Your first weeks in RAID

The one idea that matters

RAID hands you hundreds of champions over time, but your resources (silver, energy, skill books, good gear) are limited. A champion with six stars, a decent level and a full set of matching gear beats five champions that are all half-finished.

So the whole plan is: choose a small team, finish it, use it to earn more resources, and only then widen out. The rest of this page is just that idea applied to each stage of the game.

Week one: the Campaign

The Campaign is the story mode, and it is where nearly everyone spends their first days. It teaches the controls, drops your first gear and gives rewards for finishing stages and chapters.

1. Pick a starter. You choose one of four Rare champions: Kael, Athel, Galek or Elhain. All four are Magic-affinity attackers, and all four can be taken to the top rank, so the choice is smaller than it feels. A better champion you summon later can replace your pick.
2. Claim the free stuff. Open the login rewards, the progression rewards and the mission list, and check the Settings menu for promo codes. Many of these are one-time gifts that you only get once.
3. Play until you get stuck. Clear stages, equip new gear when it drops, level the team, and keep going. Do not over-plan after every fight.
4. Use Multi-Battle. Once you have cleared a stage, the game can repeat it for you several times in a row. Use it when you need experience or silver.
5. Save your shards. Open them when you know what you need, not immediately. See Shards, summon chances and the mercy system.

Weeks two to four: find a farmer

A farmer is a champion who can clear one particular stage alone and fast, again and again, with Auto and Multi-Battle. Farmers are how you turn energy into experience, silver and gear without watching every fight. Two stages come up in almost every guide as the target for a first farmer: the Brutal Campaign stage 12-3 (for experience and silver) and the Dungeons (for gear and potions).

A good first farmer is simply a champion with a reliable damage skill and a way to stay alive. It does not need to be fancy.

Food and farmers: who gets fed

"Food" (or "fodder") means champions you sacrifice to rank up another champion. To go from rank N to rank N+1 you need N champions of rank N, so the higher ranks eat a lot. Common, Uncommon and Rare champions are the usual meal; Mystery Shards and the Campaign give you plenty.

Spending gems and energy

Gems are the premium currency: you earn them slowly (quests, events, login rewards, some arena rewards), and the shop sells them for money. Energy is spent on almost every PvE fight and slowly refills by itself.

• Gems. The common advice from players is to avoid the shop's shard packs, silver packs and energy refills early, and to save gems for things that last: an upgrade of the Gem Mine (it pays back slowly, so divide its cost by its daily yield first - sources disagree on that yield) and, when you are ready, masteries for a champion you are keeping. Whatever you do, decide on a monthly limit, even if the limit is zero.
• Energy. It refills while you play, a level-up refills it fully, and several quests and rewards give you more. Spend it on your farmer's stage rather than on stages you will not repeat. More detail in Currencies and resources explained.

The middle game: widen out

Once your first team can clear the Campaign comfortably, open up the rest of the game in this order of usefulness:

• Dungeons - the main place to get gear of a chosen set, ascension potions and mastery scrolls. This is where your account really grows.
• Gear - learn the sets and stats before you spend silver on upgrades. Complete sets matter more than perfect stats early on.
• Arena - daily PvP with weekly rewards.
• Faction Wars and the Doom Tower - rewards for building teams out of a single faction, and the source of a few special champions.
• Clan Boss - needs a clan; a daily source of gear and shards. See below.

Join an active clan

A clan gives you access to the Clan Boss, the Hydra and the Chimera, plus a chat full of people who answer questions. "Active" is the key word: look for a clan whose members visibly take their daily Clan Boss attacks, and avoid a clan where half the roster is asleep. You can change clans later if it does not suit you, so you are not signing a contract.

The late game

When your core team is strong, the long-term goals open up: the harder Clan Boss difficulties, the Hydra, the Chimera, relics, blessings and the full set of masteries. At this stage it is mostly about speed, accuracy and the details of your gear. The guides on this site go through each one.

Rough milestones

Treat these as signposts, not deadlines. Everyone moves at their own pace.

Mistakes to skip

• Upgrading gear everywhere. Silver is limited. Upgrade the pieces you will keep.
• Chasing the "perfect" piece. A set that matches the job and sensible main stats is good enough for a long time.
• Watching only damage. Speed and accuracy decide a lot of fights.
• Forgetting the inbox. Boosters and rewards there can expire, and the game will not claim them for you.
• Skipping the daily routine. Small rewards add up over months. See your daily and weekly checklist.

Next step: your daily and weekly checklist. If a word in this guide was new, the glossary explains it.