Raid: Shadow Legends gives new players plenty of free rewards, but many of the most valuable ones are surprisingly easy to miss. Promo codes expire, event deadlines arrive earlier than they seem, and several reward tracks only pay out if you remember to open the right menu and claim what you have earned.
This guide covers seven common mistakes that can cost a new account Champions, Shards, Books, Silver, and other useful rewards. Some can be fixed whenever you notice them, while others, particularly new-player promo codes and limited-time login events, have deadlines you cannot recover once they pass. Here is what to check during your first few weeks so free rewards do not slip through the cracks.
Why Raid new players leave free rewards unclaimed
Most raid beginner tips cover what to do in combat, but a Raid new player has a second, quieter checklist to work through: the free rewards that sit entirely outside the battle screen. Very little advice covers the second game running quietly in the background, where developer Plarium hands out Champions, Shards, materials, and time-limited rewards to players who remember to check the right menus.
1. Assuming every promo code you find is dead
The most common reason players skip codes entirely is that the first three they tried failed, so they concluded the whole system is defunct. It is not. Plarium issues codes around updates, tournaments, and creator campaigns throughout the year, and they pay out Energy, Silver, Skill Tomes, and, for brand-new accounts, whole Champions.
The catch is that codes retire without any announcement, so the average search result is a graveyard. Working from a maintained set such as ModuleTD rather than a random listicle changes the hit rate considerably, and it matters most in your first three days (72 hours), when Raid new player codes are still available to you.
What it costs you: a free Champion, permanently, if the window closes before you check.
2. Never opening the Plarium Points Program
This is the single largest oversight on most young accounts because the tab is easy to miss on the left-hand Bastion menu and nothing in the game pushes you toward it.
The program runs on cards. Each card holds slots, each slot unlocks at a Points threshold, and the Special Cards include a warm-up card carrying the Epic Dwarf Morag Bronzelock, a Champion card carrying the Legendary Searsha the Charred, plus cards for her Artifacts and the Souls needed to Awaken her. Clear all three Special Cards and a set of Common Cards opens, which then reset and run again. Plarium’s own Plarium Points Program guide has the exact thresholds if you want to plan ahead.
Points accumulate from ordinary play – tournaments, events, Advanced Quests – whether or not you have looked at the tab. Plenty of players discover months of banked Points sitting unclaimed.
What it costs you: a Legendary Champion, fully geared, that requires no summoning luck at all.
3. Ignoring Playtime Rewards and Advanced Quests
Two separate systems, same problem: they pay out for things you were already doing.
Playtime Rewards issue Plarium Points simply for time spent in the game each day, with a higher rate through Plarium’s own launcher. Advanced Quests sit above the daily quest board and run on longer objectives, feeding both resources and Points.
Neither one nags you. Both quietly stop paying if you never open them.
What it costs you: the fuel for mistake #2, which is why the two compound.
4. Playing for weeks without binding a Plarium ID
A surprising number of new accounts run entirely on a device-local save. That works until the phone dies, the app is reinstalled, or you want to play the same account on a PC.
Binding a Plarium ID ties your progress, purchases, and rewards to an account rather than a handset, and it is also the mechanism that lets rewards claimed on the web reach your roster. Without it, the redemption portal has nowhere to deliver rewards.
What it costs you: in the worst case, you could lose your entire account.
5. Sitting out tournaments you have already qualified for
Tournaments in Raid are not competitions you enter. They are brackets you are placed into automatically, and they pay milestone rewards for progress rather than for placing first.
New players routinely see a leaderboard, decide they cannot compete against established accounts, and close the tab. But the milestone track pays out long before the top ranks matter – levelling a Champion, running a dungeon or summoning from Shards you were going to open anyway all register as points. This is standard raid beginner tips territory, and one of the easiest to fix: you don’t have to play differently, just open the tab.
What it costs you: Books, Shards and Silver for activity you performed regardless.
6. Discovering a crossover event on its final day
Raid’s licensed collaborations hand out Legendary Champions through login campaigns, and the deadlines are stricter than they appear. The Xenomorph giveaway, for instance, required logging in on seven non-consecutive days and gave players until early January to finish, which meant that anyone starting after Boxing Day could not complete it at all.
That pattern repeats. The advertised end date is when the reward disappears; the real deadline is that date minus however many logins the campaign demands.
What it costs you: a Legendary that rarely comes back, missed by a matter of days.
7. Feeding away Champions that events will ask for later
Low-rarity Champions exist to be consumed, and new players are told this early. What they are not told is that fusion events specify exact Champions, and the Rares they ask for are often ones you have been merrily sacrificing for weeks.
The habit worth building is to check the announced fusion requirements before a rank-up session, then set aside anything named. Storage is cheap; re-farming a specific Rare during a two-week window is not.
What it costs you: an otherwise achievable fusion, abandoned halfway.
FAQ
The code window should be fixed first, as it has a strict three-day expiry. Everything else can be picked up later.
No. Purchases generate Points faster, but ordinary play, Advanced Quests and Playtime Rewards accumulate them without spending.
Yes, because the milestone tiers are keyed to activity rather than ranking. You collect them by playing normally.
The in-game news tab announces them on day one. Checking it weekly is enough to catch the login campaigns while they are still completable.
72 hours (three days) from account creation, per Plarium’s official Promo Codes FAQ – this is the deadline mistake #1 is built around.
No. The Points Program is the in-game rewards tab described in mistake #2; Plarium Play is a separate PC launcher that happens to earn Points faster. You don’t need one to use the other.
The pattern behind all seven
Every mistake here shares a shape: the reward exists, you qualify for it, and nothing in the game tells you to collect it. Raid’s free economy is opt-in by design.
Ten minutes spent opening every tab in the Bastion menu once – Plarium Points, Advanced Quests, tournaments, the news feed – will find more value on a young account than an equivalent ten minutes of Campaign farming ever will.
Mistake → What you lose
| Mistake | What you lose |
| Assume every promo code is dead | A free Champion – permanently, once the window closes |
| Skip the Plarium Points Program | A fully-geared Legendary Champion |
| Ignore Playtime Rewards and Advanced Quests | The Points that fund the Legendary above |
| Never bind a Plarium ID | In the worst case, the entire account |
| Sit out tournaments | Books, Shards, and Silver you’d earn anyway |
| Miss a crossover event’s real deadline | A Legendary that rarely comes back |
| Feed away fusion-needed Champions | An otherwise achievable fusion |
