If you’ve ever tried to take on a high-level Void Raid or world boss solo in The First Descendant, you know it’s a slog even with a fully kitted out top-tier character. The game is built for co-op play, and teaming up with other players cuts down clear time, lets you unlock rarer loot, and makes even the most frustrating missions feel fun. Learning how to invite people on The First Descendant is one of the first skills you should master if you want to get the most out of the game, especially if you plan to tackle endgame content. I fumbled through half a dozen failed invites when I first started playing, messing up crossplay settings and adding the wrong usernames, so I put together this guide to help you avoid the same mistakes.
How to Invite People on The First Descendant From Your In-Game Friend List
The easiest way to build a party is to invite people you’ve already added to your in-game friend list, whether you met them in a previous public lobby or added them via their Nexon ID. The process works almost the same whether you’re playing on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo Switch, with only small differences in which button opens your social menu. For PC players, hit Escape and select the “Social” tab from the main menu. For console players, open the options menu and navigate to the Social icon, which looks like two overlapping player silhouettes.
Once you’re in the social menu, switch to the “Friends” tab to see a list of all your added friends who are online and available. You can filter this list to show only friends who are not currently in a party, which saves you the trouble of sending invites to people who are already mid-mission. Click or select the name of the player you want to invite, then choose the “Send Party Invite” option from the dropdown menu. You can only send invites to players who are not already in a full 4-person party, so if that option is greyed out, that’s the most likely reason.
If you want to invite someone you haven’t added to your friend list yet, you’ll need to navigate to the “Add Friend” tab in the social menu and enter their full Nexon ID, including the 4-digit number tag at the end. That’s true even if you’re already friends with them on your gaming platform of choice, since The First Descendant uses Nexon’s own account system for crossplay. Once they accept your friend request, you can send them a party invite just like you would for any other friend.
Fixing Common Invite Errors for Crossplay Parties
Crossplay is one of the best features of The First Descendant, since it lets you play with friends no matter what platform they own, but it’s also the source of 90% of invite issues people run into. I once spent 20 minutes trying to invite my friend who plays on Xbox to my PC lobby, and it turned out I’d misspelled his Nexon ID by one letter, so don’t feel bad if you run into snags. Most issues are easy to fix with a few quick checks.
If your invites aren’t going through or your friend isn’t receiving them, work through this list of fixes first before you restart your game or contact support:
Another common issue I see all the time is players trying to invite friends from different regions. Crossplay invites will not work if one player is on a server in a different region, so you’ll all need to switch to the same region in your account settings before you send invites. You can change your region at any time from the main menu, but you can’t switch it mid-mission, so make that change before you start trying to build your party.
How to Invite Random Players to Your Lobby for Public Missions
You don’t have to only play with people you know to have a good time in The First Descendant. Tons of players are looking for groups to run endgame content with every day, and inviting random players to your lobby is a great way to fill out your party fast when your friends are offline. You can either set your lobby to public and let players join on their own, or send invites directly to players who are hanging out in the main hub looking for groups.
To set your lobby to public, navigate to the mission select screen before you start a mission, and toggle the “Lobby Privacy” setting from “Private” to “Public”. You’ll start seeing join requests from random players within a minute or two for most popular missions, and you can accept or reject them as you see fit. You can filter players by their main character level and cleared raid progress if you’re looking for people who can handle hard content, so you don’t end up with a new player who can’t survive the first hit of the Void Chasm final boss.
If you want to be more selective about who you invite, you can walk around the main hub and inspect other players’ profiles by walking up to them and selecting the “Inspect” option. You can see their main character, their gear score, and their cleared mission history, and send them a party invite directly from that menu if they look like a good fit for your group. Most players are happy to accept invites to run endgame content, especially if you mention what mission you’re planning to run in the invite message.
Best Practices for Managing Your Party After Sending Invites
Sending invites is only half the battle, you also need to manage your party properly to make sure your missions go smoothly. There’s nothing worse than spending 10 minutes building a party only to have someone leave halfway through a raid because they didn’t know what mission you were running, or they didn’t have the right gear equipped. A few small steps before you start your mission can save you a ton of frustration later.
First, always make sure every member of your party knows what mission you’re running, and what role they’re expected to fill if you’re tackling a high-level raid. Most endgame raids work best with a balanced team of two DPS characters, one support, and one tank, so assign roles before you queue up to avoid confusion. You can kick unresponsive or toxic players from the party before starting a mission, but only the party leader has that permission, so don’t be afraid to use that option if someone is being rude or isn’t responding to questions about their loadout.
If you’re the party leader, don’t start the mission until everyone has confirmed they’ve selected their desired loadout and upgraded their gear. I’ve made this mistake before, starting a raid before one of my party members had swapped to their main character, and we wiped on the first boss because they were using a low-level alt with bad gear. It only takes 30 seconds to ask everyone if they’re ready, and it saves you 20 minutes of replaying the mission from the start.
If someone leaves mid-mission, you don’t have to restart or play shorthanded. You can send new invites to replacement players from the pause menu at any point before you reach the final boss checkpoint. Just open the social menu from the pause screen, and send invites the same way you would from the main hub. The new player will spawn at your last checkpoint, so you won’t lose any progress when they join.
Teaming up with other players completely changes how The First Descendant feels, turning grindy, difficult missions into fun, collaborative challenges that reward you with way better loot than you could ever get solo. Now that you know how to invite people on The First Descendant, you can start building teams to tackle even the hardest endgame content, whether you’re playing with close friends or random players you meet in the hub. Don’t be afraid to experiment with public lobbies either, I’ve met some of my regular co-op partners through random invites, and we run raids together every week now. If you run into an invite issue that none of the fixes in this guide solve, check the official game social media pages for announcements about temporary server issues, which are usually the cause of rare, widespread invite problems.