Raid has three Clan Bosses. The Demon Lord is the daily one with two keys a day, and it has its own page: our Demon Lord Clan Boss rewards guide covers tiers, chests and the classic poison and Unkillable teams, so we do not repeat it here. This page is about the two weekly bosses. The Hydra arrived first and is a fight against several heads at once. The Chimera came with Update 10.00 in December 2024 and is a single shape-shifting boss with optional Trials. Both share the same idea: the whole clan chips at one big HP pool, and your personal damage decides your chest.
If you are still building your first account, start with the Raid: Shadow Legends hub and come back once your clan has unlocked these modes. Both bosses reward a deep roster more than any single champion, which is why the rare and epic champions guide matters here more than a tier list.
Demon Lord, Hydra and Chimera at a glance
| Demon Lord | Hydra | Chimera | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keys | Daily keys | 3 per week, no Gem purchase | 2 per week |
| Team size | 4 champions | 6 champions | 5 champions |
| Difficulties | Easy to Ultra-Nightmare | Normal, Hard, Brutal, Nightmare | Easy, Normal, Hard, Brutal, Nightmare, Ultra-Nightmare |
| Main twist | Affinity rotation | 4 heads at once, monthly head rotation | 4 forms on a fixed cycle, Trials |
| Weekly clash | No | Hydra Clash vs 4 other clans | Chimera Clash vs 4 other clans |
The difficulty unlock rule is the same for both weekly bosses: when your clan fully defeats a difficulty, the next one opens for the clan for good. You can keep fighting lower difficulties while you work on the higher one, and each difficulty pays its own chests.
How the Hydra works
Feature Preview: The HydraThe Hydra sits on the Clan Bosses map next to the Demon Lord. You need level 45 and a clan. Every week you get 3 Hydra Keys, and Plarium is explicit that they cannot be bought with Gems: when they are gone, you wait for the weekly reset. Keys and the reset arrive on Wednesday morning UTC. You bring 6 champions, and each champion can be used in only one Hydra battle per week, so a second and third key need different teams. That rule alone is the reason the Hydra rewards a wide roster.
A battle is a fight against 4 heads at once. The Hydra has 6 heads in total. Each monthly rotation fixes 4 starter heads and 2 substitutes, and each head gets an affinity for that month. When you bring a head to zero HP it is decapitated and leaves an Exposed Neck that takes increased damage. After a short delay a new head grows in its place, and it can be one of the substitutes, so a fight that starts against an easy lineup can turn ugly. A regrown head arrives with Serpent's Will, a buff that sharply cuts the damage it takes until it acts, so do not waste your big nukes on a fresh head.
The other mechanic that shapes every Hydra team is devouring. Early in the battle one of your champions gets the Mark of the Hydra with a countdown. When it runs out, a head swallows that champion. You get a few turns to deal enough damage to that head to free them, or the champion is gone for the rest of the fight. Each later mark and each later digestion is shorter than the one before, so long fights get harder as they go.
Rewards come once a week. If your clan does not kill the Hydra, every member who dealt damage gets one chest based on personal damage and difficulty. If the clan kills it, you get two. Hydra Chests are the only source of the Stone Skin and Protection artifact sets, and Plarium lists Clan Gold, Clan XP, Mortal Soulstones and Champion Fragments for Mithrala Lifebane among the contents. Opening Hydra Chests also adds Clan XP, which feeds the clan level and the Clan Shop.
The six Hydra heads
Head names are fixed, the lineup and affinities change monthly. Here is what each head does, limited to what official material and at least two established guides agree on.
