Community Stories: Helicath Fusion – Brand New Free To Play POV

Not too long ago we were approached by Karim_Panda, a member of the Raid Community, who was inspired by previous videos showing other players’ progression, and what they’d done with their accounts, he decided to share his story so far in Raid: Shadow Legends, which you can find here.

Karim once again asked us if we’d like to share his story, as he has recently started a Free to Play account, and in the very early stages decided to take on the Helicath Fusion, so let’s take a look at how he got on!

Introduction

I recently shared the account story of my main account (https://hellhades.com/community-stories-from-ftp-to-baby-whale-karim_panda).

I contacted the HellHades team again to share another story about a very young FTP account I started less than a month ago.

It might be interesting, especially for new players who struggle with the current fusion or fusions in general.

The reasons why I started a new free-to-play account are:

• I don’t have proper challenges on my main account anymore
• I was motivated by the FTP series of HellHades
• I wanted to test how good Deliana is for a brand-new account

So far it was a very intense month with this FTP account and the journey just has begun…

Pre Fusion Situation

Since it was not my first account, and I would characterise myself as quite experienced & knowledgeable about Raid the start was easy as expected.

The classic & logical choice to start off is Kael and I wouldn’t recommend otherwise.

In the very early days, there is nothing spectacular and the game guides you more or less well in this period. So, besides the normal progress towards 6* ing the starter champion a few days later the champion training tournament was announced where you either were running for Kyoku (advanced accounts) or Magnarr (younger accounts).

On my main account, I already got Kyoku so there was no ambition to compete in this tournament.

But is this challenge possible if you just started off the game?

I was going to find out (as I also have not built Magnarr on my main account and it was another test of a champion).

Through all my progress on my main account, champion training tournaments/events were always easy for me and I mostly completed every single one of them especially to farm books whilst levelling new champions.

So, what I did was I farmed my food to 6* Kael but waited for the start of the champion training tournament to complete it. At the same time, Deliana was joining the forces…

Already at this stage, there are a few things to point out:

• With a new account, you are facing much less competitive opponents in the tournaments compared to an advanced account where you are almost all the time put in a bracket with at least 1 player whaling out. Keep this in mind when we later talk about the fusion and how to potentially complete it.
• There was no better time to start a new account than now:
  • The arena is super easy to progress now even without deeper knowledge. On top higher arena tiers just give a big boost for atk%, hp% and def%.
  • Therefore, there is no roadblock to progress through the missions.
  • You receive Deliana a legendary for free which is awesome for a new account.
  • You have so many areas to progress in the game compared to 1 or 2 years before.
  • The Clan Shop and Forge offers an excellent possibility to get top gear with a bit of luck early on.
• Especially in the first weeks, you need to invest a lot of playtime but it also rewarded with huge progression.

In the next days of the tournament, there was only one other player competing but in the end, he gave up and I finished the tournament table with more than 4k points ahead:

This was just 1 or 2 days prior to the upcoming fusion which was widely promoted as one of the best fusions ever. Since it wasn’t really a priority at this early stage for me I burnt nearly all my resources at this point including the big chunks of energy from the Plarium anniversary.

In addition, I used referral accounts already to get 600 energy in total.

Basically, I had left 300 gems, 1 million silver, and a few brews.

My shard count was ok for a new account but later more regarding this topic.

Basically, at this point it was an “all or nothing” decision to go for the fusion which I made for 2 reasons:

• Helicath is probably for such an early account even a bigger game-changer. Probably over the course of 1 month I could be able to tackle Nightmare clan boss or even Ultra Nightmare.
• I couldn’t really lose anything except a few resources which are refillable anyway.

Making a fusion plan

Having completed this first challenge, I was curious about how far I could progress in the fusion.

If I have experience with something, then it is fusions. On my main account, I have completed every fusion since Yoshi the Drunkard without exception. Sure, you could say that my main account is way different since it is very advanced and also P2W.

But from a planning perspective running a fusion on a FTP doesn’t differ a lot from P2W. You just need to put more effort and hope that nothing unexpected happens.

Once the fusion plan was released the big picture was already clear:

Either you will be able to get the epic in the Summon Rush event or you need to get all the Goat rares.

The big problem was that the number of points necessary to get the epic champion was unclear and in previous fusions ranged between 3000 and 4500 points as also HellHades pointed out.

I calculated that I could get around 4.25k+ points:

• 4x sacred shards => 2,000 points (campaign, mission, challenges)
• 7x void shards => 840 points
• 40x ancient shards => 800 points
• 600x mystery shards => 600 points

So far so good but this was just a theory with big disadvantages:

• Not all void and sacred shards were secure. For e.g. to get the sacred shard from challenges you need to beat a lot of different dungeons including Fireknight 13 where I had no team at all
• Even considering I can get around 4.25k points => how do I know this was enough? If can’t get the epic from Summon Rush, I need to get all the other Goats including the 2 Goats from the champion chase.
• Skipping one of the Goats early could mean that I am already “drawing dead” which is a poker term for not being able to win anymore the hand at a showdown.

