The Guildrun Meta: How to Win Consistently at Red Rift
If you want a quick way to win consistently at Red Rift, here is the one-line strategy guide: Be as rich as you can without compromising your ability to win the next fight. The reality is a lot more complicated than that, but that's a good summary of the core strategy you should be following.
If you look at the Red Rift leaderboard, there are players with 50+ streaks, meaning they have a close to 100% win rate. This should prove to you that basically every run on Red Rift is winnable. So why aren't you winning all your games? The reason why you lose is because you do not see the necessary pieces to scale into late game. And the reason why you do not see those pieces is because you are poor. Which naturally leads into the core strategy described above.
Now executing on the "be rich" strategy is not so simple. It requires you to have a good understanding of the following things:
Which damage/durability thresholds you need to meet in order to win any given fight. This mostly comes with experience and is by far the most important thing to learn. The entire strategy depends on knowing when you are "strong enough" and then greeding to the maximum afterwards. And you cannot pull of this strategy when you don't know where "enough" is.
The long-term shard value of each action. This can be done by using your brain and converting things into shard-value.
Which things to buy to win the late game. This also comes with experience and is especially relevant for the Post-Boss Shop, which is usually the single strongest power boost in the entire game and is a spot you ideally want to be very rich for to maximize the odds of seeing something immediately run-winning.
Going in-depth into the above points would take way too long, and a lot of it really just comes down to playing the game to develop experience/intuition, but here are a few basic examples:
Buying the Act 1 Key Fragment early "effectively" generates 2 shards per round until the boss (that is because it must be bought eventually and is 2 shards more expensive after each fight). If you started with a strong early game hero like Reyna, you can often get away with buying a tank + key fragment in the first shop, which lets you get started on early game econ/preparing for the post-boss shop. If however you started the run with a hero like Aria or Gustav then you will usually need to buy 2 heroes in the first shop or else you will die to the second fight. (This immediately makes starting with weak early game heroes a lot worse, since they will cost you shards going into the Post-Boss shop.)
Buying a quest is also a way to "effectively" generate extra shard value, assuming you are strong enough to buy the quest. This can be a better alternative to buying the Key Fragment if a good quest shows up. Quests that directly generate money like Victory Vessel are most obvious (+15 extra shards worth of value after 3 fights). But even something that doesn't give you money directly can be converted into a monetary value. For example, Frost Vessel gives you close to 20-30 shards worth of stats once completed, so buying it early effectively generates 10-20 shards.
Some strong items/heroes can also generate a lot more shard value than normal. For example Sentinel's Plate is a rare item that often provides more stats than an Epic item if you can meet its (relatively easy) condition, which effectively generates you money because you need to spend less in order to win the upcoming fights. Going back to a previous example, an early Reyna is also effectively an econ play because you need less to win the early fights with her on your team, meaning you can spend the resources on generating more money. Scaling is also a way to generate more shard value than normal. An item like Warrior's Greataxe can provide huge stats if scaled a few times, and taking a scaling hero like Backup Rowan can pay off hugely later if you can afford it (you need to know that you are strong enough to win the immediate fights, however).
Getting an early B rank assassin (or Tilly) is often easy mode, since they usually provide a ton of shard-value over the course of the run while not being bad immediately. Even if you sell them immediately once you get to act 2 you will usually be well set up for late game (assuming you navigated the post-boss shop well). There are other heroes as well that provide econ as well but you have to be strong to carry them (such as Gustav).
If you are weak and have to speculate or buy short-term power, you can also calculate the cost of speculating. For example, if you buy a common item to win the next fight and then sell it back later, that costs you -2 shards total. Buying a C rank hero and then selling it back is -6 shards. On the other hand, buying anything on sale is often quite nice (as long as it isn't completely terrible) because it significantly reduces the cost of speculating. For example, buying C rank hero on sale to get you through the next combat or give you an extra out at a B rank for the challenge fight only costs 2 shards instead of 6, which is much more palatable. Keep in mind that this is one of the most important places to lock in and play correctly, because when you are weak is the exact spot where narrow shard margins matter the most.
A "standard" flowchart for a run is something as follows:
Be exactly as strong as you need to be in order to beat every fight in act 1, while focusing on generating as much shard-value as possible.
Have a good post-boss shop where you solidify your plan for act 2. At this point your team/gameplan is a bit more locked in.
Know where the holes in your current composition are, and roll a bit more liberally in act 2 to fix those problems. For example, if your damage is good but you know that your current tank will not cut it for the entire act, you want to be rolling for tank relics, a rank up for your tank, or an A rank tank replacement that is better than your current tank. (Usually in act 1 you roll 1 time max per shop unless you are actively dying, whereas in act 2 you will often roll two or three times per shop since you are looking for something specific.)
Disclaimer: I am not the best Guildrun player, but I would consider myself decent (10-streak on the current patch). I am friends with multiple players who are a lot better than I am however, including players that have been near or at the top of the Red Rift leaderboard, and this playstyle is something that I have learned from them. (I am just much worse than they are because my intuition/game sense is not as good.)