Splatoon Raiders Beginner's Guide: Tanks, Weapons, Builds and What You Can Undo
Update log (1)
- — Published on launch day. Build advice reflects the first hours of community testing and should be treated as provisional.
- There are three ink tanks — Speed, Power and Tactical — and your gadgets must match the tank you have equipped. You can swap tanks between missions.
- Difficulty changes enemy strength only. Nintendo has confirmed loot pools are identical across Tourist, Raider and Survivalist, so there is no reward for playing above your comfort level.
- Dying in a solo raid costs you nothing. You keep the loot and the XP you picked up before you went down.
- The one irreversible thing is spent materials. Test all three tanks before committing rare upgrade resources to any of them.
Splatoon Raiders launched on 23 July 2026, exclusive to Nintendo Switch 2. It is the first PvE game in the series — a story-focused, roguelike-structured looter where you raid the Spirhalite Islands with Deep Cut and keep what you find.
Most beginner guides published today will hand you a tier list. On launch day, that is the least reliable thing anyone can give you. Nobody — including the guide writers — has enough hours to know what the best build is yet.
So this guide leads with what is actually verifiable and useful right now: which of your early decisions you can undo, and which you cannot. Get that right and the tier lists sort themselves out later.
Everything below was checked on 23 July 2026, launch day.
The one thing that matters on day one
| Decision | Can you change it? |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | ✅ Yes — toggle any time from the Hideout Ship |
| Which tank you use | ✅ Yes — swap between missions |
| Dying in a solo raid | ✅ No penalty — you keep loot and XP collected before dying |
| Gadget loadout | ✅ Yes, within your equipped tank’s gadget pool |
| Rare materials spent on upgrades | ❌ No. Gone. |
| Spirhalite Shards spent on weapon levels | ❌ No — and costs escalate per level |
Everything that feels like a big commitment is reversible. The only thing you cannot undo is spending.
That gives you one rule that will not be invalidated by whatever the meta turns out to be: play all three tanks before you spend rare materials on any of them. Missions are free to retry, difficulty is free to lower, and death costs nothing — so the experimentation is genuinely free. The upgrade currency is not.
The three tanks, explained
Your loadout is built around an ink tank, and the tank determines which gadgets you can equip. There are three.
| Tank | What it does | Named gadgets |
|---|---|---|
| Speed | Mobility and evasion — hit-and-run | Blast Boot (leap in or out), Dash Bomb |
| Power | Direct damage, aggressive close-range | Splatchet, Spinwheel |
| Tactical | Area denial through deployables | Shot Pot (auto turret), Bombloons (linked explosives), Tether Wail (laser link) |
Gadgets must match your equipped tank. You start able to equip two, and unlock a third slot as you use a tank more.
Gadgets upgrade through gadget parts collected during raids — improving damage, fire rate, duration, or adding effects like ink explosions and knockback gas. Duplicate parts still advance the upgrade, so nothing you pick up is wasted.
Two separate upgrade tracks are worth keeping straight:
- Tanks upgrade at the Mechanic’s Shack, using raid spoils — attack power, HP.
- Weapons upgrade at Frye’s Weapon Stash, using Spirhalite Shards — damage, with costs climbing at each level.
⚠️ One mechanic is genuinely unresolved right now. Guides disagree on whether skill upgrades and mod slots carry across every tank you own or apply only to the tank you spent them on. We could not settle it between four sources, so we are not going to assert either.
It does not change what you should do, though — which is the useful part. If upgrades carry across, experimenting is free. If they are tank-specific, experimenting before you commit matters even more. Either way: try all three first, spend after.
Which tank should a beginner pick?
Pick by how you like to move, not by what anyone calls optimal.
- You push forward and want fights over quickly → Power
- You reposition constantly and dislike standing still → Speed
- You like setting up the fight before it starts → Tactical
Tactical has the steepest learning curve of the three — deployables reward reading a room in advance, which is harder before you know enemy patterns. It is also the one that scales best once you do. If you are unsure, Power is the most forgiving place to learn the game’s rhythm, and swapping later costs nothing.
