If you’ve been grinding The First Descendant looking for a versatile ice support that can shut down entire crowds of enemies and buff your squad’s damage output, you’ve probably wondered how to get to Vespers the first descendant. Vespers is one of the most sought-after late-game characters, thanks to his unique freeze abilities, low cooldown support skills, and synergy with almost every popular meta squad build. A lot of players hit a wall trying to unlock him, though, because the prerequisites are not clearly spelled out in the game’s in-game guide. I’ve unlocked Vespers on three different accounts across PC and console, so I’ve figured out all the shortcuts and common mistakes to avoid while working through the requirements.
Prerequisites You Need to Complete Before You Can Get to Vespers in The First Descendant
You can’t just walk straight to the location where Vespers is unlocked; you have to tick off a few key progression milestones first. If you skip any of these, you won’t trigger the quest line that lets you fight for the character unlock, even if you head to the right area on the map. I missed the third prerequisite on my first run, and I wasted almost two hours running around the frozen wastelands wondering why the quest wouldn’t pop up.
All of these materials are farmable, so you don’t have to spend any real money to unlock them. That means you can grind for them in a single afternoon if you have a solid squad to run missions with. If you’re playing solo, focus on running open-world enemy sweeps in the Northern Frost first, as you’ll collect both Frozen Cores and XP at the same time.
Navigating to the Vespers Unlock Instance
Once you’ve checked off all the prerequisites, you’ll get a pop-up notification directing you to the Frost Spire, the tall ice-covered structure on the northern edge of the Northern Frost map. You can fast travel to the Frost Spire Outpost if you’ve already unlocked that fast travel point, which cuts down your travel time significantly. If you haven’t unlocked it yet, you can drive a hovercraft across the frozen plains, but watch out for the random ice tornado events that can one-shot low-gear characters.
When you get to the entrance of the Frost Spire, you’ll see a glowing blue portal that only activates if you have all the required materials in your inventory. You don’t have to turn the materials in beforehand; the portal will automatically consume them when you enter the instance. Make sure you don’t leave any of the required materials in your storage vault before you head to the portal, or it won’t let you in. I made that mistake on my second run, and I had to make a 15-minute round trip back to my base to grab the Advanced Power Cells I left behind.
The instance has a recommended gear score of 18,500, but you can get away with 18,000 if you’re running a tanky character or have a healer in your squad. Solo runs are possible, but they take almost twice as long as squad runs, so I recommend grouping up via the in-game matchmaking system if you can.
Beating the Vespers Boss Fight to Unlock the Character
The boss fight has three phases, and each phase gets progressively harder as Vespers uses more of his ice abilities. The first phase is fairly straightforward: you just have to dodge his ice shard attacks and hit the glowing weak points on his arms when they pop up. If you get hit by his freeze attack, you’ll be immobilized for three seconds, which is enough time for him to land a follow-up attack that takes off 70% of your health, so stay mobile.
The second phase adds floating ice mines that explode when you get too close, so you have to watch your step while you’re dodging his attacks. The best strategy for this phase is to stick to the outer edge of the arena, as the mines only spawn in the central 60% of the space. You can also use a fire-based descendant like Viessa to melt the mines instantly if you have one in your squad.
The third and final phase is where most players wipe. Vespers will activate a full arena freeze attack every 60 seconds, and you have to hide behind one of the four ice pillars around the edge of the arena to avoid getting one-shot. The pillars break after one use, so you have to plan your positioning carefully. Once you get his health down to 10%, he’ll stop attacking and trigger a cutscene where he agrees to join your roster.
You don’t have to worry about re-doing the entire fight if you wipe, either. The game saves your progress after each phase, so you can respawn at the start of the phase you died on instead of going all the way back to the first phase. That’s a huge quality of life feature that a lot of players don’t know about until they accidentally wipe in phase three.
What to Do After You Unlock Vespers
As soon as the cutscene ends, Vespers will be added to your character roster automatically, and you can switch to him immediately from the character select screen. He starts at level 1, but you can use character level-up tickets to boost him to your current maximum character level right away if you have any saved up. I recommend saving your high-tier level tickets for Vespers, since he’s worth investing in for almost every game mode.
First thing you should do after unlocking Vespers is run his personal side quest line, which gives you exclusive skill mods that boost his freeze duration by 30%. These mods are only available from this quest line, so you can’t get them anywhere else in the game. The quest line only takes about 45 minutes to complete, so it’s well worth the time investment.
Vespers works best as a support character in squad missions, but he’s also viable for solo play if you build him for damage instead of support. His ultimate ability freezes all enemies on the screen for 8 seconds, which is perfect for taking out large crowds of trash mobs or stopping a boss from using a devastating ultimate attack of their own. If you play a lot of endgame void intercept missions, Vespers will quickly become one of your most used characters.
If you’re not sure how to build him, start with the recommended meta build that pops up in the character menu. It’s optimized for general use, and you can tweak it as you get more mods and better gear for him over time.
Unlocking Vespers is one of the most rewarding milestones you can hit in The First Descendant, and once you know how to get to Vespers the first descendant, you can get him unlocked in just a few hours of focused grinding. The only hard part is remembering to complete all the prerequisites before you head to the Frost Spire, so you don’t waste time running around the map like I did on my first attempt. If you group up with a full squad for the boss fight, you can even unlock Vespers the same day you hit the required player rank. Once you have him on your roster, you’ll wonder how you ever ran endgame missions without his powerful ice support abilities.