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Windows Central

Technology

Richard Devine

This one update made the most tedious farming in The First Descendant so much better

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Image of The First Descendant from the Microsoft Store.

What you need to know

Hotfix 1.0.4 is now live in The First Descendant and has some really helpful quality of life changes.
Of those, the change to where you can farm Void Shards makes what was previously a super tedious task much less so.
You can now acquire Void Shards from Special Operations, with the Void Experiments offering the best drop rates. And it's a game changer.

The latest hotfix has come in, er, hot, for The First Descendant, and it's made one fairly significant change I'm most excited about. Sure, the cooldown timer dropping by a huge four minutes on the Vulgus Outposts is great, but what's even better is the change Nexon made to how we acquire Void Shards.

To this point to get these materials we'd have to target the Void Fragments, take out waves of enemies, get the rewards, wait for the Fragment to respawn and do it again. The drop rates aren't great for some of the Void Shards, and it's made even more troublesome by the fact the Void Fragments are linked to a specific type of skill. So, if like me, you don't have any characters with Fire skills, you can't even touch those Void Fragments.

Hotfix 1.0.4 has added the ability to get Void Shards from Special Operations, and hoo boy, is this a change I like. It's quite literally going to change the game when it comes to farming Void Shards, necessary to open the Void Fusion Reactors.

25 Void Shards in total of varying types from one Void Experiment run, along with other materials and almost half a million Gold. (Image credit: Windows Central)

Why is that? Well, for one, there's no rule on what type of skills you have. If you run Bunny all the time, you can hit the Special Operations and farm away without having to worry about hitting specific Void Fragments. It's also great for solo players, since you're dropped into a match made environment with other players. Farming Void Fragments is quick enough if you're in a group, but on your own, tedious.

But what's better about this change is that your farming runs become more efficient. You can get other rewards from Void Fragments, but if you're in the endgame, most of them are probably not what you're looking for. Special Operations drop a lot of Gold, and in endgame, you need Gold by the truckload.

The image above shows my spoils from one run on a Void Experiment Special Operation, netting 25 Void Shards of various types, alongside other materials, a couple of Mark for Arrests (which themselves are now worth 100,000 Gold each), and a chunk of Mastery XP. The other Special Operations, such as my old favorite in Sterile Lands, also drop Void Shards, but not as many.

There will no doubts now be a community effort to find out just exactly which is the fastest way to farm Void Shards, but all I know is this is a seriously welcome change. For what it's worth, in my extremely unscientific early testing, the Vesper Void Experiment seems to be the one to do. The enemies are easier, and it's been most lucrative for me so far for the time I've spent.

It already feels so much less tedious, and alongside the Shards, we're also able to supplement with large quantities of Gold. And that's alright by me.