How to Upgrade Reactors in The First Descendant

More materials to farm for upgrades...

Upgraded Reactors The First Descendant
Screenshot by Prima Games

The First Descendant gives you many opportunities to strengthen your character or Descendant. Whether through weapon modules, Descendant modules, external components, or Reactors, you have to go through them all to be the strongest version of yourself. In this guide, we’ll focus more on the Reactors and how you can upgrade them in The First Descendant.

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Where to Upgrade Reactors in The First Descendant

To upgrade your Reactors, visit the Workbench near Deslin and Anais in Albion. This is also the same area where you upgrade your weapons or enhance the unique abilities of your Ultimate Weapons.

Interact with it and select the “Reactor Enhancement” tab. Under this menu, you’ll see all your Reactors in your inventory, including your equipped Reactor. Select any of them, and you can upgrade them using Ion Accelerators and Precise Ion Accelerators. The normal Accelerator is for rare and below items, while the Precise Ion Accelerator is for Ultimate Reactors.

You can craft these Accelerators through Anais, but they’ll take a while to complete, considering you need several of them per upgrade. I highly suggest crafting the bulk order (x15 Precise Ion Accelerators), which will take 10 hours to complete. Leave it overnight and stock up to at least 30+.

Reactors Basic Guide – The First Descendant

Reactors might be the least complicated feature in the game, but it is still a handful to learn. Here are the basics.

Optimization Condition

In the tooltip of the Reactor, you’ll see an Optimization Condition. Under the category, you’ll see conditions like “Tactical Rifle weapon class equipped.” If you meet these conditions, you’ll get the added skill power boost indicated below. If not, the “Missed: Skill Power 100%.” will be highlighted. This only means you are not getting the bonus, but the Reactor still gives you 100% of its stats.

Skill Power Boost Ratio

The Skill Power Boost Ratios are also conditions required to get the bonuses under this category. If you see the Chill Skill Power Boost Ratio – 0.2x, you need a Chill-type Descendant like Viessa to activate the condition. Once you have this activated, you’ll receive a 0.2x multiplier to your Skill Power stat.

Aside from all the conditions, Reactors also have stats rolled on them, like Electric Skill Power Boost Ratio bonuses. In a perfect scenario, you want to stack all the multipliers on every condition and activate them all for a specific Descendant. That is a tall task, but you can still grind it out.

Is Upgrading Your Reactors Worth It in The First Descendant?

Upgrading your Reactors isn’t worth it if you are currently leveling and finishing the story. You’ll constantly find better Reactors as you go deeper into the campaign. Even if you are already at max level, you will still have some better Reactor drops.

The only time you should upgrade your Reactors is when you have already reached the last mission of the campaign and you have the highest level possible for a Reactor. Once you have that, it is all about min-maxing the stats, which is hard. But, even if they don’t have the specific stats you need, you already know that you are getting the highest Skill DPS boost possible because of the item level of the Reactor.

It is still worth an upgrade, but you should be thrifty when upgrading your Ultimate Reactors because Precise Ion Accelerators are hard to farm.

About the Author

Enzo Zalamea

Enzo is a staff writer at Prima Games. He began writing news, guides, and listicles related to games back in 2019. In 2024, he started writing at Prima Games covering the best new games and updates regardless of the genre. You can find him playing the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Path of Exile, Teamfight Tactics, and popular competitive shooters like Valorant, Apex Legends, and CS2. Enzo received his Bachelor's degree in Marketing Management in De La Salle University and multiple SEO certifications from the University of California, Davis.