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As basically everyone knows, grinding for items is an integral part of looter-shooters, and The First Descendant is no different. Each mission can give certain items, each with its own drop chance. The better the item, the smaller the drop rate. Furthermore, The First Descendant has Amorphous Materials, which function like an “item-in-an-item”. There are over 100 different Amorphous Materials and each of them has a selection of blueprints, for weapons or Descendants, and will give you one of them when you “open them”. As you’d expect, more valuable parts have a smaller drop rate, going as low as 3%.
Shape Stabilizers – Then and Now
To help with that, you can use Shape Stabilizers, which increase the drop chance of the items with the lower drop rate while decreasing the higher ones. Pretty neat, right? Let’s not forget that Shape Stabilizers themselves have an abnormally low drop rate as well. So, grinding for an item with a next-to-zero drop rate so you can slightly increase the chance of getting the item that you want when you “open” the Amorphous Material which, in turn, requires you to complete a Void Reactor mission or defeat a Colossus before you can do so…well, it sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? And we all know that you will get another 38% chance item anyway…
One player said that Shape Stabilizers were immensely better in the beta. In one Reddit thread, they explain that before the official release, “back then if you had the stabilizer an amorphous was linked to and used it you could PICK what item you wanted for your reward”. This is quite a difference from what we have now. If Shape Stabilizers worked like that in the full version, that would explain the drop rate and make them quite a valuable asset.
Most Players Would Love to See This Change
Naturally, players are not sold on the Shape Stabilizers right now. User rxninja said: “Functionally speaking, these have been 100% worthless for me. I have used so many and not once has it ever given me a high-tier item.” You also get comments like “I love it when u finally get one and use it and still get a 32% item.” from teleostseeker, and the answer to it is the best one: “I use them to guarantee I get the 32% drop I want. Gotta play the system.” by Getrektself.
Others state that some tweaking is needed definitely. Maybe not the 100% guarantee on the item that you want, but at least “maybe picking 2 items and having 50/50 between which one you get would be way better. “ as proposed by GrieverXVII. One user, named lambo3635, gave a good suggestion: “I argue that shape [stabilizers] should straight out remove the 2 common drops in the pool and distribute the remaining reward based on their rarity. For example without shape: 6%|10%|20%|32%|32%. With shape stab: 18%|30%|52%|0%|0%.”
Surprisingly, not everyone is rooting for these changes. Some players argue that Shape Stabilizers are fine the way they are because if they worked differently, you’d get all of the items that you want and basically “complete” the game. User TheMooseYouKnow stated: “If I had an item, that let me pick whatever item out of an amorphous I wanted at this point in the game (played the betas dw) I would currently have nothing to farm…” and Inolk agrees saying: “If they have implemented that system, I would most likely have finished the game and move on to something else.”
In conclusion, both sides have a point. Getting a guaranteed drop for something that usually has a 3% chance may be a bit too much, but just slightly increasing the already low drop rate is also not working very well, and could use a boost. With the talks of the “pity system” coming our way, and Season 1 being on the horizon, we will see how Nexon will handle this.