The First Descendant: Best Thunder Cage Build

There are over 20 different Ultimate Weapons in The First Descendant. These are the strongest weapons you can get your hands on, and require a lot of component grinding and research to unlock. One such ultimate weapon that you can get quite early on is the Thunder Cage.

The Thunder Cage is a unique ultimate weapon in The First Descendant that can deal a lot of explosive damage and is categorized as a submachine gun. If you’re lucky enough to get this weapon, building it using the right modules is the key to unlocking its true power. With that in mind, this guide covers everything you need to know about how to build the Thunder Cage properly.

What Is Thunder Cage in The First Descendant?

Thunder Cage is an electric-type ultimate weapon in The First Descendant, known for its solid critical hit potential and mod flexibility. You can unlock this weapon quite early on from researching, and it comes pre-installed with two socket polarities, which lets you build it using a wide range of mod combinations, making it suitable for multiple purposes.

Thunder Cage also boasts a strong base critical chance of 20 percent, and with the right build, this can be enhanced significantly, making it a critical hit machine in both early and late games. You can also build it accordingly with the right modules to make it better suited for farming mobs or even taking down Void Intercept bosses.

Best Early Game Build

For the early game build for Thunder Cage, your goal is to maximize damage and critical chance while working with the limited module capacity available at the start of the game. This build focuses on scaling critical chance and damage.

With Better Insight and Edging Shot, you can reach a solid 36% critical hit chance early in the game. Better Concentration increases your critical damage output, making your critical hits more impactful. This setup is ideal for progressing through the campaign and tackling early endgame content. You can also equip Chill Enhancement for a cost-efficient DPS boost.

Best Late Game Build

In the late game, Thunder Cage becomes even more powerful with a higher module capacity, so you should focus on maximizing critical damage, fire rate, and damage scaling. That’s why this build emphasizes critical hit scaling, with Better Insight and Concentration Priority providing a 6x multiplier for critical damage.

It also increases in fire rate and magazine size through Fire Rate Up, and Expand Weapon Charge further boosts your damage per second, while Weak Point Sight ensures maximum damage against bosses and most Elite Vulguses as well. This build is ideal for endgame content, including boss fights and high-level encounters.

Best Build for Farming

When farming, your focus should shift to mob clearing efficiency. Thunder Cage is great for this, but only with the right build. When you’re farming mobs, you should maximize crit damage and status effects like poison. This build maximizes your ability to clear mobs quickly.

The addition of Toxic Enhancement and Toxic Priority ensures that your shots inflict poison, which is extremely effective for farming groups of Vulguses. Meanwhile, Edging Shot and Better Insight give a higher crit chance, and Concentration Priority boosts your crit damage significantly.

Best Build for Void Intercept Battles

Void Intercept Battles are challenging boss fights in The First Descendant, and the best build for this mode increases your accuracy, weak point damage, and helps you maintain a balanced damage output for both clearing Vulgus mobs and colossi. Hawk-Eye and Vibration Absorption increase your precision and accuracy for hitting weak points, while the combination of Fire Rate Up and Expand Weapon Charge provides excellent burst DPS.

When choosing the Elemental Damage Mod for Void Intercept Battles,
choose the element which is the boss’ weakness
. For example, when fighting the
Dead Bride
you should choose Fire Enhancement, but you should use Electric Enhancement against a boss like the Swamp Walker.