Raid is fundamentally a turn-based RPG, but one that doesn't really have much of a story or ongoing quest. Instead it focuses on collecting and building up characters to clear an assortment of solo challenges and for various PVP modes. It centers on a "gacha" system through which you get most of your new characters by earning assorted "shards" used to pull new characters for your team.
THE SHORT VERSION
> I would strongly suggest only pursuing goals up to level 55. Up to that level, the EXP requirement is very reasonable within F2P limitations if you're willing to put in some time each day. Past that, it scales so high it's very unlikely you'll reach 60 or beyond even if you nearly max out every day's free opportunities. Even paying doesn't help a whole lot, I was 1.5 levels short of the level 60 goal when time expired and I calculated that it would take at least $40 of the $45 I would earn to purchase enough energy to make it in the final day.
> That said, you can do the "time rush" early goals that GPT sites offer fairly easily, up to level 45. Level 45 in five days will require either some spend for energy to eat a chunk of your profits (probably at least half if it's paying $140ish), or basically flawless play optimizing every single minute available from the beginning to cut that down substantially. So it's also really not a bad play from a time efficiency perspective to simply pursue the goals up to level 40 within the first three or five days, then just walk away from the game.
> There are two kinds of EXP in this game - the EXP individual characters get from battles and such to level, and "account EXP" which is simply tied to your energy spend. GPT goals are based on the latter, don't get the EXP of the starting character you pick confused with this. Account level and EXP is seen in the upper-left corner of the main game hub screen. Unfortunately, the developer does not make transparent exactly how this works. However, based on experimentation, players have found that Campaign mode battles seem to yield more account EXP per energy spent than Dungeons.
> Common advice you'll see around is to grind Campaign Brutal 12-6 for maximum account EXP efficiency, and from my own play I found this to be accurate; it seems to provide almost 2x what the same energy spend gets you in Dungeon levels. However, the "Brutal" difficulty is not available right away and will take some powering up to unlock (you have to clear the Campaign on "normal" and "hard" difficulties first). If you focus exclusively on powering up your two starter champions to Rank 6, level 60 and throw all your resources at them, you can get Brutal 12-6 available in about three days. If it's not available yet, the next best play is grinding 12-6 on normal or hard difficulties, but any Campaign level is better than a Dungeon.
> Getting a good Legendary "bonus champ" with your new account is key (by entering a one-time code within the first three days of playing). If you play other GPT games that have ads you've probably seen ads for an assortment of these - Alice in Wonderland and the Cheshire Cat, the Ninja Turtles etc. The availability of these rotates, however, so you'll have to look and see what's currently the best option when you start. Pelops the Victor (code RAID7 or SUPERVICTORY) is a very overpowered character that seems to be available longer-term and is probably the best choice as of this writing. I personally used Sun Wukong (code MONKEYKING) who isn't the best long-term but is more than good enough to get you through the rush goals of the first few days. This site lists a lot of what's currently available, but not necessarily everything. You can only enter one Legendary champ code per account, and it has to be done within three days of starting.
> One more note on starter champions - you'll see common advice to also set up your account by using a "creator link" provided by various "influencers" that promote the game, which gives some bonus goodies and one or two Epic champions (a step below Legendary). However, this is a pre-install referral thing and I'm guessing it will screw with your GPT setup and tracking. So I wouldn't suggest trying it, and it is definitely not necessary to hit goals.
> Also, you'll be asked to pick a character when you start the game. Consensus seems to be either Kael or Elhain are the best due to more focus on AOE wave-clearing skills. Kael worked fine for me, but he looks like Temu version of the Witcher with an annoying face and Elhain is a hottie. I don't think this matters too much as any character is sufficient for the goals of the first few days and they'll both get replaced eventually if you're sticking around longer.
> While simply grinding Campaign allows for Raid to mostly run in the background with minimal interaction, getting enough free energy from F2P requires some more active management that eats up more time. This is the main reason why I suggest simply doing the first five day rush goals may be the best play, you can simply grind Campaign and not worry about 95% of all this extra stuff. If you want to go beyond to 55, however, you'll have to devote some more time to going into the weeds with it each day. It's too much to cover in the "short version" but my basic suggestion is, the daily/weekly/month goals are nearly always worth doing as many as you can, but for anything else seriously consider whether the energy spend of going into a Dungeon level is gonna be worth the reward.
TIME TO START
There isn't really an ideal day to start this (like there is with some other games like Mu). The game day (not your GPT day count) and bonuses reset at 8 PM Eastern, starting a few hours ahead of that might optimize things for the "rush" goals of the first few days if you can get through all the first day's bonus stuff before the rollover (that's why I say give it at least a few hours).
One thing I might look out for is the start of a "Champion Growth" challenge. I forget exactly what they call it but it's one of the periodic three-day challenges that keep popping up here and there. The growth challenge gives you points toward bonus items for every character level you gain, which you'll naturally do a LOT of when you're just starting out.
The other thing is the "Clan vs Clan" events that take place for three days every two weeks. It's easy to join a clan right away, and joining any clan provides a lot of booty from these as pretty much every action you take in the game contributes points that lead to rewards. However, these alternate between a version that has only group "clan points" and one that also adds more rewards for "personal points"; obviously you want the one with personal points ... the problem is your clan has to actually win at the end for you to get these rewards now, but it's still worth the gamble as it's a big haul of energy and rank-up items.
