The First Descendant: Reactors and External Components Guide

In The First Descendant, players have many items and weapons, from shotguns to sniper rifles. You can use whatever you want that fits your play style, but there are a few key components that can make the difference in your fights against the Colossi and Vulgus.

If you don’t know how to choose which reactors and external components to equip in your favorite descendant, you have come to the right place. Get ready to learn about reactors and external components in The First Descendant.

The First Descendant: How to Choose the Best Reactor

Reactors are one of the few items that will change how powerful your abilities will be on the battlefield as they boost them, making them more effective when facing difficult enemies. As with weapons, reactors come in different rarities. You can find normal, rare, ultimate, and transcendent.

While playing The First Descendant, I gathered a few normal reactors, and at later stages, I started to find rare ones and noticed something interesting about them. Some normal reactors have better skill and subattack power but lack some bonus stats.

All rare and ultimate reactors have bonus stats when equipped, giving you shorter cooldowns, additional damage against enemies, HP health modifiers, and much more.

Besides looking for skill power and sub-attack power stats, you must consider the bonus stats rare reactors bring to the table, as they will also affect your gameplay. Another thing to consider when equipping a reactor is the skill power boost you get when using a weapon in a specific category.

Rare and ultimate reactors have something called optimization conditions. Sometimes, the optimization condition is having a weapon type equipped and other times, it demands that they be mounted. Meeting these conditions gives your descendant a skill boost, something you must have while fighting final bosses in Void Intercept Battles.

Having a weapon mounted means your character has it on their hands. So, if you switch weapons, you will lose all the boosts if you change your weapon mid-fight.

The First Descendant: How to Choose the Best External Components

Besides reactors, you can improve your descendant stats by equipping items in the Auxiliary Power, Sensor, Memory, and Processor slot. Like reactors, these items came in different rarities, adding boost stats.

Each component can affect a different stat, like max HP, defense, and max shields. Rarer external components come with additional stats similar to the ones reactors have, but some external components allow you to have even better stats.

Some external components have additional stats for wearing matching sets. So next time you switch external components, check and see if you have one with a matching set bonus.

For more content, go to our The First Descendant guide hub. There, you’ll learn how to do infiltration missions, which are the best weapons in the game, and more.