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Making your champions more powerful is one of the things that you’ll be spending a lot of time doing in RAID: Shadow Legends.
There are many different ways to make champions stronger in the game, and as tempting as it is, it’s not always the wisest choice to blindly upgrade any champion.
Increasing the power of your team is essential to the rate of your progress in the game, which is why you want to max out champions as fast as possible.
Recommended Read: RAID: Shadow Legends Energy Guide
In short, the fastest way to level up and max out champions is to keep training fodder champions while you farm items to upgrade your main champions.
You can find more information on all of this in this guide, where we cover the fastest way to level up and max out champions in RAID: Shadow Legends, as well as the considerations that you want to take while you do so.
Table of contents
- What is maxing out a champion?
- What champions to level up and max out
- How to level up champions fast
- How to max out champions fast
What is maxing out a champion?
Maxing out a champion refers to upgrading the champion to its maximum potential.
To get a champion to its maximum potential, you have to rank it up to 6-stars, the maximum rank, level it up to 60, ascend it to ascension level 6, upgrade its skills, unlock all masteries, and give it powerful artifacts and accessories.
Because of the way the game is made, it is incredibly difficult to fully max out any champion.
Skill tomes or duplicates can be hard to come by, especially for epic and legendary champions, and stats are randomly rolled on artifacts and accessories.
Therefore, maxing out a champion is also used simply to refer to deciding to invest resources and bringing a champion close to being fully maxed out.
Even players who’ve been playing for years usually don’t have their entire team fully maxed out, just close to it.
Some of the things that you can consistently max out on champions because you can farm for it are:
- Rank
- Level
- Ascension level
- Masteries
- Artifacts*
*You can farm artifacts that are close to being perfect, but usually, you could technically get an artifact that is a bit better.
If a champion is of rare rarity, then you’ll have a much easier time maxing out its skill upgrades, especially if that rare is farmable, so you can use duplicates.
What champions to level up and max out
Choosing what champion to level up and max out is an important decision in regards to your progress in RAID: Shadow Legends.
Maxing out the wrong champion will cost you a ton of resources, and with the right champion choice, you would have been able to progress further using the same resources.
There is not one single champion that is the best to max out, as it depends on what champions you have.
The next champion that you choose to max out should fit what your main team currently lacks.
If you’ve yet to max out any champion in the game, the best champion to max out is one that can carry you through the campaign and solo-farm dungeons.
For many players, this champion will be your starting champion, like Kael or Athel. Starting champions are strong overall and have great AoE, making them suitable for solo-farming and progression.
Another factor to consider when choosing what champion to max out is the rarity of that champion.
Most players want to max out champions that are legendary or epic. However, often that isn’t always the best strategy.
The resource cost of maxing out champions sharply increases the higher the rarity. A rare champion is much easier to max out in terms of ascension and skill upgrades, which is another reason why you might want to choose a strong rare champion as your first champion to 6-star and max out.
Some rare champions can also be actively farmed in the game and are easy to obtain from mystery shards, making it easy to get duplicates for upgrading their skills.
Later on in the game, you, of course, want to start maxing out epic and legendary champions, as the best legendaries are stronger than the best rares.
But, if progression is a high priority for you, it might be best to go with rare champions when choosing your first and maybe second champion to max out.
How to level up champions fast
The fastest way to level up champions in RAID: Shadow Legends is to use all your XP brews and then farm stage 6 of any chapter in the campaign with an XP boost when you have no more brews.
XP brews are not easy to farm, so most of them you’ll get from events, tournaments, and free packs.
You can also get XP brews as drops from dungeons, but don’t farm for them there just for XP. Your energy is better spent in the campaign XP-wise. Some missions also give XP brews.
Once you’ve used up the XP brews in the Tavern that you had laying around, the fastest way to level up champions is to farm stages in the campaign. Go with the highest difficulty that you can farm with just one champion.
If you can time your XP farming for champions with an XP boost from your weekly or advanced quests, you can speed up your champion leveling greatly.
Stage 6 of any chapter yields the most XP to champions, but stage 3 yields the most silver when selling the artifacts dropped while still giving a lot of XP. So, if you want to farm silver at the same time, go with stage 3. But if you’re just after as much XP as possible, go with stage 6.
When farming stage 3 or stage 6 for leveling up champions, you want to use only one strong champion that can solo the stage and then three champions that you want to level up. This ensures that you spend your energy efficiently.
XP from the stage is divided equally between the champions on your team, even if they are defeated in battle.
So, if you have 4 champions on a team, each of them will receive 25% of the XP obtained in that battle.
How to max out champions fast
The essence of maxing out champions fast in RAID: Shadow Legends is farming efficiently. The more efficiently you can farm, the faster you can max out champions.
When looking to max out champions, these are the items and resources that you need:
- Fodder champions
- Arcane and affinity potions
- Mastery scrolls
- Artifacts and accessories
- Skill books
The first four of these can be farmed, while your best shot at getting skill books is from events, tournaments, advanced quests, and various chests.
We recommend not using skill books on just any champion. Instead, save them up for when you want to max out a champion.
Now that you’ve decided on a champion to max out and know what items and resources you need, it’s time to upgrade.
Before you start farming, go ahead and use whatever of the above-listed items and resources that you already have lying around on the champion you’ve chosen to rank them up, ascend them, level them up, upgrade their skills, unlock masteries, and equip artifacts.
