The First Descendant’s mastery rank up – XP and rewards explained

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✓ At a glance
  • When you see mastery rank up available, head back to town.
  • Go to the mastery rank up machine and get new rewards for modules and inventory space
  • continue to complete content in game to progress mastery rank on your favourite descendants.

The Mastery Rank-up feature in The First Descendant is a way to level up your favourite characters and Descendants to get more from their builds. You’ll want to take on new challenges with the character,m alongside level-up weapons and other features to ensure you can get better mods on them, improve the mods, and much more.

Mastery rank up in The First Descendant explained

To unlock the Mastery feature, players will need to complete the main story mission in the Kingston operation area. Once you return from the dungeon part of the quest, you’ll be able to go to the Prime’s hands as part of the main storyline in Albion and look more into the mastery system.

When you arrive at the Prime’s Hands, you can read more about what the Mastery system means and how it works. Firstly, you’ll need to get Mastery XP, which is acquired through playing the game, and then you simply level up at the Prime’s Hands for that Descendant you’re playing as.

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An in-game level up info-graphic in the first descendant
One of the ways to get Mastery Rank Up XP is via completing quests and levelling up. VideoGamer / The First Descendant.

How to rank up mastery in The First Descendant 

Now that Prime’s hand is unlocked, you will need to acquire a set amount of Mastery XP per level for your Descendant. To do so, you can do the following activities.

  • Clear Missions for the first time
  • Using Descendant who have not yet assigned a Socket to a module slots.
  • Levelling up your Descendant.

Due to the nature of the mastery system, players will find lots of the early Descendants will power level through the game with Mastery XP. You’ll be more open to missions early on, and thus, your early Descendants will have free reign of mission naturally. Outside of that, you’ll need to casually play the content, and gather mastery points as you level your Descendants up via other missions, endgame content, and operation tasks. So, work on that,m and you’ll find you can improve your characters to take on harder difficulties as you get further and further into the content.


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an in game screenshot of the First Descenants feature that allows to them to level up their mastery rank for their character.
Go to the Prime’s Hands feature in Albion to check progress or to increase your Mastery Rank in the First Descendant. VideoGamer / The First Descendant.

Mastery rank up rewards in The First Descendant

It’s important to state that mastery rank-ups are very important in The First Descendant. You will earn a few key rewards for doing so.

  • Descendent Module Capacity improvements
  • Descendant Module slot improvements
  • Weapon capacity improvements
  • Weapon module slot improvements
  • Inventory improvements
  • And more

The amount of improvements and the type of improvement you get depends on each mastery rank up. These are important, as it means you can grind more items in your farming and dungeon content. Moreso, increasing capacity improvements means you can get more power, which means funding more of that resource to either more mods or better mods that cost more power. In addition, more slots mean even more, improvements you can add, either lower-performing ones on a smaller power budget or for when you can afford lots of improved power mods you get from Silion when you decide to improve your modules in Albion. You can check out more info on how gearing works in our The First Descendant Beginner’s guide if you’re interested.

It is absolutely important to do this, because the better your character gets for weapon mods and its Descendant mods, the better your character can perform on harder difficulties. More so, it means that you should progress much better in the Void instances, end-game dungeons, or the Special Operation challenges, which is where you get the best epic and legendary gear, resources and other items used in crafting.

And there you have it, you now know why it’s important to engage with the mastery rank-up feature in The First Descendant. You now know what you need to do to increase your mastery rank and get more mastery XP for the feature. Good luck grinding your favourite Descendants and levelling them up.

About the Author

Craig Robinson

Craig is a Guides Writer for VideoGamer. He is a big-time MMO fan, with interests in competitive games like League of Legends, and Rainbow Six Siege. When he’s not sweating games, you can find him get

The First Descendant

  • Platform(s): PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X
  • Genre(s): Action, Adventure, RPG
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