There’s no worse feeling in The First Descendant than being 10 seconds away from beating a tough Void Intercept boss, watching your health bar drop to red, and realizing you have no emergency measures left to pop. One hit from the boss’s enrage attack, and you’re sent back to the lobby empty handed, wasting all the time you and your team put into the run. If you’ve found yourself in this exact spot more than once, you’re probably wondering where to get emergency measures the first descendant community swears by for surviving even the most brutal encounters. This guide breaks down every reliable way to farm this critical consumable, plus tips to use it effectively so you never lose a run to a dry stock again.
Where to Get Emergency Measures in The First Descendant: Core Farm Locations
Emergency measures are the most common healing consumable in the game, but that doesn’t mean you’ll always have enough when you need it most. The good news is you don’t have to spend real money or grind for hours to build up a solid stock. There are four consistent locations and methods to get them, no matter what level your character is or how far you’ve progressed in the story.
- Normal and hard difficulty story missions: Every mob kill in story missions has a 7% chance to drop emergency measures, with boss encounters guaranteeing at least 2 per clear. If you’re still working through the main story, you’ll naturally accumulate a decent stack without any extra effort. For newer players, this is the easiest way to build your first stockpile without going out of your way.
- Albion downtown general goods NPC: You can buy stacks of 10 emergency measures for 500 common credits each, with the shop restocking every 30 minutes real time. Common credits are super easy to earn by selling unused gear and completing basic missions, so this is a great option if you need to restock quickly before a big run. I usually swing by this NPC every time I’m back in Albion to top up my storage, even if I don’t have an immediate need for them.
- Public event completion rewards: All open world public events give 3 to 8 emergency measures as a base reward, plus extra drops from event mobs. Events in the Frost Wastes and Desert Expanse zones have higher drop rates than those in the starting Albion outskirts, so if you’re level 20 or higher, head to those zones for faster farming. I once got 12 emergency measures from a single 10-minute Frost Wastes horde event, which is way faster than running story missions repeatedly.
- Limited-time event shops: Seasonal events often let you exchange event currency for bulk stacks of emergency measures, with no purchase limit during the event run. Event currency is easy to earn by completing event-specific missions and challenges, so if there’s an active event, this is the fastest way to stock up hundreds of emergency measures in just a few hours. I once got 200 emergency measures during a recent summer event without spending any extra time grinding specifically for them.
You might also get small stacks of emergency measures as login rewards or battle pass free track rewards, so don’t forget to claim those every day you log in. These free bonuses add up fast, and I’ve gotten almost 50 emergency measures this month alone just from daily login rewards.
Fastest Methods to Farm Emergency Measures for Endgame Content
If you’re running endgame content like Void Intercept runs or hard difficulty co-op missions, you’ll go through emergency measures a lot faster than casual players. The regular farm spots work, but there are faster methods to stock up quickly so you don’t have to pause your endgame grind to restock.
The fastest method by far is running the 3-minute supply run side missions in the Desert Expanse zone. These missions require you to collect 5 supply crates from a small area with very few high-damage mobs, and you get 5 emergency measures every time you complete one. You can run 10 of these in 30 minutes, which gives you 50 emergency measures plus a bunch of extra common credits and crafting materials. I use this method whenever my stock drops below 20, and I can get back to endgame runs in less than half an hour.
Another great method is joining open world public event groups. Most players running public events stick around for multiple runs in a row, so you don’t have to waste time waiting for events to spawn or looking for a group. You can easily earn 30 to 40 emergency measures per hour this way, plus you’ll get other useful rewards like upgrade materials and rare gear drops. It’s way more fun than grinding solo too, since you get to play with other members of the community.
Just don’t waste your time running the highest difficulty missions for emergency measures. The drop rate only increases by 2% on extreme difficulty, but the missions take 3 times as long to complete, so you’ll actually get fewer emergency measures per hour than you would running normal difficulty content. I made this mistake early on, and I spent 2 hours grinding extreme difficulty story missions only to get 15 emergency measures, which is way less than I would have gotten running supply runs in the same time.
Mistakes to Avoid When Stockpiling Emergency Measures
Even if you know all the best farm spots, common mistakes can leave you without emergency measures when you need them most. These are the mistakes I see most new and even intermediate players make, and fixing them will make sure you never run out mid-run again.
The biggest mistake is buying emergency measures from the premium currency shop. The shop sells stacks of 20 for 200 premium currency, which is the same amount you’d spend on a character skin or a battle pass level. It’s a total waste of money, since you can farm that same stack in 15 minutes of free gameplay. I once wasted 200 premium currency on a stack of emergency measures before I knew about the free farm spots, and I still regret it to this day.
Another common mistake is forgetting to restock your emergency measure quick slot before you start a mission. You can hold up to 20 emergency measures in your quick slot per run, but if you don’t restock after every run, you’ll go into the next one with whatever you had left over from the last. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve joined a Void Intercept run and realized I only had 2 emergency measures left, forcing me to play extra cautiously the entire time so I didn’t die and let my team down.
Don’t hoard more emergency measures than you actually need, either. You can only hold 100 emergency measures in your storage at a time, so any extra you farm beyond that will go to waste. If you hit the 100 cap, stop farming them and focus on other resources you need, like upgrade materials or crafting components. I used to farm emergency measures nonstop until I hit the cap, and I realized I was wasting hours of gameplay that I could have spent upgrading my main character’s gear.
How to Use Emergency Measures Effectively to Boost Survival Rates
Having a big stock of emergency measures is only half the battle. If you use them at the wrong time, you’ll still run out mid-fight and end up dying anyway. These simple tips will help you get the most out of every emergency measure you use, and cut down on your mission failure rate by a lot.
First, set a 30% health usage threshold for yourself. Don’t use an emergency measure if you’re only missing a little bit of health, since most characters have passive health regen that will fill that up for free over time. Save them for when you’re below 30% health, especially during boss enrage phases when you’re taking a lot of damage fast. This will make your stock last way longer, and you won’t waste them on minor damage that you could have healed for free.
If you’re playing multiplayer, you can use emergency measures to support your team too. Most support characters have a skill that lets them share healing effects with nearby teammates, so if you pop an emergency measure when your whole team is low on health, you’ll heal everyone at once. This is a game changer for tough endgame runs, and it’s one of the reasons multiplayer team support plays are so much easier to win than solo runs. I’ve saved entire runs by popping an emergency measure right as my whole team was about to die to a boss AOE attack.
You can also pair emergency measures with damage resistance buffs to get even more value out of them. If you pop a damage resistance buff right before you use an emergency measure, you’ll take less damage while your health is refilling, so you won’t lose all the health you just gained immediately. This is especially useful for tank characters who draw all the boss’s aggro, since they take way more damage than other team members.
At the end of the day, you don’t have to spend hours grinding or waste real money to keep a solid stock of healing consumables. Knowing where to get emergency measures the first descendant players rely on for tough runs will make every part of the game feel less frustrating, from early story missions to the hardest endgame content. Try out the farm methods outlined here, avoid the common mistakes, and you’ll never find yourself stuck mid-boss fight with no healing left again. I went from failing 70% of my endgame runs to clearing almost every one I join, and the only change I made was keeping a full stock of emergency measures on hand at all times.