| Head | What it does | Answer |
|---|---|---|
| Head of Decay | Places a Life Barrier on a head; if you do not break it in time, that head fully heals. Can remove debuffs from all heads. | Provoke it so it attacks the Provoker instead of cleansing. Burst through the barrier. |
| Head of Blight | Poison specialist. Places Poison Cloud on the heads, which blocks hostile Poison damage and turns your hits into Weak Hits. | HP Burn (it takes double damage from it). Skills or sets that land debuffs on Weak Hits. |
| Head of Wrath | Counts the hits it takes, then gains Vengeance and hits your team for massive damage. | Block Buffs or buff removal before Vengeance lands; Decrease Attack to soften the hit. |
| Head of Suffering | Defensive anchor for the other heads. Applies Pain Link: a linked champion takes a copy of 15% of the damage this head receives. | Focused single-target damage; keep healing on the linked champion. |
| Head of Mischief | Steals buffs from the champion with the most buffs and redirects your attacks to other heads. | Hex stops the redirect; Provoke and Block Buffs control it. |
| Head of Torment | Fear mechanic; it punishes champions without a Perfect Veil buff. | Perfect Veil and cleansing. |
Update Preview: Hydra, Trunda, ShieldsTwo takeaways for team building. First, no head can be ignored, because the substitutes rotate in: a team that only answers the starters will meet a head it cannot handle. Second, the heads that hurt most are the ones that work on buffs (Wrath, Mischief, Decay's barrier), which is why Block Buffs is the single most valued Hydra debuff.
Hydra Clash: competing with four other clans
Plarium's Steam page lists Hydra Clash among the main features: your clan is matched each week with 4 other clans and the clans compete on Hydra damage. Clash Points come from damage and difficulty, and the first key a player spends on each difficulty during a Clash earns a points multiplier, so spend your first key on every difficulty you can contribute to rather than three keys on one. The clan needs a minimum number of active players and Clan Activity stars in the week before the Clash to enter, and rewards go to the top finishers that also reach a points threshold. Rewards include Clan Gold, Clan XP and Stone Skin and Protection accessories, and they must be claimed when the Clash ends.
Clan activity stars feed both clash entry and the clan level. The daily stars come from checking in, playtime, Clan Boss battles, Arena fights and Campaign or Dungeon stages, which is one more reason to keep a daily dungeon routine even when you are not chasing a specific set.
The Chimera: forms, Trials and Quick Battle
Update Overview: ChimeraThe Chimera unlocks at level 33, so most players meet it before the Hydra. You get 2 Chimera Keys a week and bring 5 champions. It has six difficulties from Easy to Ultra-Nightmare. Every battle lasts a fixed 65 boss turns, and the boss changes form every 5 turns on a set pattern: it starts in Ultimate Form, switches to Ram, Lion or Viper, then returns to Ultimate before the next animal form. Over one battle each animal form appears twice and the Ultimate Form seven times. The weekly cycle resets on Thursday to Friday UTC, and you cannot fight during the reset window.
| Form | Signature mechanic | What it asks of your team |
|---|---|---|
| Ultimate | Base form between the others; grows stronger as you complete Trials | Survive it; its strength scales with your own success |
| Ram | Duel: pairs the boss with a target that can only use its default skill on it, and takes extra damage | Champions whose default skill still contributes |
| Lion | Hunter's Gaze: damage to the marked champion cannot be reduced, blocked or transferred; Evade still works | Raw HP, healing and revives |
| Viper | Necrosis: every dead ally adds a stack that damages the living team each turn | Keep everyone alive; revive quickly |
Trials are the Chimera's extra layer. Each animal form has 3 Trials, each in Easy, Normal and Hard tiers, for 27 in total, and a higher tier opens only after the lower one. Trials reset every battle. Completing them pays rewards that change weekly and boosts your Chimera Clash points for damage dealt afterwards, but each completed Trial also makes the Ultimate Form stronger. You must spend a key to earn Trial rewards. The practical approach for most players: pick the Trials your team does naturally, and do not wreck your damage chasing all 27.
Chests follow the Hydra rule: one per contributing member if the Chimera survives, two if the clan kills it, scaled by personal damage and difficulty. The Chimera also has its own five-clan Chimera Clash, scored from damage, difficulty and completed Trials.
Since Update 11.65 in July 2026 the Chimera has Quick Battle, as the Demon Lord and Hydra already had. Quick Battle runs the fight as if on Auto and finishes almost instantly. It unlocks separately on each difficulty once you have claimed the final reward chest there by dealing enough damage. In practice: fight manually until your team reliably reaches the last chest on a difficulty, then switch to Quick Battle for that difficulty and save your attention for the next one.
