It’s 2024, and it’s time to finally play RAID: Shadow Legends—if you haven’t already. The turn-based RPG was once one of the most common gaming sponsors out there, enough so that it almost became a meme. Over the years, a plethora of creators made videos praising the game.

It's not too late to get started, though. RAID: Shadow Legends is still worth playing if you love the genre, even in 2024. Our guide contains everything new players need to know to make the journey smooth, including the basics of combat, a guide to the multitude of menus in RAID: Shadow Legends, and some general tips.
 

Battle basics

In RAID: Shadow Legends, combat is turn-based. You’ll battle against small groups of enemies with a team of three to five Champions, each with a special pool of abilities that are used to attack—or sometimes heal, buff allies, and apply status effects to enemies.

Each Champion and enemy has an Affinity, displayed with an icon and color above their head. There are four affinities: Magic (blue), Force (red), Spirit (green), and Void (purple). Aside from Void, Affinities are in a power triangle, where Magic beats Spirit, Spirit beats Force, and Force beats Magic. Void isn’t super effective or super weak against any of the Affinities. Understanding and applying effective moves is a key part of progressing through RAID: Shadow Legends.

Artifacts are another key part of battles in RAID: Shadow Legends. Artifacts are equippable items for your Champions. Each Champion has six Artifact slots, and filling them provides stat boosts and sometimes even passive abilities that can strengthen your team.

Now that you know the basics of battle, let's break down every menu and area in RAID: Shadow Legends. If you’re jumping into the game for the first time, whether on PC or mobile, the main screen can look overwhelming. There are a ton of options, and while the game has a tutorial, it only explains what everything is once.

We’ll start with the action, since that's how RAID: Shadow Legends starts.
 

Battle menu

The Campaign is where you’ll spend a lot of your time early on. You’ll build up your first powerful team here, and it’s the best place to get Artifacts and even three-star Champions early on. There are 12 different areas in the campaign, each with Normal, Hard, Brutal, and Nightmare difficulty settings.

Dungeons are weekly rotating bosses that drop everything from summoning shards to level-up materials to Artifacts. These change week to week and also include event bosses throughout the year. You can run Dungeons at different levels. The boss of any given Dungeon is always the same, but running at a higher level means the difficulty goes up—as does the chance of scoring some impressive gear.

The Arena is where you can take on other players. There’s both an attack and a defense side to this, so make sure you set a team up for defense, protecting against any attacks from other players.

Once you’re in a clan, you can tackle the Clan Bosses to get invaluable loot. This requires everyone to participate, and it’s a good way to contribute to a clan that you’re a part of.

At higher levels, you unlock Doom Tower and Cursed City. The Doom Tower is like a massive dungeon with 120 floors, making it some of the hardest content in RAID: Shadow Legends, and something mainly intended for endgame players. Cursed City is similar to the Campaign, containing a lot of new battles to tackle. You'll unlock it at level 52.

The Bastion

There's a lot to interact with around the Bastion, the main screen of RAID: Shadow Legends. Some of the major areas are the Portal, which is where you summon new Champions, and the Tavern, which is where you’ll level up Champions and their abilities.

The Great Hall lets you give your Champions stat boosts depending on their Affinity. These stat boosts apply to all your Champions for each Affinity you upgrade, and you get the materials to boost their stats from the Arena.

The Guardian Ring lets you passively level up your team, get stat boosts, and even trade in Champions to get tokens for new Champions.  

The Market is the place to go for anything random you’re looking for, whether low-level fodder Champions or early Artifacts. It refreshes throughout the day—and you can spend gems to refresh it quicker.

You’ll need to unlock the Mine to use it, which costs 500 Gems. Once you do so, you can passively farm Gems. It’s a great way for free-to-play accounts to get additional Gems, but it will take a bit of restraint to save up enough to unlock it.

At higher levels, you’ll get access to the Forge and the Altar of Souls. The Forge lets you craft Artifacts, and you’ll get the materials to do so from battles. The Altar of Souls lets you power up your Champions by collecting soul parts for them.
 

Side menus

RAID: Shadow Legends hides some important features in various menus. These are generally free rewards that can be hard to find if you don’t realize they’re there.

On the left side of the screen, there’s a menu with several different options. Things come and go from this menu, but the important areas to check are the Daily Login Rewards, Progression Rewards, and Plarium Points Program. These all offer ways to get free stuff in RAID: Shadow Legends. If you’ve come to the game with a promo code from a content creator, you’ll also use the Promo Codes area of this menu.

Along the bottom of the screen, there are several icons. Most of these are pretty important. Missions, Quests, and Challenges all reward you for doing something in-game, and you can even browse through them to see how you can get freebies. Some are as easy as changing your profile picture or even opening a menu—don’t let these easy rewards get lost in the sea of notifications!

There’s also an area for Clans, another important part of RAID: Shadow Legends. Joining a clan gives you access to clan rewards and even some events, like Clan vs. Clan. These can help you progress quicker and maybe even make some friends along the way.

On the right side of the screen, you’ll mainly see event notifications. This is also where you'll find Daily Playtime Rewards, which you'll earn after playing for 5 minutes, 20 minutes, 40 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, 120 minutes, and 180 minutes. If you’re playing on PC, then having RAID: Shadow Legends open in the background while you do something else can help you get the big rewards.

Tips and tricks

If you’re just starting your RAID: Shadow Legends journey, there are a few things to keep in mind.

First, when you start playing, don’t get caught up in making your team as strong as possible after every fight. The best thing you can do is to start the Campaign and go as far as you can until you can’t pass a level. Then you can re-evaluate your team and their Artifacts, slot in new ones if necessary, and level everything up. There are a lot of battles in RAID: Shadow Legends, and you don’t need to rework your whole team every single time.

When you do start looking at your Artifacts, make sure you’re checking out the set bonuses that come with them. Every Artifact belongs to a set, and Artifacts in each set are designed to work together. They generally match a specific playstyle, so you know they’ll be good for specific character types. For example, high defense Artifacts or sets of Artifacts are going to be good on your tanks, enabling them to take more damage for teammates.

If you’re really struggling to get through an area, take a look at the rewards from previous areas. You’re not guaranteed to get every reward when you beat a battle, and you may have missed a Champion or an Artifact that could make RAID: Shadow Legends a bit easier. Luckily, you can set your team to Auto and let them go through as many times as you need to collect all the rewards.

Likewise, make sure you’re not missing out on easy rewards. Summons appear in many different areas, and checking things like the Market or even your Quests can sometimes get you free Summons.

There are also rewards you can get by obtaining a certain number of stars from Campaign battles. You can see these at the bottom of the Campaign screen. You’ll get one, two, or three stars every time you win a battle, and the more you get, the more you're rewarded. If you’re really stuck, then the extra money or Summons may be just enough to help you upgrade your Champions or Artifacts enough to progress.

Also, don’t be afraid to change your team up. You may have a great team for 90% of the battles you encounter, but weaknesses play a major part in battles. You can tell what units are best against what by looking at the arrows when they attack—if an opponent has a green arrow above their head, then the current unit will do good damage against them. If it’s red, then your Champion is weak against them. You’ll need to swap Champions in and out of your team depending on who you’re facing, which means you’ll need to level up more Champions than you can have on your team at one time.

That’s everything you need to know to get started. You can start playing RAID: Shadow Legends for free on the Epic Games Store on PC, or find it in your phone’s application store if you’re playing the mobile version.