RAID: Shadow Legends throws hundreds of champions and a dozen overlapping systems at you before you've even finished the tutorial. Most of that can wait. What can't wait is understanding affinity, gear, and where to spend your first week of energy, because the choices you make in the first few days decide how fast everything after them goes.
Learn affinity before you pick a favorite champion
Every champion belongs to one of four affinities: Magic (blue), Force (red), Spirit (green), or Void (purple). Magic beats Spirit, Spirit beats Force, and Force beats Magic — a straightforward rock-paper-scissors loop where the counter affinity deals bonus damage and resists debuffs better against its weak target. Void sits outside that triangle entirely, with no bonus against anyone and no one holding a bonus against it, which is why so many top-tier champions end up Void. In practice this matters most on the Campaign and in Faction Wars, where enemy teams often lean into a single affinity — bring a counter-affinity team and stages that felt brutal suddenly clear in one attempt. Don't build your first serious team around whichever champion looks coolest; build it around covering all three counter-relationships so you're never stuck fielding the wrong color into a stage.
Understand rarity, but level for role, not stars
Champions come in six rarities — Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary, and Mythical — and it's tempting to dump every resource into the shiniest Legendary you pull. Don't. A well-built Rare or Epic will out-farm an undeveloped Legendary for weeks, and your account's early bottleneck is champion levels and skill upgrades, not rarity. Pick one champion with a strong AoE (area-of-damage) skill as your Campaign farmer and commit to it. That single farmer is what lets you clear Campaign stages efficiently for XP brews, silver, and gear, which in turn is what funds everyone else's growth. Chasing a second or third project champion before your farmer is fully built is the single most common way new accounts stall out.
Gear is six artifacts and three accessories, not a pile of loot
Each champion equips six artifacts — Weapon, Helmet, Shield, Gauntlets, Chestplate, and Boots — plus three accessories: Ring, Amulet, and Banner. Every slot has a fixed main stat (Weapon always rolls ATK, for example), and pieces gain random substats as you level them up to a cap of 16. Don't upgrade gear past level 12 or 13 until you're sure it's staying on that champion long-term; substats lock in as you level, so wasted upgrades on the wrong piece are wasted silver. When you're choosing what to equip, prioritize Accuracy on any champion whose skills apply debuffs, then Speed, then HP — raw ATK and DEF matter less than surviving and landing your effects. Once you start clearing dungeons consistently, look for 4-piece Savage or Lethal sets; both let the wearer ignore 25% of enemy DEF, which is the single biggest damage multiplier available to a mid-game roster.
Spend your first week on Campaign, not distractions
The Campaign has 12 chapters across four difficulties — Normal, Hard, Brutal, and Nightmare — and it's your main source of XP, silver, and early gear, so nearly all of your starting Energy should go there rather than into Arena battles or dungeon attempts you can't win yet. Stage 6 of each chapter is consistently the best XP-per-Energy stage, so if you're grinding levels on your farmer, that's where to camp. Push for three stars on every stage you clear rather than just beating it once — the cumulative star rewards add up to real gear and resources later. Alongside Campaign progress, put your first Mastery points into your farmer champion; Masteries are permanent passive bonuses unlocked with points earned from leveling, and investing them in one champion first gets you a noticeably stronger farmer instead of a handful of mediocre ones.
Move into dungeons once your farmer can solo-clear Campaign
RAID's five main Faction Dungeons — Spider's Den, Fire Knight's Castle, Ice Golem's Peak, Dragon's Lair, and Minotaur's Labyrinth — are where you'll farm the gear sets and leveling fuel that Campaign eventually stops providing. Spider's Den is the easiest entry point: bring a healer, since the Spider boss applies stacking poison debuffs that punish teams without sustain. Ice Golem's Peak rewards restraint rather than raw damage — burst the boss too hard too fast and its shield mechanics punish you, so a steady, controlled team clears it more reliably than a glass-cannon one. Fire Knight's Castle is widely considered the toughest of the five and is worth skipping until you have multi-hit champions that can break its shield quickly; there's no shame in leaving it for later. A realistic first-week target is unlocking dungeon floors 10 through 13, not clearing them at full difficulty.
Save the Doom Tower for when you have a real roster
The Doom Tower unlocks at account level 40 and resets every 30 days, with 120 floors split across Normal and Hard difficulty, each floor throwing three waves of enemies at you before a boss fight. You get 10 Gold Keys and 10 Silver Keys daily — Gold Keys open uncompleted floors, Silver Keys open uncompleted Secret Rooms and floors you've already beaten once. As a rough benchmark, if your team can comfortably clear Dragon's Lair stages 15 to 20, Normal-difficulty Doom Tower floors should feel manageable. Don't force your way in early just because it's unlocked — going in underleveled burns keys on failed attempts instead of progress, and those keys don't roll over.