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Champions are the essence of RAID: Shadow Legends.
What champions you have, how you build them, and the composition of your team is the largest determent in how powerful you are in the game.
In this guide, we give you all the basic information you need on champions in RAID: Shadow Legends.
Table of contents
- Starter champion
- Factions, rarity, affinity, and role
- Make champions stronger
- What champions to keep
- What do to with champions and duplicates
- How many champions are there in the game
Starter champion
You cannot play RAID: Shadow Legends without any champions.
That’s why you’re given a choice to pick between four champions at the beginning of the game as your starter champion.
- Elhain
- Kael
- Galek
- Athel
The best starter champion in the game is, according to most players ourselves included, Kael.
Recommended Read: How to Reroll in RAID: Shadow Legends
No matter what champion you choose as your starter, you’re going to be using them for a long time, as they’ll be stronger than most champions you get early on in the game.
Factions, rarity, affinity, and role
Every champion in the game is unique with their own set of skills and playstyle.
All champions in the game also belong to one of 14 factions:
- Banner Lords
- High Elves
- The Sacred Order
- Barbarians
- Ogryn Tribes
- Lizardmen
- Skinwalkers
- Orcs
- Demonspawn
- Undead Hordes
- Dark Elves
- Knights Revenant
- Dwarves
- Shadowkin
What faction a champion belongs to only determines what crypts you can use them in, in Faction Wars and what accessories they can wear, as these are faction-specific.
There are five rarities in the game, each of which becomes increasingly difficult to obtain.
- Common
- Uncommon
- Rare
- Epic
- Legendary
Champions of higher rarity are, in general, more powerful than those of lesser rarity.
Learn more in our RAID: Shadow Legends tier list.
Every champion in the game has one of four affinities that determine whether or not they deal extra damage to or take extra damage from another champion.
The four affinities in RAID: Shadow Legends are:
- Magic (Blue)
- Spirit (Green)
- Force (Red)
- Void (Purple)
You can see the affinity of a champion next to its name in the Champions tab of the game.
Be sure to check our guide on the affinity system to get a better understanding of the system.
Lastly, each champion in the game are assigned one of four roles:
- Attack
- Support
- Defense
- HP
The role of a champion gives an indication of what their specialties are and what their skillset offers.
However, the role should not be viewed as an absolute description of the champion’s capabilities.
Some champions might perform well in other roles than the role they’ve been assigned by the game.
Make champions stronger
To progress in the game, you need to make your champions stronger.
Here are the different ways that you can make your champions stronger in RAID: Shadow Legends:
- Leveling up
- Upgrading rank
- Upgrading skills
- Ascending
- Artifacts
- Masteries
- Great hall boosts
You can learn more about ranking up, ascending, upgrading skills, and leveling up champions in our guide on how to upgrade champions in RAID: Shadow Legends.
Also, make sure to check out our artifacts guide to get all the information on artifacts, how to obtain them, and more.
Great hall boosts are stat boosts you can unlock in the Great Hall located in the City by collecting medals in the Arena.
What champions to keep
Your champion vault will quickly be filled up in RAID: Shadow Legends, and it gets expensive to keep upgrading its capacity.
Therefore, you want to get rid of champions often by using them as fodder for upgrading other champions.
Recommended Read: RAID: Shadow Legends Beginner’s Guide
But with so many champions in the game, it can be difficult to know what champions to keep and which ones to get rid of.
To begin with, you can safely use all champions of either common or uncommon (grey and green) rarity as fodder for other champions.
The only time where you might not want to use an uncommon champion as fodder is if there is champion fusion you can do with that champion.
You can check the fusion tab yourself, or you can simply select a champion as fodder in the game, and if there is a fusion where you can use that champion, it’ll tell you in a pop-up message.
You can easily acquire champions that are better than almost every single common and uncommon champion in the game.
This means that you only really have to consider whether a champion is worth keeping if it’s either rare, epic, or legendary.
We highly recommend checking out who the best champions in RAID: Shadow Legends are in our tier list.
You can use our tier list as guidance when determining whether or not to keep a champion.
If a champion is either S or A rank, then we definitely recommend keeping it.
You also want to strongly consider keeping champions of B rank unless you have progressed far into the game already and have a rooster of many strong champions.
If there is a specific champion that you really want to try because you find it interesting, then you should also keep it, even if it’s ranked C or lower in our tier list.
Sometimes, champions that aren’t ranked the highest can still be useful given the right circumstances and team around it.
What to do with champions and duplicates
As you keep acquiring more champions in the game, you might wonder what to do with all of them and the duplicates you have of some champions.
The four uses of champions in the game:
- On your team in battles
- As fodder for upgrading the level or rank of other champions
- To upgrade the skills of a champion, if the champion in question is the same as the one’s skills you are upgrading
- For champion fusions
Most of the champions you get in the game are either common or uncommon and should just be used for fodder for upgrading other champions.
If you’re using an uncommon champion on your team, then you want to keep the duplicates of that champion, as you can use them to upgrade that champion’s skills instead of using skill tomes.
Lastly, you can use some champions as sacrifices to fuse other more powerful ones, but the game will tell you if that’s the case upon selecting them for upgrading other champions’ level or rank.
You can also check yourself what champions you need for the currently available champion fusions in the Portal.
How many champions are there in the game
There are almost 600 unique champions in RAID: Shadow Legends between the 14 factions.
At the time of this writing, there are exactly 596 champions in the game.
New champions are being released regularly, so chances are that when you read this, there are more than 600 unique champions in the game.
You can see every single champion that is currently in the game by clicking the Index button at the bottom of the screen in the City.
In the Index, you can see a list of all factions in the game, and by clicking one of them, you can see all the champions that belong to that faction.
If you’re like most players, you want to collect and experience many different champions.
Therefore, we recommend you check out our guide on how to get champions in RAID: Shadow Legends.
Those are the basics that you need to know about champions in RAID: Shadow Legends!
Have any input or suggestions for this guide? Let us know in the comment section below.