"RUSH" GPT GOALS
Extremely doable prior to level 45, if you're willing and able to put in the time for the first three days. Honestly, I don't think it would be a bad play to just run it intensely for three days and hit these goals then quit and never look back. It's an extended grind past this point.
As to the Lv 45 in 5 days for $140 goal: I "napkin maffed" this out once I hit level 40 and I'd say it's feasible, but you'll have to run the game a LOT (like minimum 10 hours a day of productive time every day), and for my reward it would have cost at least $60 of uncompensated purchases bringing the actual profit to $80. At this point in the 5th day I was kind of burned out and didn't want to risk the money or have like six to eight full hours more of relentless grinding to MAYBE get there (if the experience earning rate held up). But basically what I came up with is that from level 40 to 45 you'll need a minimum of 8000 energy, which can be purchased with 3200 gems. You get fully compensated for the "Sacred Daily" pack of $30, which gets you 400 gems right away plus 700 energy (100 extra gems for each day early that you purchase it. That leaves you needing somewhere between about 2000-2500 gems somewhere depending on when you buy it. The other compensated packs don't really help at this point. The best uncompensated packs that I saw would appear to be the 2050 gems for $50 plus the two available "special packs" that total out to $10 for 680 gems and/or $6 for 400 gems if you buy both. So that's around $60 total uncompensated that eats out of your profit. This might be worth it if your offer is structured differently so that you get more compensation for gems, or if you have like a 30% or 50% off Google Play coupon you can use on the big gems purchase.
SHOULD YOU SPEND MONEY ON IT?
Raid is extremely F2P-friendly, such that you really don't need to spend anything to get as far as level 55 in time (as long as you're willing to check in every day and maximize your free resources). I bought only a 99 cent pack just to be in compliance with the rush offers, and the 30 day diamond pack because there was a small profit on it. The diamond pack was only mildly helpful, mostly for 200 diamonds on the first last and a middle day (enough for five energy refills), but most days it only gives you enough for one refill and certainly isn't a necessity. I think you only really need to spend a significant amount to hit the level 45 rush offer or go farther than 55 in the long term.
CREATING "RANK 6" CHARACTERS
Once you get to account level 40 or so, you'll start finding your ability to complete campaign and quest lines and such is somewhat stymied even with a full party of Lv 50 ascended characters. At this point, you need to make getting at least two Rank 6 characters a priority. Rank is indicated by the count of yellow stars, which later turn to purple and red after further powering up (though that element isn't important just yet).
Since you most frequently draw and deal with Rank 1-3 characters, I'll explain the requirements in those terms. First of all, all the Rank 1 characters you draw from Summon Stones are all crap and should be used purely to level up other characters. When a Rank 1 hits level 10, you can take them to the Tavern and use another Rank 1 (of any level, ideally lv 1 for efficiency) to promote them to Rank 2.
The Rank 2s you draw fairly often are by-and-large useless in battle, maybe some small utility in the early levels of Faction Wars at best. The only exception is those with a swirly yinyang symbol on their portrait, which means they can be used in a fusion for a better character. However, you pull tons of them and I didn't find any of those lower-level fusions to really be worth pursuing, so don't worry about that. You also can freely sacrifice all the Level 2 "uncommons" (green border around their profile pic) that you pull without worry; the one exception is Armiger, who may have a niche use in a couple particular boss challenges later on (but you only need to hang on to one of him).
On rare occasion you'll also pull a Rank 3 (light blue profile border), set them aside in your Master Vault as some of them can be useful for niche challenges. There are a handful, such as Apothecary, Warmaiden and Bellower, that are good enough to become regular contributors.
So here's what you generally do - grind 12-6, with "food" Rank 2 champions in your spare slots that the one or two high-level carries aren't using. When they max out at level 20, promote them up to Rank 3, continue grinding. Continue this pattern for Rank 4 and then 5. These "food" champions are then fed to a legit good champion (Legendary or Epic, the ones with gold and purple borders respectively) that is a main contributor to have them reach Rank 6.
You'll occasionally get "rank chickens" that serve the purpose of a food champion, but without any of those on hand it'll take 5 rank 5 food champions to elevate one of your "real" champions to Rank 6. Setting aside the initial 5 you plan to take all the way to Rank 5 food, that means 20 Rank 4 champions. Which in turn requires 60 Rank 3 champions, which in turn requires 120 Rank 2. So basically every Rank 6 character, again leaving rank chickens out of the equation, starts with five level 2s that you fully level to be the five pieces of Rank 5 food in the end, plus another 120 Rank 2s to feed them along the way.
FURTHER POWERING OF CHARACTERS
Unfortunately just getting to Rank 6 doesn't make for unstoppable characters. It makes them good enough to clear the Campaign through Brutal and the Dungeon levels up to 10 or so and wipe out most level 50 and below parties of other players they encounter, but it's kinda just table stakes to start the mid-game process. There are lots of other little pieces and parts to further power them up, some of which will be worth exploring to meet optional challenges for energy+gems.
However, always keep in mind that you're earning nearly 2x account EXP from Campaign vs Dungeon. Long-term it makes a big difference.
LINKS
* Raid Promo Codes - Has most new player codes and currently active bonus codes (which can be used at any time, also keep an eye on the email that you give to the game for these at certain level and time played thresholds)
* Hellhades Beginners Guide - More in-depth info for new players, this site and YouTube channel are also considered the premier centralized resource for game info
* AyumiLove - Another highly regarded info source
* Official Reddit - Keep an eye on for new promo codes
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