Nexon decided that 10:00 p.m. EDT last night was the right time to host a nearly five hour-long livestream to outline what’s coming next to its looter shooter The First Descendant, but if you managed to set aside that many hours of your life, you were treated to an absolute deluge of information about what’s headed to the game in the near and distant future.
The vast majority of the stream was focused on Season 3: Breakthrough, which fans already know is arriving on August 7th, but now we’ve got a whole lot of extra information, starting off with a preview of gameplay from the Axion Plains region map, which will pit players against new assault ships and some new monsters that promise to require a bit more skill to take down without being “boring bullet sponges.”
The Axion Plains will also offer up several map events like a hover bike mission, supply drops, randomly spawning “unstable zones,” and new field bosses. The zone itself is also considered a great way to farm multiple items, though players seeking targeted rewards are still advised to focus on other content.
The new season will also introduce a new trigger module system for high-level characters that procs extra benefits based on new “tags” associated with various skills. Nine of these modules will be added in Season 3, with new modules added every month, while unlocking this module slot requires characters to have completed a pretty serious set of prerequisite grinds, like having arche tuning and character levels at 40 as well as a special material.
Season 3 is also bringing features for new players such as socket type assignments no longer resetting character stats to level one and a boost event that will speed players past normal story quests and right into level 40 content while also providing a “boost path” that fills in missing narrative blanks and grants various rewards along the way.
Other highlights from the broadcast included a closer look at the new character Nell with granular breakdowns of her skills and a demonstration of her in combat, a look at two new ultimate weapons, a preview of the new hover bike vehicle in action, and the arrival of character skins styled after NieR: Automata among many other skins.
Finally, the devs shared a content roadmap that extends all the way into December. Planned additions include sword weapons, new dungeon instances, another new collab, the NPC Harris as a playable character, and ultimate versions of Luna and Yujin.
