Are you sure you need to expand your storage and vault yet? Yes, at some point you will spend silver for that, but only when you in desperate need for more room.

Who to keep? Every champion that is a part of these fusion you will find in the summon portal under fuse tab. You will need those for your progress mission. If you can, keep every epic+ even if they are bad. If you can afford now, keep every rare, they may become part of future fusion. Keep every void.

There are 2, maybe 3 uncommon that may have some use, just don't bother with them. They are more like end game / content creators toys, not beginners choice.

There are some endgame rare, it is easier for now to just refer to their user rating in game. Later on you will learn (or ask) who is realy worth investment. Apothecary, Coldheart... for example.

Your Kael is your best investment right now. You can be sure you will use him for some time, so don't hesitate to put rare books on him (the blue one, all other books you should consider as "treasure") and build him to 6*.

Also keep you gems, don't refresh Market /Arena and if you feel you want to spend them on some shard packs from Shop, it's ok when you just start and are of great need of more / good champions. When you start to get some useful champions it's better to keep your shards for x2 events, but now it make sense to open those and pray to rgn god to smile on you. 

There are some uncommons that could be useful to you already now and can continue to be useful later on. But the thing with uncommons is, you will be summoning so many mystery shards in time that you will get each one of them many, many times so it's really not a big deal if you get rid of a good one (unless you already put effort into upgrading them, of course). For rares and epics, that's absolutely not the case and I agree with Daering on that. 

Outlaw Monk should be useful on your Clan Boss team from the start because of the poisons, while Armiger can be useful in dungeons, especially Spider (provided you give him gear that increases his defense and crit rate as much as possible - his attack rating is completely irrelevant as his damage is based on his defense rating). In the early game I also found Sniper quite useful with her double hit-AOE attack, she can do some nice damage. But that one will soon be replaced as you get more rares and epics. 

And very important is Daering's point about skill books. Those are the rarest resource and if you put any skill books on a champion that you won't be using for the long term, you will absolutely regret it later. E.g. when you get Shaman from the login rewards - yes, bring her to level 40 and use her, or even to level 50, but don't waste your epic skill books on her. 

@Daering  @L9753    Thank you for the info.  I am buffing Squire, Hardscale and Skellag for defense in the arena along with Valerie.  They will have to do for now.  All the Rare I have found so far are attack. 

I like Sniper but she is squishy.  Should I increase her HP or Def with all the free gear I am collecting?

ClosedPoly said:

@Daering  @L9753    Thank you for the info.  I am buffing Squire, Hardscale and Skellag for defense in the arena along with Valerie.  They will have to do for now.  All the Rare I have found so far are attack. 

I like Sniper but she is squishy.  Should I increase her HP or Def with all the free gear I am collecting?

I am 72 and haven't played many online games.  Farmville and World of Warships is my experience.  I like this game much more.  I like the friendly attitude of the other players willing to help.  Thanks a lot.   

I think you misunderstand the arena defense. Your arena defense team shouldn't look much different than your main arena offense team and should also include Kael, Warpriest and Valerie if those are your best rare champions. The only difference between arena defense and arena offense is that with defense, you have to put a fixed team which you aren't in control of during battles, while on offense you can adjust your team before the battle based on what the defending team looks like and control the tactics during the battle. 

Generally speaking, you want the gear to further increase a champion's strong sides, so offensive gear (attack percentage, crit rate, crit damage) on attack based champions, defensive gear on defensive champions (also, always look at a skill's description to check if its damage is based on attack, on defense, or more rarely on HP). That being said, if you have 'glass cannons' who do massive damage but die very easily, that's also not good in most fights, so you need to find a balance indeed. 

Also very important on all champions: speed. The higher your speed, the more turns you get relative to your opponent, which means you can just do more of everything (attacks, healing, buffing or debuffing,... ). 

Ok, let me give you some other very basic tips, just to be sure you are on the right track.

The rarity of the champions is important, for obvious and not so obvious reasons. Obviously, its way more badass to have unique named and unique looking epic and legendary champions with strong skill kit than some generic uncommon with one or two skills that doesn't make a difference.:))). It is a gotcha/collector game after all.

