Champion ascension is one of the most impactful upgrades you can make for your champions in RAID: Shadow Legends. Whether you’re chasing an in-game offer milestone, gunning for campaign clears, or racing to complete a mobile game rewards challenge, ascension boosts stats, unlocks abilities, and can mean the difference between getting stuck or surging ahead. This guide will equip you with practical and efficient strategies for champion ascension, letting you maximize progress while staying no-spend or low-spend.
Understanding Ascension: What It Unlocks and Why It Matters
Ascension is much more than a visual upgrade. Every ascension tier boosts a champion’s base stats, and crucially, at certain ranks, new skills or passive abilities are unlocked—these can transform a mediocre fighter into a campaign-carrying powerhouse. For example, many rare and epic champions unlock their best skills at ascension stages three or five.
Efficient ascension should be focused around your key champions. Don’t waste resources spreading ascension materials across dozens of heroes. Instead, concentrate on:
- Your campaign farmer (the champion you use to clear campaign stages solo or nearly solo)
- Your top support or healer for dungeons and bosses
- Essential progression champions for missions and offer milestones (e.g., those needed for Faction Wars or Arena)
Unlocking ascension skills as early as possible gives you an immediate jump in power, so always check your champion’s skill tree before prioritizing ascension efforts.
Where to Get Ascension Materials Without Wasting Resources
The core currency for ascension is potions—arcane (for all champions) and affinity-specific (magic, force, spirit, void). You primarily obtain these by farming the corresponding Potion Keeps in the Dungeon tab. Each day, a different Affinity Keep is open (except for Arcane, which is open daily), so planning is key.
Maximize your potion farming efficiency by farming at the highest stage you can reliably clear in each Keep. Higher stages return more and higher-tier potions, saving you energy in the long run. If you’re stuck at a low stage, farm there consistently, but always push to higher levels as your team grows stronger.
Outside of Keeps, you may accumulate potions from free daily rewards, event prizes, and some mission completions. While these are valuable, you should never rely solely on these, especially if you’re trying to hit offer deadlines. Always schedule your potion Keeps farming early in your progression route.
- Farm Potion Keeps daily—prioritize Arcane, and whichever Affinity Keep matches your target champion
- Use the potion mixer in the Tavern to upgrade small potions into greater ones as needed
- Avoid exchanging Clan Gold for potions; it’s rarely efficient unless you’re absolutely stuck
For a detailed breakdown of potion requirements and efficient farming, consult community guides and referenced resources for in-depth tables and updates.
Prioritizing Champions and Milestones: Where to Spend Your Potions
In RAID, your resources are always limited—especially if you’re a no-spend or low-spend player. The biggest mistake is spreading potions too thin. Prioritize ascension for maximum impact by focusing on the following progression points:
- Ascend the champion you use most often for campaign and dungeon clears—usually your dedicated “farmer” or main damage dealer
- Prioritize support or healing champions if you’re struggling with bosses or Faction Wars stages
- If working toward a milestone reward or offer, target ascension requirements relevant to those goals (e.g., ascend a specific number of champions to a certain level)
- Do not waste potions on common or low-impact rare champions unless specifically required for fusion events
When presented with a choice, it is always more efficient to bring one champion to a high ascension level (unlocking their best skill), than to spread low ascensions across many. This is especially true if you’re speedrunning to a particular milestone. As you prepare for major objectives, map out the champions you’ll need ascended and pre-farm the necessary potions in the weeks or days leading up—this smooths out bottlenecks and avoids wasted energy on last-minute scrambling.
Efficient Progression: Managing Energy, Silver, and Event Timing
Energy, not potions themselves, is your real progression gate. Since Keep runs consume a large amount of energy, you need to budget wisely and optimize your daily runs for maximum return. Never dump energy into low-drop stages “just to get started.” Instead:
- Always farm the highest stage your team can beat within a reasonable time (around 1-2 minutes is ideal for Keeps)
- If an event or tournament is running, especially an Ascension or Dungeon Divers event, stack your potion runs during these windows for extra rewards
- Check energy refresh times and plan your farming around them—early-morning or just before “day reset” can help maximize daily energy usage
You’ll accumulate a lot of lesser potions—combine them only as needed for milestone jumps, not preemptively, since the game often throws potions at you from events that might fill gaps unexpectedly. If you find yourself running low on one type of potion, consider pausing other ascensions for a few days to restock, rather than burning energy inefficiently on low-tier stages.
For tips on using energy efficiently across all aspects of progression, including campaign and dungeons, see this guide on maximizing energy use in RAID: Shadow Legends.
Common Ascension Mistakes and Traps to Avoid
Many new players (and even some experienced ones) delay their progress by falling into common traps related to ascension. Here are the most important ones to watch out for:
- Splitting potion investment over many unimportant champions—instead, pick your “core five” and ascend them first
- Ignoring the Arcane Keep, which is needed for every ascension for every champion—don’t get bottlenecked here!
- Using Clan Gold to buy potions (save it for rare shards or clan shop exclusives instead)
- Sinking too much energy into low stages of Keeps—higher stages are far more energy efficient in the long run
- Trying to ascend champions you’ll never use in late game; most offer/mission requirements count only for base ascension, and not for keeping those champions on your roster forever
Lastly, resist the temptation to mass-upgrade your entire early roster. Most food champions (used just to rank up better ones) never need ascension. The exception is if an event or mission specifically requires a certain number of ascended heroes—check the requirements before investing.
Advanced Tips: Making the Most of Free Resources and Events
RAID’s regular events—such as Dungeon Divers, Ascension, and Special Login Reward Chains—often hand out potion rewards, sometimes even greater or superior ones. Check the in-game calendar and time your potion farming when a concurrent event makes it extra profitable. If you’re completing a mobile offer, syncing your ascension efforts with these events can dramatically increase your progress.
- Log in daily for event rewards—even a single day missed can mean the difference between a completed and missed milestone
- Double up milestones: If you need to level up, ascend, and rank-up a champion, do it all during matching events
- Complete campaign progress missions alongside ascension missions where possible, as you’ll need a strong, ascended campaign farmer anyway
- Hold off on mass combining lesser potions until right before you actually need them for an upgrade or event
If you’re low-spend, only use energy refreshes for Potion Keeps during major events or when you’re about to hit a milestone. Avoid impulsive refreshes on random weekdays if there’s no event or milestone urgently needing potions.
Champion ascension is a crucial investment that can accelerate your progress in RAID: Shadow Legends, especially when you’re aiming to hit milestones or complete a lucrative mobile offer. By targeting your key champions, maximizing potion farming during events, and avoiding common traps, you’ll ascend smarter—not just faster. Efficient, focused ascension will be your edge—use it well, and enjoy your rewards!