Return of Shadow is a thrilling strategy mobile game released by the same team that brought us Nations of Darkness. It features similar fantasy elements as the previous game but with a unique storyline and different characters and features.
Players must build up their kingdom, develop powerful heroes, battle epic monsters, and conquer the world! To help you get started, we created this beginner’s guide to Return of Shadow, which includes an overview of the game, and some strategies to help you master it.
Return of Shadow Beginner’s Guide
Gameplay Overview
Return of Shadow takes place in a fantasy world filled with horrifying creatures, vampires, and werewolves. You will take on the role of a dark hero who must lead his forces to reclaim his city from the invading demon lords.
To do this, you must build your territory, summon powerful dark heroes, and forge alliances with other Lords to battle against monstrous enemies.
The game features a turn-based battle system and requires you to carefully manage your resources and pick the right tactics to win in the various combat modes, which we will discuss in more detail below.
Resource Management & Economy
The economy and resource management aspects of Return of Shadow are crucial to your success in the game. You must carefully manage your resources to build up your city and defend it from enemy attackers.
You will need to collect wood, metal, fuel, mana, and food by building resource structures inside your city and gathering them from the resource points on the world map, once you reach Headquarters level 5.
There is also a premium resource called Diamonds, which can be used to instantly build and upgrade structures, and buy special items from the Shop.
You can also get resources from completing missions and taking part in events, but these will be in the form of tokens, delivered to your inventory.
Since the resource tokens cannot be looted by other players in PvP battles, it is recommended to use them only when performing upgrades, especially in the early game when your city defense is still weak.
City development and buildings
Your city needs to be carefully developed to provide resources, boost power, and ward off attackers. As you level up the Headquarters, more and more buildings become available for you to construct, such as resource structures, and military buildings.
Each of these buildings can be upgraded to increase their output or efficiency. However, to avoid wasting resources, in the beginning, it would be best to focus on upgrading resource production buildings as they provide the most immediate benefit.
Of course, you should also upgrade your military buildings but only enough to have some troops to gather resources. At early levels, your troops will be no match against higher-level players, and having a strong economy will be much more beneficial in the long run.
Hero Recruitment and power upgrades
The main characters in the game are the powerful dark heroes. You can collect them via the Hero Center building, by visiting the Hero Summon page after upgrading the Headquarters to level 6. For that, you need special keys for each of the 3 rarities: Rare, Epic, and Legendary.
These heroes are vital to your success in the game, as they bring powerful abilities and buffs to your team. But to keep up with other players and maintain a strong army, you must upgrade them regularly.
For that, you can level them up with EXP Books, promote their start rank with hero shards (duplicates of the same hero), and upgrade their skills.
However, new heroes will have only one skill unlocked by more become available as well as the possibility to upgrade them, as you increase the hero star rank.
Missions, tasks and events
While there are plenty of PvE and PvP battles to take part in, there are also various missions and tasks you can complete to get rewards.
As a new player to Return of Shadow, Chapter missions should be your top priority. These missions are not only the easiest way to earn rewards and quickly increase your power but also the only way to progress in the game’s storyline.
In addition, there are event missions and daily tasks which provide valuable rewards that can be used to upgrade your heroes, and buildings, and research new techs. These rewards can help you progress much faster in the games, as we described in our Return of Shadow tips and tricks guide.
Events usually run for a few days or weeks, whereas the daily tasks, as the name implies, are available every day. However, uncollected rewards cannot be claimed the next day, so complete the tasks and claim your rewards before the day ends.
Training units and saving formations
Your army is an important part of your success in the game. Having a strong army of units and heroes not only helps you defeat even the most powerful enemies but also helps defend your city from other players. To get the most out of your troops, you must create effective formations.
This includes constantly training troops and unlocking new troop tiers and summoning better-quality heroes (preferably legendary). After that, it is best to save formation presets so you can have them ready for any kind of activity, whether is a PvE or PvP battle or gathering resources on the map. Formations are made of units and 3 heroes.
One of these 3 heroes is the captain of your formation and provides unique bonuses to the whole formation. That is why you should consider having one of your best heroes in Return of Shadow as the captain of your team.
Planning a defensive strategy
Having a prosperous city is great but also attracts the attention of enemies. To ensure you are always prepared for any attack, you must set up your defensive strategy. There are several methods through which you can protect your city, but the two most important ones are upgrading your city’s wall and the Warehouse building.
You need to make sure that your city’s wall is upgraded as high as possible and that you have at least one hero assigned to it. You can have up to 3 heroes assigned to your wall but only the first slot is unlocked in the beginning, followed by the second slot at Wall level 8, and the third one at Wall level 11.
Upgrading your city’s wall increases its durability, which means it will hold attacks longer before enters the burning state and your city gets teleported randomly on the map.
Leveling up your Warehouse is also crucial. This will increase the number of protected resources, and as long as you keep them below that threshold, your resources will be safe from enemy attacks.
World map and wilderness
The world of Return Shadow is one big map with several different kinds of locations, including cities owned by other players, resource points, and monsters. Defeating these creatures will help your heroes level up faster and offer you nice rewards as well.
Some of them such as Demons, have different difficulty levels and can be attacked individually. On the other hand, Demon Lords are the most powerful monsters in the game and can only be defeated by joining forces with other players in rallies.
For a quick search of a specific monster level or resource tile level, you can use the map’s search feature visible on the bottom-left corner while in the world map view, as you see in the above image.
Final Thoughts
This concludes our Return of Shadow guide. We have gone through all the important aspects of the game, from upgrading your city to defending it against enemy attacks.
While there are many other aspects of the game to be covered, these are the basics that everyone needs to know before starting to play the game. Good luck and have fun!