Early builds, and why they all look the same
Here is what launch-day guides are recommending:
| Tank | Weapon | Gadgets | Relics | Bot Buddy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Power | Steam Blaster (Lv. 10+) | Splatchet, Spinwheel | Wind-Up Key, Ballroom Mask | Frye |
| Speed | Steam Blaster (Lv. 10+) | Blast Boot, Dash Bomb | Miniature Scoop, Sea Bead | Frye |
| Tactical | Steam Blaster (Lv. 10+) | Bombloons, Shot Pot | Sage’s Bracer, Bamboo-Shoot Brooch | Frye |
Notice what those three rows have in common. The same weapon and the same Bot Buddy are being recommended for all three tanks, by every outlet publishing today.
There are two possible explanations. Either the Steam Blaster is genuinely dominant early — plausible, since AoE clears the swarms this game throws at you — or the community has had one day with the game and has not yet found what else works. History with games like this favours the second.
Treat these as reasonable starting points, not as a solved meta. They will not waste your time. They are also very likely to look different in two weeks.
Practical tips that hold regardless of build
Play on the difficulty you enjoy. Splatoon Raiders has three settings — Tourist, Raider and Survivalist — and Nintendo has confirmed they change enemy strength, not the loot pool. Tourist and Survivalist drop the same tier of rewards. There is no hidden bonus for suffering, and you can toggle it mid-campaign from the Hideout Ship.
Use your gadget the moment a fight starts. Gadgets recharge; holding one for a perfect moment usually means using it less often than you could have.
Collect gadget parts over hoarding shards early. Parts improve what you already use, and duplicates still count. Shards go into weapon levels whose cost escalates — spending them early buys less than spending them later, once you know which weapon you actually want. This is the same trap as choosing which stats to level up in Palworld: escalating costs punish early guesses far more than they punish patience.
Death is information, not a setback. You keep what you collected. Pushing one room further to see what is there costs you nothing but time.
Keep one weapon of each range band. Until the full weapon type system is understood, having a swarm-clearing option and a single-target option covers both the mobs and the bosses.
Is the game any good?
Worth knowing if you are still deciding, because the critical reaction is unusually split.
| Score | |
|---|---|
| Metacritic | 81 from 70 critics |
| OpenCritic | 83% of critics recommend |
| IGN | 9/10 — “one of the Switch 2’s best games” |
| The Guardian | 2/5 |
An 81 aggregate with a 9/10 and a 2/5 inside it is not a game people mildly agree about. The praise centres on the roguelike mission structure and how much the systems reward experimentation. That is consistent with a game whose appeal depends on enjoying the loop itself — which is exactly the kind of thing reviewers split hard on.
That spread is worth reading differently from a low average. The other big launch this week, Halo: Campaign Evolved, landed at 84 with broad agreement — a similar aggregate reached by consensus rather than by disagreement. An 81 built out of 9s and 2s tells you the game is polarising, not mediocre, and that whether you like it depends on something you can predict about yourself.
Frequently asked questions
Is Splatoon Raiders multiplayer?
It is primarily single-player and story-focused, with co-op for up to four players locally or online. Difficulty scales with player count.
Do I need to have played Splatoon before?
No. This is a PvE spin-off with its own structure, not a continuation of the competitive games.
What platform is Splatoon Raiders on?
Nintendo Switch 2 only.
Does difficulty affect loot in Splatoon Raiders?
No. Nintendo has confirmed the difficulty settings change combat only — Tourist, Raider and Survivalist share identical reward pools.
What happens if I die in a raid?
In solo raids you keep the pickups, weapons, salvage and XP you collected before dying. There is no loot loss penalty.
Can I change my tank later?
Yes — tanks can be swapped between missions. What you cannot recover is rare upgrade materials already spent.