The best First Descendant characters and how to unlock them

Choosing the best First Descendant characters means picking through 19 options (if you include Ultimate variants). You can only pick one to start with, and the rest either cost real money, or time and effort to 'research' them using materials farmed from boss encounters. Because of this, picking a character in The First Descendant is important - because whether it's a starting character or a new unlock, they're not quick and easy choices to make. So you don't want to pick poorly. 

Each character has a wide array of attacks, and active or passive skills, to set them all apart and some Descendant characters are obviously better than others. To help you pick well, we've arranged them all in a tier list covering starters, the best overall character, and then what's left.

If you're playing The First Descendant crossplay with friends, this list should also help you pick characters that work well together. 

Best starter character in The First Descendant

You can choose one of three Descendants at the start of the game: Viessa, Lepic, or Ajax. In terms of which one is best, this is our ranking: 

• Lepic – S Tier: The assault option who throws normal grenades and a gravity well like traction grenade, while using an extra-powerful Overkill weapon and inflicting burn damage. He also some fatal damage protection meaning he can give and take damage.
• Viessa – A Tier: The elemental support choice who slows and weakens enemies with Ice abilities that include shooting frost shards, an area-of-effect blizzard, and an ice trail.  
• Ajax – A Tier: The tank, with placeable shields, and an enemy knockback or stun ability. He also uses Void Energy to enhance his skills.

All three are good, with no real weaknesses so your choice depends on what you want to do. Lepic is a basic solider with good damage options, Viessa is more about controlling enemies with ice status effects, and Ajax is your tank.

Here are The First Descendant starter characters in more detail:  

Lepic

Lepic relies on straightforward DPS skills so he’s a good First Descendant character to get you started. His grenade can easily take out small groups of enemies, while he has a passive ability that shields him from damage for a short time and recovers a large portion of HP on taking fatal damage - if you’re doing your first missions in solo mode this can greatly improve your survival chances. Just be mindful of the ten-minute cooldown time. 

Ajax

Ajax is a good choice if you want a tanky character. He has a stronger shield and higher HP than Levic, but he lacks the forgiving fatal damage protection. Instead, Ajax accumulates Void Energy while using his skills, which enhancing their strength. However, his first active skill, Orbit Barrier shield, can be a bit tricky to use  as it’s stationary and needs to be placed in just the right spot to be useful. He also has a longer cooldown, so early-game Ajax players won’t be able to call on their first active ability quite as often. 

Viessa

Viessa uses ice status effects which take a little more care than throwing a grenade or dropping a shield, but she can be very effective when used well. To use her Ice Shackle skills, she’ll need to be near the frontline of battle - most of her abilities will mean getting closer to enemies but, unlike Lepic and Ajax, she doesn’t have strong defensive abilities. However, she can affect, if not kill, far more enemies, than either with her skills, and using them generates orbital Ice Spheres that inflict more damage.

How to unlock more characters in The First Descendant

There are two ways to unlock new characters in The First Descendant: buying them or unlocking them through research with crafting components. Each characters has their own level which affects their skills, while the First Descendant Master Ranking, which affects things like inventory slots and upgrade modules, is player specific and carries over

Buying a basic character will cost 300 to 900 First Descendant Caliber, while Ultimate characters will cost 3000. There's a range of options when buying the Caliber currency but if you're looking to purchase a character from scratch it costs £7.99/$9.99 for 520 Caliber, and £57.98/$69.99 for 3920 Caliber, as the closest amounts that will get you an unlock.

If you don't want to spend actual money, then you can also effectively craft them via research using Anais, who can be found here in Albion:

Crafting or researching a character uses components you get as mission reward drops. This process will be introduced once you're free to explore the open world, with the side mission to Obtain Bunny Suit Materials from various activities. That will conclude with a mission to kill a Colossus Grave Walker boss that will reward you with a range of First Descendant Amorphous Materials, one of which will be the final 'key' to unlock the Bunny research: 

You'll need 400,000 gold, which you earn as you play, to pay for the research, as well as the character specific unlock components. After that you'll be able to farm materials to research other characters by killing subsequent Colossus bosses unlocked as you level up. Each has a chance of dropping the various character components you need.  

The best characters in The First Descendant

Our tier list below will cover the best The Last Descendant characters: 

• Bunny – S Tier (DPS): Bunny builds Electricity by moving, which is then used to charge a multi-target orb, a laser beam, and a surrounding electrical pulse effect. 
• Jayber - S Tier (Support): Jayber can place assault turrets and medical turrets on the battlefield and when both types are present, his attack will increase. He can recall his turrets to deal area-of-effect damage and then place more powerful ones. After activating his Multi-Purpose Gun ability, hitting active turrets will also enhance them.
• Lepic – A Tier (DPS): Lepic uses a normal grenade and a traction grenade to pull enemies in. He can also call upon an extra-powerful Overkill weapon, inflict Burn damage and has fatal damage protection.
• Freyna – A Tier (DPS: Freyna deals increased damage against opponents affected by Poison. She can throw Poison bullets, switch to a Poisonous weapon, create Poison Puddles on the ground, and create Plague Body Armor that deals Poison damage to nearby enemies. 
• Valby - A Tier (DPS): Valby shoots Bubble Bullets that leave behind Small Puddles, creates Big Puddles while knocking back opponents, and can temporarily switch to a Laundry Bomb weapon. These attacks inflict the Laundry status on her opponents. She can enter a Liquefied state to increase her movement speed and leave a water trail. She also uses less MP whenever she’s standing on water.
• Ajax - A Tier (Tank): Ajax can place shields, knockback enemies, and stun enemies while using Void Energy to enhance his skills.
• Viessa – A Tier (Support): Slows enemies with her Ice Shackle skills, including two forwards-shooting frost shards, a larger area-of-effect blizzard, and an ice trail.

