In terms of what gear is best for what champs - focus on their primary stat, but especially, focus on the stat that their attacks scale off of.

You can use Raid Shadow Legends Tier List | List of Champions by Ranking | AyumiLove to see all the champs and their stats.

In terms of who you should level - stop leveling all but Ninja, and focus on getting him to 60. Once he's there, you can consider Kael to 60 as well, but there's a good chance by that point you'll have better choices to level.

In general look at artifacts with good stats. The sets don't matter, as the setbonus is rather small.

Use speed boots (boots with mainstat speed) on most of your champs. Boots are the only itemtype that can get speed as mainstat.

Try to get your damagedealers to 100% critrate. Use gloves with critrate as mainstat on them.

Never use gloves, chests or boots with flat atk, def or hp as mainstat. The effect is hundreds or even thousands of points higher when you use %atk, %def or %hp. The same is true for substats on items.

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For example, this is a good item. Maximum speed for boots as mainstat and 27% critrate from substats. The set doesn't matter. Even a pure damagedealer, who doesn't need accuracy and will use no second item from the accuracy set, could take this boots. 

The critrate bonus from this single item is 27%. The critrate bonus from the critrate set is 12%. Sets don't matter. Stats are the thing to look for. 

A lot of your actual champs should be replaced soon. Kael and Ninja are worth investing. Both are damage dealers that also can place some interesting debuffs, so they are rivals about their equip. Both should have 100% critrate, a lot of critdamage, speed, attack and accuracy (obviously hard to build at the start). They still need some hp for survivability. Try to get that from substats on your artifacts, with %hp over flat hp. Gloves cirtrate, chest %attack, boots speed as mainstat.

@kramaswamy.kr  Thanks - yeah, Ninja and Kael are at 50, the rest are at 40 - I just want to dress them appropriately for best impact while I wait for better Champions to come around!

@Skadi - thanks for that information.  While I want my current Champions dressed well, I will probably put some of those artifacts  onto better Champions when I get them to replace the current ones - this way I'm not spending tons of money upgrading equipment.

So, good to know about the boots - I'll look for speed boots to upgrade and look at the stats for others.  I just finished a task to get 5 5* artifacts from one of the dungeons, so I have to see what I have.  Will definitely also look at the substats for HP and see.

I have a void shard and 6 Ancient Shards but I was advised to wait for a summoning event to summon from them....so I'm waiting...

Just another note - I would highly recommend *not* taking any of your gear to level 16, unless you're fortunate enough to pull a 5* or 6* item with good main and substats. Getting gear to 16 is very expensive, even for late-game players. You should get your good gear to level 12, but don't get anything to 16 unless you're sure it will be a keeper.

Oh, thanks, great note - I will take them up to 8 without much thought - that seems the easiest to get to to get decent assist from the artifact without spending to much coin but you stopped me from going buck wild and taking a bunch to 16 that would be essentially a waste of coin...I'm trying to NOT make to many silly noob mistakes....

Yeah, a good rule of thumb is that taking an item from zero to 16 will cost you roughly 10-15M silver. Skadi's advice is pretty solid. Generally speaking, the items you'll want to pay attention to are the ones with the proper main stat - ATK/DEF/HP% on chest, crit % on gloves for now, but eventually crit damage % on gloves, speed on boots. There's exceptions to this, of course - some champs will want to run ATK/DEF/HP% gloves and boots. But generally that rule should work for you.

Don't worry too much about set bonuses. They're nice, but they're not a gamebreaker. Focus more on substats. You ideally want to have at least three "good" substats for your champ.

Any suggestions on artifacts to look for for either Kael, Warpriest, Sniper, or maybe Stoneskin?  I'm working on a personal goal of getting all the stars for the Campaigns on Hard and I am really just missing stage 7 for Godfreys' crossing, Hallowed Halls, and Brimstone Path....Ninja can beat them on his own but I need someone to survive with him!  Kael is the strongest, so I would like to equip him best.

Don't focus on that.  More important to get to 12.3 brutal and just solo farm alot, like forever alot.... And definitely dont waste any energy in NM campaign.

Ok, so 12.3 brutal is getting to that stage set on Brutal - why?  Is that the best way to farm?  I'm hanging out in Brimstone Path on hard because that seems like a good place but open to suggestions.  I've been collecting shards and saving them for summoning..um..what's it called?  Bonus days or whatever? 

I need something to focus on, though, and have been told to not focus to much on leveling up my Champions so I figure trying to beat a level is a good way to figure out how the artifacts work.

What's NM campaign?

12 3 brutal gives you the most xp to silver ratio you can farm silver and xp on that stage. As far as how to build champs each champ is diffrent and will require diffrent sets of gear, diffrent stats and just all around diffrent aproaches. sometimes stats are far more important than the sets.

1. Farmer to 60 (ninja or kael) -- honestly not sure what is better choice, honestly I think Kael because you can book but I started so long ago I still haven't used Ninja

2. 12.3 Brutal

2a. 9.3 Brural (or hard) for Warmaiden and dupes for books.

2b. Same for Spirithost (maybe not for books)

3. 12.3 Brutal chicken farming (90% of energy here)

4. Dragon Progress (The faster you start getting decent gear, even if just 1 item a day, the better. Don't waste time/silver upgrading and testing crappy artifacts.)

