I've played for 87 days, and I enjoyed most of them despite having 0 legendaries.

First week is great: new game, cool graphics, story, lots of freebies to keep playing. All starting champions are good, don't be sad if yours is not Kael. I like my Elhain, she is great campaign farmer and arena nuker.

Next weeks are about making progress on campaign, missions, challenges, first stages of dungeons and faction wars, bronze arena. Making your first powerful team of level 40 farmable characters. Still lots of freebies from progression, including constant x2 experience. Gem mine starts giving you a steady income. You can even win tournament groups with active and smart play competing with other newbies!

Second month starts with High Khatun. Speed aura speeds up both dungeon and arena progression a lot! Don't be sad that you can't reach silver arena for a mission or deal millions to clan boss. Fight where you can, grind campaign and dungeons, upgrade artifacts. You should have your starter at 60 at this point farming Brutal 12-3, with all masteries unlocked for 800 gems (don't touch minotaur, he's not worth the time and energy, he's only good for first mastery levels).

Get some epic characters from shards on x2 events (legendaries if you are lucky, but don't get upset if not). Put them in your teams (not blindly!). Find synergies. Check ayumilove site and reddit, some epics are worse than farmable rares, and some are well worth investing in. Experimenting is too expensive, an hour of research saves a week of farm just to see that a champ does not work. At this point arena, dungeon and clan boss teams are not the same one anymore, even if some characters fit all of them.

Plan for tournaments. Keep level 30 food for champion training tournament. Open shards during champion chase (if also x2 chance or really good x10 boost). Run appropriate dungeons.  Farm campaign when you have x2 exp. Tournaments become nearly unwinnable after certain level, but they still give good milestone rewards.

Progression does not stop. On some weeks you get new champions. On others better artifacts. Get enough artifacts to reequip a hero or even a team (using pen and paper to find out the best setup). Get 1 level deeper in some dungeon. Get the next chest on clan boss.

Battles are not the game. In ARPGs you mash buttons to grind. Here you run the game in background to grind. In both genres actual gameplay is when you improve your champions or choose where to go next.

I don't even see a point in spending money early on. It's a shortcut. It's almost a cheat code. I don't know if endgame is as enjoyable as early progression, and I definitely don't want to skip a joy of getting first hard-earned 6* artifact or legendary champion. But if you want to support developers, do it!

The game is excellent! It has so many cool features and enjoyable moments. Focus on them, not on negative ones, and you'll have a great time! Applies to life too.