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RAID: Shadow Legends Beginner’s Guide: Tips, Cheats & Strategies to Outsmart Your Enemies

RAID: Shadow Legends is a turn-based “hero collector” game by Plarium, a company that’s behind a number of high-profile games such as Throne: Kingdom of War and Vikings: War of Clans to name a few. The very moment you enter RAID: Shadow Legends you know that it’s not a simplistic title with pixelated graphics and rudimentary gameplay, but a graphically high-end and thought-through product featuring balanced mechanics and a well-crafted game world reminding only the newest of triple-A titles.

In RAID: Shadow Legends you become a leader of a team of heroes with a goal of venturing into dungeons, combat different kind of enemies and vanquish the bosses that you will stumble upon pretty often on your perilous path. To do so, you will need to pay a high attention to keeping your heroes strong and efficient by levelling and gearing them up.

For some, the gameplay may seem rather straightforward, but in case you need a helping hand, we’ve prepared for you a set of tips and tricks perfectly fit for those who just begin their journey in RAID: Shadow Legends. Below you can find our RAID: Shadow Legends tips, cheats and strategies. So without further ado, let’s delve into the basics of this fresh and amazing game!

1. Briefly On The Mechanics

Those of you who may not really know what’s a “hero collector” game about, the answer is pretty much simple. In a game like this, your goal is to collect, level, gear and command heroes onto their victories. Just like in the majority of RPGs, in RAID: Shadow Legends you will find melee, ranged and casting classes. Each of them has a particular set of skills meant to deal damage and debuffs to your enemies, others, however, will buff and heal members your team.

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Apart from a number of different modes, including campaign mode and dungeon mode where you can collect loot for your characters, the game is divided on the management stage and battle stage. In the management stage, you can decide where to direct your heroes. You can also increase their capabilities by gearing them up, levelling and increasing their ranks and combat value. In the battle stage, as the name may suggest, your task is to command your characters in battles, choose the skills for them to fire, explore and clear out the dungeons from the enemies.

2. Colours Matter

While to this point in RAID: Shadow Legends looks like nothing super revolutionary, here we come to the so-called “colour system”. Starting with the basics, the green bar above the hero’s head indicates its current HP level and the yellow bar shows whether it is able to perform an attack or not. Once the yellow bar is filled, a unit will have its turn and will be able to act. The bar will fill up as the battle progresses. But there’s more to that.

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Each of your characters is assigned to one of the following colour patterns: green, red or blue. Just like in rock-paper-scissors game, each of these colours is effective or not against one another. Green is effective against red, red beats blue and blue wins against green. Once the colour of your unit is suitable against the enemy colour, it will gain an additional bonus to damage and reduction of the incoming damage.

Related: RAID: Shadow Legends Advanced Guide: Tips & Tricks to Level Up and Farm More Effectively

In order to gain advantage on the field of battle, it’s worth to keep in mind these colours, but it’s not super necessary to memorise them, since every time you target an enemy with one of your characters, an arrow will appear upon his or her head, indicating whether an attack will end successfully or not. A green arrow shows that an attack will be delivered successfully, yellow shows a mediocre success and red means that the attack will be rather weak.

3. Choose Your Champions Wisely

As the genre of the game suggests, the main focus of RAID: Shadow Legends are your champions, each different from the other in terms of the role, active and passive skills and also visual aesthetics. In order to successfully improve your characters’ combat capabilities, you will need to level and gear them up. Before you do it though you will need to learn their roles and know how to maximise their potential. It’s best to read descriptions first and learn the purpose of each and every hero on the field.

Every champion is assigned to 1 out of 4 different roles in the game: Attack, Defense, Support and HP. Attack champions are best damage dealers, Defense champions protect your team members with defensive buffs, Support heroes bestow buffs upon their allies and lay debuffs on their enemies, and HP champions can be best described as healers. The role of your champion can be easily checked at the top-right corner of the champion’s menu.

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At the beginning of the game you can choose 1 from 4 rare champions, including Athel (buffer), Galek (melee dps and debuffer), Elhain (single and aoe dps) and Kael (damage over time). As you progress, the number of heroes you can control will increase to 5 as maximum. Make sure to make a well-thought choice when choosing your team, since most likely the character you will pick for your main hero will stay with you until the late game and can become a great asset to your party if managed properly.

To get your champions, you have to go to the main screen of the game and find a summoning portal from which you will be able to get your heroes. Bear in mind that every champion requires from you a certain kind and a number of special shards, including mystery, ancient, void and sacred. The higher quality your shard is, the more advanced hero you will get in return.

Related: RAID: Shadow Legends Champions Guide: The Best Legendary, Epic and Rare Heroes in the Game

As a beginner, you have to remember that balancing your team is key to success. This is why your group of champions should consist not only of Attackers and Defenders, but also of Healers and Buffers/Debuffers. If you decide to add to your team only damage dealers, at the early stage of the game you may be just fine, but the further you go, the more challenging your opponents will become. To deal with them, you will need a balanced team, consisting of healers that will keep the HP of your champions high. It’s also worth considering to add buffers and debuffers that will boost your champions during battles or weaken your enemies. Don’t be afraid to experiment with your setup of heroes, and choose the one that will fit your needs.

4. Improve Your Skills

In order to properly upgrade the skills of your champions, you will need to understand what is “scaling” in the game. Every time you decide to upgrade your hero, he or she will have a specific stat that will scale up along with the skill that increases. Remember, however, that every champion has only one or at best two specific stats that will fall to that category, so if you don’t want to waste your upgrades for a stat that your hero won’t profit from, make sure to carefully read characters’ descriptions and pay attention to “primary stats”.

