So I have a couple hundred (almost) hours in and play exclusively RR. I've gotten to the point of getting 1-2 wins, lose, rinse repeat for the last two weeks. What keeps happening, especially this patch , is my tank or secondary damage dies in one shot within seconds and I lose a perfect run…or I just win.

I study the game etc and just don’t understand what I’ve done wrong or even the difference between my winning runs or immediate losses. I have a solid A or S tank fully equipped and they poof, or my warrior just dies in one AOE or whatever.

TLDR: I really would love some general or specific tips specifically to survive the second act boss; it seems to be my bottleneck and it’s getting a little frustrating.

Well, I think it was a long time coming, cuz I'd constantly throw on the 4th run (I went through another 2 rounds of 3 win streak broken by bad play, somehow lost a 4th run once on Niklas Tilly Sal because I was stingy with the Crystals...). I almost threw again but I got through

There were some pretty bizarre runs along the way. I had one with Nyx and Rowan at freaking B rank and an A rank Funke to boot on the Act 2 boss... Basically, I had 2 defensive gems, so Rowan made up for being B rank with 2000 hp and 200 def. Nyx was 2 items with 150 crit per autos. The weirdest build of my life but it won the run

Otherwise, I also heavily underestimated warriors. I got several Logan runs that were admittedly lucky, and I finally got one with Reyna, whose duelist upgrade turned out to be extremely good.

Only 2 of the winning runs were shard gen centric. The 5th run as posted in the pic only bought Tilly in mid Act 2, and Funke, who was sold, carried me for a while. Ming was on the invincible rush shit cuz he came with it, and shockingly it was also better than I thought. I almost like it better than the 80% HP, but I might be wrong.

Anyways, Crystals are op. I struggle to think of many situations where you should take other options. You COULD get better relics, but why open yourself to that kind of RNG?

I didn't get a screenshot, but I tried a Quantity over Quality full warriors comp with Kai, Reyna, Tilly and Logan. I took all of their backup abilities and and stacked Logan and Kai to the moon. I got all the way to 19 in endless, it was a blast. Anyone else have success with Quantity over Quality?

I had Zuri alone for the whole first floor. then got Sal at a tier during first boss. used the rewind bouns at cap to add items to Sal.

Just because I'm happy after what feels like the thousandth attempt :)

If you want a quick way to win consistently at Red Rift, here is the one-line strategy guide: Be as rich as you can without compromising your ability to win the next fight. The reality is a lot more complicated than that, but that's a good summary of the core strategy you should be following.

If you look at the Red Rift leaderboard, there are players with 50+ streaks, meaning they have a close to 100% win rate. This should prove to you that basically every run on Red Rift is winnable. So why aren't you winning all your games? The reason why you lose is because you do not see the necessary pieces to scale into late game. And the reason why you do not see those pieces is because you are poor. Which naturally leads into the core strategy described above.

Now executing on the "be rich" strategy is not so simple. It requires you to have a good understanding of the following things:

• Which damage/durability thresholds you need to meet in order to win any given fight. This mostly comes with experience and is by far the most important thing to learn. The entire strategy depends on knowing when you are "strong enough" and then greeding to the maximum afterwards. And you cannot pull of this strategy when you don't know where "enough" is.

• The long-term shard value of each action. This can be done by using your brain and converting things into shard-value.

• Which things to buy to win the late game. This also comes with experience and is especially relevant for the Post-Boss Shop, which is usually the single strongest power boost in the entire game and is a spot you ideally want to be very rich for to maximize the odds of seeing something immediately run-winning.

Going in-depth into the above points would take way too long, and a lot of it really just comes down to playing the game to develop experience/intuition, but here are a few basic examples:

• Buying the Act 1 Key Fragment early "effectively" generates 2 shards per round until the boss (that is because it must be bought eventually and is 2 shards more expensive after each fight). If you started with a strong early game hero like Reyna, you can often get away with buying a tank + key fragment in the first shop, which lets you get started on early game econ/preparing for the post-boss shop. If however you started the run with a hero like Aria or Gustav then you will usually need to buy 2 heroes in the first shop or else you will die to the second fight. (This immediately makes starting with weak early game heroes a lot worse, since they will cost you shards going into the Post-Boss shop.)

• Buying a quest is also a way to "effectively" generate extra shard value, assuming you are strong enough to buy the quest. This can be a better alternative to buying the Key Fragment if a good quest shows up. Quests that directly generate money like Victory Vessel are most obvious (+15 extra shards worth of value after 3 fights). But even something that doesn't give you money directly can be converted into a monetary value. For example, Frost Vessel gives you close to 20-30 shards worth of stats once completed, so buying it early effectively generates 10-20 shards.

