Raid: Shadow Legends F2P Progression Guide: Free Shards, Energy & Champions
By @tempBOT, mobile RPG writer.
Experience: @tempBOT has tracked Raid: Shadow Legends' summon rates, mercy thresholds, and F2P routes to free Champions since 2020, checking every percentage in this guide against Plarium's published rates and the live Summoning Portal before publishing.
Reviewed August 2026
Any Raid F2P guide worth reading starts from the same place – the bottleneck is never the Champion pool. Free accounts stall on Energy and Shards, and those two constraints shape every decision you make for the first year.
Energy converts into levels, gear and Silver. Shards convert into roster depth. Everything else in the game is just a delivery system for one of those two currencies. Once you plan around that, "playing free" stops meaning "playing slower" and starts meaning "spending your two scarce currencies on the right days." Raid without paying isn't a compromise mode – every PvE system in the game is reachable free, provided Energy and Shards are managed well.
Your Energy budget is arithmetic. The bar ticks up 20 points an hour and stops dead once you reach your cap, which climbs with your account level before settling at 130 around Level 60. Left running under that ceiling for a full 24 hours, passive regeneration alone is worth roughly 480 Energy.
If you're specifically looking for how to get Energy without paying, the table below is the full free loop – nothing on it requires spending.
The rest of the daily loop costs nothing but attention:
Clan Boss deserves particular attention on a free account. Chest rewards are based on your damage contribution instead of the number of kills, so even a half-built team can still earn rewards. Skill Tomes in particular are awkward to farm anywhere else, and they are what turn a free Champion into a usable one.
Working out how to get Shards without spending starts here – every route below is free, and the rates decide which colour is worth chasing first.
The rates are not hidden. Plarium publishes them in-game behind the "i" icon on the Summon screen, and they have barely moved in years:
Mystery Shards are food, not hope. At 1.4% for a Rare, they exist to feed your rank-up pipeline and to generate event points. Treat them as a renewable resource and spend them freely during summoning events.
Void Shards are structurally different. Void affinity Champions cannot be obtained from any other Shard type, which makes Void pulls worth holding even though the headline rates match Ancient.
Sacred Shards are the one thing you should genuinely hoard. A free account sees a handful per year.
Primal Shards are Ancient Shards with the odds shifted up a tier, plus a shot at Mythical. They're the only source of Mythical Champions in the game, which is how to get Legendary Champions and the newer Mythical rarity from the same pull – but a free account will see very few of them, so save them for a boosted weekend rather than opening them as they arrive.
Raid also runs a mercy system – go long enough without a given rarity and your odds climb per pull until it lands. Plarium confirms the system exists but does not publish the thresholds; community trackers put the Ancient and Void Legendary counter at 200 pulls, and Sacred at 12. Primal Shards run two counters at once: Legendary mercy starts after roughly 75 pulls, Mythical mercy after roughly 200. Each Shard type carries its own counter, so a Sacred Legendary does not reset your Ancient progress.
Summon Boost events are not interchangeable:
Random summoning is the least dependable path on a free account. If you're after how to get Legendary Champions without gambling on Shards, these four routes are more dependable:
The login calendar. Milestone logins have historically handed out real Champions, including Scyl of the Drakes at the 180-day mark. Zero skill required, only attendance.
Progress Missions. A long arc of one-time objectives that pays out Shards, Energy and Champions along the way, ending in the Arbiter for players who complete it. This is a multi-month project, not a weekend one.
Faction Wars. Clearing every Crypt stage at three stars rewards Lydia the Deathsiren. Slow, but entirely free, and the Glyphs you collect en route improve every Artifact you already own.
Promo codes. Plarium releases redeemable rewards around events, updates and creator campaigns, and new accounts get a separate starter pool. The catch is that codes expire quietly and most listicles are half-dead, which is why keeping a regularly updated list of Raid promo codes bookmarked beats digging through year-old forum threads. New accounts are also limited to a single starter Champion code, so it pays to read what each one awards before locking yourself in – Plarium's official Promo Codes FAQ covers the eligibility rules in full.
Fusions are the most reliable free Legendary in the game, and the most expensive in time. Plarium runs three formats:
Commit when: you have banked Mystery Shards for fodder, your Potion Keeps runs are current, you have a farmer that clears Brutal Campaign quickly, and you can log in daily for the full window.
Skip when: your first Champion is not yet at 6 stars, your Silver is thin, or you cannot cover the daily tournaments the fusion feeds off. A half-finished Traditional fusion still leaves you the upgraded components, but it burns weeks you could have spent on your core team.
Permanent fusions such as Relickeeper sit in the Portal year-round with no deadline, which makes them a reasonable first attempt.
Being accurate about the ceiling matters more than motivation. Free accounts reach every PvE mode in the game, and plenty of them clear Ultra-Nightmare Clan Boss and Hard Doom Tower. What money buys is compression: more Shards per month, more Energy per day, more attempts at gear rolls.
The places where that compression bites hardest are the top Arena tiers and any content requiring a specific meta Champion on a deadline. Everything else is a question of months rather than dollars.