But from gameplay perspective you will prefer higher tier champions not only because they usually have more and better skill sets (and look better :P), buy also of the way they scale. Building uncommon or rare to 6/60 most of the time will result in lower overall champion stats. Rare attack champion 6/60 may sometime end up with 2/3 of his base or important stats compared to good epics or Legenrary one and this will give you hard time building them properly (equipment/stat wise). As obvious this seems to be for those that play long enough, it may not be the case for someone that just start the game. We all somehow knows from the begging that higher tier champions are better that lower ones, but how big is that gap you will start to understand when you are overinvest in bad/lower tier champion. Also, there is some hidden things like damage modifiers and they further increase that gap.

Your first "wall" in game will be your first 6* champion. Grinding is major part of the game and you should have your first 6* with that in mind. It must be champion, that can speed up and make somehow easier those farming process for you. Farming is process in which you level up enough useless champions, so you can "feed" them to your better one. You are still too early into game, but when you make some 5^ champions to help you have some progress into campaign and dungeons, you should start working on your first 6^. Better be prepared for some unpleasant grinding :) Your best choice for your first 6^ as of now is Kael.

Also, he must be part of your every team now and your primary focus. He is just too good rare to just sit and watch how some Squire, Hardscale and Skellag have taken his place. :) No offense! Just use him, he is the best you have.

You have to understand how stats affect gameplay. Speed, crt rate, crt. damage, accuracy, resistance... you have many stats and you have to dig around the net or that forum for some basic understanding. Some things are obvious even if you didn't have long game history, some are not so obvious or have specificity use here. Learning how these stats affect your gameplay will give you initial understanding how to equip your champions. More understanding will come with more digging or asking.

Speaking of asking - don't hesitate to ask. There are too many possibilities to make beginners mistakes, it's better it you can avoid some of them.

These are the epics I have now and their levels

Conquerer     R3L30

Kael     R4L40

Ox     R3L22

Rocktooth     R3L2

Siegebreaker     R3L17

Skullsworn     R3L23

Slayer     R3L1

Warmaiden     R3L1

Valerie     R3L30

Warpriest     R4L25

Some I have not had time to level up.  I like Kael, Warpriest to L50.  Others I need to level up, see them play. 

You may find a site like https://ayumilove.net/raid-shadow-legends-list-of-champions-by-ranking/ useful to see faster which champions are worth more than others - it also has rankings per type of content, gear recommendations and some general information about the game. That doesn't mean you should blindly follow it, certainly for the gear you shouldn't look too closely at the recommendations because those are kind of long-term goals, in the first couple of weeks and months you just use the best gear you can find, even if it's a long way from the perfect gear from that champion. And if you're using those champions in somewhat different roles, the gear priorities will also be different. 

Among your other champions, Warmaiden is the most important one to develop, because of her third skill with the ability to decrease defense on all enemies. That's useful everywhere but very, very important in arena, you will see countless teams with Kael and Warmaiden together. Always the same approach: Warmaiden goes first to try to decrease defense on all enemies, then Kael hits his AOE attack with much higher damage than he'd otherwise have. Later on you may get champions that can increase attack on your team, such as Spirithost, which makes that tactic even more devastating (Warpriest and Valerie also have increase attack buffs but only 25 percent, Spirithost has 50 percent). But remember, it can only work if you have enough speed (as well as accuracy on Warmaiden, because if your accuracy is low the opponent may resist the decrease defense attempt). 

As for major mistakes, I think the big ones to avoid early on are:

- getting rid of good champions - always check before sacrificing any rare/epic if they're any good, and preferably keep them in your vault even if they aren't, unless you already have that champion 

- putting skill books into champions that aren't worth it - leveling and ascending the wrong champions is a bit wasteful but you can easily get that energy or ascension potions back, while skill books are much harder to come by, at least after you've exhausted the ones you get from login/progress rewards early on

- focusing too much on progress missions or challenges, those are interesting to do but you should only be doing them in a way that helps your account in general (e.g. if you need to get a specific piece of gear from a specific campaign location, ok, but make sure you keep leveling up your champions while you keep repeating the stage to get that gear, swapping other champions in as needed). 