Additionally, I had to value only resources which were bringing me points for the fusion:

• Books usually have a high value but during fusion, they can be also only a waste of energy or silver
• Getting fragments from the 3v3 Bazaar or accessories from the Clan Shop was a low priority for me compared to 300 energy (Bazaar) or silver (Clan Shop)
• Sometimes a lower position in a tournament can be beneficial if it means that you get energy/gems instead of shards / relentless gear

I postponed opening the gem mine until after the fusion. So far I used my gems for the masteries of Kael & Deliana and refilling energy

Making Decisions & Fusion Progress

After thinking back and forth I decided to get every Goat possible at least until the Summon Rush event was open. For champion chase I could get the 1^st Goat easily:

• 550 points through Magnarr, the fusion epic and Justiciar
• 1x 10 pull of ancients shards

Still thinking I had to spare as many shards as possible for Summon Rush I just decided to pull another 10 ancients with the following result:

Not only did I almost instantly get the 2^nd Goat from champion chase – I was also very lucky to get such an awesome Legendary early on.

Progressing through the first week of the fusion was very tough and two events I just completed a few hours before they were ending:

• Artifact enhancement (my biggest fear)
• Dungeon Divers

I looked for every possibility to generate more resources: one time through challenges & missions and continuously through Doom Tower, Clan Boss and Faction Wars progress. Before the Summon Rush, I could finish all my advanced quests daily unless maybe I had to beat a faction war boss.

I never thought I could beat Bommal so early but to make the progress also meant having a better understanding overall of this boss leading a full auto team.

Just right before the Summon Rush, I went on the break from  mission & challenge progression basically 1 week after I am still at the same point:

Game Over?!

The Friday when both events (Summon Rush, Artifact Enhancement) started I could describe as a “Black Friday”. I was shocked by the number of points to get the fusion epic (almost 5k) plus 5.3k points for Artifact enhancement. A gap of 750 points I felt was impossible to bridge and my silver count was already drained from the first Artifact enhancement event. Even without the epic, I needed enough points to get the Goat from Summon Rush so I pulled my sacreds, voids and ancients.

My hope was also to get at least useful champions to progress in Doom Tower (Scarab Boss) and/or Fireknight. It turned out I pulled two epics in exactly those categories:

• Vergis for the Scarab Doom Tower boss
• Fylja for Fireknight

For Vergis (A2 and A3 booked) these stats and gear sets were enough to beat the Scarab boss more less solo which would require otherwise a very specialised team:

Fylja at 5* was just enough to beat Fireknight stage 12 1x time and stage 11 “half automatic”: automatically clearing the waves and manually fighting the boss. I gave up on bad affinity stage 13 to save resources for the rest of the fusion.

The remaining scary events for me were the 2^nd Artifact Enhancement plus the last Dungeon Diver. However, with all the incoming flow of resources, everything was possible to handle (including a sharp Gear cleanse like “every out which isn’t immediately useful or a longtime keeper”): I could complete all the events in time with at least 1-day buffer. One step with a certain risk was to dive into the Nightmare campaign with 6* Kael + 6* Deliana (sometimes even solo). This can easily deplete a lot of energy but mostly I was able to get complete it first try.

The rewards are quite good at this stage, especially the big amounts of silver:

So, the last challenging part was to reserve enough energy to farm the remaining spirit potions and levelling the fusion champs.

The Importance of Content Creators during Fusions.

One thing I’d like to emphasize again in this article, and is how important consuming videos, website information, optimiser etc. is for fusions. Not only is the awareness raised for game-changing champions in the first place. Also, during the fusion in the case of the HellHades youtube, stream and website a lot of useful information is put out and even though I have completed so many fusions there is always something new to learn.

If I want to know stats for stages, I often use the Raid Stages Tool during progression plus the drop rates for spirit potions I needed to calculate the energy I had to reserve for farming those.

Even the optimiser isn’t so much important at the early stage of this account I used it to get myself a better overview of my champs and gear.

Summary & closing statements

By today it looks like my decisions were right plus I had the extra bit of luck I needed to complete this fusion.

My only remaining task is the level and ascend the last epic (food & potions I have already):

As it is visible, my resources are depleted and again and also I still haven’t opened the Gem mine.

Looking forward to letting Helicath rock this young account a very nice reward and also seeing the tight fusion plan be successful.

Furthermore, the whole account progress feels very good:

• Solid champion roster

I find it interesting that I kind of always end up with my free or “easy” to obtain champions:

Warmaiden, Diabolist, Armiger, Reliquary Tender (just missing Spirithost and Valerie in the club).

And to answer the original question: Deliana is simply mental for fresh accounts. With force, she has the perfect affinity next to Kael and tested different gear sets on the referral accounts for her. The outcome was basically that every build works with a certain amount of speed & hp.

• Easy 3v3 farming (at least this way of playing the game I have in common with Eharbads 😊

• Comfortable 3v3 Farming
• Solid Doom Tower Progression (49 stages completed, with 2 secret rooms) Level 50 will likely be an easy clear with Burangiri.
• Very strong arena progression (Gold IV) with a level 15 Great Hall.
• Challenges nearly completed.
• 3x Referral Accounts above level 30 for future Sacred Shard Rewards.

We hope you liked Karim’s story, as mentioned at the start, please let us know in the comments if you’d be interested in seeing more content like this, and feel free to reach out to Neva on discord (Neva#3251) with your stories!