The First Descendant Best Viessa Build

If you’re more of a winter person, then Viessa is the Descendant for you. Her playstyle revolves around freezing her enemies and dealing AoE damage (with some DoT effects to boot). What is best is that you don’t even have to grind to unlock Viessa – she is available as one of the three starter characters that you get to pick at the beginning. To use Viessa’s full potential, you need a good build. Read on to see what is the current best build for Viessa in The First Descendant.

Viessa Skills

• Ice Sphere (Passive) – Creates an Ice Sphere floating around her body when inflicting enemies with the Ice Shackle effect, proportional to the effect stage. The Ice Sphere will automatically fly towards nearby enemies and deal damage to the target and its surroundings.
• Frost Shards – Fires an exploding Ice Beam, inflicting damage and Ice Shackle around the area it hits.
• Frost Road – Increases Running Speed and Shield, and creates Ice Sheets on the ground where Viessa stands. When enemies come into contact with these Ice Sheets, they are inflicted with Ice Shackle.
• Cold Snap – Releases an arc of cold air in front, inflicting damage and Ice Shackle.
• Blizzard – Creates a snowstorm that explodes over time, inflicting continuous damage and Ice Shackle on enemies caught within.

How to Unlock Viessa

If you have chosen another character at the beginning, you have to gather up some unique parts (Viessa Code, Viessa Spiral Catalyst, Viessa Enhanced Cells, and Viessa Stabilizer) to unlock Viessa. Those parts are scattered all over the planet and will require some materials to unlock. The parts and their required materials are:

• Viessa Spiral Catalyst
  • Superfluid (571)
  • Hardener (386)
  • Synthesized Artificial Biometal (99)
  • Viessa Sprial Catalyst Blueprint
  • 200.000 Gold
• Viessa Enhanced Cells
  • Repton (422)
  • Semiconstant Plasma (290)
  • Fusion Plasma Battery (40)
  • Viessa Enhanced Cell Blueprint
  • 200.000 Gold
• Viessa Stabilizer
  • Compound Coating Material (239)
  • Monomolecular Extractor (499)
  • Common Carbon Activator (14)
  • Viessa Stabilizer Blueprint
  • 200.000 Gold
• Viessa Code
• 400.000 Gold

Best Viessa Build

Viessa primarily uses her Skills to deal damage and slow enemies. The playstyle focuses on crowd control, slowing the enemies down as much as possible and hitting them with Chill damage. So, a solid mix of MP improvements and Skill Power is needed. Below you will see the best items for Viessa for each equipment category: Weapon (and Weapon Modules), Descendant Modules, Reactor, and External Components.

Best Weapon for Viessa in The First Descendant

The best weapon for Viessa to further improve her AoE damage is the Thunder Cage Submachine Gun. When you eliminate an enemy using the Thunder Cage, they have a set chance (about 60%) to release an Electric Shockwave which deals even more damage to everything around them. Pair that Viessa’s already impressive AoE mechanics, and you’ll be eliminating Vulgus swarms with ease.

Since bosses are not the best target for AoE attacks, you’ll need something to help you out during those boss fights. The best secondary weapons for Viessa are Nazeistra’s Devotion Hand Cannon and Afterglow Sword Sniper Rifle. Both of these weapons capitalize on hitting Weak Points. Nazeistra’s Devotion reduces the DEF value of the target by 30% when hitting Weak Points, while Afterglow Sword gets a stackable Damage increase and Reload Reduction as long as you keep hitting those Weak Points.

An honorable mention is the Clairvoyance Beam Gun. This weapon deals more damage the longer it stays on the tree, and it can trigger Frostbite, which goes along with Viessa’s general playstyle.

Weapon Modules

Since you’ll be using Thunder Cage, the best Weapon Modules that you should have as Viessa should focus on improving the firearm ATK and Fire Rate. That is so you can utilize those Shockwaves as much as possible. The best Weapon Modules for Viessa are:

Weapon Module	Effect
Rifling Reinforcement	Improves weapon’s ATK
Action and Reaction	Improves weapon’s ATK and Recoil
Fire Rate Up	Improves weapon’s Fire Rate
Marksman	Improves weapon’s ATK and Critical Hit Rate

Nazeistra’s Devotion and Afterglow Sword all focus on hitting Weak Points, so Modules that improve on that are more than useful. Modules like Weak Point Control and Weak Point Sight to improve the damage, and Hawkeye to improve your accuracy, so you can more easily hit those spots.

Descendant Modules

Viessa is a Skill-heavy Descendant that uses a lot of MP during fights, so you will need some Modules that improve her Skills and help out with MP usage. Additionally, there is a special Module for Viessa that replaces her slowing abilities with DoT effects, called Hypothermy. Equipping this rare Skill Module will increase your overall damage output, but will remove some of Viessa’s general utility (ie, slow effect)

The best Descendant Modules for Viessa are:

Descendant Module	Effect
Chill Specialist	Improves Chill Skill Power
Energy Collection	Allows leeching of MP from enemies
Nimble Fingers	Reduces Skill Cooldown
Strong Mentality	Reduces Skill MP cost
Skill Extension	Increases Skill Duration
Skill Expansion	Increases Skill Effect Range
Hypothermy	Replaces slowing effects (Ice Shackle) with damage-over-time effects

More useful Mods are those that improve Skill Critical Hit Rate and Skill Critical Hit Damage, and those that improve your Max MP and MP management in general.

Reactor

Viessa uses a lot of Skills so a good Reactor is necessary. We are looking for Reactors that boost Chill Skills, as well as those that boost Fusion Skills (for Frost Shard, Frost Road, and Cold Snap) or Tech Skills (for Blizzard and Ice Sphere Passive).  

The best Reactor for Viessa is the one that has “Frozen” in the title. Frozen Reactors improve Chill Skills, ie, all of Viessa’s Skills, so are a natural choice for this build. Furthermore, for the Fusion Skills, look for “Mixture” reactors. If you want to go along the DoT route (with Hypothermy Descendant Module), then you need a Reactor that improves Tech Skills, and those are “Mechanics” Reactors.

In summary, the best Reactor for Viessa is the Frozen Mixture Reactor, unless you are using the Hypothermy Module, in which case you should look for a Frozen Mechanics Reactor.

External Components

To round off the build, we have External Components. They are almost always a source of defensive buffs for every character, and since Viessa is far from tanky, she will benefit from them pretty much. The Components are a random drop so try to pick the one with the best stats when making your build.

So, the best External Components for Viessa are those that improve Max Shields, HP Recovery, Max HP, and DEF.

We hope this build helps you tackle the game with Viessa as easily as possible.