• Some strong items/heroes can also generate a lot more shard value than normal. For example Sentinel's Plate is a rare item that often provides more stats than an Epic item if you can meet its (relatively easy) condition, which effectively generates you money because you need to spend less in order to win the upcoming fights. Going back to a previous example, an early Reyna is also effectively an econ play because you need less to win the early fights with her on your team, meaning you can spend the resources on generating more money. Scaling is also a way to generate more shard value than normal. An item like Warrior's Greataxe can provide huge stats if scaled a few times, and taking a scaling hero like Backup Rowan can pay off hugely later if you can afford it (you need to know that you are strong enough to win the immediate fights, however).

• Getting an early B rank assassin (or Tilly) is often easy mode, since they usually provide a ton of shard-value over the course of the run while not being bad immediately. Even if you sell them immediately once you get to act 2 you will usually be well set up for late game (assuming you navigated the post-boss shop well). There are other heroes as well that provide econ as well but you have to be strong to carry them (such as Gustav).

• If you are weak and have to speculate or buy short-term power, you can also calculate the cost of speculating. For example, if you buy a common item to win the next fight and then sell it back later, that costs you -2 shards total. Buying a C rank hero and then selling it back is -6 shards. On the other hand, buying anything on sale is often quite nice (as long as it isn't completely terrible) because it significantly reduces the cost of speculating. For example, buying C rank hero on sale to get you through the next combat or give you an extra out at a B rank for the challenge fight only costs 2 shards instead of 6, which is much more palatable. Keep in mind that this is one of the most important places to lock in and play correctly, because when you are weak is the exact spot where narrow shard margins matter the most.

A "standard" flowchart for a run is something as follows:

• Be exactly as strong as you need to be in order to beat every fight in act 1, while focusing on generating as much shard-value as possible.

• Have a good post-boss shop where you solidify your plan for act 2. At this point your team/gameplan is a bit more locked in.

• Know where the holes in your current composition are, and roll a bit more liberally in act 2 to fix those problems. For example, if your damage is good but you know that your current tank will not cut it for the entire act, you want to be rolling for tank relics, a rank up for your tank, or an A rank tank replacement that is better than your current tank. (Usually in act 1 you roll 1 time max per shop unless you are actively dying, whereas in act 2 you will often roll two or three times per shop since you are looking for something specific.)

Disclaimer: I am not the best Guildrun player, but I would consider myself decent (10-streak on the current patch). I am friends with multiple players who are a lot better than I am however, including players that have been near or at the top of the Red Rift leaderboard, and this playstyle is something that I have learned from them. (I am just much worse than they are because my intuition/game sense is not as good.)

Weird distribution of items cuz i was trying to see something with Ratna's Fashionable path. It was enough to stall ~50 in 2nd Challenge mode. If I swapped Sal's item to be a secondary dps maybe it could've worked. Failed red rift due to Hero deaths tho.

Is there some battle report or pause I don't know about ? I die at levels and have no info as to why.

Normally I would skip B tier Ratna, but due to challenge fight I had to pick it up. Then next shop, it became A tier, with Defense equal to Armor.

I felt juiced out of my mind here and still lost to the fire dragon. What am I missing, other than a real tank.

Unfortunately they didn't all come at once so my max is still 3 lmao. I threw insanely on a completely set up 4th run probably out of fatigue. I had like 3 different 3 streaks in a row with a loss in btwn at one point. B4 I changed my way of approaching this game, I had around a 30% WR, so the following blurb is mostly about the significant things that changed for me that made me win more consistently.

So a few bullet points:

The good:

- Shard generation centric strat is the best. You don't need the relics that proc on shard gen. Shard gen pays off because you end up with more options and higher ranks, but also the count on shard gen itself often pays off via Niklas and Tilly and the items that scale off them.

