HH Free 2 Play 2023: Wix Interview

Wix has taken the community leaderboards by storm in our 2023 Free to Play series, and not only is he limited by his account being free to play, he’s chosen ONLY to use Telerian Champions!

Today we’ve spoken to Wix about his journey and how he plans to progress further!

Be sure to check out Wix on Youtube here.

Wix’s Current Progress:

• Dragon: Stage 25 – Rank 1
• Spider: Stage 15 – Rank 3
• Fire Knight: Stage 17 – Rank 2
• Ice Golem: Stage 17 – Rank 4
• Doom Tower Rotation 2: Stage 120 Cleared – Rank 1
• Classic Arena: Gold V
• Arcane Keep: Stage 20 – Rank 6
• Spirit Keep: Stage 20 – Rank 2
• Force Keep: Stage 20 – Rank 4
• Clan Boss: Nightmare 13.08M – Rank 6

Who are you?

I’m a Canadian gamer who grew up on Final Fantasy III, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, and Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past.  I would pull all-nighters in grade school playing the Super Nintendo I bought with my paper route money and fall asleep in class.  Graduated to Diablo II and Runescape and then played Final Fantasy 11 Online for many years.  Definitely a gaming addict my whole life.

I got into Tolkien books and Fantasy novels in Grade 3.  My favourite series is A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) by George R.R. Martin and Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan (Brandon Sanderson).

What is your experience with Raid: Shadow Legends?

I heard about Raid from OSRS (Old School Runescape) Content Creator advertisement.  I was working on a very long and AFK grind so I decided to finally click it and try.  A week later I quit playing runescape and was full-time on my first Raid account.  This was around 2 years ago now.

Early on I visited the in-game shop to see if there was something I could buy to help out the early game.  After seeing how insane the prices are in shop I decided to be permanent F2P.

The first few weeks I wanted to try learning and playing on my own.  I started to learn more about the game and realized how much silver I wasted on trash gear and wanted to reroll.  I got a Lyssandra from my first ancient though and then I pulled a Draco from my Brutal sacred during a 2x 3 weeks later, and my clanmates told me how strong they were, so I stuck with it.

Around that time I decided to start watching Content Creators to learn about the game.  I found Hellhades’ channel and binge-watched all of his previous F2P series and started learning how to play the game.  Hellhades was like raid dad to me, but instead of teaching me how to shave or ride a bike, he showed me how to speed-tune my arena team and how to gear my champions properly (flat stats in the bin!)

Early on I was in love with the progression style of Raid.  I loved trying to push the limits of my account and try to get as far as I could as fast as I could.  I wanted to beat the F2P arbiter record, which was 89 days at the time, and I was on track to do so, but a week before I finished Arbiter at 78 days, the guy from Chosen’s F2P challenge at the time ended up getting a 63-day Arbiter, which was frustrating because I could have rushed it sooner by spending gems on arena refills and opening potion keeps, but whatever!

After Arbiter, I turned my focus to Lydia record.  The record at the time was 239 days IIRC, and I felt like I could beat it.  Eventually got Lydia at 203 or 204 days.  I contacted BGE who was the CC doing all of the F2P and challenge account milestone videos, and he made a video to document and verify the F2P status of the account.

• Normal DT clear on day 77
• Arbiter day 78
• Hard DT first clear on roughly day 135 and cleared every one after that.

After clearing Lydia I was ready to take a break, but they announced the Bommel rotation of Doom Tower coming and I wanted to stick around and try it out.  Ended up clearing it on release and then took a long break from raid.

When did you come back to Raid?

Came back to scratch the Raid itch about a year ago and I wanted to build a challenge account.  I settled on Mystery Shard Only to Arbiter and decided to document my progress for Youtube with some scuffed / low-effort progress videos.  Did Mystery Shard Only challenge until Arbiter on day 100 and then Budget Lydia Challenge to Lydia on day 280.  I can detail the rules if you want them, but they are posted underneath every video description as well for the specific challenges.  I carried on with the account for a while because I wanted to get into gold 1 Tag team to say that I ‘beat’ the game as f2p and possibly get ramantu.

I ended up getting into gold 1 around day 350 or so and had already been considering what series I want to do next.  That was when HH announced the F2P challenge 2023 and I was stuck playing two accounts for a time which I absolutely hated, and eventually just stopped pushing on the main for now, falling out of gold 1 about a week before I got to the gold 1 mission (yikes).  As far as gomlok goes I was around 4 months of DT hard secret rooms away from him, so not far off ramantu.  All the other missions were easily doable for me.

What do you enjoy about Raid?

Part of the fun of Raid for me is the community aspect of pushing limits and showing what is possible with limited champions and early progression, so being able to share my journey and progress with others is what drives me to upload videos.  I’ve made a few guides as well focusing on mainly F2P friendly champs and teams to take down content, and will eventually expand on them in the future, but I will always stick to doing something I find fun and enjoyable, and with Raid’s silver costs it makes content creation on a F2P very problematic and annoying, as I have to farm silver for weeks to keep up with events and be able to regear champions.

Part of the reason I decided to make content was thinking that maybe one day I’d get on the test server and actually be able to experiment and have fun with my account without the frustrating gearing costs :D

What inspired you to get involved with the F2P Series?

