You just downloaded The First Descendant, picked your favorite playable character, sorted your initial mod loadout, and are ready to jump into chaotic boss fights and resource farming runs. But if you’re fumbling through clunky menus trying to figure out how to join a friend in The First Descendant, you’re not alone. Tons of new players run into confusing cross-play settings, hidden lobby options, and random connection glitches that stop them from teaming up right away. I’ve spent dozens of hours running co-op missions with friends across PS5, Xbox Series S, and PC, so I’ve broken down every step you need to follow, plus simple fixes for the most common issues you’ll run into.
Step-by-Step: How to Join a Friend in The First Descendant
The process is a little different depending on if you’re playing on the same platform or cross-play, but these core steps work for every setup. First, confirm you’ve both enabled cross-play in your settings if you’re playing on different devices. You can find this under the Gameplay tab in the Settings menu, just toggle the cross-play option to on. If you’re only playing with friends on the same console or PC storefront, you can skip this step, but leaving cross-play enabled won’t hurt anything.
Next, open the social menu by pressing the Options button on console or the O key on PC. From there, you’ll see three tabs: Friends, Recent Players, and Blocked. Navigate to the Friends tab, and you’ll see all your in-game friends, plus platform friends who also own the game. Find the friend you want to join, select their profile, and click Join Session if their lobby is public. If their lobby is private, you’ll need to send them a request to join, or have them send you an invite directly.
If you’re still having trouble figuring out how to join a friend in The First Descendant after checking these settings, try restarting your game entirely before moving on to more complex fixes. Small temporary glitches often block join requests, and a quick restart solves 90% of basic issues.
Cross-Play Specific Rules for Joining Friends
A lot of connection issues pop up because players don’t understand how cross-play works for this game. First, you don’t need to link a third-party social account to play with friends across different platforms, but you do need to add each other as in-game friends using their unique Nexon ID. Your Nexon ID is the username you chose when you first launched the game, and you can find it listed at the top of your social menu. Make sure you share the full ID, including any numbers or special characters at the end, because partial searches won’t pull up the right profile.
You can only join friends who are on the same game version as you, so make sure you’ve downloaded all recent patches before trying to team up. If one of you is on an older version, the join button will be greyed out entirely, and you won’t be able to send or receive invites. The game usually updates automatically, but if you have auto-updates turned off on your console, you’ll need to manually check for updates before you play.
Also, note that if you’re playing on a console with a child account, you may need to adjust your platform’s privacy settings to allow cross-play and incoming friend requests before you can join any lobbies. I ran into this exact issue when my little cousin tried to join my lobby on his PS4 last month, and adjusting his parental control settings fixed it in two minutes.
Common Issues That Stop You From Joining Friends (And Fixes)
Even if you follow all the steps correctly, you might still run into errors that keep you from joining your friend’s lobby. I’ve compiled the most frequent issues and the fixes that have worked for me and my squad consistently over months of playing:
Tips to Make Co-Op Sessions Run Smoothly
Once you’ve mastered how to join a friend in The First Descendant, there are a few small tweaks you can make to ensure your sessions are fun and low-stress. First, agree on a mission type before you join each other’s lobbies, so you don’t waste time switching back and forth between open world exploration and boss raids once you’re teamed up. It’s super frustrating to load into a lobby expecting to farm rare mods, only to find the host wants to spend an hour doing side quests.
Assign roles based on your Descendant’s strengths before you start a hard mission: for example, have a support main like Viessa focus on healing and crowd control, while a damage main like Ajax handles boss burst damage. You’ll clear missions way faster, and you won’t waste time arguing about who should pick up what loot mid-fight.
You should also make sure you all have your mic settings adjusted correctly, or use the in-game ping system if you don’t want to talk, to communicate enemy positions and loot drops quickly. Another tip I swear by: have the player with the most stable internet connection host the lobby, as this cuts down on lag and connection drops for everyone else. I used to host lobbies on my old spotty rural internet, and we’d get kicked out of missions every 20 minutes until I passed host duties to my friend who lives in a city with fiber internet.
Teaming up with friends is easily one of the best parts of playing The First Descendant, and once you get the hang of the menu system and cross-play rules, you’ll be able to squad up in seconds. Don’t get frustrated if you run into small connection issues at first, most of them have simple fixes that take less than a minute to implement. Next time you’re gearing up to take down a giant Colossus or farm rare upgrade materials, you’ll know exactly how to join a friend in The First Descendant to make the mission way easier and way more fun.