FastStart Online

A reference library for readers in Australia on free-to-play battle collection RPGs — the format, the money, the odds, the ratings and the account risks, one concept per entry.

How this site is paid for

Some entries link to Raid: Shadow Legends. Those links are paid affiliate links: FastStart Online is paid a commission when a reader signs up and installs through them. The reader pays nothing extra, and nothing about the game changes because the link was followed from here. Commission does not decide which concepts the library covers, what an entry says, or where an entry sits in the index — that is set by the editorial method described on About this site. The full explanation is on the Affiliate Disclosure page.

Index of entries

Account security: How game accounts are taken over, which recovery details matter, and where to report a compromise in Australia.
Battle collection RPGs: What the format is: collectable rosters, turn-based combat, campaign and dungeon structure.
Classification and age ratings: How games distributed in Australia are classified and what the consumer advice lines mean.
Data collection in games: What a game client and a publisher account handle, and how to read a game privacy policy.
Desktop play: Official desktop clients, publisher emulators and third-party emulators, and what each one changes.
Free-to-play economies: Soft and hard currencies, energy limits, daily loops, and how pacing shapes spending decisions.
In-game purchases and consumer rights: What a purchase actually buys, and how the Australian Consumer Law applies to digital content.
Raid: Shadow Legends at a glance: A summary built only from the vendor's own description, with the gaps marked as gaps.
Randomised rewards and summoning odds: How randomised character rewards work, what published rates mean, and how regulators treat them.

How the concepts relate

The entries are not a sequence, but they are not independent either. Four of them describe the machinery of the format: what a battle collection RPG is, how its economy is paced, how randomised rewards are distributed, and what money buys inside that system. Three describe the reader's position in relation to it: consumer rights over a purchase, classification and age suitability, and what the game knows about the player. The remaining two are practical: how the game is run on a desktop computer, and how the account that holds years of progress is protected.

A reading order for newcomers

A reader approaching the format for the first time gets most of the picture from three entries, read in order. Battle collection RPGs establishes the vocabulary — roster, ascension, campaign stage, clan boss — that the other entries assume. Free-to-play economies explains why a game that costs nothing to install still has a pace, and where that pace is designed to be felt. Randomised rewards and summoning odds covers the single mechanic most likely to be misread, because the arithmetic of a published rate behaves differently from how it is usually described in conversation.

A reader who already plays the format and arrived with a specific question is better served by going straight to the relevant entry from the index above. Entries are written to be read alone, with cross-links where a concept is defined elsewhere rather than repeated.

The five entries most readers need first

Randomised rewards and summoning odds — the mechanic behind most of the disappointment and most of the spending.
In-game purchases and consumer rights — what the Australian Consumer Law does and does not cover when a digital item fails to arrive or does not work.
Free-to-play economies — the structure that makes a free game feel expensive after a few months.
Account security — the account is usually worth more than any single purchase made through it.
Classification and age ratings — for anyone deciding whether a game suits a household with children in it.

Common misunderstandings, corrected

“Free-to-play means the game is free.”: Installation is free. The economy is built so that time and money are substitutable, and the design decides the exchange rate. See Free-to-play economies.
“A 6% drop rate means roughly one in sixteen pulls will succeed, so sixteen pulls is about right.”: A published rate is a per-attempt probability, not a schedule. Sixteen attempts at 6% leave a substantial chance of no success at all. The arithmetic is worked through in Randomised rewards and summoning odds.
“Digital purchases are final, so there is no refund.”: A seller's stated policy does not displace the consumer guarantees in the Australian Consumer Law. What those guarantees cover, and what they do not, is set out in In-game purchases and consumer rights.
“If a game is rated for general audiences, the purchases in it are too.”: Classification covers content. Consumer advice lines sit beside the rating and are a separate signal. See Classification and age ratings.
“Running the game on a PC through an emulator is the same as the official client.”: It is not the same in terms of what software runs on the machine, which account the session is tied to, or where support sits. See Desktop play.

Where Raid: Shadow Legends sits among these concepts

Raid: Shadow Legends is one title in the battle collection RPG category, and it is the title this site has a commercial relationship with. It is covered in a single entry, Raid: Shadow Legends at a glance, built only from the vendor's own published description. Anything the vendor does not state — current drop rates, download size, system requirements, account options, pricing in Australian dollars — is marked as not stated rather than filled in from elsewhere. The concept entries are written about the category and apply to many titles in it; they are not descriptions of this one.

Visit the Raid: Shadow Legends website

Paid link. FastStart Online is paid a commission if a reader registers and installs through it, at no additional cost to the reader. Desktop computers only, and the vendor's own terms apply. See the Affiliate Disclosure.

What official Australian bodies publish, and where

Where an entry states a general fact about rules, risks or rights, it links to the body that publishes it rather than restating it as this site's own finding. The bodies relevant to this category are the Australian Classification Board, which classifies computer games distributed in Australia; the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which administers the Australian Consumer Law; Scamwatch, which collects reports of scams including those aimed at game accounts; the Australian Cyber Security Centre, which publishes account-protection guidance for the public; the eSafety Commissioner, which publishes material on gaming and online safety for families; and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, which oversees the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

A–Z of key terms

Ascension: Raising a character's level cap by consuming specific materials, usually gated behind separate content.
Banner: A time-limited summoning pool with its own odds and featured characters.
Consumer guarantee: A right under the Australian Consumer Law that a seller cannot contract out of.
Energy: A regenerating resource consumed per battle, which caps how much can be played in a session.
Gacha: A randomised reward draw, named after Japanese capsule-toy machines.
Hard currency: The premium unit bought with money, occasionally granted in small amounts for free.
Pity counter: A mechanism that guarantees a result after a stated number of unsuccessful draws, where one exists.
Roster: The set of characters an account has acquired and can field in battle.
Soft currency: The unit earned through play, used for routine upgrades.
Whale: Industry shorthand for the small proportion of players responsible for a large share of revenue.

How entries are written and checked

Each entry defines its concept in the first two sentences and then develops it, with a quick-answer summary at the top for readers who need one fact and nothing more. General claims about Australian rules carry a link to the body that publishes them, or are written as general guidance rather than as a finding. Claims about a named product come from that vendor's own published material, and gaps are left visible. The library does not publish reviews, scores, benchmarks or reader accounts, and it does not describe any product as the best of its kind.

Entries are reviewed on a quarterly cycle and whenever a linked source is reissued. The date of the most recent review across the library appears in the footer of every page. The publisher, its registered details and its contact address are on About this site and Contact. Corrections are welcome by email and are made on the page itself rather than noted elsewhere.