Glossary
Around forty terms, grouped by the part of the game they belong to.
What is on this page
How this site is funded
This site carries paid links. Ergonomix CZ s.r.o. publishes Synergy Portal and is paid a commission by an advertising network when a reader follows a link marked as paid, registers, and installs the game at the other end. Raid: Shadow Legends is the one title on this site with such an arrangement. That payment is why the site exists, so it is stated here, next to every paid link, and in full on the affiliate disclosure page.
Two things the payment does not do. It adds nothing to what you pay — the vendor's price is the same whether you arrive through this site or type the address yourself. And it does not buy a verdict: the entry on Raid: Shadow Legends repeats only what the published description states, then lists what that description leaves out.
Ten terms worth knowing first
Each term below has a fuller entry in the glossary. These ten come first because they decide how much time and money a title will ask for, and all ten are visible before you commit to anything.
- Roster
- The characters an account has collected. Progress here is measured by roster depth more than by player skill.
- Summon
- The action granting a randomised character or item, in exchange for a currency earned or bought.
- Drop rate
- The stated chance a single summon yields a given rarity. It is a per-attempt figure, not a promise about a batch.
- Energy
- A meter limiting how many battles a session allows. It refills over real-world time.
- Ascension
- Raising a character's ceiling by consuming duplicates, rather than by playing that character.
- Campaign
- The scripted single-player route, and normally the source of materials every other mode assumes you have.
- PvE
- Player versus environment: battles against the game's own opponents rather than another player's roster.
- Clan
- A player group unlocking cooperative content, often the only route to materials a solo account cannot farm.
- Soft currency
- Currency earned by playing. Usually abundant, and usually not the bottleneck.
- Hard currency
- Currency bought with money, or granted sparingly. This is the bottleneck the economy is arranged around.
How entries here are written
Method
Three rules govern every page. Anything said about a named product comes from that product's own published description, and where the description is silent the page says so rather than filling the gap. Anything said about the genre is written as general guidance, and anything said about Australian law or a regulator links to that body's own site. No page reports a test result, a benchmark, a rating or an opinion attributed to a person, because this site runs no testing programme and inventing one would be dishonest.
The result is narrower than a review site. It will tell you what a term means, what a mechanic implies for your time and your wallet, and where the authoritative answer lives. It will not tell you which title is best. More on the editorial method.
The genre in plain terms
A battle collection RPG runs on three loops that feed each other. Acquisition: you obtain characters, most often through a randomised summon, occasionally as a fixed reward for finishing a chapter. Development: a character arrives underpowered, and materials farmed from repeatable stages raise its level, rank and gear. Deployment: a developed roster clears harder content, which drops better materials, which develops the next character.
No loop ever finishes, by design, and the gates between them are timed rather than skill-based. Energy is the clearest case — a meter permitting a fixed number of battles, then refilling over several hours, which turns a question of ability into a question of patience or payment.
That structure is neither a trick nor an accident, and describing it plainly is the most useful thing a reference can do. A player who recognises the three loops on day one can decide deliberately how much of each to engage with. A player who does not tends to meet the economics only after weeks of investment, at the point where walking away feels expensive. The pages on genre structure and randomised rewards take each loop apart.
Worked example: reading a title before you install it
This sequence applies to any title in the genre, takes about fifteen minutes, and relies only on sources the publisher does not control.
- Read the store listing for mechanics, not adjectives. Count how many of the ten terms above appear. A listing naming summons, energy and ascension is describing an economy; a listing naming none of them may be marketing copy that omits them.
- Find the platform. Check whether the title runs natively on your machine, through an official desktop client, or only through an emulator. The desktop and system page explains why that changes performance and support.
- Look up the classification. Computer games distributed in Australia are classified under the national scheme. The Australian Classification Board publishes the guidelines and a searchable database of decisions, which is the authoritative source for a title's classification and its consumer advice lines.
- Find the monetisation before you find the fun. Locate the shop's currency packs and convert the smallest and the largest to AUD. Two numbers tell you most of it: the price of the smallest pack, and the price of whatever the game calls its best value.
- Decide your ceiling in advance. Write down a monthly figure in AUD you are content to lose entirely, and treat it as a limit rather than a starting point. Spending and consumer rights covers what happens when a purchase goes wrong.
The title covered in most detail here
Raid: Shadow Legends is the title this site covers at entry length, and the title behind the paid links described above. Both facts are true at once, and the second is why the first deserves scrutiny rather than trust.
What the published description states: a battle collection RPG in which the player assembles an alliance of Champions and leads them through dungeons and clan boss encounters, with a fully voiced campaign spanning twelve locations and tactical player-versus-environment combat. The distribution linked from this site is for desktop computers — Windows, macOS and Linux — and the flow at the other end is registration on the vendor's landing page, then installing the game and starting the tutorial.
What the description does not state runs longer, and the entry page sets it out in full: nothing about currency prices in AUD, nothing about drop rates, nothing about how much of the twelve-location campaign is reachable without spending, and nothing about the account and data terms you accept at registration. Those answers sit on the vendor's own site and in the game's terms, which is where to read them.
Visit the Raid: Shadow Legends website
Paid link. Ergonomix CZ s.r.o. receives a commission if you register and install after following it. Your cost does not change, and the commission did not decide what the paragraphs above say.
Independent help for Australian readers
None of the bodies below are connected to this site or to any game publisher. Each answers a category of question a game's own support desk cannot.
- Australian Classification Board
- The national classification scheme for computer games, with published guidelines and a searchable database of decisions and consumer advice.
- Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
- The regulator for the Australian Consumer Law, covering misleading conduct and the consumer guarantees that apply to digital products.
- Scamwatch, run by the National Anti-Scam Centre
- Where to report a scam and read current advice. Account-selling and top-up offers aimed at players recur there.
- Australian Cyber Security Centre
- Government guidance on passphrases, multi-factor authentication and device security, written for individuals as well as organisations.
- eSafety Commissioner
- Australia's online safety regulator, with a complaints route for serious online abuse and material on games and chat.
- Office of the Australian Information Commissioner
- Privacy regulation under the Privacy Act 1988, including how to complain about an organisation's handling of personal information.
Every page on this site
Genre structure
Rosters, turn order, energy and progression ceilings, and how the loops connect.
Randomised rewards
Drop rates, pity counters, and which Australian bodies handle questions about them.
Desktop and system basics
Native clients, emulators and browser play, and how to read a requirements table.
Account security
Passphrases, multi-factor authentication, recovery details and account-trading risk.
Spending and consumer rights
Currency pricing in AUD, who you buy from, and what the consumer guarantees cover.
Evaluating a title
A checklist with a stated method, and what a missing answer tells you.
Raid: Shadow Legends
The published description, the gaps in it, and the paid arrangement. Contains paid links.