Raid Shadow Legends Beginner Guide: Your First Month

A strong start in Raid Shadow Legends comes down to four habits: pick Kael as your starter, turn that starter into a Campaign farmer and push it to six stars, join an active Clan early for the Demon Lord, and save your shards for summon events instead of opening them on day one. Everything else, from dungeons and the Arena to Faction Wars and the Doom Tower, gets much easier once that first farmer is running.

We checked this against Plarium's RAID support guides to the Apprentice Pass, the Tavern, Multi-Battle, the Demon Lord, the Doom Tower, Faction Wars, promo codes and saving progress, plus HellHades' 2025 getting-started, energy and Arbiter mission coverage and CGMagazine's 2026 beginner guide, in November 2026.

Day One: Starter, Account and Codes

Plarium offers four starter champions: Galek, Athel, Elhain and Kael. HellHades' 2025 getting-started piece still names Kael the best long-term option and notes all four are Magic affinity. Kael earns that through a kit built for both farming and bosses: his basic attack carries an 80 percent chance of a Poison, Acid Rain hits every enemy and refills his turn meter for each kill, and Disintegrate strikes four times with more Poison chances. HellHades adds that he needs 85 percent Critical Rate to reliably crit with Acid Rain, which is a useful first gearing target. If you already chose someone else, HellHades' older progression guide ranked the four as Kael, then Elhain, Athel and Galek, which gives you a sense of how far apart they sit before you think about restarting.

Three quick jobs on the same day save trouble later:

1. Link your account. Plarium's support site says connecting a Plarium ID, Apple ID, Google account or Facebook both saves your progress and syncs devices. Our account guide walks through it and explains why you should link before ever launching the PC version.
2. Redeem a new-player code if you have one. Plarium's rules give you 72 hours from account creation and one new-player code per account; see our promo codes guide for where to enter it now that the mobile menu is gone.
3. Open the Apprentice Pass. Its free Starter track pays out for four daily challenges and a set of one-time Apprentice Challenges built around strengthening your starter.

Build Your First Farmer

HellHades' beginner energy guide gives the clearest early plan: spend most of your Energy in the Campaign, which it calls the most efficient place to farm experience, and get your starting champion to six stars as quickly as possible. Gear it with a Lifesteal set so it heals as it fights, and fill the other two artifact slots with Speed, Critical Rate or Cruel. Our artifact set guide explains what each of those does.

The Tavern rule to memorize is simple: ranking a champion up costs as many same-rank champions or Chickens as its current rank, and the champion drops back to Level 1 afterward. That is why your farmer's job is half leveling itself and half leveling food. Plarium gives every player 30 free Multi-Battle attempts a day, and a Champion Queue can feed up to 20 food champions through your farming stage automatically. CGMagazine's 2026 guide names Brutal 12-3 as the farming goal to aim for; our guide to leveling up fast covers the full setup.

Low-rarity pulls are not wasted either. The Tavern's Instant Upgrade button sacrifices Common and Uncommon champions of Rank 2 or lower in one tap to give XP to the champion you choose, so the flood of Mystery Shard results early on becomes fuel for your farmer instead of clutter.

Energy, Silver and the Daily Loop

Energy refills slowly while you are below your cap and not at all once you hit it, so the rhythm of a good day is logging in often enough that you never sit full. HellHades puts the refill at one point every three minutes and the eventual cap at 130, which works out to 480 points a day that a capped account simply loses. Purchased Energy can stack above the cap, but nothing regenerates while you are over it, so refills are best used right before a long farming session.

• Daily quests: HellHades notes they pay gems and account XP, and account XP is what raises your Energy cap.
• Silver: HellHades points to stage 3 of a Campaign chapter as the Silver farm, and you will need plenty, since ranking up and summoning both cost it.
• Demon Lord keys: you get one every six hours, so spending them through the day matters as much as Energy.
• Skill Tomes: they are rare enough that Plarium itself advises against spending them on champions you do not plan to keep, so hold them until your core team is clear.

