If you’ve spent even a few hours grinding missions in The First Descendant, you’ve probably asked yourself who is the best descendant in first descendant for your preferred playstyle. With over 15 playable characters to unlock, each with unique skills, passive bonuses, and role specialties, picking the wrong one can leave you struggling to clear even mid-tier Void Intercept Battles, let alone endgame co-op content. I’ve logged over 200 hours testing every descendant across every game mode, so I’ve got the hands-on data to break down which characters are worth investing your hard-earned resources into, and which you can skip until you’ve got extra materials to spare.
Who Is the Best Descendant in First Descendant, Broken Down by Role
There’s no universal top pick that works for every situation, but you can narrow down the best options by what role you want to fill in your squad, or what you enjoy playing most as a solo player. Each role has clear standouts that outperform the rest of the roster by a wide margin, especially at endgame when you’ve fully upgraded their skill trees and gear. I’ve ranked the top picks for each core role below, based on consistent performance across both solo and co-op missions.
- Top DPS Descendant: Viessa. Her frost-based skills deal massive area-of-effect damage and slow enemies, making her perfect for both clearing hordes of trash mobs and melting boss health bars fast.
- Top Support Descendant: Ajax. His shield buffs and team-wide healing skills can keep a full squad alive through even the hardest Void Intercept Battle phases, and he has enough personal damage to hold his own when playing solo.
- Top Tank Descendant: Freyna. She gets passive damage resistance the more enemies are around her, and her taunt skill pulls all aggro away from squishy DPS and support players in co-op runs.
- Top Solo Play Descendant: Bunny. Her high movement speed and explosive rocket skills let her clear missions faster than any other character, and she has enough self-healing to survive tough encounters without a support.
Even if you’re dead set on finding who is the best descendant in first descendant for your main, it’s worth experimenting with a few different picks first to see what clicks. You might find you prefer a support playstyle way more than DPS, even if you originally thought you only wanted to deal high damage.
What Makes a Top-Tier Descendant Worth Investing In
Many new players pick characters based solely on their flashy ultimate skills, but that’s a mistake that will cost you a lot of wasted upgrade materials later. The best descendants have a mix of useful base skills, strong passive bonuses that scale with endgame gear, and low cooldowns so you can use their abilities often instead of waiting minutes for an ultimate to charge. Skill synergy with common gear sets is another huge factor that most new players miss. For example, Viessa’s frost damage pairs perfectly with the popular Frostbite gear set that boosts frozen enemy damage by 40%, so she gets a way bigger power spike at endgame than characters with no clear gear matching options. You also want to pick characters that don’t require super rare upgrade materials to level up early on. Some of the less popular descendants need hard-to-find Void Shards to unlock their second skill, which means you’ll be stuck with a weak character for your first 10+ hours of play if you pick them first. That doesn’t mean low-tier characters are unplayable, but they require a lot more investment to get the same performance you can get from top-tier picks with minimal effort.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Picking Your Main Descendant
I’ve seen so many new players grind for 10+ hours to unlock a descendant they saw in a flashy TikTok clip, only to realize they hate playing that character’s playstyle. For example, Sharen is a super popular high-skill DPS character, but she requires perfect positioning and skill timing to get the most out of her damage, and if you’re not comfortable playing super aggressively, she will feel extremely weak compared to more forgiving picks like Viessa. Don’t sleep on free starting characters either. Bunny, one of the first characters you unlock in the tutorial, is still one of the best solo play options in the entire game, even when compared to late-game unlocks that take dozens of hours to get. A lot of players assume later unlocks are automatically better, but that’s not the case at all. Another common mistake is ignoring team composition when playing co-op. If your squad already has two DPS players, picking a third DPS instead of a support or tank will make it way harder to clear endgame missions, even if your DPS is the best character in the game. You can have multiple descendants leveled up for different situations, so it’s worth investing in at least one of each core role once you have the resources to spare.
How to Test Descendants for Free Before You Invest Resources
You don’t have to waste upgrade materials to figure out if a descendant fits your playstyle, there are a few free ways to test almost every character in the game before you commit to unlocking or upgrading them. The Training Room lets you test any unlocked descendant with max level skills and endgame gear, so you can see how they feel against different enemy types before you spend resources to level them up for real missions. You can also test locked descendants during free trial events that run every few weeks, which let you play any character in the roster for 48 hours without unlocking them first. These events are the perfect time to test out rare late-game characters you haven’t been able to unlock yet, to see if they’re worth the grind to get. If you have friends who play the game, you can also ask them to let you try their upgraded characters in co-op missions if you’re curious about how a fully kitted out descendant plays at endgame. Just make sure you ask first, no one likes having their build messed with by a random squad mate. At the end of the day, the best descendant for you is the one you have fun playing, even if it’s not at the top of every tier list online. If you love playing a less popular character, you can make them work for almost all content with the right build and gear upgrades.
At the end of the day, who is the best descendant in first descendant depends entirely on what you want to get out of the game, whether that’s fast solo mission clears, carrying co-op squads through endgame content, or just playing a character that fits your personal playstyle. The tier lists and picks we covered here will give you a great starting point to pick a character that will make your grind way easier, but don’t be afraid to branch out and try less popular picks if they look fun. No matter what character you pick, focusing on upgrading their core skills and matching their gear to their damage type will get you further than just picking the meta character and not learning how to use their abilities properly.