Screenshot by Destructoid

The best Gley build in The First Descendant

Insert Rorschach prison quote here.

While the natural instinct is to find a favorite character and devote all of your time and resources to them, The First Descendant is designed around having a roster of characters that specialize in various activities. There’s no HM Slave here and you’ll be running into walls unless you diversify. Enzo is the pick for opening Encrypted Vaults, Bunny for various farms, and Gley for ruthlessly murdering Colossi. This build will turn our vampire mommy into Levi Ackerman.

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Gley is one of, if not the, most complicated characters in The First Descendant. She swaps between forms, lacks shields and mana, and fuels her damage by using harvested health orbs as a resource. She’s terrific when specializing in an aspect of the game, but there’s no build that allows her to transcend everything simultaneously. Thankfully all we need her to do is clear some of the hardest content in the game and nothing else. Gley is our designated hitter.

Combining the Increased Sensory Skill with the Vestigial Organ rocket launcher allows Gley to become a mobile anti-colossus unit. Being frenzied increases this damage and the Real Life Fighter Mod turns up the heat by stacking increased damage when hitting Weak Points. Be it the Shadow Realm or Flavor Town, Gley is going to banish these oversized monsters somewhere.

The tradeoff is that Gley requires a lot of management and situational awareness. While frenzied, Gley’s healing is cut in half, meaning you need to deactivate the Skill to heal and then turn it back on before resuming damage. Additionally, her key Skill, Increased Sensory, decreases her speed by 50% while frenzied. Should a Colossus become spry, you’ll be in for a world of hurt and unable to get away quickly.

Gley Skills

(Passive) Thirst: Reduces incoming damage while Gley isn’t frenzied. Defeated enemies have a chance to drop health recovery orbs.

Frenzied: Gley becomes frenzied, increasing Firearm ATK and Penetration while also reducing HP Recovery.

Life Siphon: Gley rips the life from nearby enemies which HP Recovery based on the number of foes hit. If frenzied, Life Siphon deals increased damage based on HP. If in a non-frenzied state, Gley gains Vigor proportional to the number of enemies hit.

Increased Sensory: If used while Gley is frenzied, she is able to fire weapons with infinite ammo for a time. In a non-frenzied state, Increased Sensory increases the amount of health recovery orbs generated.

Massacre: Gley conjures a pistol whose amount of ammo is determined by the amount of Power of Life (health orbs) obtained. If frenzied, increases damage proportional to HP. If non-frenzied, Massacre fires non-lethal rounds that stun enemies.

Screenshot by Destructoid

Vestigial Organ: This rocket launcher is absolutely critical to this build due to its fire rate. No other rocket launcher comes close. When Increased Sensory is active and frenzied, Gley can hold down the trigger and fire so many rounds into a Colossus that it can impact the game’s performance for other players. As for weapon perks, we want Weak Point Damage, Explosive ATK, and Bonus Firearm ATK (vs. Colossus).

  • Rifling Reinforcement: Increases Explosive ATK
  • Weak Point Sight: Increases Weak Point Damage
  • Action and Reaction: Increases Explosive ATK and Recoil
  • Fire Rate UP: Increases Fire Rate
  • Real Life Fighter: Increases Firearm ATK for 5s (up to 10 stacks) when hitting a Weak Point. Missing the Weak Point deducts two stacks. Accuracy is also reduced.

The goal of this build is to have so little cooldown that Gley can continually unload rockets into Colossi’s faces. Part of that is increasing her survivability with increased defense and max HP. This is the more tedious part of the build as it requires using an Energy Activator and several Crystallization Catalysts to reach its full potential. It will take some time (or cash), but is worth the effort to have a dedicated character that can farm each Colossus.

  • Mid-Air Maneuvering: Modifies the Grappling Hook to be cast mid-air and increases maximum Module capacity.
  • Focus on Non-Attribute: Increases Non-Attribute Skill Power and decreases Skill Cooldown
  • Focus on Singular: Increases Singular Skill Power Modifier and decreases Skill Cooldown
  • HP Amplification: Increases Max HP and decreases Max Shield
  • Maximize Duration: Increases Skill Duration and Decreases Skill Power Modifier
  • HP Collector: Recovers a percentage of Max HP when defeating an enemy
  • MP Conversion: Decreases Skill Cooldown and Max MP
  • Nimble Fingers: Decreases Skill Cooldown
  • Increased HP: Increases Max HP
  • Skill Extension: Increases Skill Duration
  • Increased DEF: Increases DEF

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Author
Image of Christian Dawson
Christian Dawson
Christian has been playing games since he could hold a controller in the late 80s. He's been writing about them for nearly 15 years for both personal and professional outlets. Now he calls Destructoid home where he covers all manner of nonsense.