After 70 runs I got a single piece out of four for “Ultimate” Viessa, a rare form of a starter hero in The First Descendant. But it wasn’t just running one activity 70 times, it was three different things, RNG upon RNG, and even in a grind-focused games, players are simply giving up, especially transplants from other games without these punishing systems.
One of the grinds is not that bad. That would be the idea that you run a “strike” type Infiltration mission for a specific type of amorphous material. Depending on your score, you can get two at once or now, after a recent patch, even three. You will usually then take those to a boss, beat it, open it, and repeat. There’s certainly RNG there, too, but it’s far better than the other grind in The First Descendant
This is the Outpost farming system, which has not changed nearly enough since launch. I’ve talked about this before, but to recap:
- You need to invade a specific outpost on the map, one that is on a one minute cooldown timer, mercifully nerfed from 5 minutes as it was previously.
- A normal amorphous material from these outposts has a 20-25% drop chance, so 1 in 5 runs. But for the higher end engrams you want, you have to invade the outposts silently, blowing up 3-4 stations without being seen. This is effectively only possible on a single character, Sharen, who can go invisible, who you’d have to farm up to even start this. Often you are looking for the second material that is only available from Sharen infiltration and has a 25% drop rate chance. If you are lucky that’s probably one drop every ten minutes. If not, you might go half an hour without seeing one.
- The process with Sharen is exhausting by itself. You have to set the area to private, lest some random come and mess up your stealth. You have to dart in and out breaking the 3-4 stations with max duration mods on her. Then there’s an ensuing fight that is often not suited for the dramatically underpowered Sharen, and can result in a lot of death.
- Then, you have to run an elemental wave minigame with a specific elemental character 3-4 times in a different part of the map which gives you the currency you need to finally get to the Abyssal Void Fusion Reactor. There, you’ll fight often a very tough boss in hard mode, one that does not usually spawn any additional enemies so you cannot refill your ammo, health or MP.
- Then, that amorphous material has an X amount chance to actually get the character/gun piece you want. If you’re lucky, this can be a 32% chance. If not, for something like my Viessa piece, is a 6% chance. One miss, and you start the entire process over again.
- It’s a 1 in 4 or 5 chance to get a material using one specific character, then farming an arbitrary currency, then anywhere from a 1 in 3 to a 1 in 5 to a 1 in 16 or so chance to get what you are looking for. The compounding RNG here is exhausting paired with busywork steps and terrible Reactor fights again bullet sponge bosses.
- All of this is for one piece, out of four, to craft a full hero or weapon.
I cannot tell you how many people I have initially gotten to try the game have hit this part of the grind and simply stopped playing. Again, there is going to be a certain amount of RNG in a game like this, but this process to open one material for a chance at once of four pieces of a thing you’re trying to build, layered with poor odds, is enough to get people to quit. And as the playercount declines, it seems like a more widespread problem.
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The problem is that Nexon does not seem to be moving terribly fast on this, saying they will take away the material requirement for not opening the thing to give you the piece at the reactor, which is pointless. They’ve talked about RNG protection in vague terms but with no firm plans and no dates on when this might happen. But it needs to be sooner rather than later.
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