The debuffs that matter and why
Both weekly bosses have huge HP and long fights, which is why damage over time and MAX HP based damage work so well. Plarium's own clan guide recommends Poison and HP Burn champions and skills that scale on the target's MAX HP for exactly this reason. The catch is that the Hydra shuts some of these down per head.
| Debuff | Role on Hydra | Role on Chimera |
|---|---|---|
| Decrease Defense | Core damage multiplier on every head | Core damage multiplier |
| Weaken | More damage taken; stacks well with Decrease Defense | Same |
| Poison | Strong in general, but Head of Blight's Poison Cloud blocks it | Steady damage over 65 turns |
| HP Burn | Hits all heads; Head of Blight takes double damage from it | Steady damage |
| Block Buffs | The key control debuff: stops Wrath, Mischief and other self-buffing heads | Situational |
| Provoke | Makes Head of Decay attack instead of cleansing; controls Mischief | Situational |
| Hex | Stops Head of Mischief from redirecting your attacks | Not a priority |
| Decrease Attack | Softens the big hits, Wrath above all | Helps survive Lion and Ultimate turns |
Accuracy is what makes the table work. Plarium's Uugo guide quotes common targets of around 220 Accuracy for Hydra Normal and Hard, 250 to 300 for Brutal and around 400 for Nightmare, while noting that the real requirement varies by head. Gear and set choice for that is covered in the artifact sets guide.
Champions that work
We only list picks that Plarium's own champion guides back and that the major community guides agree on. Hydra teams usually combine a Block Buffs and Decrease Defense support, a healer or reviver, a sustained damage dealer and one or two answers to the current heads.
- Uugo (Epic, Support). Plarium calls the Hydra her highest value use case: Block Buffs counters the buff-stealing and self-buffing heads, plus AoE Decrease Defense, healing, cleansing and a revive. She is also a new player code champion, see the Raid promo codes page.
- Royal Guard (Epic, Attack). Hits all heads at once and deals damage based on their MAX HP. Plarium names him a Hydra boss killer.
- Angar (Legendary). Provoke on the Head of Decay forces it to attack him instead of cleansing every head.
- Stag Knight (Epic, Support). Plarium points to his option to land debuffs on Weak Hits, which is the answer to Head of Blight's Poison Cloud.
- Revivers and team protection. Devouring and Viper's Necrosis both punish deaths. A cheap reviver keeps a key alive.
Your second and third Hydra teams are where rares and epics earn their keep, because each champion can only fight once a week. Champions who build MAX HP damage get a lot out of the Warmaster mastery; Plarium's Mad Hatter guide names the Demon Lord, Hydra and Chimera as exactly the long fights where it pays off.
FAQ
How many Hydra keys do you get per week in Raid?
Three. They arrive with the weekly reset on Wednesday morning UTC and cannot be bought with Gems. Free Regroup in the Pause menu lets you restart a bad fight without spending another key.
What level do you need for Hydra and Chimera?
Level 45 for the Hydra and level 33 for the Chimera, and you must be in a clan for both. Difficulties unlock for the whole clan when it defeats the previous one.
How many champions do you take into the Hydra and Chimera?
Six champions against the Hydra and five against the Chimera. In the Hydra each champion can only be used in one battle per week, so you need three different teams for your three keys.
What drops from Hydra chests?
Hydra Chests are the only source of the Stone Skin and Protection artifact sets. They also contain Clan Gold, Clan XP, Mortal Soulstones and Champion Fragments for Mithrala Lifebane. You get one chest if the clan does not kill the Hydra and two if it does.
How do Chimera forms work?
The Chimera changes form every 5 turns over a fixed 65 turn battle. It starts in Ultimate Form, switches to Ram, Lion or Viper and returns to Ultimate in between. Each animal form appears twice, each with its own Trials.
Does Chimera have Quick Battle?
Yes, since Update 11.65 in July 2026. It unlocks on each difficulty after you claim the final reward chest there, then runs the fight on Auto almost instantly.