How to unlock Hard Mode in The First Descendant

Like all good looter shooter games that require a ton of grinding, finishing your story playthrough of The First Descendant is just the beginning. One of the first things you should do immediately is enter hard mode. However, it isn’t guaranteed to be unlocked and available when the story is over. But trust me, this difficulty is worth the extra work. Here’s how to unlock Hard Mode in The First Descendant.

Finish the normal story and every Zone Recon mission

Yes, step one to unlock Hard Mode is finishing the main story. However, there’s more to accessing the higher difficulty than just that. The First Descendant also features optional quests you’ll spot on the map throughout the world as you explore. While the vast majority of the zone missions are required during the normal mode story playthrough, you’re bound to have skipped a few.

Mainly, these will probably include the optional Zone Recon missions, which are the ones that appear on the map with a timer over them. These only happen every few minutes, though it isn’t a very long wait, so you might have to fast travel to each one and take a seat. I had to go back and finish most of these after the normal mode story to access Hard Mode.

Unfortunately, the game doesn’t do a great job telling you this is what you have to do to unlock hard mode. It’ll pop up and tell you to travel to an outpost and change the difficulty to switch to hard mode. However, if you haven’t completed every Zone Recon mission, it just won’t work with no explanation.

Change the difficulty and fast travel

Lastly, once you have access to Hard Mode in The First Descendant, you’ll have to fast travel to an outpost after switching to hard difficulty. You can change the difficulty on your map, but make sure you do it before fast traveling from Albion or your current location. If you are already at an outpost on normal and open the map to switch the difficulty, it won’t do anything unless you fast travel again.

Is Hard Mode worth it?

Once you’re farming the endgame of The First Descendant you should pretty much always have Hard Mode activated. It guarantees far more drops, level 100 drops, and loads of legendary rarity Reactors, which are absolutely necessary for a great build.

Additionally, there are certain missions that will drop different rewards on different difficulties. For example, some rarer modules only appear as rewards with Hard Mode activated.

With all of the requirements met you’ll be able to access Hard Mode. You’ll also be able to fight new versions of the same Colossus bosses that are even more difficult. So get your farming going, there’s a lot to do.