The First Descendant Valby guide: Best build, loadout, weapons, modules, and more

Valby is an interesting character in The First Descendant as she uses her water abilities to cue up her foes for a powerful attack rather than using her abilities for outright damage. Here’s the best build for her and how to get her.

How to unlock Valby in The First Descendant

To play with Valby in The First Descendant, you’ll first need to unlock her. To research Valby, you’ll need the following research materials:

• 400,000 Gold
• Valby Enhanced Cells
  • 200,000 Gold
  • 422 Repton
  • 571 Superfluid
  • 48 Data Processing Neural Circuit
  • Valby Enhanced Cells Blueprint
• Valby Stabilizer
  • 200,000 Gold
  • 246 Monad Shard
  • 239 Compound Coating Material
  • 40 Murky Energy Residue
  • Valby Stabilizer Blueprint
• Valby Spiral Catalyst
  • 200,000 Gold
  • 519 Metal Accellerant
  • 386 Hardener
  • 32 Encrypted Neural Circuit
  • Valby Spiral Catalyst Blueprint
• Valby Code

This is a lot of materials, and like any other Descendant, will require lots of farming.

The Core Research Materials (Blueprints and Code) are the hardest to farm for, so I’ve broken down the fastest way to get the materials you need:

There are other ways to get these Core Materials for Valby in The First Descendant, however the paths presented require less farming.

Note that you can always check in-game to know all the ways of getting these Blueprints and Code by pressing “F” when hovering over them in the Research menu.

Now that we know all about obtaining Valby, let’s go over her skills and recommended equipment.

Valby Playstyle and Skills Explained

To effectively use Valby in The First Descendant, you’ll need to best know her skills and how she plays.

Here are all of Valby’s skills in The First Descendant:

• Water Intake is Valby’s Passive skill that allows her to reduce the MP cost of her abilities whilst she’s standing in any sort of water. Her other skills can create water puddles, and these count for this passive ability.
• Bubble Bullet launches a bouncing water projectile. The bubble bullet will explode upon contact with an enemy, or after three bounces. The more it bounces, the more damage it does! Enemies hit with this skill become inflicted with Laundry, and a small puddle is made at the point of impact.
• Plop Plop allows you to pick a spot rather far away. This will create a big puddle that will continually damage enemies and inflict them with Laundry. Once the puddle is made, Valby will dive into the ground and suddenly erupt from the big puddle, damaging and knocking back enemies. The more enemies affected by the knockback, the more damage is dealt.
• Clean Up allows you to enter a liquified state. This increases your movement speed, allows you to phase through enemies, reduces damage taken significantly, and leaves behind a water way. Enemies in the water way are inflicted with Laundry and receive damage. You can’t jump or use other skills whilst liquified, however.
• Laundry Bomb equips Valby with a unique weapon that has a limited timer and projectile count. When you shoot enemies with it, those in the radius of the impact will get pulled into one big bubble. This deals continuous damage that increases proportionately to the number of enemies with Laundry. Also, enemies with Laundry are also inflicted with Towed.

As you can see, Valby’s skills allow her to become a crowd control Descendant that can deal with enemies efficiently once she’s used other skills to inflict them with Laundry. Her Clean Up ability allows her to dart in and out of enemies to inflict Laundry en mass or flee difficult encounters.

As she uses her skills to create puddles, she can stand in them to reduce the cost of her other abilities, allowing her to quickly inflict Laundry on enemies and then use Laundry Bomb to tie them all up and deal with them.

If you are to play Valby, you’ll need to be mobile and place yourself strategically to deal with any oncoming hordes and crowds.

Best Valby Build in The First Descendant

Now that we know how best to play Valby in The First Descendant, let’s go over the best gear for her.

Best Valby Modules

The Modules that you equip for Valby will make a world of difference. As you level up your Mastery, prestige Valby, and use Energy Activators, you’ll be able to hold more of the Modules.

Here is a list of all the Modules I’d recommend for Valby:

As you can see, the recommended Modules for Valby are mostly concerned with making her skills more powerful, as that’s the crux of her playstyle.

There are also some Modules that increase her survivability, considering she’s a very delicate Descendant that cannot stomach too many hits. If you’re playing in public servers, you’ll certainly need everything you can get to survive any brutal attacks. Make sure to upgrade your Modules, too, to make them more effective.

Best Valby Reactor Stats

Considering Valby’s skills are all Non-Attribute, you’ll want a Materialized Reactor, as these ones boost with Non-Attribute Skills.

There are different types of Materialized Reactors that pair well with different skill types. In Valby’s case, the skills Bubble Bullet and Laundry Bomb are Fusion Skills, and Plop Plop and Clean Up are Dimension Skills.

If you want her Dimension Skills to receive higher damage, go for a Materialized Phase Reactor. If you want her Fusion Skills to receive higher damage, go for a Materialized Mixture Reactor.

Best Valby External Components

Equipping powerful External Components is useful for buffing specific stats for a Descendant to increase their survivability.

As different components can help with the same stats, I’ll mention the stats that you’ll want to have increased and the most powerful External Components for the job:

• Increase DEF
• Increase max Shield

Valby has a lot of Max HP, but abysmal Defence and Shields. You can use the External Components to fix that issue.

Alternatively, you could instead increase her HP recovery to gain more health from health pickups. As she is a mobile Descendant, you will be running around the battlefield and picking them up rather frequently. With more health from these items, not having a large Shield pool to protect your health wouldn’t be too much of an issue. Although I wouldn’t personally recommend this.

Best Weapons for Valby in The First Descendant

Your choice of weapons for Valby in The First Descendant will dictate how well you do in battle. How fast you fell your foes will determine how much damage they deal to you. Although her abilities do a great job of dealing with enemies, a good gun is always needed.

For Valby, I would suggest the Ultimate weapon Thunder Cage.

The Unique Ability for this weapon, Overcharge, has a set chance for defeated enemies to deal additional damage to other enemies. As this is electric damage, this deals even more damage to any enemies inflicted with Laundry — a perfect pairing.

For your other weapon slots, I’d suggest you bring a powerful shotgun and scout rifle. As Valby is always on the move, you’ll want weapons that don’t require you to stay still. Shotguns are great for when you’re up close to your enemies, and scout rifles are just mobile enough and allow you to hit specific points if needed.

Now that you know all about how best to utilize and equip Valby in The First Descendant, you’ll be unstoppable. Just make sure you know how to hack into Encrypted Vaults when grinding for her.