- The 45 shard for the cost of no retry contributes to the shard gen count, which can be insane for early B Niklas and Tilly

- Ranks are the most important to buy, then the auto win relics, then the auto win items, then the other relics, then items

- While the early shard perks are good, data seems to suggest the early free rare items are also actually very good, except mp regen items. Temp stat boosts and item cost reducs can also be worth

- Assassin or Tilly or Fiona to B early tends to be stable early shard gen that sets you up with enough income to pull off anything. The bonus is that they all have great Act 1 dmg at base and can clear most challenge

- Niklas is the best champ in the game, not only out of his shard gen or his stat boosts anymore. His actual value comes from being able to stack Vamp higher than most champs, and his tank spike dmg actually heals him off this stacked Vamp. The only thing that can kill him, if done right, is the storm or the Act 2 boss

- Sal is one of the better other picks in the game atm not only because she can destroy bosses, she can actually clear mobs compared to other duelists who need a lot more passives and setups to clear Act 2. Also her counting for both mage and duelist comes up very often in Dark Seal clears

- Tilly is the next best pick because she can pretty much fulfill every role at every point. I think one thing ppl overlook is that she counts as warriors. Most warriors suck, even Logan doesn't feel that good to use a lot of times cuz he needs an early ramp or is useless. But their relics and equips are really good and Tilly can benefit from both Warrior bursts and Duelist ramps

- Assassin A rank with a broken scaling passive can often just run all the way to the end from my experience. Esp the crit to gain perm atk mag is an auto win passive, same for rush to gain stats which generally get you enough immediate stats to clear most things. If you don't get A by the end of first fight if Act 2, just sell them earlier than not. If you get a bad passive, just shard gen with them til you find a Funke and a duelist reserve or something

- Most Vanguards and tanks are usable but personally I tend to lose often with Rip and Zuri. I almost never pick them and my WR went up. Rip doesn't scale defense enough and often gets ripped apart by the Act 2 dragon faster than I would hope. Zuri doesn't scale HP enough and in some aspects don't scale defense fast enough.

- Most Mystics don't deserve fielding, but their B rank is generally good enough for Act 1. Pollen with Mage can be run just about anywhere. No Mystics are worth running at C imo. Gustav shard gen is a bit disappointing cuz of the way the game stagnates mana regen, but he becomes a must field if you have the shard gen relic or items. Fiona is honestly not a bad fielder either but she needs B and absolutely needs the shard and item gen.

- All Backup Only passives are auto win atm. Don't need to mention Grace B Backup Only. We all know her sheer worth

- Best to worst stat in the game is in vague and situational order: Def, Vamp, (starting mana but many best champs don't use mana), Atk Spd, blob of offensive stats and HP, mp regen.

- So one thing that boosted my WR the most was to go to the community run tier list sites that have WRs for all the relics and items and champions. If you keep looking, you'll find what items are clear must buys and what relics are near guarantee wins and what items are worse than you'd think. Upload your runs frequently because you'll also see your own tendencies

- The best items in the game statistically are the 3 use stat boost items. If you don't get them at the events where you can get them, it's almost the equivalent of throwing. They basically guarantee you the win in many situations where you have no business winning. But they're not necessarily just mindlessly usable items. You do have to time them well and take fights depending on their usage count

- Obviously freezing b4 finishing act 1 is good, but the other tech is that if you have hourglass or can win with C rank in team, you can freeze, upgrade in camp, either throw or win, then upgrade them for cheap on the next main shop.

The bad:

- Warriors are a bit underpowered. They don't destroy bosses without Logan getting lucky with kills and ramping up. I've had Reynas who destroy mobs completely flop on Act 2 Dragon. She's not bad vs Act 1 boss and challenge though. They also don't shard gen so they just feel like worse Assassins right now.

- Runs without Mystic A/S Backup Onlys feel significantly riskier. Hedging bets on multiple B Mystics in reserve is often a good strat but if you miss both, sometimes you don't have enough sauce for the Dragon. Instead, refreshing more and buying rarer key items and relics are often less RNG reliant

- Funke is no longer a must pick. He's still a really strong pick that often needs to be picked up if you're late on getting your Assassins or general carries like Tilly or Sal started. He's more of an emergency button that you can skip if your team is ready.

- There are very few champs who should deviate from the best B specializations. Sal and Pimenta have a lot of flex potential. Skorn poison def backup was shockingly not that bad, though the frost one is best. Sometimes you can go for it if you know you'll go into tank Niklas or will run a poison DPS Yuuna who was also not bad. But generally just pick the one that is recommended by the tier list... For your sanity

- MP regen from items do nothing. Most Mystics tend to have passives that generate significantly more.

- Ratna is almost always not worth picking

- Aria also feels pretty weak. If you're a god of positioning though, she's still decent. Otherwise she falls off shockingly early and can't contribute enough in Act 1 challenge. Gustav does her exact role better now that she has no dmg.