The best First Descendant characters mix up a range of skills and ways to affect or damage enemies. So let's break it down in a little more detail. 

Bunny builds Electricity by moving, an effect enhanced by using her Speed of Light mobility skill. The Electricity is then used to enhance her remaining skills, including an auto-targeting electro bomb, an automatic electrical pulse, and a laser beam. Bunny also deals area-of-effect damage during her landing after performing a double jump. While this may sound complicated, Bunny’s auto-targeting skill and surrounding pulse effect don’t require amazing aim – just good positioning. As long as you’re comfortable with her high movement speed, she’s one of the best DPS characters in The First Descendant. 

Jayber has the ability to heal allies while dealing pretty good damage on his own. He can also recover allies’ MP with his enhanced medical turrets, thus allowing them to use their skills more often. Since no other The First Descendant characters can currently do any of this, Jayber is the number one support to have on your team. 

Lepic’s abilities are easy to understand. You can pull enemies in with the traction grenade, then hurt them with the normal grenade and the Overkill enhanced weapon. If you use his Overclock ability, Lepic deals extra Burn damage with his grenade and Overkill ability. While this makes him a great choice for new and solo players, the only strong team ability he has is his traction grenade, preventing him from becoming one of the best DPS characters in co-op. Furthermore, his fatal damage protection isn’t that valuable in late-game, when you’re (hopefully) too experienced to need it often.

All of Freyna’s attacks apply poison to her opponents, making her a strong damage-over-time character. She’s arguably a bit better than her fellow DoT character Blair, as she doesn’t need to remove her Poison Puddles to activate her defensive ability, and neither does her passive effect depend on the number of Poison Puddles currently on the battlefield. Her Venom Baptism ability is particularly great at spreading Poison directly (through its bullets), thus allowing for maximum mobility. 

Valby uses her Liquefied movement ability and Puddles to quickly spread water across the battlefield, thereby inflicting the Laundry status upon her opponents. She's probably one of the most “fun” characters to play. Her inability to use other skills while Liquefied can be a bit tedious, but her Laundry Bomb active skill more than makes up for it, as it deals continuous damage while completely immobilizing the target. As a bonus, Valby dives through her Big Puddles as she creates them, which not only knocks back opponents and deals damage, but is also an amazing way to evade damage. 

Ajax has a small Orbit Barrier shield and a massive circular Hyper Cube shield at his disposal, both of which scale with his defense and HP. These shields, combined with his knockback and stun abilities, make him incredibly valuable as a tank, though this arguably means he's most useful in teams, rather than solo.

Viessa is a useful team support thanks to her ability to slow her opponents and, through her Blizzard skill, decrease their defense. True, she’s more of a hybrid support/DPS, but since there are already plenty of DPS characters in The First Descendant, Viessa is more useful when capitalizing on her freezing ability. 

Other characters in The First Descendant

• Gley – B Tier (DPS): She has no shield and consumes her own HP to become stronger. Defeated enemies drop HP-recovering Life Spheres. She can enter the Rampage stage, which decreases her HP recovery but increases her attack power. Her skills consist of a Life Siphon ability to recover HP, a Sensory state that either recovers HP (non-Rampage) or doesn’t consume ammo (Rampage), and a Massacre state that deals increased damage when HP is low (Rampage) or stuns opponents (non-Rampage). 
• Blair – B Tier (DoT): Blair drops Flame Zones on the ground that Burn enemies upon touch. He can recall the current Flame Zones to recover MP and increase his defense. Beware that the number of active Flame Zones increases Blair’s critical rate, while attacking enemies affected by Burn increases his critical damage. Blair also has a flamethrower and giant fireball ability at his disposal.
• Sharen – C Tier (DPS): An assassin who deals increased damage against opponents who don’t target her. She has a Camouflage ability to help her hide. Her attack skills consist of an electrical sword slash, an electrical grenade, and electrical throwing knives.  
• Kyle – C Tier (Tank): This tank can use a small shield, a jetpack, and a knockback ability. He can also place an extra shield on himself, the Magnetic Force, which is depleted before his normal shield and HP. 

Gley has a unique dual kit with a more powerful “Rampage” stance and skills that consume her HP in return for better damage. The problem? It’s very difficult to maintain the balance between a high damage output and staying alive. On top of that, Gley requires constant repositioning; although you want her to keep some distance from her opponents, she needs to pick up the Life Spheres dropped by the enemies she defeated. If you’re on the frontline but don’t manage to consistently defeat enemies, your Gley will be in trouble. 

As The First Descendant's number one arsonist, Blair’s whole kit consists of fire-blasting abilities. The idea is to apply Burn, then shoot while the opponent is weakened. While this can certainly lead to devastating damage, beware that Blair’s skills don’t have the best range, so you’ll need to stay close to your opponents. Combine that with the relatively slow damage-over-time buildup, low HP, and low defense, and you have a pretty vulnerable damage-over-time character.

Thanks to her passive Assassinator skill, Sharen deals increased damage against targets who aren’t aiming for her. She relies on her Camouflage ability to ensure her undetected approach, then uses close- to mid-range electrical attacks to instantly deal a ton of damage. Since you want her to draw as little fire as possible, she’s not a great choice for solo players. And since it takes a lot of time and effort to maximize her damage (hiding, approaching the enemy, striking, then withdrawing again), she’s not that amazing in teamplay either. 

Although Kyle can move around while holding up his Magnetic Bulwark (small shield), he can’t use any attacks while doing so, making this shield quite useless in solo mode. He doesn’t have a large shield for his allies to hide behind either, and neither does he have a stun ability. If you’re looking for the best tank character in The First Descendant, pick Ajax. 

And that wraps up our best The First Descendant characters list - who are you unlocking next.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission'