If you’ve spent even a few hours running Void missions or farming boss drops in Nexon’s online looter shooter, you’ve probably wondered how to get descendants in The First Descendant that fit your playstyle. Unlike many live service games, you don’t have to drop real cash to unlock every playable character, but the process can feel confusing if you don’t know where to look. I’ve spent over 80 hours grinding every character unlock in the game, so I’ve broken down every step to skip the frustrating trial and error most new players go through. You won’t have to waste time farming the wrong missions or missing hidden requirements with this guide.
How to Get Descendants in The First Descendant: Core Unlock Requirements
When you first start learning how to get descendants in The First Descendant, the list of required materials can feel overwhelming, but you can break it down into small, manageable steps. Every descendant unlock follows the same basic structure: you first need to collect their unique blueprint, then gather three types of crafting materials specific to that character, then craft them at the Anvil in your home base. You can check all unlock requirements for any descendant by visiting the Descendant tab in your main menu, even if you haven’t unlocked their blueprint yet.
Starter descendants are given for free as you progress through the main story, so you don’t have to farm anything to get your first three playable characters. Rare and legendary descendants require you to run specific Void Intercept Battle missions to get their blueprint, plus grind for rare materials scattered across different map regions. You don’t need to reach a super high account level to unlock most characters either, most rare descendants are accessible as soon as you finish the first three main story chapters.
Farming Materials for Descendant Unlocks Efficiently
The biggest time sink for unlocking new descendants is farming the required materials, but there are plenty of tricks to cut your grind time in half. Boss-specific drops only drop from their respective Void Intercept Battle missions on the correct difficulty, so always double check the mission reward list before you queue up. Higher difficulty missions give more general rewards, but they don’t increase the drop rate for descendant blueprints or unique boss materials, so you’re better off running normal difficulty if you’re only farming for unlocks.
There are a few common mistakes that make the farming process way longer than it needs to be, so keep these rules in mind:
So if you’re working on how to get descendants in The First Descendant that are rare, you can save a lot of time by using your weekly crates for their missing materials. You can team up with 3 other players to cut mission completion time in half, even if all of you are using low-level starter characters. Most public lobbies are happy to help new players farm unlocks, so don’t be afraid to join a random queue if you’re struggling to beat a Void boss solo.
Unlocking Hidden and Rare Descendants
Some descendants aren’t visible in your unlock menu until you complete a specific side quest chain, so you might miss out on powerful characters if you only stick to the main story. For example, the popular support descendant Gley doesn’t show up in your unlock list until you finish the full side quest chain in the Glacier region, which takes about two hours to complete if you’re at the right level. One of the biggest mistakes new players make when learning how to get descendants in The First Descendant is wasting their rare material crates on common characters they can unlock in a few hours of story play.
Rare descendants have a 15% drop rate for their blueprint per normal difficulty Void run, so you can expect to get it within 7 runs on average. If you get unlucky and don’t get the blueprint after 10 runs, don’t stress, the extra boss materials you collect can be sold for a huge amount of credits, or used to craft other descendants you might want to try later. You also don’t have to unlock descendants in order, if you want a high-damage sniper descendant first, you can go straight to that Void mission as soon as you reach account level 15, you don’t need to unlock all the starter descendants first.
What to Do Right After Unlocking a New Descendant
Once you get the hang of how to get descendants in The First Descendant, you can start planning your unlock order to get the most account-wide stat boosts first. Don’t just jump into high difficulty missions right after you craft a new descendant, take 10 minutes to test their skills in the practice arena first to see which upgrades fit your playstyle. Level up their core passive skill before you upgrade their active skills, the passive boost usually makes a bigger difference to their overall performance than extra damage on a single skill.
Every descendant gets a unique stat boost when you max their level, so it’s worth leveling even characters you don’t plan to main. That boost applies to your entire account, so even if you only play as a damage main, leveling support descendants will give you extra health or shield that works on all your characters. You can also transfer weapon mods between descendants, so you don’t have to farm new mods every time you unlock a new character, just move your best mods over to test them out.
At the end of the day, figuring out how to get descendants in The First Descendant doesn’t have to be a grind that takes dozens of hours if you know what you’re doing. Stick to targeted mission runs, take advantage of weekly rewards, and don’t be afraid to team up with other players to speed up the process. You’ll have a full roster of characters to fit every playstyle before you know it, and you won’t have to spend a dime on microtransactions to get them. If you’re still stuck on a specific drop, try adjusting your mission team comp or running the fight a few more times—luck always evens out eventually.