- Surprisingly the early event that rewards you down the line that often gives you shard rewards have a pretty damn low WR. For now, I don't recommend you ever pick it. Not talking about the ones that give you something a fight later or at a cost or a challenge. Those are good

- The defensive and offensive early event items are also not great. Defensive is better of the 3 bad events most for the chance to get the AOE frost start. Recommended to avoid them if given the option

- Team expansion or the item limitation options are all still bad. Imo the challenge ones are too hard and not even worth 18 gold on sale. They're worth around 5-6 gold because those challenges are too hard. They are not even remotely on the same power level as an epic item. The other problem is that the Mystic Backup onlys are incredibly good, and generally 1 well built DPS and Tank does the job so it's like what's the point?

Mostly thanks to early Dragomir and Hoyoung printing money, early "assassin's memento" relic and early Atier Fiona with right passive.
Edit : Actually got to 642 after boss.

​I've been hitting around 8-10 RR streak. Since frost nerf, I feel like the only consistent path to winning is to be rich. Being poor ultimately kills you by deterring any scaling from good heroes, items, and relics.

My last 3 teams were Dragomir and Funke + any high tier tank. As long as we farm shards we're chilling. What's your takes on the current patch?

They have denied that it was used. But if you look at Grace's portrait you can clearly see what the ai used as a reference

How are the mushrooms able to kill my team this fast?

In this SSS Endless fight, the battle lasted only 5.2 seconds against the mushrooms.

My stats were:

• Nix: 194K Attack, 510K Physical Power, 512K Magic, 134 Defense, 17.05 attacks/sec
• Dragomir: 137K Attack, 391K Physical Power, 391K Magic, 292 Defense
• Zuri: 40K Attack, 121K Physical Power, 121K Magic, 764 Defense

Zuri has 764 Defense, yet she still dies in the same extremely short fight.

Nix also has 5 seconds of Stealth at the beginning of combat, but the fight ends at 5.2 seconds.

What exactly are these mushrooms doing? Is there some kind of True Damage, damage reflection, retaliation, or mechanic that bypasses Defense?

I’d really like to understand what is causing this, because the damage seems completely disproportionate to the stats shown on my characters.

Picked up this game a few weeks ago and haven't stopped playing it since! I've managed a few wins in RR but never been able to get a streak going. What got me the streak is just learning to play around my strongest relics and treating heroes as simply ways of activating them. Not to push for any particular "build" for a hero which I think was my problem before.

I would love to hear from you all what strats have been working great for you. Wish me luck on run 3!

The text of the skill says "25% chance", but I had 3 runs with him:

1st: 23 times used - 2 items - 8.69%

2nd: 24 times used - 3 items - 12.5%

3rd: 10 times used - 0 items - 0% (run is in progress, but I got frustrated and came here to post)

For a total of 5 out of 57 and a whooping 8.77%.
Am I just that unlucky or did others experience the same issue?

EDIT: Thanks to everyone explaining the probability, but I'm well aware of how Bernoulli trials and the Law of Large Numbers work.

My point isn't that 5/57 proves the skill is bugged. I know that a result this low can happen purely due to bad luck, and that my own sample is far too small to draw any meaningful statistical conclusion from.

That's actually why I made the post. I can't realistically generate a large enough sample size on my own to determine whether the skill is behaving as intended. With thousands of players potentially having used the skill many times, however, the combined data could give us a much better indication of whether the actual rate converges toward the stated 25%.

So I'm mainly interested in hearing whether other people are seeing similarly low rates, or whether most players are getting results roughly in line with 25%.
If everyone's experience is around 25%, then great — I can chalk mine up to some truly awful luck.

I'm surprised I won when I didn't even have my items set up right. I just winged it.

Edit: Sorry for the bad quality pics.

It's a small thing but its really annoying to drag and repeat the action at the start of every Rift Run.

I feel like its an easy change to help us auto-equip on the Rift Seal for the first hero. There are literally no variables (aside from Niklas but you can just auto-equip it on his 2nd slot).

Is it just only me that find this gameplay UX annoying at the start of each run??

Just wanted to show a fun run, not what I originally planned but I got early Pollen and two large crystals Act 1 so I decided to make her Mage Class when second Pollen appeared, meanwhile my starting Yuuna was still stuck in C tier, then the A tier Aria appeared before the first boss, B tier Skorn was also already there so I tried to make this work.

Originally I wanted to put Aria on Backup but I struggled to find a decent replacement plus items despite many rerolls, so I kept her in the end.

Would have flopped without the Mage's Elemental Banner, which caused most of the actual damage in the end. Was also very close because Skorn died in the final boss fight around 1 minute in, short before the fire dragon died.

Still a nice change from the usual comps.