Nintendo's Official Splatoon Raiders Tips, Explained
Five first-party tips published the day after launch, including two official loadout combos and a green light for farming.
By the SplatAtlas editorial team · Last updated: 2026-08-02
What This Is
On July 24, 2026, the day after launch, Nintendo UK published a tips column called "Five tips for Salmonid splatting in Splatoon Raiders" (Nintendo Australia ran it on July 27). It is short, but it is the only first-party gameplay advice that exists for this game, and several of its lines quietly confirm things guide sites could previously only infer. This page goes through each tip and what it means once you connect it to the game's systems.
The column exists only in English; Nintendo published no Japanese or Chinese edition. Quotes are from the UK version.
The Five Tips
1. Scrap your extra weapons!
Once the Weapon Stash is fully up and running on the Hideout Ship, visit Frye to turn unwanted weapons into Spirhalite, then spend it boosting the firepower of your favourites.
This is the answer to the mid-game shard squeeze. Raids shower you with duplicate weapons, the facility tree wants 37,500 shards, and upgrading a ★5 weapon wants more on top. Scrapping is the only income that scales with how much you play, and Nintendo making it tip #1 says it is designed as a primary income, not a dump bin. The full facility bill is in our items guide.
2. Develop gadget parts
Once the Hideout Ship is sufficiently upgraded, the Gadget Workshop lets Shiver craft gadget parts from materials gathered from defeated Salmonids, with "no need to leave everything to chance."
"No need to leave everything to chance" is Nintendo confirming that part drops are random and crafting is the deterministic path. Every material is named after the Salmonid that drops it, so a workshop recipe is also a hunting list. The material → Salmonid → dungeon table is in the items guide; what each part does is in the gadgets guide.
3. Synergise your loadouts!
The article names two concrete combos: a Charger backed by a Shot Pot with knockback gas plus a Torqscrew to hold hordes at range while you charge, and a Blaster paired with a Blast Boot or Dash Bomb so you can escape trouble without inking a route first.
These are the only loadouts Nintendo has ever put in print, and both follow the same logic: use gadgets to cover your weapon's weakness rather than double down on its strength. Note the second one: the Blaster is our early-game pick, and it now has an official escape package.
4. Practise on the test range
As tempting as it is to spend every material on upgrades, furnishing the test range with targets, rails and balloons lets you safely test the range, damage output and manoeuvrability of new setups.
The interesting word is 'materials': the range is furnished with the same currency as upgrades, and Nintendo is saying the information is worth the shards. With 120 weapons and re-rollable weapon powers, a furnished range is how you check a roll without burning a raid on it.
5. Revisit stages to grab more treasure
"Ultimately, Splatoon Raiders is all about the loot." Don't be afraid to revisit cleared stages to bolster your resources and push deeper into the islands.
This is the sentence that matters. Every farming route ever written for this game, 25-second Awlmun Den loops included, is play the developers explicitly endorse, not an exploit. If you have been saving farming for 'after' the real game: per Nintendo, it is the real game. Routes are in the endgame and items guides.
The Two Official Loadouts
Straight from the article: the only weapon-and-gadget combos Nintendo has published:
| Weapon | Gadgets | Nintendo's logic |
|---|---|---|
| Charger (JP: チャージャー) | Shot Pot (スケットポット) with knockback gas + Torqscrew (マキアゲスクリュー) | Keeps approaching hordes at a safe distance while you charge your shots. |
| Blaster (JP: ブラスター) | Blast Boot (カチコミシューズ) or Dash Bomb (ダッシュボム) | Gets you out of trouble without having to ink an escape route first. |
What Nintendo Just Confirmed
Three things in this short column were, until July 24, community inference: that scrapping is meant to be a primary Spirhalite income, that gadget-part crafting is the intended answer to drop randomness, and that repeat farming runs are intended play. All three now have a first-party sentence behind them.
The column also gives official English names for two Hideout Ship facilities: the Weapon Stash, run by Frye, and the Gadget Workshop, run by Shiver. Translated guides (ours included) previously used Japanese-derived names for these facilities, so treat the article's names as canonical.
Related guides
Sources
- Five tips for Salmonid splatting in Splatoon Raiders, Nintendo UK (official)
- Five tips for Salmonid splatting in Splatoon Raiders, Nintendo Australia (official)
Source: 'Five tips for Salmonid splatting in Splatoon Raiders', Nintendo UK, July 24, 2026 (also Nintendo Australia, July 27, 2026). All quotes from the UK edition. The 'what it means' readings are ours, cross-referenced against our own database pages.