Fodder champions for ranking up
Obtaining fodder champions to use for ranking up is going to be one of the main hurdles of maxing out a character.
You don’t want to use epic or legendary champions as fodder to rank up another unless you’re completely sure that you’ll never use that champion, and even then, we still think you should keep them. We strongly recommend using rare and uncommon champions as fodder instead.
Your primary way of obtaining fodder champions is going to be from Mystery Shards.
There are tons of Mystery Shards to be obtained everywhere in the game. If you just purchase all Mystery Shards that appear in the market and farm dungeons and the campaign from time to time, you’ll quickly have hundreds.
After summoning a bunch of champions from Mystery Shards, you’ll have a lot of uncommon and some rares.
At this point, it’s time to get those rares and uncommons up in ranks so they can be used as fodder to get your selected champion to rank 6, 6 stars.
Fodder champions don’t need to be of a specific level to be used as fodder for ranking up, but the champion that you are ranking up has to be of max level for its current rank.
Because you need to eventually rank up some of the rare and uncommon champions themselves so they can be used as fodder to get the selected champion from rank 4 to 5, and from rank 5 to 6, you need to train them.
The fastest way to get fodder champions to max level is to run stage 6 with one champion that can solo-carry and then the rest of the team being fodder champions. Check out the previous paragraph for more information.
If you’re maxing out an epic champion, then you need a total of four 4-star fodder champions or chickens and five 5-star fodder champions or chickens. If you’re maxing out a legendary champion, you need only the five 5-star fodder champions.
Assuming a rank 3 champion is already max level, it’s easy to rank it up, as you just need to use other rank 3 champions that can be level 1.
Getting one champion to rank 5 so that it can be used as fodder when you’re ranking the selected champion from rank 5 to 6 requires:
- One max-level rank 4 champion
- Four rank 4 champions of any level
To get those five champions at rank 4, you need:
- Five max-level rank 3 champions
- Fifteen rank 3 champions of any level
If you were only using rare champions, this comes out to a total of 20 rare champions per one rank 5 rare champion, assuming they all start at rank 3. To get the five rank 5 champions that you need as fodder to upgrade a champion’s rank from 5 to 6, you’d need a total of 100 rare champions.
If you were using only uncommon champions as fodder, you’d need the following number to get the twenty rank 4 champions:
- Twenty max-level rank 2 champions
- Fourty rank 2 champions of any level
If you were only using uncommon champions, this comes out to a total of 60 uncommon champions per one rank 5 uncommon champion, assuming they all start at rank 2. To get the five rank 5 champions needed as fodder to upgrade a champion’s rank from 5 to 6, you’d need a total of 300 uncommon champions.
You will, of course, end up using a mix of both rare and uncommon champions, so the total number of champions required will end up between 100 and 300.
Arcane and affinity potions for ascension
To max out the ascension level of a champion, you need to farm a lot of both arcane and affinity potions.
The fastest way to get the potions needed for ascension is to farm the Keeps in the Dungeon map.
Make sure to also utilize the potion mixer located in the Tavern under the Ascend tab to turn lesser potions into greater and greater into superior.
While your farming potions in any Keep, be sure to bring fodder champions on your team so that you train those for when you need them in the future.
Being efficient with your farming and energy, like training fodder champions while farming potions, is a great way to ensure that your progression in the game goes smoothly.
If possible, bring only one carry champion and four fodder champions when running Keeps.
Just make sure that you don’t have to go down to a too low stage level with this setup. Otherwise, bring only one to three fodder champions.
Mastery scrolls for unlocking masteries
Farming mastery scrolls for your champion in Minotaur’s Labyrinth in the Dungeon map will also be a big part of maxing out a champion.
If you have enough gems, consider using them to unlock all the mastery scrolls for the champion you are maxing, as it’s one of the best ways to spend your gems.
Purchasing all mastery scrolls for a champion comes with an extra benefit as well.
Once a champion has all its mastery scrolls, it can no longer get them from the Minotaur boss. This means that if you run Minotaur with the champion with all its mastery scrolls purchased and another champion, the second champion will always get all the scrolls.
Likewise, if you run Minotaur with the one champion with all its mastery scrolls and two other champions, one of the two other champions will always get the scrolls. This makes it much easier to farm scrolls efficiently.
Artifacts and accessories
Obtaining artifacts with both the right set and stats will require some farming. Check out our best artifacts guide to get more information on what artifacts to go for.
Depending on what artifacts you need for your champion, you’ll be farming either campaign levels or dungeons.
When farming either, we recommend, once again, that you bring as many fodder champions to train while you farm artifacts.
You’ll be farming all your accessories from the Spider boss in the Spider’s Den dungeon.
Accessories don’t have set effects, so when looking for the best one for your champion, the stats are all that matters, and that it is of the same faction, of course.
You now know what is needed to max out a champion. All that depends on how quickly you can max out a champion is how fast you can farm the items and resources you need!
As mentioned, both energy efficiency-wise and time-wise, it will prove to be fastest to combine different aspects of farming to max out champions, like training fodder champions while farming potions.
That’s how to quickly level up and max out champions in RAID: Shadow Legends!
Have any input or suggestions for this guide? Let us know in the comment section below.
Thanks! This was a lot of help.