If you’ve spent even a few hours running missions in The First Descendant, you’ve probably hit a wall where your starter assault rifle or shotgun just doesn’t cut it against high-level Vulgus enemies. You might have collected piles of upgrade materials sitting unused in your inventory, and no clue how to turn that trash into a weapon that one-shots elite mobs. Learning how to upgrade weapons the first descendant is one of the most impactful skills you can pick up to skip the early-game grind and start tackling endgame content faster.
Prerequisites You Need Before You Upgrade Weapons in The First Descendant
You won’t unlock weapon upgrading right out of the gate, so don’t panic if you don’t see the option in your first hour of play. The weapon upgrade station unlocks once you complete the first three story missions and gain access to the Albion hub area, located in the main Armory building near the mission board. You don’t need to pay any in-game currency to access the station, but you will need a stock of specific materials to make meaningful upgrades to your gear.
Before you dump resources into any weapon, take it for a test run in 2 or 3 regular missions first. Different weapons have wildly different recoil patterns, fire rates, and reload speeds that might not fit your playstyle, even if their base stats look good on paper. Never upgrade a weapon you haven’t tested for at least 2-3 regular missions first, because you only get 70% of your invested materials back if you dismantle it later. Higher rarity weapons also have higher level caps: uncommon weapons cap at level 20, rare at 30, epic at 40, and legendary at 50, so you’ll get more long-term value from upgrading higher rarity gear you plan to use for weeks, not days.
Step-by-Step Weapon Upgrade Process for Maximum Power
Once you’ve picked a weapon you love and gathered enough materials, the upgrade process is straightforward if you follow the right order to avoid wasting resources. First, interact with the Armory upgrade station and select the weapon you want to work on from your inventory. You’ll see four core upgrade tabs: level up, ascend, reroll stats, and apply mods.
Start with the level up tab first, where you can use Weapon XP cards to raise your weapon’s base level. Each level raises its base damage, and you’ll unlock extra secondary stat bonuses every 5 levels. Prioritize leveling your weapon to its current cap before ascending, because you’ll get immediate access to higher damage output instead of locking those gains behind an ascension grind.
When you hit the level cap, move to the ascension tab to raise the cap and unlock extra perk slots. You’ll need rarity-specific ascension cores and gold to complete this step, and you can ascend a weapon up to 5 times total. Once you’ve ascended to your desired cap, head to the reroll tab to adjust secondary stats to match your build. Reroll only the secondary stats that don’t match your build, since the weapon’s main damage stat is fixed and can’t be changed.
Even experienced players make avoidable mistakes when upgrading weapons that cost them hours of extra farming. Watch out for these common pitfalls:
- Wasting legendary upgrade cores on rare or uncommon quality weapons that you’ll replace in a few missions
- Upgrading multiple low-tier weapons at once instead of focusing on one primary, one secondary, and one heavy weapon for your main build
- Forgetting to match elemental upgrade cores to your weapon’s innate element for an extra 15% stat bonus
- Selling unused upgraded weapons instead of dismantling them for partial material refunds
Best Upgrade Priorities for Different Playstyles
There’s no one-size-fits-all upgrade path that works for every player, since the best stats to boost depend entirely on how you like to play and which Descendant you’re using. If you prefer a run-and-gun playstyle with SMGs or assault rifles, focus on upgrading fire rate, critical hit chance, and magazine size first to melt groups of regular mobs fast. If you’re a sniper main who hangs back to pick off elite enemies and hit boss weak points, prioritize critical hit damage, weak point damage, and reload speed to take down high-health targets in one or two shots.
Always align your upgrade choices with your active Descendant’s passive bonuses to get extra damage boosts for free. For example, if you’re using Viessa, who has a passive 20% ice damage bonus, upgrading ice elemental damage on your weapon will stack with that passive to give you a 35% total ice damage boost with no extra work. If you play support in co-op groups, prioritize status effect chance, ammo capacity, and team buff perks to help your whole squad clear missions faster instead of focusing only on personal damage.
For endgame Void Intercept and Raid missions, you’ll want to add elemental resistance penetration as one of your final upgrade stats. Most endgame bosses have high resistance to their innate element, so even a 20% penetration boost can increase your damage output against them by almost 40% in some cases. You don’t need to worry about this stat for early and mid-game missions, so save it for when you start tackling content with a recommended level of 35 or higher.
How to Farm Upgrade Materials Fast Without Wasting Time
You don’t need to grind for 10 hours a day to get enough materials to fully upgrade a legendary weapon, as long as you run the right missions. For Weapon XP cards, run weekly Supply Run missions on normal difficulty. Each run takes 4 to 6 minutes to complete, and you’ll get 10 to 15 blue or purple XP cards per clear, plus a chance for gold XP cards as a bonus reward. These missions are also low-risk, so you can run them even if you’re still working on building your main loadout.
For elemental ascension cores, run the corresponding Elemental Outbreak missions that pop up on the map daily. Each Outbreak mission only drops cores for one specific element, so you can target farm exactly what you need instead of getting random drops from regular missions. For mod components and general upgrade materials, dismantle unused green and blue quality mods and weapons instead of selling them. You’ll get 3 times more components from dismantling than you will from selling, and you can usually get enough components to fully mod a weapon from a single hour of mission runs.
Join public co-op missions for material farming to cut clear times in half. More players in a mission means more enemy spawns, which translates to more drops for everyone in the squad, and most public groups will finish high-difficulty material runs in less than half the time it would take you to run them solo. Don’t forget to claim your daily login rewards too, since they often give out free legendary ascension cores and gold XP cards that would take hours to farm manually.
You don’t need to drop hundreds of hours into the game to get a weapon that carries you through almost every mission. Even small, intentional upgrades to your favorite weapon will make a noticeable difference in how fast you clear mobs and how little you have to hide behind cover during boss fights. Taking the time to learn how to upgrade weapons the first descendant will save you dozens of hours of frustrating grind, and let you focus on the parts of the game you actually enjoy, whether that’s chasing new legendary drops or tackling endgame raid content with friends.