How many Legendary Champions should a free account expect in a year? Realistically, a small handful, and most of them will arrive from fusions, Progress Missions and login events rather than from Shard pulls. At 0.5% per Ancient Shard, summoning is a bonus stream, not a plan.
Should I open Shards during a x10 Summon Boost? Only Mystery Shards, for event points. The x10 format leaves Epic, Legendary and Mythical probabilities untouched, so a Sacred or Primal hoard gains nothing from it.
Are Void Shards worth saving over Ancient? They pull from a separate pool that no other Shard can access. If you want Void affinity Champions, Void Shards are the only route, which makes them worth holding for a x2 event.
Can I complete fusion events without spending? Yes, particularly Fragment fusions. The limiting factor is daily activity across the full two-week window, not money.
What is the single highest-return free habit? Two Clan Boss attacks a day. Five minutes, and the Skill Tome and Shard flow compounds across months.
A free Raid account is a resource-planning exercise wearing a fantasy RPG costume. The published rates tell you that summoning will not carry you, so the accounts that get somewhere are the ones that keep Energy moving, bank Shards for x2 weekends, run Clan Boss without fail, and pick one fusion a quarter to actually finish. None of that requires a wallet. It requires showing up on the right days and knowing which days they are.
Experience: @tempBOT has tracked Raid: Shadow Legends' summon rates, mercy thresholds, and F2P routes to free Champions since 2020, checking every percentage in this guide against Plarium's published rates and the live Summoning Portal before publishing.
Reviewed August 2026
Quick summary
- This Raid: Shadow Legends F2P progression guide starts with the real bottlenecks: Energy and Shards, not the Champion pool.
- Summon rates are published, and they are low. Ancient Shards return a Legendary 0.5% of the time; Primal Shards return a Mythical 0.5% of the time.
- Never open Ancient, Void, Sacred, or Primal Shards outside a x2 Summon Boost. A x10 boost does nothing for your rarity odds.
- Fusion events are the most dependable route to a free Legendary, provided you prepare weeks ahead.
- Clan Boss twice a day and the login calendar quietly outperform any amount of impulse summoning.
Raid: Shadow Legends F2P guide: the two resources that gate you
Any Raid F2P guide worth reading starts from the same place – the bottleneck is never the Champion pool. Free accounts stall on Energy and Shards, and those two constraints shape every decision you make for the first year.
Energy converts into levels, gear and Silver. Shards convert into roster depth. Everything else in the game is just a delivery system for one of those two currencies. Once you plan around that, "playing free" stops meaning "playing slower" and starts meaning "spending your two scarce currencies on the right days." Raid without paying isn't a compromise mode – every PvE system in the game is reachable free, provided Energy and Shards are managed well.
The daily loop that funds a free account
Your Energy budget is arithmetic. The bar ticks up 20 points an hour and stops dead once you reach your cap, which climbs with your account level before settling at 130 around Level 60. Left running under that ceiling for a full 24 hours, passive regeneration alone is worth roughly 480 Energy.
If you're specifically looking for how to get Energy without paying, the table below is the full free loop – nothing on it requires spending.
The rest of the daily loop costs nothing but attention:
| Source | What it returns | Cadence |
| Passive regeneration | Up to ~480 Energy | Continuous, if you stay under cap |
| Daily quests | Energy, Silver, XP Brews, Mystery Shards | Resets daily |
| Clan Boss | Shards, Skill Tomes, Silver, gear | 2 free attacks daily |
| Login calendar | Potions, Shards, occasional Champions | Daily, with milestone tiers |
| Progress Missions | Shards, Energy, one-time Champion rewards | One-time, long arc |
| Faction Wars | Glyphs, Forge materials, Skill Tomes | Rotating crypts |
Clan Boss deserves particular attention on a free account. Chest rewards are based on your damage contribution instead of the number of kills, so even a half-built team can still earn rewards. Skill Tomes in particular are awkward to farm anywhere else, and they are what turn a free Champion into a usable one.
Shard math: what each colour is actually worth
Working out how to get Shards without spending starts here – every route below is free, and the rates decide which colour is worth chasing first.
The rates are not hidden. Plarium publishes them in-game behind the "i" icon on the Summon screen, and they have barely moved in years:
| Shard | Colour | Rare | Epic | Legendary | Mythical | Notes |
| Mystery | Green | 1.4% | – | – | – | 74.2% Common, 24.4% Uncommon |
| Ancient | Blue | 91.5% | 8.0% | 0.5% | – | Your bulk stream |
| Void | Purple | 91.5% | 8.0% | 0.5% | – | Only source of Void affinity Champions |
| Sacred | Gold | – | 94% | 6% | – | Rarest to earn free |
| Primal | Red-orange | 82.5% | 16% | 1% | 0.5% | Only source of Mythical Champions |
Mystery Shards are food, not hope. At 1.4% for a Rare, they exist to feed your rank-up pipeline and to generate event points. Treat them as a renewable resource and spend them freely during summoning events.
Void Shards are structurally different. Void affinity Champions cannot be obtained from any other Shard type, which makes Void pulls worth holding even though the headline rates match Ancient.