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Remember that scaling occurs completely randomly. The developers of the game did not provide their customers with clear ratios, so you have to rely on random number generator system, also known in the gaming community as “rng”. Don’t be afraid to test things out by yourself though, since only that way you will find a setup that will fit you best.

Similarly to the majority of other RPGs, in RAID: Shadow Legends your heroes have single and multiple (aoe) target skills, and that falls to all kind of performances, including damaging, healing, buffing and debuffing. Some of your champions will have a special “Aura Skill” that permanently affects all the allies or enemies on the field. You can easily check whether your champion possesses an area-of-effect skill of this kind, by going to the top-right corner of your hero’s portrait.

To improve the skills of your champions, you will need to get as many Tomes as possible. There are several ways to get them. First of them, is by simply logging to the game, second is by progressing through the game, and the third is by performing a number of challenges within the game. As you can see, there are not too many means from which you can get the Tomes, so make sure not to waste them.

5. Upgrade Your Champions

To make your champions more effective in battle, you have to level them up and improve their ranks. There are two ways to do so in the game. One is leading them through the levels, exploring dungeons and defeating bosses. The more successful your team will be in the instance, the more points of experience its members will get and in the process, the sooner you will be able to upgrade them. The other way, however, is by sacrificing low-level champions in the tavern option.

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Mind that the champion that will reach its maximum poll of experience won’t be able to gain more, unless you will rank him or her up. To do so, you have to go to the tavern option, tap “update rank” and choose a champion you want to rank. But here, the process of improving your champions’ ranks doesn’t end. If you choose, you can “ascend” your champions by providing them with special ascend potions which you can get by exploring dungeons. This feature, however, is best recommended for those who can handle the mechanics of the game pretty good. Besides, in the early game, you will gain much more of experience by levelling and ranking your champions.

Related: RAID: Shadow Legends Team Guide: Tips, Cheats & Strategies to Form the Best All-Around Teams

6. Use The Right Gear

Before you will learn how to properly assign the gear to your heroes, keep in mind that every piece of gear is considered in 3 different aspects, such as main stats, sub stats and set bonuses.

The main stats are the ones that should concern you the most, since their values grow with every upgrade you perform. It’s important to note here that weapon (attack), helmets (HP) and shields (defence) have fixed main stats in oppose to other parts of the gear. Contrariwise, gloves, chest, boots, accessories, rings, amulets and banners can feature different main stats.

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Your parts of equipment also have secondary stats which can be upgraded on certain item level thresholds of 4, 8, 12 and 16. Each of them is highly dependent on the quality of your item, so if you want to maximise their potential, make sure to read through them before making a choice of performing an upgrade. Remember that upgrading your secondary stats is also completely random, so everything depends on the whims of the “rng god” that will decide whether you are given with 3 good sub stats, or 2 satisfactory and 1 awful with the latter having all 3 possible upgrades. This is the moment you know that the luck was definitely not in your favour.

When it comes to the set bonuses, you want to follow a simple pattern of how to upgrade multiple parts of your gear to make them work better together. Your choice, however, has to go along with the needs of your characters. We will try to describe in short which set stats you should choose for which of the characters’ roles.

When upgrading your attacker, you want to make sure that he or she will have a high damage base number and crit damage chance. Also, it’s worth to equip your attacking champion with boots that rely on a speed as their main stats, so he or she will attack before the enemy does. The only problem with that set is that your champion will probably be super squishy and will die quicker than more sturdy team members.

As it comes to defenders, most common setup would be three defence stats along with crit dmg or defence boost applied to gloves, defence boost on chest and speed on boots. The general rule for defenders is to make them sturdier than other classes for the cost of damage and HP.

HP champions rely on similar stats as defence heroes, with the exception of using equipment parts that boost their HP not defence. A good way to go is stacking HP on chest, gloves and, as usual, adding speed to boots in order to increase the chance for attack.

As to supporters, the thing is not so straightforward though. The role of champions that fall into that category can be described either as buffers or debuffers. You want to make them as fast as possible so they can apply buffs and debuffs before the enemies do that.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with a number of different options. After all, the game encourages players to try their own builds and make them see how they fit your playstyle!

And that would be all for our RAID: Shadow Legends beginners’ guide. This fresh gem by Plarium is a perfect example of how free-to-play games released on iOS and Android evolve over time not only in regards to graphics but also to gameplay. We hope that some of these tips and tricks will help you take your first steps in RAID: Shadow Legends, and if you happen to have some useful hints yourself, don’t be afraid to let us know about them in the comment box below.

Matt

Saturday 12th of September 2020

It's not possible.. Like now way! Unless you magically pulled a legendary with your first ancient shard... 0.5% chance.

Carl

Monday 31st of August 2020

Hi there, I am new to Raid: Shadow Legends and to be honest my focus is not really to play long term but to receive a bonus that another plattform / app is giving if I manage to level up a champion to 5 stars within 7 days.

Two questions regarding this.... - Is it even possible to reach 5 stars for a champion within 7 days? - What would be the best / fastest way to achieve this goal?

Thanks for your hints and oppinions!

Jeff

Wednesday 5th of February 2020

how do i disenchant upgraded heroes?

Jimmy

Sunday 1st of March 2020

You tell them that the way sucks and they will all die in the end. That gets me pretty disenchanted pretty quick!