Is The First Descendant Pay to Win?

The First Descendant is a free-to-play looter-shooter action-RPG, and like most free-to-play games, they try to make up for it with microtransactions, or in-game purchases. This leads to the biggest question: does The First Descendant require pay-to-win? Since it’s not a PvP game, pay-to-win is still for those who want to compete against each other and are put off by microtransactions for player character abilities.

Can you pay to win in First Descendants?

Improved the shop in The First Descendant

In The First Descendant, you can buy items that indirectly improve your abilities, but are these enough to make a significant difference compared to players who haven’t spent a penny? The answer is yes, but that doesn’t mean free-to-play players can’t catch up.

Any number of materials can be acquired by any player by playing enough games, and no single material is exclusive to the in-game store, except for the following:

  • Improvements (Kuiper Fragments, Gold, Weapon Mastery, and XP)
  • Cosmetics and skin
  • Additional slots (offspring, storage, inventory, etc.)

Additional slots are free by reaching proficiency levels, but those who purchase them gain access to more.

Everything else can be earned by playing the game, but some may take longer. For example, if you want a new Descendant, you have to get materials from Void Interception battles and other activities. Farming can take 20+ hours, especially if you’re looking for a very specific material. These materials are used to research Descendants. Sometimes, you’ll even research a material to make another material to make a Descendant.

Descendant Studies in The First Descendant

Each research takes nearly a day to complete and costs gold. All in all, obtaining offspring is an extremely tedious task, but not impossible. However, players can also purchase them from the in-game store without waiting, collecting materials, or researching.

If some descendants are stronger than others, the player who buys them will gain an advantage. If you are looking at it from a PvE perspective, this doesn’t really matter since you only need to focus on your descendants.

The biggest boosts that pay-to-win players can get are… boosts. These boosts will boost them to a point where they can’t catch up. These boosts have a certain duration, but if they do activate the boost, they’ll make sure they get the most out of it, and a 30% boost across the board is a huge barrier to catch up for a free player.

The pay-to-win model in The First Descendant is mild, given the genre, in-game store, premium battle pass rewards, and the lock-in and purchasability of descendants. This is a subjective topic, though.

Even without earning Calibers (premium currency), everyone can still enjoy the game because your goal is to complete the story, power up your characters, and complete the game’s final campaign with others. You are not fighting against players who spent “X” amount of money to beat you.

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