Join a Clan and Hit the Demon Lord

The Demon Lord is Raid's Clan Boss, and Plarium calls attacking it the primary way of winning its extremely valuable Clan chests. Every member's attacks wear down the same health bar, and the damage you personally deal decides which chest you receive. The boss resets between 10:00 and 11:00 UTC each day, and a Clan that defeats it gives each contributor two chests instead of one.

• Pick an active Clan. Higher difficulties, from Easy up to Ultra-Nightmare, only open once your Clan beats the one below, and Plarium says the higher the difficulty, the more valuable the chests.
• Claim before you move. Plarium's Clan FAQ says you lose the day's chest if you leave before the reset, and changing Clans locks you out of the Demon Lord for an hour.
• Unlock Quick Battle. Dealing enough damage with one key to earn the top chest on a difficulty unlocks Quick Battle there and on every easier difficulty.

Those chests are also where the Cruel and Immortal artifact sets come from, and nowhere else, which is one more reason to pick a Clan that hits the boss every day. A quick way to judge activity: Plarium's Clan vs Clan tournament only opens to Clans with at least 10 members and 50 Clan Activity Stars over the previous seven days, so a Clan that regularly takes part is one that plays.

Unlocks to Plan Around

The Arbiter missions are your main progression checklist, and HellHades' January 2025 walkthrough flags a few traps. They come in four parts, ask you to fuse Justiciar and later Relickeeper, and include rank, level and ascension missions that the author believes are not retroactive, so hold off ascending champions until you reach those missions. Potion Keeps are open every day for your first seven days and then move to a rotating schedule, so progressing quickly early saves real time.

• Level 6: the Tavern opens for leveling, ranking, skills and ascension.
• Level 40: the Doom Tower, which GINX and Pocket Gamer both list at this level. Plarium describes 120 floors in 30-day rotations, with 10 Gold and 10 Silver Keys every day.
• Level 45: Background Multi-Battle, so farming runs while you play other modes.
• Faction Wars: one Crypt per Faction, 21 stages each, and keys that are only used up on wins, so a Faction you have barely built can still attempt early stages for free.

The Classic Arena is worth a few easy fights a day from the start. HellHades' early-game advice is to win the fights you can and spend the medals upgrading the Great Hall, and its Arbiter walkthrough suggests pooling medals for the Affinity bonus mission and considering Accuracy upgrades there, since they can reduce the stat requirements for many champions.

Shards: When to Open Them

The official RAID site lists Mystery Shards at 74.2 percent Common, 24.4 percent Uncommon and 1.4 percent Rare, Ancient and Void Shards at 91.5 percent Rare, 8 percent Epic and 0.5 percent Legendary, and Sacred Shards at 94 percent Epic and 6 percent Legendary. Mystery Shards are fine to open whenever, but Ancient and Sacred Shards are worth holding for x2 events, when Plarium's FAQ says the Legendary chance doubles to 1 percent and 12 percent respectively. Void Shards share the Ancient odds but only summon Void affinity champions, so they follow the same rule. Our guides to Sacred Shards and the mercy system go deeper.

When champions arrive, look them up before they go into the Tavern. Plenty of strong Epics have names a new player will not recognize, and a current tier list takes seconds to check.

Beginner Mistakes to Avoid

• Spreading resources thin. CGMagazine's 2026 guide advises leveling a small core group of champions; a few strong ones tend to clear more content than many half-built ones.
• Ascending too early. Wait for the Arbiter ascension missions if they may not count past progress.
• Sitting at full Energy. Every hour at the cap is Energy you never get back.
• Feeding unknown champions. Check first, especially Epics.
• Skipping the account link. Without one, moving to a new phone or to PC is far harder.
• Chasing every fusion. HellHades warns that new and free-to-play accounts can drain their resources chasing every monthly fusion; our fusion guide explains how to tell which ones are worth it.

Prefer a Head Start?

Every new account starts from the same long Campaign. If you would rather begin with stronger champions and banked resources, the store's Raid Shadow Legends page lists Raid accounts, most of them starter accounts whose listings name their headline champions and stocked resources such as Energy, gems and silver. Platform notes vary by listing, so check that the login fits your device. Plarium's terms forbid buying or selling accounts, so read our account guide above before choosing that route.

Frequently Asked Questions