Creating a strong build in The First Descendant requires carefully choosing and optimizing your components, like modules, reactor stats, weapons, weapon mods, and skills of Viessa. She is a highly customizable character, offers great potential if you know how to craft the perfect build for her.
For a Viessa build, the focus should be on enhancing skill power, and survivability in The First Descendant. This build is ideal for players who enjoy skill-based damage and mobility. Viessa is particularly effective at dealing with chill damage, applying status effects, and covering large areas (AOE) with her abilities.
For more The First Descendant guides, take a look at these:
- The First Descendant: Ultimate Gley Build Guide
- The First Descendant: Best Lepic Build
- The First Descendant: Best XP Farm Locations
Who Is Viessa in The First Descendant
Viessa is a playable Chill Attribute Descendant in The First Descendant, known for freezing enemies with her Chill powers and delivering Cold Snap-like attacks while moving between foes. Her Area of Effect (AoE) abilities are particularly effective against large groups of enemies.
Overview of Viessa
While Viessa is one of the top characters in the game, she struggles against enemies with resistance to Chill, requiring a different strategy or a character swap. Although her survivability isn’t the highest, she excels overall with her Frost Road ability and mobility.
How to Unlock Viessa
To unlock Viessa in The First Descendant, you can select her as your starting character, buy her from the store, or research her. If you choose a different character at the beginning, you can still unlock Viessa later.
Unlocking Viessa Requirements
To research her, you need to gather four components. The first three components are acquired by gathering materials and a blueprint through various missions. To get the last component “Viessa Code”, you need to get and use the Amorphous Material in The First Descendant. Since the chances of getting the needed component from the Amorphous Material are low, you would have to farm it. After collecting all of her blueprints, you must research each component with Anais in Albion to unlock Viessa as a playable Descendant.
Here are the various resources you need to collect:
| Component | How to Get |
| Viessa Enhanced Cells |
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| Viessa Stabilizer |
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| Viessa Spiral Catalyst |
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| Viessa Code |
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Skills
The main strategy with Viessa build is to accumulate stacks of your passive ability, Ice Shackle, to boost your damage output in The First Descendant. This passive generates an Ice Sphere that deals free damage, so you should aim to trigger it every 20 seconds using your skills.
Showcase of Viessa
Additionally, Viessa uses a mix of AoE skills to control enemies and restrict their movement. Blizzard has a long cooldown and is ideal for taking down bosses or high-HP enemies. Depending on the situation, Viessa can either focus on using weapons or rely on her skills for combat in The First Descendant.
Here are the active skills of Viessa, which means these are activated by the player (effects on demand):
| Skill | Description |
| Frost Shards | Viessa fires Frost Shards that damage enemies in an area and apply Ice Shackle. |
| Frost Road | This causes Viessa to create ice sheets on the ground she touches. Enemies that step on the ice take damage and are inflicted with Ice Shackle. |
| Cold Snap | Launches a Chill attack in front of Viessa, dealing damage and applying Ice Shackle to enemies. |
| Blizzard | Summons a Blizzard at a chosen location. Enemies inside take continuous damage, and when the Blizzard ends, it explodes, dealing area damage and inflicting Ice Shackle with each hit. |
Here is the passive skill of Viessa, which is applied automatically or under certain conditions:
| Skill | Description |
| Ice Sphere | When Viessa uses a skin to trap an enemy in the Ice Shackle stage, she creates an Ice Sphere. This sphere targets a nearby enemy, flying toward them and causing area-of-effect (AoE) damage upon impact. |
Descendant Modules
In The First Descendant, modules are key components that boost and personalize your character’s abilities, stats, and overall performance. You can obtain these modules through quests, missions, loot drops, and purchases from vendors. However, since resources for slotting mods are limited, some slots might remain empty depending on how you configure your setup.
| Modules | Description |
| Cold-Bloodedness | When using skill, increases Skill Power and decreases Skill Cost and Skill Cooldown. Frost Roads are not created when moving. |
| Mid-Air Maneuvering | Modifies the Grappling Hook to be cast mid-air. Charge Time increases by 20% |
| Battle of Stamina | Max HP +12%, Skill Duration +8.8% |
| MP Conversion | Skill Cooldown -9%, Max MP -4% |
| Focus on Chill | Chill Skill Power +19%, Skill Cooldown -6.1% |
| Front Lines | Skill Critical Hit Damage +16%, Skill Critical Hit Rate +7% |
| Spear and Shield | DEF +22%, Skill Power +8.1% |
| Emergency Measures | Skill Critical Hit Rate +16%, Skill Critical Hit Damage +7%. |
| Nimble Fingers | Skill Cooldown -6% |
| Skill Extension | Skill Duration +9%, applies only to certain skills for each Descendant |
| Skill Concentration | Skill Critical Hit Damage +14% |
| Skill Insight | Skill Critical Hit Rate +14% |
While the Cold Snap Watch is a favored Skill Module over Cold-Bloodedness, reducing the cooldown and MP cost of Frost Road allows you to spam Frost Shards more frequently. This creates a run-and-gun build that makes you tougher and capable of soloing difficult content.