Ignore missions/challenges unless they are easy.  Don't waste energy for 1-time rewards that aren't going anywhere.  Leveling Kael 6*, Ninja 50 or 6*, WM 5/6*and even SH to 40 is worthwhile.

OK, thanks - I thought of it and NM is normal mode?  I kept thinking New Mexico....

So, new plan - I'll start heading across brutal.  I'm waiting for Void Keep to open again to work on the next progress mission so I have a few days (it opens Sunday).  So, I've been leveling/ranking up some lower level champions to 3/4 stars just to have to rank up good Champions when I have them but while doing that, I thought I would play with artifacts as well.

By Dragon Progress you mean the Progress Missions that are sets of 75?  I've been working on that.  I looked at the challenges and when I could kill two birds with one stone, I did that but I'm up to the hardest challenges that are just so specific to worry about.  I have been doing the daily/weekly quests as well as they are easy.

OK, so current plan - work across the Campaigns on Brutal while leveling/ranking sacrifice Champions to get Ninja and Kael to 60 while I wait for the summoning bonus time to summon with my Ancient and Void Shards.

NM = Nightmare Mode.

Dragon Progress = your progress at Dragon Dungeon. It's (for most players) the easiest dungeon, at stage 20 (or higher) you can farm your endgame gear.

You should, like Trips suggested (point 2a in his post), try to find Warmaiden. She can be obtained as campaigne loot in stage 9 (9.3 is easy to beat). This champ can put decrease def on all enemies at once, a much better champ than most of your actual team. Kael, Ninja and Warmaiden are allready a good base to build up decent teams. At day 30 you will get High Khatun as log-in reward, another champ worth building.

OK, great, thanks for the clarification.  I'm up to stage 10 of Dragon Lair in Dugeon missions, that's the one you are talking about?  I will keep working on that.

So - main goal: Getting Kael to level 60

Will work through the campaigns while leveling up Sacrifice Champions until I get to 9.3, then will switch over to Dragon's Lair once I get Warmaiden and level her up while working through there.

That's enough for now....I will reassess once I have Kael at 60.

Main goal should be getting Ninja to 60, fully ascended, and with masteries. If you already have that, and have no better champs to level, then go for Kael, but there's a good chance you have someone more valuable to level than that.

OK, I thought someone said Kael was better and to be fair for some reason, I get the two confused.  I just want a "fighting" goal to use while getting my sacrifice champions ranked/leveled - Ninja is at 50 now so I need 5 5-star champions to get him to 6 stars. 

Right now, I have 2 4 star, 3 3-star and a couple 2/1 star....so I have a while to go before Ninja is at 60!

The levelling process is a grind. It takes a while to get a champ to 60.

Sometimes you get a chicken from daily log-in rewards or other sources. That saves a lot of time (especially 5* chickens). 

And don't sacrifice good champs. Even, if using an epic (4* allready from the start) would save some time compared to levelling uncommens, it's a bad choice in the end. Check at pages like Hellhades or Ayumi if the champs you want to sacrifice are usefull.

Thanks for the tips!  I have been traveling for work and unfortunately unable to play every day....so sad!  I'm still grinding to get guys up leveled up to rank up so thanks for the links because there are a few that I'm not sure about so I haven't sacrificed them.

Hopefully, someone can help with my related question - while I'm grinding through leveling up champions, I'm focusing on Dragon Lair to get good artifacts but I know I'm getting WAY more than I will ever use!

So, I'm pretty comfortable selling the commons since I have tons of uncommons and rares but I am wondering how the stars play into it.  So, if I have an Epic with 3 stars, is that better or worse than a Rare with 4 stars (assuming all stats are the same categories).  I know the stats change as you upgrade them but I'm not sure if you can add more stars and I'm not sure how rarity and stars effect how the stats increase as you upgrade.

The stars of an artifact determine the value of the stats, main and substats as well.

For example a chest with %-atk as main stat. 4* lvl 16 will be 40% atk, 6* lvl 16 will be 60% atk. The same is true for substats, an artifact with 6* and speed as substat will have more speed per roll than an artifact with 4* and speed as substat.

The quality of artifact influences the number of substats from the start, and therefore the value of the substats at lvl 16. An epic artifact starts with 3 substats, that get increased at lvl 4, 8 and 12, it gets a new substat at lvl 16. An uncommen artifact starts with one substat that gets increased at lvl 4. It gets new substats at lvl 8, 12 and 16. So in the end the uncommen artifact gets only one substat increased, vs. 3 increased substats for an epic.

Both is important, stars and quality of an artifact. If you want to decide between 3* epic and 4* rare, the answer is none of them. Don't level up bad artifacts to much, this is a waste of silver. Of course your champs should not fight naked, but don't invest heavy in bad artifacts. Make them lvl 8 if you have to use them right now, that is a good compromise between silver cost of upgrading and benefit from the gear, and wait for better stuff to come.

HA - yeah some of the  ones I'm going to sacrifice are running around naked right now but that's not a big deal.  I have some artifacts upgraded to 8 that I do toss on my champions that I'm planning to keep but don't have ideal artifacts are.

But I also have a ton of artifacts that almost exactly the same except rarity and stars.  So, I think, following you advice, I will keep the more rare over the less rare as a "just in case" but not look to upgrade either - try to wait for better ones (I did get a 5 star legendary recently, though I was in multibattle mode so now I have to go look at the stats).

It's that balance between not having naked Champions and waiting for the right artifacts!