No, The First Descendant is not turning every Outpost into a loot cave farming spot

The First Descendant’s first couple of weeks have been a little tumultuous, mostly because of the game’s excessive monetisation schemes and the in-game grind required to unlock its various characters, craft weapons and get the gear you need for higher-level content.

This is a live service game, though, and if there’s one thing those players love, it’s optimising their runs to be as efficient as possible to make farming less annoying. Some of those can be benign; relying on unbalanced systems and combinations, rather than exploits.

Over the past few days, however, the community shifted from the former to the latter.

Even before players figured out they could go AFK in The First Descendant’s missions and still earn rewards, some clever folks devised a killer combo of Tamer and Gley, which, when done correctly, allows you to have an infinite magazine build.

The way Nexon responded to that discovery was a little unusual. Rather than nerf it, the developer left it as is in patch 1.0.2. In fact, Nexon pointed out that other, stronger combos and builds do exist in the game, leaving players to figure out what they are. That attitude has contributed to a feeling amongst players that Nexon is okay with these sorts of player discoveries, no matter how broken they may be.

And so, when something else got discovered a few days later, players expected it to be left alone, too. We’re talking about a farming method that has since come to be known as the Valby Run. This particular farming exploit relies on replaying the Vulgus Strategic Outpost in the Fortress, mainly because of a bug that cause enemies to infinitely spawn.

The most efficient way of doing that requires the damage-dealer Valby, hence the name. This has lead to players rushing to unlock the character so that they could get in on the fun. The farming spot was likened to Destiny’s infamous Loot Cave, just because of the sheer volume of rewards you could earn in such a short span of time.

When Nexon was first alerted to the farming method, the developer responded with a statement from director Minseok Joo, saying that the game’s upcoming patch, version 1.0.4, would change other farming spots in the game so that they dole out rewards just as often as the Fortress Outpost in question.

Even as generous as Nexon has been so far with The First Descendant’s recent patches, that statement was a little off; felt too good to be true. Of course, this was not actually the developer’s intention, and was merely a translation error.

Later, Nexon clarified the initial statement on Twitter, and updated the news post on the game’s official website. “We apologise for the confusion caused by the misinterpretation during the translation process of the original Korean text,” the developer wrote.

What’s actually happening is that, until patch 1.0.4 arrives sometime next week, the Valby Run farming spot will be left as is. Nexon is obviously not going to make every other Outpost in the game as efficient, it’s the other way around - Fortress’ Vulgus Strategic Outpost will be brought back in line with the rest of them.

“To maintain our game, and to be adored by our players for a long time, we believe that it is wrong to just look on and leave the unbalanced content, which is providing biased rewards,” game director Minseok Joo wrote.

“However, as Valby Run became popular very quickly within our community, we assume many players have researched Valby to enjoy the newly discovered content. The current issue has occurred clearly by our own mistake, but we do not wish to suddenly remove it. Because it has already become a solid content of TFD.

“So, we would like to inform you, that we’re preparing a patch without completely blocking The Fortress Outpost issue and to keep allowing the players to enjoy playing like before. However, at the same time, we will update the Fortress - Vulgus Strategic Outpost to match the efficiency of other farming locations.”

So that’s pretty much the gist; you may enjoy the Valby Run while you still can, because once 1.0.4 is out, the Vulgus Strategic Outpost won’t be the prime farming spot it is today.