Modules of Viessa
If you’re preparing to face specific bosses, you might want to adjust your modules, but this setup is perfect for quickly clearing missions and farming loot while staying durable enough for close combat.
Reactor and External Components
Using a Frozen Mechanics Reactor boosts the damage of your high-scaling skills like Blizzard and Ice Sphere. For substats, aim for the Chill Skill Power Boost Ratio along with other damage-enhancing or utility substats.
Reactor
| Reactor | Substat Priority |
| Frozen Mechanics Reactor |
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The Glacial set enhances your Chill Skill Power Modifier and increases the Firearm Critical Hit Rate while reducing Skill Costs.
However, in the early stages, it’s better to focus on survival. Choose External Components that provide more HP, defense, and elemental resistance to stay safe.
External Components
| External Components | Substat Priority |
| Auxiliary Power |
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| Sensor |
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| Memory |
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| Processor |
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Best Weapons and Modules
Viessa’s playstyle is incredibly flexible, giving you many weapon options to suit different situations. As she progresses into the late game, the weapons she chooses become crucial to her overall build. To fully utilize Viessa build in The First Descendant, it’s important to focus on two key weapons: Clairvoyance and Thunder Cage. These weapons are essential for making the most of her abilities and ensuring she can handle whatever challenges come her way.
Clairvoyance
- Firearm ATK: 23
- Fire Rate: 399
- Reload Speed: 2.2 seconds
- Effective Range: 35 meters
- The Thing Beyond: Hitting an enemy with a Stage 2 Beam applies the Void Gaze effect. Hitting an enemy with a Stage 3 Beam applies the Appalled Calling effect, which works similarly to Frostbite in certain modes.
Clairvoyance
The Clairvoyance Beam Rifle in The First Descendant is ideal for Viessa build because of its synergy with the Frostbite status effect. This weapon enhances Viessa’s ice shackle debuff and skills, and the Stage 3 Beam can significantly slow down enemy action for 4 to 5 seconds, making it a perfect complement to Viessa’s chill damage abilities.
Thunder Cage
- Firearm ATK: 18
- Fire Rate: 666
- Reload Speed: 1.4 seconds
- Effective Range: 23 meters
- Overcharge: Defeating an enemy triggers an electric shockwave that deals firearm damage to nearby enemies within 3 meters, with extra damage.
Thunder Cage
The Thunder Cage Submachine Gun emits an electric shockwave and boosts damage after a kill. It’s excellent for clearing groups of enemies, but you might want to switch to the Tamer Machine Gun for boss fights.
Modules
Just as descendant modules enhance descendants, weapon modules provide specific effects for weapons. However, these effects will only activate when the weapon is equipped.
No matter which weapon you choose, here are some of the best modules to consider when playing as Viessa:
| Module | Effect |
| Hawk-Eye | Improves Viessa’s Accuracy |
| Reload Concentration | Reloading is quicker Firearm Critical Damage is improved |
| Rifling Reinforcement | Significantly improves your Firearm Attack |
| Concentrate Support Ammo | Viessa gets more rounds per magazine Slightly more Firearm Critical Hit Damage |
| Electric Conductor | Improved Firearm Attack when attacking Electrocuted enemies |
| Action and Reaction | Improves Firearm Attack and Recoil |
| Marksman | Improves Firearm Critical Hit Rate, and slightly improves Attack |
| Weak Point Control | Improves Weak Point Damage and Recoil |
| Weak Point Sight | Greatly improves Weak Point Damage |
| Fire Rate Up | Significantly improves Viessa’s Fir |
How to Play Viessa
Viessa acts as a debuffer for her squad, using Ice Shackle stacks to slow down enemies and help keep her team alive. While her damage is low compared to typical DPS Descendants, her slow debuff becomes extremely effective in late-game. Ice Shackle remains potent even in tougher scenarios, making it consistently valuable, and it can even slow down bosses, though not as effectively
In most battles, start by casting Frost Road to approach your targets quickly and apply the slow effect. Once enemies are debuffed with Ice Shackle, follow up with Ice Shards to damage them. It also spawns drones around Viessa that do small damage and add more Ice Shackle stacks. When played correctly, Viessa can keep all enemies slowed down, giving her team a significant advantage.