@TRIPS @L9753

I like your advice.  I am going to focus on getting Kael to 50 while I bring Warmaiden along to 40.  Would you look at my list above and see if I have any Epic that are low quality and can be food.  Since I dont have many I will need to uses Uncommon to manufacture 3 star for upgrading. 

I get Shaman in 2 days.  Is he a candidate for 60 also?

I would not sacrifice any epic early. Level them to 40. Get spirithost as well. I wouldn't really do anything with athel at this point. 

Once you get kael to 50, next step is to get kael to 60. Use lifesteal gear on kael.

ClosedPoly said:

@TRIPS @L9753

I like your advice.  I am going to focus on getting Kael to 50 while I bring Warmaiden along to 40.  Would you look at my list above and see if I have any Epic that are low quality and can be food.  Since I dont have many I will need to uses Uncommon to manufacture 3 star for upgrading. 

I get Shaman in 2 days.  Is he a candidate for 60 also?

I just got Athel and Hope from shards.  Isn't Athel a good one? 

I think you are confusing rares (3 star) with epics (4 star). Hope is an epic, but otherwise the above list are all rares. Athel is good, yes, but you already have Kael as your main damage dealer, she'd fill a similar role. In some cases you may want to use both together, but more often not. 

Neither Hope nor Shaman is particularly strong as epics go, less viable long-term than Kael or Athel, but they are not terrible and still better than an average rare. Shaman is useful early on because of the resurrect which you won't have on a lot of other champions yet. But probably by the time you've brought Kael to level 60 and then probably Warmaiden or Athel next, you will have enough better candidates that there's no point in taking Shaman to 60 anymore. Even just from the login rewards, you'll get Jizoh who is better than Shaman, and then High Khatun who is even better. 

Regarding food: at this point your primary goal should be to get, as quickly as possible, to a point where Kael is able to basically solo advanced campaign stages, because then you can put him in a team with 3 common or uncommon champions without any gear, who will promptly die but nobody cares, they are only there to get XP and become food. The best stage for farming is Brutal 12-3 or 12-6, but you won't be able to do that until Kael is (almost) at level 60 and geared well, so in the meantime you can do the same thing on lower levels. In that way, you don't have to use any rares or epics for food.

Suddenly, I have 4 SpiritHost.  Do I keep them all? 

I am using Kael, along with another rare that I am leveling up, plus 2 uncommon in 4.4.  Its the best I can do for now.  I can run them thru in 20-30 seconds.  I get a lot of shards that way.  I feed the common to the uncommon to give them a head start on farming. 

I am waiting for Kael to hit 60 before I give him great gear and ascension.  I dont have the resources to do that each time he levels up. 

Valerie at 30 is performing better than WarPriest at 40 when I have to play them together.  WarMaiden at 40 plays more like an attacker.  It is fun watching and learning. 

Thanks to everyone for your advice.  You are a great group of people.  I hope y0u are all safe. 

Yes, if you're farming in chapter 4, you'll get a bunch of Spirithosts over time... for Warmaidens, go to chapter 9, and there are some other good rares that you can also farm. 

Keep at least two copies of Spirithost - one to play with and one for the fusion. But the other two, instead of just using them as food, you could use to improve the skills on your main Spirithost. As you'll see in the Tavern, leveling up skills can be done either with skill books or with duplicate champions - in most cases using duplicate champions isn't very viable because you don't have many of those, but when it's the rare from the chapter that you're farming and you have many duplicates, it makes sense to use them for skill leveling. 

Two tips tip from a fellow new player, if I may. 

Do as many quests, missions, challenegs and such to get as many blue or better shards as you can. Participate in as many tournaments and events as you can. The point here is not to win unless you are in a beginner group, rather to collect certain rewards on the way. If there is a champion training event, be sure to do whatever you can to get as many points as you can, because you will get very nice rewards. Save your energy from daily rewards for such events and tournaments. Even farming lower stages of dungeons will allow you to pick up some nice rewards, such as free skill tomes, gems, and shards.

