Since its release, The First Descendant has seen a total of 7 minor updates, which have brought with them various fixes, minor but sometimes very pleasant changes to key game systems, and some new content. In this article, we will analyze the new content, in my opinion, the most important changes and how they affected certain things, as well as what else needs to be changed.
New
One of perhaps the biggest updates added the following new content to the game:
- A female character named Luna .
- The chance of crafting parts dropping is 32, 38, 38%.
- The chance of getting a blueprint for crafting is 32%.
- The ultimate or prime version of an existing female character named Valby .
- In terms of basic characteristics, it differs from the regular version as follows: defense 2120 instead of 1976, maximum shield reserve 671 instead of 531, maximum HP reserve 1402 instead of 1347.
- The chance of dropping parts for crafting is 32, 32, 20%.
- The chance of getting a blueprint for crafting is 20%.
- A new colossus (boss) named Gluttony . He is the very last boss of the hard difficulty.
- Peace Maker’s ultimate weapon is a green-bullet revolver.
- All parts and the blueprint for crafting it drop from Gluttony.
- A gold grade module called Arche Concretion .
Since I have only studied the character Luna from the above, below we will briefly examine her key features:
- By default, she is a support character, but after installing a special class mod, she can be turned into a DD. By the way, there are only two class mods – one is sharpened for support, the second – for DD.
- The first ability allows you to summon a special pistol and activate the rhythm mechanic, which is what a lot of things are tied to. This is probably the only thing I don’t like about the character.
- Also, after activating the first ability, Luna starts dancing in place and certain music plays in a loop.
- The pistol deals quite good damage, and it can be increased even more with the help of mods that enhance the power of abilities.
- The pistol has a certain supply of ammunition, which can be replenished by activating the three remaining abilities.
- If you miss the beat (dots in the rhythm mechanics) when firing a pistol, the specified amount of mana and 1 bullet are spent, and if you hit, only 1 bullet is spent.
- The three remaining abilities apply a certain buff to the character and all allies in the area of effect.
- Unfortunately, to activate the ability, you must hit the beat, that is, press the ability button at the right moment.
- In addition to the buff, the abilities also do the following: refresh the ammo supply in the special pistol, increase the maximum ammo supply in the special pistol, change the dance \ melody \ aura color around the character, change the rhythm of the beat.
- The ability buffs are as follows:
- Increased ability damage.
- Boosts how much mana you restore.
- Speed of filling a special scale (for a character), reduction of ability CD (for allies).
- Finally, after each successful cast of an ability, you fill a special scale under the mana bar a little. Once it is filled to 100%, you can activate an enhanced version of one of the three abilities with a buff (their icons will light up).
- Enhanced versions add the following to the base property:
- Increased ability damage + critical chance and critical damage.
- Boost to how much mana you restore + additional boost and reduction to mana cost of casting abilities.
- Ability CD reduction (for allies) + additional ability CD reduction.
Changes
Complex missions
Complex missions that take place in a separate location can be launched in matchmaking mode, but, unfortunately, without additional multipliers of the final score. Frankly, I do not understand why the game was released without this function and why the last restriction was added, because in almost all such missions a high final score adds a chance to get a second amorphous material (hereinafter simply cores).
Outposts
The recovery time or, more simply, the CD of all outposts of locations has been reduced from 5 to 1 minute. This is the first, I’m not afraid of this word, large-scale change that simply saves a lot of time, because players spend a huge amount of time farming outposts for chance cores (20%). Well, of course, the change also slightly speeds up the process of farming certain things, although here everything depends on personal luck.
Abyssal Reactor Bosses
The developers have significantly reduced the HP of all the Abyss Reactor bosses. This is the second major change that has significantly simplified the gameplay, especially for solo players. Now you can easily kill the reactor bosses alone, even on hard difficulty, instead of suffering and running around the discords in search of at least one player or a group. The video below shows an example of how much easier it has become to kill bosses.
Also, reactor bosses now drop ammo, this change was added to make it easier to kill multiple bosses at once. Simply put, after X bosses, you no longer need to teleport to the main checkpoint to replenish the robot’s ammo.
Boss spheres
All bosses with invulnerability phases have had their spheres removed that need to be destroyed in a certain sequence. On the one hand, this change slightly simplifies the process of killing bosses, on the other hand, it removes the factor of not very smart randoms who randomly shoot at the spheres and reset the sequence (I mainly had this problem).
Storages
Having listened to some of the community’s criticism, the developers have significantly increased the drop rate of resources from hidden storage locations. If on release they dropped 2-4 resources, now they drop from 6 to 12 depending on the difficulty, on hard mostly 8-12. In a way, this change made the storage a little more enjoyable, although, anyway, in some cases you need to find up to 10 correct storages (more on this in the section “What else needs to be changed”).
small (or I’m very unlucky) that it’s easier to purposefully farm storages. For example, recently from three fairly quick missions (about 5 minutes each) I only got 3 resources.
Miscellaneous
Under this point I have collected smaller, but no less significant changes:
- The limit of selected items for each piece of equipment has been increased to 1000.
- An option to disable camera shake has been added to the settings.
- A damn useful option has been added to the settings that allows you to hold down the button and shoot, even if the weapon’s firing type is not automatic.
- The functionality of the “Lost and Found” system has been slightly improved. Unlike the release, a “Take all items” button has been added, and if there is not enough space in your inventory, only some of the items will be moved. By the way, the latter point was added after the button appeared.
