If you’ve spent any time upgrading high-tier weapons or maxing out your favorite Descendant’s passive skills, you’ve probably hit a wall where you need a rare, hard-to-find resource to progress. Common materials like iron, polymer, and energy cells are easy to grab from regular mission runs and world chests, but rarer crafting items often have vague drop requirements that the game never explains clearly. A lot of new players ask how do you get Caliber in The First Descendant, and it’s not as straightforward as farming common crafting materials. This guide walks you through every reliable way to earn it, no exploits or glitches required, so you can stop wasting time on low-yield runs and start powering up your loadouts faster.
How Do You Get Caliber in The First Descendant? Core Farming Methods
There are three proven ways to earn Caliber consistently, no random luck required outside of standard in-game drop rates. I’ve tested every supposed farming trick shared on community forums, and these are the only methods that work reliably after the latest balance patch. You don’t have to stick to just one method either; I usually mix weekly challenges and Void Intercept runs to keep my Caliber stock steady without burning out on the same mission over and over.
- Clear Void Intercept Battles on Hard or Extreme difficulty: These boss-focused missions have the highest confirmed drop rate for Caliber, especially when you defeat the final boss without any party members being downed more than twice. Hard difficulty has a 35% drop rate per run, while Extreme jumps to 50% if you meet all bonus objective requirements.
- Complete weekly Descendant challenge missions: Every week, three rotating challenges reward Caliber for clearing specific objectives, like getting 100 kills with a sniper rifle or finishing three missions without using healing items. You can earn up to 15 Caliber per week from these challenges alone, no high-end gear required.
- Exchange unused Void Relics at the Operation Desk in Albion: If you have leftover low-tier relics from regular Void runs, you can trade 10 green or blue relics for one random Caliber crate, which gives between 1 and 5 Caliber per open. Never trade purple or gold relics for these crates, as they’re worth far more when exchanged for upgrade modules.
I’ve tested all three of these methods over dozens of runs, and Void Intercept Battles are by far the most efficient if you have a solid party. Solo runs on Extreme are possible, but they take 3x as long as a coordinated 4-person group, so you’re better off joining a public lobby if you don’t have friends to play with. Just make sure you meet the recommended gear score for the difficulty you pick, or you’ll get one-shot by the boss’s AOE attacks. If you’re still new to the game and don’t have the gear for Hard difficulty yet, stick to the weekly challenges first, as they don’t require any high-end gear to complete.
Best Void Intercept Builds for Fast Caliber Farming
The goal is to clear the mission as fast as possible to maximize how many Caliber drops you can get per hour, so speed is just as important as damage here. The meta party composition right now is one support, two DPS, and one crowd control character, but you can make almost any setup work if you build correctly. For support, Viessa with her freeze abilities is the top pick, as she can keep the boss staggered for 70% of the fight, letting your DPS focus entirely on hitting weak points.
Make sure every party member runs a perk that increases rare drop rate if you have it unlocked. That 10-15% drop boost might not seem like much, but it adds up over 10 runs, and I’ve gotten twice as many Caliber drops when my whole group runs these perks compared to groups that skip them. Also, don’t forget to pick up all the loot drops after the boss dies, not just the end-of-mission rewards. Caliber can drop as a random world drop from the boss corpse too, and I’ve had multiple runs where I got an extra Caliber that wasn’t listed in the final reward screen. A common mistake new players make is leaving the mission as soon as the boss dies, without checking the loot. Don't do that, you're leaving free resources on the table.
If you’re farming solo, use Lepic with a maxed-out rocket launcher loadout. His passive damage boost when he’s low on health lets him melt boss weak points in seconds, as long as you can dodge the boss’s attacks well enough to stay alive. I’ve managed to clear Hard difficulty Void Intercept runs in 12 minutes flat with this build, which is almost as fast as a coordinated group run.
Common Mistakes That Waste Your Time Farming Caliber
I see a lot of new players make the same mistakes when they first start farming Caliber, and it ends up costing them hours of wasted time. The biggest mistake by far is running Normal difficulty Void Intercept Battles. I see so many new players doing this because they think it's faster, but the drop rate for Caliber on Normal is less than 5%, compared to 35% on Hard and 50% on Extreme. If you’re only getting 1 Caliber every 5 runs on Normal, that’s way slower than getting 1 every 2 runs on Hard, even if each Hard run takes a few minutes longer.
Another mistake is ignoring weekly challenges that reward Caliber. These challenges reset every Tuesday, and you can get up to 15 Caliber a week just from completing them, no hard boss fights required. A lot of players sleep on these because they think the objectives are too tedious, but most of them you can complete passively while you’re farming other resources anyway. For example, if you’re running Void missions to farm relics, you can knock out the 100 sniper kill challenge in just two runs without changing your playstyle much.
Third mistake: trading high-tier Void Relics for Caliber. Only trade green and blue relics, not purple or gold ones. Purple relics can be exchanged for way more valuable resources like Descendant upgrade modules, so you’re losing out on a lot of value if you trade them for Caliber. I made this mistake early on, and I ended up having to farm for 8 hours just to get enough purple relics to upgrade my main Descendant’s passive skill.
How to Use Caliber Efficiently Once You Farm It
If you’re still figuring out how do you get Caliber in The First Descendant, the last thing you want to do is waste all the hard-earned drops you get on throwaway gear. Caliber is one of the rarest crafting resources in the game, so wasting it on gear you’ll replace in a few levels is never a good call. Only use Caliber to upgrade legendary or unique tier weapons that you plan to keep in your loadout long-term. Common and rare weapons can be upgraded with much easier to find materials, so there’s no point wasting your hard-earned Caliber on them.
Also, prioritize upgrading weapons that work for multiple Descendants, like the Gravitational Sniper or the Plasma Rocket Launcher, so you get more use out of the resources you put in. I made the mistake early on of using all my Caliber to upgrade a rare shotgun I thought was cool, and then I had to farm for 10 hours to get enough to upgrade my first legendary weapon when I unlocked it. Save yourself that frustration, and plan your upgrades before you spend any Caliber.
If you’re not sure what to upgrade first, check community tier lists to see which weapons are currently meta, so you don’t waste Caliber on a weapon that’s going to be outclassed after the next balance patch. You can also hold onto your Caliber for a week after a new update drops, to see if any new weapons are added that are worth upgrading over your current loadout.
At the end of the day, figuring out how do you get Caliber in The First Descendant is just a matter of focusing on high-yield activities and avoiding common time-wasting mistakes. You don’t need to spend 20 hours a week farming to get enough for your builds, just run a couple of Void Intercept runs a week and complete your weekly challenges, and you’ll have a steady supply in no time. Don’t get discouraged if you go a few runs without a drop, that’s just RNG at work, and the drops will come eventually. Once you get the hang of farming Caliber, you’ll be able to upgrade all your favorite weapons and Descendants to their max potential without endless grinding.