Save the blue, purple and golden shards until the next portal boost event which significantly increases your chances to get some interesting champions.

@WATCHDOGZ......Portal boost? 

ClosedPoly said:

@WATCHDOGZ......Portal boost? 

@L9753....I put the best gear I have gotten from drops on Kael and upgraded it to 8.  I am not sure what direction I will take with him once he gets to 6.  He is definitely a killing machine.  I wanted to upgrade him to 5 tonight but there is a game glitch.  Once he is 5 I will use whatever potions I have tro ascend him.  Thanks for the spirithost suggestions.  Should I level all of them to 3 before merging skills in the tavern? 

I have been playing for exactly 30 days (I got High Khatun today, yay!), and I have seen at least I think three events that changed the colour of the summoning portal from blue to golden (or rather, it looked like a furnace) for 2-3 days.

The portal had a 10x chance to get some specific epics and legendaries - from a certain faction, etc. - when you pulled a champion of that rarity. I would say that is the best time to use one's blue or better shards.

No, guy, those x10 events sux most of the time (not always, just most of the time). You have same low chance to pull epic and legos as always, just when you happen to pull some epic or lego those x10 chance aplly to these specific champs. Best events are when you have actuall x2 chance. Always check that exclamation mark to see the chance before pull.

But as new player you still want to pull some shards here and there when your roster is still limited.

ClosedPoly said:

@WATCHDOGZ......Portal boost? 

@L9753....I put the best gear I have gotten from drops on Kael and upgraded it to 8.  I am not sure what direction I will take with him once he gets to 6.  He is definitely a killing machine.  I wanted to upgrade him to 5 tonight but there is a game glitch.  Once he is 5 I will use whatever potions I have tro ascend him.  Thanks for the spirithost suggestions.  Should I level all of them to 3 before merging skills in the tavern? 

The champions that you just use to level up skills on another champion, require zero leveling or ascension. Don't bother putting any effort into them. For fusion it's another story, there you will need to level up and ascend the champions used in the fusion. 

And Daering is right, you should try to save your shards for a 2x event. Though a 2x event for a particular type of shard (for instance for ancient shards) happens only once every 6-8 weeks, and not even on a regular schedule, so it takes quite a while and indeed you'd probably have to try some shards already before that. 

You're aware of the potion keeps where you can get more potions, right? Keep in mind the rotation, with all keeps except Arcane being open only on particular days of the week. For Kael's Magic affinity, that would be Wednesdays and Saturdays. 

@DAERING......Is it OK to use a few rare books to increase skills.  Kael has 3 purple stars and I would like to get him to 5.  I only have 1 epic book and I am saving it.  I am saving everything that is epic.  I need more game experience before I use those

@LG9753......Is it OK to use mystery shards now?  I get so many of them from farming.  I have 47/50 now so have to use them.  I am saving all the other shards

Yes, for mystery shards there are no special events, it's fine to use those whenever. The only time that you might consider delaying the use of mystery shards, is if there is a summoning and/or leveling event coming up in the next 12 hours (they only announce such things 12 hours in advance). Then you should wait for the event to start, so you get points for the event with every summons you do. 

For all your other shards, keep in mind that if you wait until the 2x event for each of them (ancients, void, sacreds), you'll be waiting a long time. Which is good for a player like myself who is mid-game and already has a good bunch of rares and epics, so I have plenty of useful champions to develop while I wait for the next 2x event. But in your case, if you're limited to only the champions you already have plus the epics you get from login rewards, that may be difficult. Given that you still need a lot of rares and epics, it may make sense to already use a couple of ancients/voids for rares and sacreds for epics, without caring too much about the 2x event maximizing your chances of getting epics from ancients/voids and legendaries from sacreds. 

Regarding books, yes, using rare books for Kael is definitely worth it. There are only a handful of rares who are even better than him and more deserving of books, and you'll eventually get enough rare books that you can max out his skills while still having enough books for those super-rares when you get them. On Warmaiden, it would in theory be worth it but for her you can just farm copies of the champion to use instead of skill books.