star ranking, so you’ll want one of these two, depending on the end-result you’re looking for.
Let’s do a quick breakdown of facts
Fact #1:
The Minotaur dungeon is difficult. It will take a new player a lot of time and effort to figure out a team that can go mid-levels, let alone later levels.
Fact #2:
Maxing out masteries takes a lot of Minotaur runs. You will need 100 Basic Scrolls, 600 Advanced Scrolls, and 950 Divine Scrolls for one champion. For reference, here are the last 5 Stages of Minotaur and their possible rewards:
Note: this is a phone screenshot and my phone RAID account is not following any of my guides (someone’s gotta do the trial and error part!) so, I don’t have the last 3 stages unlocked on this account yet, and I’ve been playing a full month with a pretty solid team.
You need a total of 1650 scrolls, and only the 100 Basic Scrolls will go by quickly. 600 Advanced Scrolls will drop at 11-16 per run, and 950 Divine Scrolls at 6-12 per run…
And that is only if you can clear Stage 15. All 1650 scrolls on Stage 15 will take you at worst 219 clears, and at best, 164 clears.
Fact #3:
Having 5 champions with no masteries in your team will scatter your Scrolls drops a lot.
Remember those 219-164 clears? That’s for ONE champion. With five no-mastery champions, you could be grinding Stage 15 over a thousand times before managing to get one champion at full scrolls, simply because of the RNG of scroll drop assignments.
At 14 energy per run, you’re looking at 2000-3000 energy per champion full mastery. With a 5-champion team, it becomes 10k to 15k energy.
That is a lot of energy.
A huge energy AND time-saver is to carefully choose one champion to spend 800 gems for full masteries. A lot of people will recommend giving the full masteries to your starter, and I don’t disagree with the fact that your starter champion, especially if you picked Kael or Athel, would make good use of a Mastery Scroll Set.
However, you can also look into specific champions that would be able to solo Minotaur for your other champions. Not only does that allow you to negate RNG by making sure of who gets the scrolls, it also allows you to cut the XP in two instead of 5. Stage 15 Minotaur gives about 20 000XP per run, so your second hero you be getting about 10k XP each time.
Who can solo-run a minotaur 15?
Not a lot of champions can boast that feat! Head on over to my guide here: RAID: shadow legends – Soloing minotaur stage 15 (Accessible champions)
800 Gems down the drain
There is one catch. I’m telling you here so you can learn from my mistakes (800 gems is a lot!).
Spending 800 gems on a full-Mastery Unlock only works if you can 6-star your chosen champion.
if you don’t make it a goal to 6-star the Minotaur-farming champion ASAP, your 800 gems… won’t do much. The last Mastery skill unlocks once your champions are rank 6, and that skill is insanely powerful. Without it, you won’t be able to run a Minotaur 15.
Why didn’t I 6-star my champion yet, you ask? I’m just gonna go ahead and blame it on the ADHD.
While you can certainly spend your 800 gems a bit before being ready to 6-star your champion (mostly to battle impulse-spending, amirite?), you won’t feel like you’re getting your gems’ worth. And you’d be right to think so!
6-star ranking a champion
For a quick rundown of getting to a 6-star champ:
You’ll need 5 fodder champions, aka champions you won’t miss, upgraded to 5-star rank.
Urgh, not math…
Worry not! Here are the numbers, math-free!
5 5-star fodder champions will require 25 4-star champions, 5 of which at max level to be upgraded.
25 4-star champions will require 125 3-star champions, 25 of them being at max level to be upgraded.
125 3-star champions will require 375 2-star champions, 125 of them being at max level to be upgraded.
375 2-star champions will require 750 1-star champions, 375 of them being at max level to be upgraded.
Formula, if you want it
While the previous numbers are only if you start from 0, which is unlikely, I hope they help as an overview kind of thing. If you want to make your own calculations:
(goal amount of champions) x (goal number of stars) + (goal amount of champions) = (how many lower rank champions you’ll need.)
For example, the 4-star champions:
25(goal amount of champions) x
4 (number of stars) +
25 (goal amount of champions)
25×4 = 100 fodder champions +25 max level champions to upgrade = 125 3-star champions.
I don’t think that was clear but that was the best I could do. I don’t do math very well.
I did math for you, now I need to lay down a bit.
Send me a message or leave a comment if my math’s wrong!