Went Telerians only because I’ve already done Mystery Shard to Arbiter and then Budget Lydia Challenge.  I’ve built two F2P from the ground up and cleared all hard DT and Lydia with them, so I wanted to do something that would be interesting to me and force me to utilize new strategies and champions to tackle content.  Also the challenge would be over much sooner because no Lydia grind.  I could just relax more with the game instead of micromanaging gear and champions for 15 different factions.

Also, the ronda chase was live, and I thought it would be fun starting a fresh f2p with her to see what she’s capable of on a new player’s account.  She’s been insanely fun to watch and very strong.  Love her little punch animations and sounds (pow pow!)

What has been your strategy so far?

My focus on the early game is just to get 5 champions to 60 with full masteries.  Typically, I’ll aim for 2 dps, 1 dec def, 2 supports (1 healer / 1 reviver).  I don’t swap gear much until I have a build that is good enough to carry me through dungeon 20 autos and normal doom tower, in order to save silver.

Use artifact airplane mode trick to max out every artifact event and get a lot of gear levelled.

I avoid dungeons until I can farm 20, except spider 10 is good to do one or two tournaments worth of points to get the basics filled.  Early on my gear comes from Brutal 6-6 / 6-7 / 8-6 / 8-7 / missions / forging from FW and DT.

I’ll push missions as they come, but trying to get to potion keep 20 to make it more energy efficient as I go along.  Can auto arcane, force, spirit 20 so far and should be able to do magic and void next time the missions ask for those.

The first thing to do is clan boss NM.  5 champions level 60 with full masteries if geared properly are usually enough to get there.  After that, I don’t really pay attention to clan boss until I have the champions to push UNM.  My focus shifts instead to clearing doom tower as much as possible, pushing Faction Wars farming up to stage 13 or 16+, and getting Arbiter.  Getting into gold V asap is the bottleneck for Arbiter missions, so if you have the gems/time to refresh and get there early it’s going to boost your progress very quickly, especially with all the free stats you get from Great hall and the Gold V tier bonus.

I’m stuck on Clan boss progress currently.  I can upgrade gear and accessories some, but until I pull a strong atk down champ I probably won’t be moving from NM for the near future.  I fed an Iron Brago and Sepulcher Sentinel so far on the account, which was very painful.  Also am going to feed a Georgid which I just pulled.  It’s painful but funny as well.

The biggest thing to keep in mind is maximizing when you use your resources to get as many back as possible, but also using all your resources early has a compounding effect since you gain access to more resources sooner and that feeds into itself.  Not a good idea to horde too much outside of saving shards for a fusion and saving some resources for CvC unless it’s going to push your progress significantly to use it right away.  Early on YOLO shards until you get something good enough to progress through the game with like apothecary / rel tender etc.

What is your current focus?

Right now I am working on champions to help me make progress in Hard DT to try and maximize the amount of resources I can get my hands on, but those champions will also triple in FW progress and Normal Secret Rooms.  It’s important to have multiple uses for champions early on when deciding on next 6 stars.  You are basically at the mercy of RNG and pull luck to decide which direction you should focus next, although there are also lots of rare champs and some free champs available that can get you very far.  Paragon + armigers spider 20 auto is one that comes to mind.  Drexthar / Broadmaw are both incredibly strong for F2P progression as well.

The biggest struggle for Telerian Only is shard luck for sure.  I just have to keep going with what I have until I pull the necessary utility champions to make progress possible.

My factions have a ton of really strong champs.  I get to use Apothecary (when I pull), Reliquary Tender, Ronda, Deacon, Scyl, Arbiter for free, and I could even fuse a yakarl / yannica, but those take 5 months of buying fragments and I’ll likely be done the challenge by then.

The challenge ends when I clear all 3 normal DT / 1 Hard DT / all 4 of my factions to full 3 stars.

What are you lacking currently?

The biggest gaps in my roster are atk down / defense up / ally protect for CB and poisoners for damage.

AoE hp burn or debuff spread for Spiders.  Can probably build a turn meter control w/ zephyr sniper spiderling tank if I have to but I don’t really want to since I did that for my mystery shard-only challenge.

A way to counter rough waves like siphi / rotos and Mortu in Hard DT.  Will need debuff spread with ronda A2 or a way to apply heal reduction to whole wave or a champ like shamael / royal huntsman/baron to ignore defense and nuke through them.

Some of the champions I’d love to pull:

• Most Wanted Void – Cardiel Lego – Haarken Epic
• Most Wanted Regular – Valkyrie Lego – Giscard Epic
• Cardiel, Venus, Sir Nick, Taras, Marichka, Raglin, Tuhanarak would be my top Void legos
• Roshcard / Wartower combo would be crazy
• Haarken for debuff spread hp burn spider and spread ronda a2 to hard DT waves to counter Siphi / Rotos
• Godseeker Aniri / Ursala my most wanted void epics besides haarken
• Tons of useful Legos
• Cupidus if I got a venus would be fun.
• Tayrel, Lodric, Giscard or any of the atk down a1
• Sigmund / Tatura / Sethalia / Lord Champfort / Lugan / Deliana / Kantra / Altan / Corvis / Martyr / Bivald / Valkyrie etc. are all crazy strong for progression / CB / Hard DT.

Still haven’t pulled an apothecary! :(

Subscribe to Wix_RSL for scuffed challenge account progress videos.  I do a takeover giveaway every 100 subs currently and will probably set up a discord and start putting effort into video editing and pacing if I end up making it into the content creator program someday.