This guide is part of my series of Raid Shadow Legends – Free to play guides. Get the most out of the game without spending money… Although they sure know how to make alluring (and expensive!!) packs.
If you’re looking into RAID guides before even starting, make sure to head over to my Starter Champion Choice post to make an informed decision!
starting on the right track
While RAID Shadow Legends is just a game, and mistakes have little consequences overall, it’s not a bad idea to avoid a few things that would slow down your progress.
1. 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
- Buying Arena Coin Refills, since you can get an extra 15 Arena coins for free daily by playing.
- Buying the Small Shard Pack
- Unlocking Champion slots with gems. Champion slots can be bought with silver, which is my recommendation.
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. This is widely considered not only a great use of your gems, but also something to do early.
Unlocking Sparring Pit slots in your Guardian Ring. The focus is on unlocking all the slots, not upgrading them.
The Big Shard Pack, which rewards you with 11 blue shards and the silver required to pay for the summons. This one rises a lot of debate on whether it’s actually worth it or not.
The marketplace additional item slots so each refresh brings you more chances to find great stuff to buy.
Energy refills BUT this purchase comes with a big caveat; it only gives you a refill of the exact amount of max energy you can currently have. That makes this purchase more interesting in late game than early!
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!
For more info on gem usage, as well as more in-depth explanation and reasoning behind my spending priority, check out my Best Gem Usage for F2P guide.
2. Upgrading gear too much, too soon
In early game, you’ll have mostly bad gear to work with. Upgrading gear helps your Champions greatly, but it costs a lot of silver to do so.
Your first two weeks will give you a daily login bonus gear piece. For a while, these pieces are going to be the best you can get your hands on, and I suggest upgrading those first!
I advise to gear up your starter champion in 4 Lifesteal pieces. The last 2 pieces could be a speed set or an offense set. That will make your champion tanky enough to breeze through the campaign for some time!
As for the second week’s rewards, you will receive 6 Retaliation Set pieces. Counterattacks always only use the champion’s first ability, so keep that in mind when you choose who to gear up with this set; some champions’ basic attacks are stronger than others!
Gear rank is more important than gear rarity
A 5-star grey item’s base stats will almost always obliterate a 3-star blue or purple item, even with nice substats.
My gear upgrade strategy is rank-based: 1-3 star gear gets upgraded to +4 if in use, but nothing much more. Rank 4 and up is when I go for higher upgrade.
3. Mix n’ Matching gear
In some cases, the base stat needed (looking at you, boots with SPD base stats) can be more important than getting set bonuses, but the general rule is that gearset bonuses shouldn’t be ignored.
Sets require either 2 or 4 pieces to give the set bonus to a champion, and it’s usually worth making sure to get the bonus.
Some sets can be very situational, and other sets are only good for specific kinds of champions, but I can tell you one thing: you will never have enough SPD sets. Pretty much any champion can benefit from a SPD set, and some champions will even use two sets or three!
Pro tip: if you’re farming campaign battles for XP and you can’t do the Campaign chapter 12-3 yet, get back into chapter 6 and stock up on SPD gear. You can thank me later.
4. Missing out on daily quests
Sometimes, there’s nothing in the marketplace… or miss out on the “kill 3 campaign bosses” because you were farming a non-boss stage. Happens to the best of us!
It’s a good idea to look into the daily quest requirements a after a bit of playtime. The quests are mostly very easy to complete, and most will be completed by playing normally, but it’s better safe than sorry.
Completing 7/7 daily quests will reward you with account XP and gems, but most importantly, it will count towards your weekly (claim reward for all daily quests 5 times) and monthly quests (claim reward for all dailies 30 times) that will give you 1 Blue Shard weekly, 1 Purple Shard and 1 Gold Shard monthly.
Besides, each quest gives small rewards in itself, and they are all worth it!
5. Dismissing Common and Uncommon Champions as useless
Yes, the rarer the better (most of the time, anyway) but some of these lowly grey and green champions are actually worth a second look!
Especially as free-to-play players, I think we tend to see the colors blue, purple and gold as something of bigger value than it actually is, due to the rarity of these Shards. Yes, these champions will often be great additions to your teams, of course, but they’re not all that this game has to offer.
Taking a common example, Saurus, who can solo-clear so much of the campaign thanks to his auto-attack AOE. With some good gear on him, Saurus can carry your fodder through the levels, after you used him to 3-star the entirety of the campaign!
What’s more, Saurus is a farmable champion, which makes it much easier to fully upgrade his skills.
I have a lot to say about Uncommon, Common and farmable champions. You can take a look at a few of my guides on them!
