With Valby controlling hyrdo powers to move around quickly and damage enemies in The First Descendant, she is proving to be a popular option for fans of the game. This is how to build her for the challenges ahead.
Table of contents
Best Valby Build in The First Descendant
Valby is an interesting and somewhat self-sustaining character. She can benefit from reduced magic point cost for using her abilities while she is standing in water, and her abilities will leave water on the ground. This means that smart positioning can give you a near-eternal pool of MP with which to power your skills.
She is also superb at locking down areas with her Clean Up ability and is quite forgiving because you can rapidly move through enemies if you need to, along with having access to an effective teleport if you get in a really bad situation that you need to escape from. She also spreads a status called Laundry among her enemies, and when she uses her ultimate ability, they are all sucked into one place and suffer damage over time.
Valby is turning into a surprise star in the community, and it’s because her kit can do so much damage while being a lot of fun to play.
Best Early Valby Build
Now, you will notice straight away that I have no shield mods. Valby is a character who just doesn’t benefit from them very much, and shields are somewhat low return in the game right now. A good health pool and strong defense and resistances is the way to go. Valby has more than enough movement tools to get out of serious trouble if she needs to. You really don’t need to worry about that coverage offered by a shield because it just doesn’t provide a huge return on investment. Your shield is going to get cracked, regardless, so it’s better to focus on your health pool and stay mobile to grab health packs from the ground if you need them.
| Mods | Effect |
|---|---|
| Increased HP | Does exactly what it says in the name. It will give a better health pool allowing you to tank a lot more damage. |
| Polygenic Antibody | It will increase the range of certain skills, allowing you to do even more area of effect and hit more enemies. |
| Non-Attribute Specialist | Valby is a Non-Attritube character, so you can use this mod. Fully ranked it will increase her skill power by over 80%, making it very potent. |
| Skill Expansion | Will increase the range of certain skills, allowing you to do even more area of effect and hit more enemies. |
| Increased DEF | This will increase your overall Defense stat, once again incredibly useful in all circumstances and against a broad range of opponents. |
| Technician | This will increase the overall Skill Power of Valby, resulting in more damage from her abilities. |
Now, for the most part, the above modules are just really good options and a version of the above would be good for almost any character. The reason why it is important to have a good sense of what works, which is health and defense, some range, and some skill power, is because of the Kuiper Shard issue. You will need to farm a fair amount of these to get any kind of build going, and efficiency is key here. All of the above stats benefit you no matter the situation you find yourself in, and all the above mods, fully ranked, are effective and maintain value in Hard mode.
Valby Late Game Build Additions
Valby in the late game does not escape the need for a large health pool, defensive stats, range, and skill power, we will just be adding more of the same to survive and be effective in the late game. Frugal Mindset is an excellent addition as it will increase range while also reducing the cost of casting. Spear and Shield will allow us to increase skill power while also getting even more Defense. They are two excellent additions, as long as you already have that strong base built up. Focus on Non-Attribute is also a great option, as it increases skill power and reduces cooldowns. Finally, you can drop the Polygenic Antibody because you should have enough defensive stats from other sources and invest in something like Nimble Fingers.
The biggest change is probably that you will be aiming to get the Supply Moisture mod. This alters how Valby works, as you no longer get the Magic Points reduction, but you do get an increase in skill critical hit rate, duration, and firearm attribute trigger rate. This is a rare mod and a tough farm, however. This really is down to what you want to do and how you want to play her. People who just love casting likely want to avoid this, but it really does ramp up her damage.
Reactors and External Components
I really like running the Thunder Cage with Valby because her water reduces their Electric resistance, and I run the Tamer with just about everyone because it’s my tough unit neutralizer. So, I aim for a Reactor that will give a skill boost based on this, as well as a Skill Power Boost Ratio for both Non-Attribute and Dimension Skill Power because she ticks both boxes. The two skills of hers that we really want boosts for are the Dimension ones, Plop Plop and Clean Up, so we might as well focus on them here. For additional bonuses, it’s good to try and get something that works with her skill power, overall damage, or skill range.
For the External Components, you just want to aim for the best stats possible early in the game, and later on, you can try to gather up an Acrobat set when you reach Level 100. What is more important here is to lean into extra health and defensive stats. You can ignore any improvement to max shields for the reasons already discussed. I have a sneaking suspicion that we will see some good Valby-specific sets dropping with her Ultimate version.
If you have just been curious about a Valby build but don’t have her yet, then you can use our guide on how to get Valby to add her to your collection. It is worth noting that Ultimate Valby is due in a couple of weeks, so you might want to hold off on investing too much into the character right now, but the above build will be transferable.
The First Descendant is available now on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation.
