GRIM FOREST – UPDATE PREVIEW

The holiday season arrives with one of the biggest presents RAID has prepared in years: a brand-new endgame feature called The Grim Forest. This update is shaping up to be one of the most ambitious expansions ever added to Raid: Shadow Legends, pushing exploration, strategy and long-term progression further than anything since Doom Tower or the Cursed City. What follows is a guided tour of the mode’s major systems and dangers, designed to whet your appetite before the full Feature Guide arrives.

The Grim Forest is vast, eerie and constantly shifting under a blanket of supernatural fog. While the broad structure remains familiar to veterans of the Cursed City, this is no simple sequel. Every monthly rotation reshapes the map, altering paths, Stage layouts and even available routes. Normal and Hard difficulties will use entirely different maps, meaning that every run through this haunting wilderness becomes a fresh experience.

Your journey always begins at The Old Camp, the closest thing this place has to safety. From there, five themed Regions stretch outward, each hiding mixed-difficulty encounters, secrets, and multiple roaming bosses. Exploration is limited by the number of daily actions you can spend, so each step and each route matters.

Preparation begins before you even move. Every rotation requires you to choose a Squad of Champions divided into two Team Decks. Normal Mode allows ten Champions per Deck, while Hard Mode demands a heavy roster of twenty each. Entering any Stage triggers a random draw of Champions from both Decks, and you must select your team from the hand you’re dealt. You can redraw a few times per day and unlock additional tools while exploring that let you influence the selection, but eventually you’ll be forced to adapt and take unfamiliar Champions into battle. This structure ensures that no two runs play out alike, pushing creativity and roster depth to the forefront.

Chests scattered throughout the forest hold valuable rewards, but some hide far darker surprises. Mimics masquerade as loot until they reveal their hunger and attempt to devour unwary explorers. Defeating them yields unique treasures, making every ambush a high-risk, high-reward opportunity.

Not all threats are monstrous. Phrygius the Trovemaster is a roaming thief who ambushes players and attempts to flee with your valuables. He only stays for a limited window of turns, and the more damage you deal before he escapes, the more Grim Coins and Grim Gold he drops. These currencies feed into the Forest’s dedicated shop, offering Curios, powerful mode-specific gear, as well as chests containing the new Mercurial Gear Set.

In addition to Mimics and Phrygius, four other Bosses wander the map waiting to challenge intruders. But they pale in comparison to the Grim Forest’s final guardian: Leshun, the Entangled One. This colossal creature embodies the malice of the Gloom Lands and serves as the ultimate encounter of the entire mode.

To fight Leshun, players must collect three Grim Crowns by defeating special Mythical-Champion encounters hidden throughout the map. When you finally challenge Leshun, he summons the four roaming Bosses. Maximoz the Weeping Blade, Isheth the Crimson Siren, Tauraze the Bestial Flame and Draugnell the Eternal Gatherer to fight alongside him. While brave adventurers are welcome to face all five at once, most strategists will eliminate these roaming foes earlier in the run to avoid a nightmarish final battle.

Every battle and exploration step adds to your Squad Progress. Levelling this track unlocks Trait Cards, providing permanent passive stat boosts that enhance your entire Squad during the rotation. Curios, another exclusive progression system, can be upgraded for additional effects that fundamentally change how your Champions perform within The Grim Forest.

These progression systems reset with each monthly rotation, ensuring The Grim Forest remains a constantly evolving challenge rather than a solved puzzle. Every new map layout demands new strategies, new Deck configurations and new approaches to both combat and exploration.

The Grim Forest offers some of the strongest and most desirable rewards the game has ever tied to a PvE mode. Chests can contain Champion Fragments and Souls for Anaxia the Reborn, a Mythical Champion obtainable only from The Grim Forest. Players can also earn Cursed Remnants to craft Relics from a brand-new group, along with gear from the protective Mercurial Set. This set offers large boosts to HP, Resistance and Speed and introduces Total Guard, a new buff that prevents incoming damage or negative effects in stacks. Bosses, however, can bypass Total Guard, preventing it from becoming a guaranteed safety net. Competitive players will also find familiar motivations: global Rankings, cosmetic rewards and a new Avatar Frame for players who carve their path deepest into the Forest.

The Grim Forest is shaping up to be Raid’s most ambitious and dynamic PvE experience to date. Its fog-shrouded maps, unpredictable Champion draws, shifting layouts and layered progression systems promise a mode that stays fresh month after month. Between the roaming minibosses, the unique Curios, the new Mythical Champion and the massive final battle with Leshun, The Grim Forest looks ready to stand alongside Raid’s greatest endgame modes and may even surpass them.

A full Feature Guide will follow soon, but for now, this preview makes one thing clear: The Grim Forest is a landmark addition, and one that will define late-game Raid for years to come.