The First Descendant Inversion Reinforcement guide: Best abilities and upgrades for all characters

Season 1 adds several new mechanics to The First Descendant. If you’re struggling with Inversion Reinforcement, let me guide you through the best abilities and upgrades for all characters.

What is Inversion Reinforcement in The First Descendant?

Inversion Reinforcement is a progression system introduced in Season 1 and it affects all characters. You can check Inversion Reinforcement anytime from your Inventory once it’s unlocked.

As Ironheart Particles are required to level up Inversion Reinforcement, you will want to run Invasion Dungeons daily for a steady supply. You might want to complete the Hailey Rescue Operation first.

Inversion Reinforcement bestows account-wide bonuses to all of your Descendants, which lasts the entirety of a season. Nexon has explained that the Inversion Reinforcement will reset each season, and the available buffs will change.

If you’re a Destiny 2 player, the system is similar to the Seasonal Artifact.

The Inversion Reinforcement page is split into five lines: Hunt, Attribute, Recovery, Survival, and Season. When you learn every ability in a line, you unlock its Collection Effect. The Collection Effect is always active once you’ve got it, and we’ll go over this in more detail in the following section.

Finally, there is a power cap to consider. You can only have three Inversion Reinforcement Effects active at once, one per line. This mechanic means that while you’ll always get value from Collection Effects, your choices will affect some Descendants more than others.

If you’re looking for a new Descendant, why not try and unlock Hailey?

Best Inversion Reinforcement Effects for all characters in The First Descendant Season 1

Many Season 1 Inversion Reinforcement Effects have notable downsides and reduce your lethality in combat.

I’m not a fan of Effects that nerf your damage output, and many nodes do this by dropping your Firearm ATK or increasing your Skill Cost. On top of that, the bonuses you get from effects aren’t always worth it when the best approach to most things in TFD is to kill as fast as possible.

With this in mind, here are a few standout Effects to shoot for that will benefit every Descendant in the game.

Hunt – Biodensity Augmentation

• When defeating an enemy, gain Biodensity Augmentation, which increases Max HP by 4.7% and decreases DEF by 0.9% for three seconds. The effect can stack up to five times.

We quickly learned that HP was the best defensive stat in Season Zero. DEF is still useful, but HP is far more important. Sadly, Shield suffers with the worst diminishing returns.

The slight reduction in DEF is worth it for the more significant HP gain.

Recovery – Selective Neurostimulation

• Grants a bonus to MP recovery, which changes every 60 seconds with the following Effects:
• 60% chance to recover MP by 8.9% of Max MP.
• 30% chance to recover MP by 15.6% of Max MP.
• 10% chance to recover MP by 20.1% of Max HP and HP by 5.2% of Max HP.

The description is absurdly wordy, but Selective Neurostimulation gives you one of the buffs above every minute. Most Descendants love a steady supply of MP, and this is a free way to provide more with zero downsides.

Recovery – Inverted Defibrillation

• If hit while under 10 HP, you consume all MP and convert it into HP. The ability has a 25-second cooldown.

The Inverted Defibrillation effect is strong, although I’d argue that your build needs work if you constantly rely on it to cheat death. This effect works like a get-out-of-jail-free card on a 25-second cooldown.

If you’re coming from Warframe, this effect is similar to the Quick Thinking Mod, which uses energy as an emergency buffer.

Recovery – Arche Assimilation

• Grant’s the Arche Assimilation buff every 0.5 seconds when an ally is nearby. Arche Assimilation lasts for 2 seconds and recovers HP by 10% of your Max HP upon reaching 10 Stacks.

Arche Assimilation could have a great quality-of-life effect if you play with friends. You gain free HP for being near your squad, which should be easy to trigger with a cooperative team.

This could be the best Recovery effect for some Descendants, especially if they don’t rely on MP.

Survival – Secondary Quantization Response

• When attacking the Legion of Immortality, decrease incoming damage by 15%

There’s a Survival node for each faction, and they all provide damage reduction based on who you’re fighting. Biostructor Decomposer works against the Order of Truth; Disable Dark Protocols is good vs the Legion of Darkness.

Naturally, you’ll have to swap your Survival node to suit the situation, but if you’re struggling against a specific faction, this is a great way to fix that.

Best Inversion Reinforcement Collection Effects in The First Descendant Season 1

You must invest heavily into a line to unlock the Collection Effect at the end. As this will take a while, here are the nodes I recommend going for:

Hunt – Enhanced Pain Suppression

• While an Augment is active, incoming damage is reduced by 4.1%

All of the Hunt effects are classed as Augments, including the Biodensity Augmentation I recommended earlier. There’s not much to say about this one; Enhanced Pain Suppression grants a 4.1% damage reduction against all sources. There are zero downsides, and it could save your life.

Recovery – Hyperdimensional Vision

• Removes debuffs for 3 seconds and grants debuff immunity for the duration. The effect has an 18% chance to activate on a Critical Hit

As many of the best Inversion Reinforcement effects are on the Recovery Line, you may as well unlock Hyperdimensional Vision. Debuffs include annoying effects like burning, so Hyperdimensional Vision is another comfy effect that will make your gameplay smoother.

Survival – Void Defence Optimization

• You gain Void Defence Optimization every 15 seconds during Intercept Battles. The Optimization decreases incoming damage by 1.8% and stacks up to three times.

I can’t get too excited about Void Defence Optimization, as 5.4% at max stacks isn’t a huge amount. That said, Collosi attacks can really sting in Hard Mode, and that 5.4% could be the difference between surviving and a reset.

Several effects in the Season line could prove helpful in very specific situations. As they are activity-specific, I don’t recommend investing in them unless you’re having problems, but it’s good to know they exist.

If you’re struggling with survivability, have you tried upgrading to an Ultimate Descendant? The variants are optional but have higher base stats than their regular counterparts and can use exclusive Transcendence mods.