If you’ve spent even a few hours grinding Void Intercepts, story missions, or supply runs in The First Descendant, you’ve probably hit a point where your damage feels like it’s not keeping up with enemy health bars. It’s around that time most players ask what is the best weapon in The First Descendant, hoping for a one-size-fits-all pick that will carry them through every piece of content. The truth is there’s no universal top pick, but after 200+ hours of testing every weapon type across all difficulty tiers, we’ve broken down the best options for every scenario, playstyle, and skill level. We’ve included pros, cons, grind locations, and mod tips so you don’t have to waste hours testing bad picks yourself.
What Is the Best Weapon in The First Descendant for General PvE Content?
The Typhoon Frenzy Submachine Gun is our top pick for general play for a lot of good reasons. It has a fire rate of 850 RPM, a 30-round mag, and an innate perk that adds 12% void damage to every fourth hit you land on an enemy. It also has a 25% faster reload speed when you empty the entire mag, which means you barely have any downtime during fights. If you're still asking what is the best weapon in The First Descendant for casual play, this is the clear pick.
It works for close to mid-range fights, which make up 90% of the game’s early and mid-game content, and it’s easy to get too. You can farm it from Tier 3 supply drops in the Red Waste region, or get it as a random drop from any Tier 2 or higher public event. The only real downsides are that its damage falls off sharply at ranges over 30m, and it doesn’t have enough single-target burst to take down endgame raid bosses quickly. But for everything else, it’s unbeatable for the effort it takes to get.
Top Endgame Raid Weapons for High-Damage Scenarios
Once you hit level 30 and unlock endgame Void Raids, the Typhoon Frenzy will start to feel a bit underpowered against the huge boss health bars and constant waves of high-level adds. That’s when you’ll want to swap to more specialized weapons built for these high-stakes scenarios. First up is the Oblivion Launcher, which is a must-have for any raid team. It fires sticky void explosive rounds that detonate after two seconds, dealing 1200% base damage to every enemy in a 10m radius. That makes it perfect for clearing out add waves that spawn during boss fights, which can easily wipe your team if they’re not dealt with fast.
It does have a slow 2.5 second reload time, so you’ll want to pair it with a fast secondary weapon for self-defense when you’re reloading. For single-target boss damage, the Starfall Sniper Rifle is the clear meta pick right now. It only has one shot per reload, but it deals 4500 base damage, and has a 40% increased critical hit chance against bosses with exposed weak points. If you can land consistent headshots on boss weak points, you can easily hit for over 200,000 damage per shot, which melts even the hardest raid bosses in minutes. Both of these weapons only drop from S-rank Void Raid clears, so you’ll need to team up with a coordinated group to farm them, but they’re well worth the grind.
Weapons for Specific Playstyle Preferences
Meta picks are great if you want to clear content as fast as possible, but they’re not always the most fun to use. If you have a specific playstyle you prefer, there are tons of viable weapons that fit every niche, even if they don’t top the general damage charts. We’ve rounded up our top picks for the most common playstyles below:
- Stealth/Backline Playstyle: The Silent Shade crossbow. It deals 300% bonus damage to enemies that haven’t detected you, and has no firing noise so you won’t alert nearby mobs. It’s perfect for players who prefer picking off targets from afar without drawing aggro, and it even works well in endgame content if you mod it for critical hit damage.
- Melee/Rush Playstyle: The Thunderclap shotgun. It has an 8 round mag, 10m effective range, and applies a stun effect to all enemies hit for 1.5 seconds. Pair it with a high-mobility descendant like Bunny and you can clear entire rooms in seconds without taking much damage, since enemies won’t be able to attack you while they’re stunned.
- Support Playstyle: The Healing Pulse rifle. It fires non-damaging rounds that heal allies for 15% of their max health per hit, and applies a 10% damage resistance buff for 5 seconds. You can still deal damage by switching to your secondary, but this weapon lets you keep your team alive during tough raid encounters even if your support skills are on cooldown.
You don’t have to force yourself to use a meta SMG or sniper if you hate that playstyle. Even lower-tier weapons can be modded to perform well enough for all non-endgame content, so prioritize having fun over following the meta if you’re just playing casually.
How to Mod Your Weapon to Maximize Its Potential
Even if you have what is widely considered the best weapon in The First Descendant, bad modding can make it perform worse than a lower rarity weapon with a good mod setup. A lot of new players make the mistake of stacking as many attack speed or damage mods as possible, but that’s rarely the most effective setup. First, prioritize mods that match your weapon’s innate bonus. If your weapon has an innate void damage perk, adding void damage boost mods will give you a much higher damage return than adding random elemental damage mods for fire or ice.
Next, match your mods to your descendant’s skills. If you’re playing as Viessa, who has ice damage skills that freeze enemies, add ice damage mods to your weapon so your shots will trigger freeze effects faster and combo with your skills. You should also avoid stacking more than 3 of the same mod, since the bonus gets diminished after that point, and you’ll get more value from adding different mod types instead. If you’re modding a weapon specifically for endgame raids, make sure to add at least one boss damage bonus mod. That single mod can boost your output by up to 60% against raid bosses, which makes a huge difference in clear times. I used to run 4 attack speed mods on my Typhoon Frenzy when I first started playing, but switching two of them for void damage mods boosted my overall damage by almost 30% during Void Intercept runs, so small changes can have a big impact.
At the end of the day, there’s no single universal answer to what is the best weapon in The First Descendant. The right pick for you will depend on what content you’re running, what descendant you’re playing, and how you prefer to approach fights. Don’t be afraid to test out different weapons and mod combinations to find what works best for you, even if it’s not the current meta pick. If you’re just starting out, the Typhoon Frenzy is a great all-rounder that will carry you through most early and mid-game content, and you can swap it out for more specialized weapons once you hit endgame raids. The best weapon is always the one that you have the most fun using, after all.