How to unlock Descendants in The First Descendant: A step-by-step Guide

When it comes to unlocking Descendants — or Characters, The First Descendant doesn’t exactly provide a great deal of guidance. Some descendants will be unlocked through normal gameplay (such as Bunny), but others require very specific research materials that can only be found in certain places.

So here’s how to unlock Descendants in The First Descendant.

How to unlock Descendants in The First Descendant

Step 1: Go to Anais

Anais is an NPC in Albion that deals in research. She can be found on the western side of the map in a circular building. Here’s her exact location on the map:

Once you’re there, talk to Anais and when you see the research screen, click on the tab “Descendants” on the left side of your screen. Click on the descendant you want, and you’ll get a list of requirements to fulfill.

Step 2: Decide on your Descendant

Before we get into how to gather the materials you’ll need, take note that not all Descendants need their materials researched. Some only need you to farm the materials from certain missions. A great example is Freyna, so let’s look at how to unlock her.

As you can see, you need four items to unlock Freyna. These are:

• Freyna Enhanced Cells
• Freyna Stabilizer
• Freyna Spiral Catalyst
• Freyna Code

Each of these can be found in a certain mission on the map. To find out where, simply hover over any of the requirements in-game and hit the ‘F’ key to see exactly where. If the mission is grayed out, you don’t have access to it yet and will need to progress further in the game.

The other side of this coin are Descendants that have research materials as their requirements. Gley is an excellent example of this, so let’s take a look at her.

As you can see, the first three materials have a small hourglass next to them, indicating that they need to be researched. Hovering over these in-game and hitting the F key will give you more details on each one. In case you need it, here’s a handy searchable list of all the descendant unlock materials you might need.

Step 3: Gather your Materials

Now it’s as simple as finding all of the materials that you need by hunting resource boxes, repeating missions, or even fighting intercept battles. You’ll notice that some super-rare items, such as Gley’s enhanced Cells Blueprint, can only be found in intercept battles, for the most part.

But you will need the Amorphous Material Pattern first, which we’ll cover in a second. Gather all of the materials that you can before moving on to Intercept Battles. Once you have everything, it’s time to get your Amorphous Material Patterns.

Step 4: Getting and using Amorphous Material Patterns

If you need one of these but don’t know where to get it, you can use our list of all the Amorphous Material Patterns and where to find them. Bookmark it, so you don’t lose it!

Next, you’ll need to head to the specific missions and farm for them. Once you get one, you’ll head to the intercept battle required. Once victorious, a blue globe will appear where the Colossus fell. Interact with this blue globe and you’ll be able to choose which roll you want to do.

Click on the one you want and you’ll see roll chances. These can also be manipulated by items, but it depends on which Descendant you’re trying to unlock on whether you’ll use these items or not. If you have the items in your inventory, there will be a prompt on-screen.

This action will consume the Amorphous Material Pattern you use, so if you run out, you’ll have to farm them again.

Step 5: Research

Once you have all of the materials for a Descendant or one of their research items, head back to Anais and click on the item you want to research, and start it up. You’ll need gold as well as all the materials, and gold can easily be farmed by doing missions around the world.

Once you’ve obtained or researched all of the materials for a Descendant, you’ll be able to complete the final research and, when done, you’ll have access to your desired Descendant.

And that’s it, happy hunting!