- Due to a certain abuse in missions that take place in a separate location and on colossi, it is no longer possible to change modules, module presets and global presets.
- Due to the addition of new characters, some old cores have been removed from the drop, replaced with new ones. Simply put, they are no longer obtainable, but you can still open the already dropped variants.
- Slightly improved equipment icons, now each item has colored dots indicating the grade of all additional effects.
- The maximum number of modules you can assemble has been increased from 1000 to 1500.
- The number of fragments from structures that produce only 2 types has been increased by 1.5 times.
- Fragments can now drop from enemies in missions that take place in a separate location. Mostly, one piece drops.
- Missions that take place in a separate location can now drop special consumable items of two grades – blue and purple. After using them, you will immediately receive a certain amount of gold – 100 thousand for blue, 1 million for purple.
- The amount of loot from a mission on hard difficulty has been increased by 1.5 times.
- The settings now include an option to disable explosions from other players’ projectiles, and slightly reduce the effects of explosions from the Vestigial Organ rocket launcher. They would also add the ability to disable your own explosions.
- The “AFK” option has been added to the player report menu, this is an extremely important change due to the fact that there are plenty of people who want to level up at someone else’s expense or kill a boss without doing anything.
- Improved some class modules and weapons.
- Judging by the patch notes, they improved optimization, although I only noticed that shader compilation has become much longer and is launched again after each major client update.
What else needs to be changed
And finally, let’s look at a few things that ideally the developers should have changed before the release to make the users’ gaming experience a little more enjoyable. I compiled the list based on my personal 200-hour experience and factors that could scare off new users.
Auto disassembly
Because of the way the process of getting new characters, gear, and modules is structured, in The First Descendant players are forced to farm the same activity over and over again, my record so far is 67 runs for one part of Gley’s ultimate. In the process, they get a ton of unnecessary gear and modules – as a reward for the activity itself (it can’t be refused) and as a drop from enemies (it can be refused, just not picked up).
Of course, at a certain point in time, the space in the inventory runs out (even the mod limit of 1500 is quickly filled), after which all rewards for activities automatically fly to “Lost and Found”, but there is not an infinite amount of space there either (even less than in the inventory). Because of this, you must periodically manually clear the space in the inventory and teleport to the hub to free up space in the found, sell unnecessary modules.
Actually, because of the above, The First Descendant vitally needs a function for automatic disassembly of received equipment, ideally with advanced settings for what not to disassemble. What’s most interesting is that the game already has such functionality with several extremely simple filters, but it only works for manual disassembly, why the developers did not attach automation to it is not very clear. By the way, such functionality has been expected from Bungie for 7 years, I wonder how much time it will take the Korean developers.
Changing Outposts
At the time of writing, all outposts have two types of rewards attached to them – some are given for destroying all terminals, and others – for stealth hacking of terminals. The latter have stabilizers attached to them that affect the chances of items dropping from cores and cores with parts for regular/ultimate characters, ultimate weapons. To hack, one player on Sharen must activate the terminals in invisibility while all other players wait, hiding from opponents.
The problem with this activity is the hacking mechanics and the cores tied to it, and all because random players may not want to wait and will start attacking opponents, forcing you to switch to solo mode, which leads to another problem “Can you kill the outpost boss alone, especially on hard difficulty”. In my opinion, cores should not have been included in the hacking rewards from the beginning, but only stabilizers should have been left.
Changing storage
As I wrote in the game summary, due to the following reasons, storages are perhaps the most terrifying activity, due to which users may well delete the game.
- Resources from storages are needed to craft parts for some regular and ultimate characters.
- The storages are divided by type into grey, blue and purple.
- To open each type of storage, you need keys of a certain color/grade – normal, blue and purple.
- Keys drop randomly from enemies in various missions, the chance is quite low, and apparently it was recently nerfed (this is not certain).
- The process of opening the vaults is implemented through a reaction mini-game, which requires a special character to simplify.
- In each location, storages appear in random places.
- A random type of storage can appear in the same place. I am mostly lucky with blue and purple storages, but keys drop for gray ones.
You can change it as follows:
- Remove it completely.
- Put keys in the drops of all activities, not just in enemies.
- Leave only one type of storage and key grade.
- Leave only one type of storage, and the grade of keys will increase how many resources you get.
Changing fragments
To summon the void reactor bosses, you need void fragments (there are 4 types in total, and you need 2 to open them), which the player gets by completing a fairly simple, boring (it makes me want to go to sleep) activity on a character of a certain element. In my opinion, the activity is present in the game only to delay the process of farming characters and weapons, because with it the chain looks like this: knocked out the core => farmed fragments and did not fall asleep => summoned the reactor boss => after killing the boss, opened the core.
You can change it as follows:
- Remove it completely.
- Unlink activities from a specific element, which means you don’t need to use a character of a specific element. Simply put, Rabbits will be everywhere.
- Reduce the number of fragments to two so players can farm a ton and forget about it.
- Increase how many fragments a player gets from one activity.
Miscellaneous
List of minor changes:
- Add a system for exchanging unnecessary character components and weapons for something else.
- Allows you to craft more than 5 items at a time.
- Allows you to craft multiple copies of the same item at the same time.
- Allow changing the character anywhere, not just at key teleport points. Of course, you can add a restriction for certain activities.
- Allow tracking of fragments. Tracking allows you to add an item to a specific block of the main interface and not open the inventory to check how much you have farmed.
- Improve the paints, make them non-expendable. This restriction was added only to pump money out of users.