Anyone who’s spent even a few hours playing The First Descendant knows how fast your inventory fills up with random drops. You’re mid-mission, grabbing every mod and weapon you can find, and suddenly you get that “inventory full” pop-up right as you’re about to pick up a rare legendary drop. That’s where knowing how to use junk filter the first descendant comes in handy. It’s one of the most underrated quality-of-life tools in the game, but most new players skip over it completely because it’s barely mentioned in the opening tutorial. I spent my first 10 hours manually deleting grey and white drops one by one before I stumbled on this feature, and it cut my post-run inventory cleanup time by 80% immediately. This guide will walk you through exactly how to set it up, customize it for your playstyle, and avoid common mistakes that make the filter work against you.
How to Access and Set Up Your Junk Filter in The First Descendant
The junk filter isn’t immediately visible on the main inventory screen, which is why so many players miss it. For PC users, open your inventory and press F to pull up the filter menu, then navigate to the “Junk Settings” tab on the far right of the menu bar. For console players, open your inventory, select the three horizontal lines icon on the top right of the screen, then scroll to the Junk Settings tab. You don’t have to manually mark items as junk ever again once you set this up correctly.
Once you’re in the settings menu, you can toggle which item types and rarities are automatically marked as junk the second they enter your inventory. For example, if you only care about blue rarity or higher mods for your current build, you can set all white and green mods to be marked as junk automatically, so you never have to sort through them again. Don’t just set it and forget it right away, though. Test it for one or two short runs first to make sure you didn’t accidentally mark a valuable item type as junk. I made that mistake early on when I marked all white rank weapon cores as junk, not realizing they’re used for low-level crafting required for some early side quests. I lost three days worth of drops before I noticed, so don’t repeat that error.
Custom Junk Filter Rules for Different Playstyles
The default junk filter settings are okay for brand new players, but they’re not optimized for any specific playstyle. If you’re a casual player who only logs on a few times a week to progress the main story, your settings will be way different than a hardcore endgame farmer who runs Void Chasm runs six hours a day. The best custom rules align with what you’re currently working on in the game, and you can tweak them at any time. Here are the most popular pre-built rule sets players use:
- Story-focused casual players: Mark all white rarity weapons, mods, and common crafting materials as junk. You’ll get more than enough green and blue drops to progress the story, and you won’t have to sort through dozens of useless drops every time you finish a mission.
- Endgame crafting farmers: Only mark white and green rarity weapons as junk. Keep all mod rarities for mod fusion, and keep all crafting materials even if they’re low rank, since you’ll need thousands of them to upgrade legendary weapons and descendants.
- PvP mode players: Mark all weapons that don’t fit your current PvP loadout archetype as junk. For example, if you only use sniper rifles and SMGs in PvP, you can set all assault rifles, shotguns, and rocket launchers to be marked as junk automatically, so you only see drops that are useful for your build.
You don’t have to stick to these exact rules, of course. If you’re working on upgrading a specific shotgun, for example, you can adjust the filter to keep all shotgun drops regardless of rarity, and mark all other weapon types as junk. The filter is fully customizable, so you can tweak it to fit whatever your current goal is.
How to Process Marked Junk for Maximum Rewards
A lot of players make the mistake of deleting all their junk items immediately, but you can get way more value out of them by processing them the right way. Deleting junk gives you nothing, but selling and dismantling it gives you credits, crafting materials, and mod XP that you can use to upgrade your builds. First, head to any shop terminal in the main hub, or use the portable shop if you have it unlocked for your loadout. Always sell junk weapons first before you dismantle anything else, because weapons give you far more credits than mods or crafting materials do, and credits are needed for almost every upgrade in the game.
After you sell all your junk weapons, go to the dismantle tab and select “Dismantle All Junk” to turn the remaining marked items into crafting materials, mod XP, and upgrade cores. You’d be shocked how much extra crafting material you get from dismantling junk instead of deleting it. I once dismantled 12 pages of junk after a three-hour farming run, and got enough low-rank upgrade cores to level up my legendary shotgun from rank 1 to rank 30 without grinding any extra missions. One important note here: always check your junk tab one time before you sell or dismantle. Sometimes rare drops can get caught in the filter if you have custom rules set too aggressively, and it’s way better to catch that before you lose a legendary mod you’ve been farming for weeks. I have a friend who lost a perfect roll legendary support mod this way, and he still complains about it two months later.
Common Junk Filter Mistakes to Avoid
Even if you set your filter up correctly, there are a few common pitfalls that can make it more trouble than it’s worth. First, don’t set your filter to automatically delete junk as soon as it’s picked up. That setting is hidden in the advanced junk menu, and while it seems like a good idea to save inventory space, you will lose valuable items eventually if you have it turned on. Auto-delete is never worth the risk, no matter how much you hate sorting inventory. It only takes two minutes to process your junk after a run, and that’s way better than losing a rare drop.
Second, don’t forget to update your filter as you progress through the game. When you’re level 10, green rarity items are useful, but when you hit level 50 and start getting legendary drops, green items are basically useless. Adjust your filter rules every 10 levels or so to match your current progression, so you’re not holding onto items that have no value for your current build. Third, don’t ignore the “exclude favorite items” toggle. This toggle is on by default, but if you turn it off by accident, your favorite builds and items can get marked as junk if they fit your filter rules. Double check that the exclude favorites toggle is always turned on to avoid losing items you’ve spent weeks building. The last common mistake is using the same filter for all your characters. If you have a main DPS character and a support alt, their useful item drops are totally different. You can set character-specific junk filter rules in the settings menu, so your support character only marks DPS weapon drops as junk, and vice versa. That’s a small feature that makes playing multiple characters way less frustrating.
At the end of the day, learning how to use junk filter the first descendant is one of the simplest quality of life upgrades you can make to your gameplay loop. It doesn’t make you deal more damage or beat endgame bosses faster, but it saves you hours of boring inventory management that you could be spending running fun missions or testing new builds. I’ve talked to dozens of players who skipped this feature for months, and every single one said they regretted not setting it up earlier. Take 10 minutes after you finish reading this to set up your filter, test it on a short supply run, and tweak it to fit your playstyle. You’ll wonder how you ever played the game without it.