Sacred Shards are the one thing you should genuinely hoard. A free account sees a handful per year.
Primal Shards are Ancient Shards with the odds shifted up a tier, plus a shot at Mythical. They're the only source of Mythical Champions in the game, which is how to get Legendary Champions and the newer Mythical rarity from the same pull – but a free account will see very few of them, so save them for a boosted weekend rather than opening them as they arrive.
Raid also runs a mercy system – go long enough without a given rarity and your odds climb per pull until it lands. Plarium confirms the system exists but does not publish the thresholds; community trackers put the Ancient and Void Legendary counter at 200 pulls, and Sacred at 12. Primal Shards run two counters at once: Legendary mercy starts after roughly 75 pulls, Mythical mercy after roughly 200. Each Shard type carries its own counter, so a Sacred Legendary does not reset your Ancient progress.
The boost distinction most guides get wrong
Summon Boost events are not interchangeable:
- x2 Summon Boost doubles your Epic and Legendary chances – Legendary moves to 1% on Ancient and Void, and 12% on Sacred. Primal Shards also have their own boosted weekends, which specifically double the Mythical chance.
- x10 Summon Boost changes nothing about rarity odds. It multiplies the number of Champions summoned, not the quality.
Where free Champions actually come from
Random summoning is the least dependable path on a free account. If you're after how to get Legendary Champions without gambling on Shards, these four routes are more dependable:
The login calendar. Milestone logins have historically handed out real Champions, including Scyl of the Drakes at the 180-day mark. Zero skill required, only attendance.
Progress Missions. A long arc of one-time objectives that pays out Shards, Energy and Champions along the way, ending in the Arbiter for players who complete it. This is a multi-month project, not a weekend one.
Faction Wars. Clearing every Crypt stage at three stars rewards Lydia the Deathsiren. Slow, but entirely free, and the Glyphs you collect en route improve every Artifact you already own.
Promo codes. Plarium releases redeemable rewards around events, updates and creator campaigns, and new accounts get a separate starter pool. The catch is that codes expire quietly and most listicles are half-dead, which is why keeping a regularly updated list of Raid promo codes bookmarked beats digging through year-old forum threads. New accounts are also limited to a single starter Champion code, so it pays to read what each one awards before locking yourself in – Plarium's official Promo Codes FAQ covers the eligibility rules in full.
Fusion events: when a free account should commit
Fusions are the most reliable free Legendary in the game, and the most expensive in time. Plarium runs three formats:
- Traditional – collect Rare Champions, take them to Rank 4 and Level 40, fuse four into an Epic, then take four Epics to Rank 5 and Level 50 to fuse the Legendary. Components must sit at maximum Ascension for their Rank.
- Fragment – collect 100 Fragments of a specific Champion through events and tournaments, then summon them directly. Fragments do not expire.
- Hybrid – Fragments summon the Epic components, which you then level, rank and ascend for the final fuse.
Commit when: you have banked Mystery Shards for fodder, your Potion Keeps runs are current, you have a farmer that clears Brutal Campaign quickly, and you can log in daily for the full window.
Skip when: your first Champion is not yet at 6 stars, your Silver is thin, or you cannot cover the daily tournaments the fusion feeds off. A half-finished Traditional fusion still leaves you the upgraded components, but it burns weeks you could have spent on your core team.
Permanent fusions such as Relickeeper sit in the Portal year-round with no deadline, which makes them a reasonable first attempt.
What free-to-play cannot shortcut
Being accurate about the ceiling matters more than motivation. Free accounts reach every PvE mode in the game, and plenty of them clear Ultra-Nightmare Clan Boss and Hard Doom Tower. What money buys is compression: more Shards per month, more Energy per day, more attempts at gear rolls.
The places where that compression bites hardest are the top Arena tiers and any content requiring a specific meta Champion on a deadline. Everything else is a question of months rather than dollars.
FAQ
How many Legendary Champions should a free account expect in a year? Realistically, a small handful, and most of them will arrive from fusions, Progress Missions and login events rather than from Shard pulls. At 0.5% per Ancient Shard, summoning is a bonus stream, not a plan.
Should I open Shards during a x10 Summon Boost? Only Mystery Shards, for event points. The x10 format leaves Epic, Legendary and Mythical probabilities untouched, so a Sacred or Primal hoard gains nothing from it.
Are Void Shards worth saving over Ancient? They pull from a separate pool that no other Shard can access. If you want Void affinity Champions, Void Shards are the only route, which makes them worth holding for a x2 event.
Can I complete fusion events without spending? Yes, particularly Fragment fusions. The limiting factor is daily activity across the full two-week window, not money.
What is the single highest-return free habit? Two Clan Boss attacks a day. Five minutes, and the Skill Tome and Shard flow compounds across months.
Final takeaway
A free Raid account is a resource-planning exercise wearing a fantasy RPG costume. The published rates tell you that summoning will not carry you, so the accounts that get somewhere are the ones that keep Energy moving, bank Shards for x2 weekends, run Clan Boss without fail, and pick one fusion a quarter to actually finish. None of that requires a wallet. It requires showing up on the right days and knowing which days they are.
