The First Descendant's first patch arrives with server fixes and more... But it also broke the servers again

What you need to know

• The First Descendant is a brand-new, MMORPG looter shooter that has been making waves in the video games community.
• On day two of its official release, though, The First Descendant's servers experienced plenty of issues.
• Many players reported being unable to connect to the game at all, and others reported sporadic disconnects even while in the middle of missions.
• The First Descendant servers were back online for a good while, until the game's first patch was released and the servers went down again.

The First Descendant seemed to be back online for good, until Nexon released a patch update. The First Descendant's 1.01 hotfix is actually the first update the game has received, and it includes a number of fixes and improvements. The biggest change in the hotfix is also the most ironic, though, as Nexon claims to have improved server and client-side stabilization.

This is ironic because, following the release of the patch update, The First Descendant's servers have crashed again. Players are experiencing the same looping error code when attempting to connect as the infamous day two outage, and it's unclear when the situation will resolve itself. In other news, Nexon has promised that more compensation is on the way to players, including rolling out many of the beta test rewards to all players. That'd be great if the game would work.

If you'd like to know what else The First Descendant's initial patch fixed, there are improvements to Xbox Series X|S FidelityFX Super Resolution upscaling, PlayStation 5 performance, and various other fixes. Recovery time for being knocked down has also been significantly sped up. You can find out more on The First Descendant website.

Those that want all the details from The First Descendant's rocky launch can catch up below with our original article and updates.

The First Descendant has barely been playable for basically the entirety of its second day, but the server issues have (hopefully) been fully resolved now. Nexon has concluded its second round of server maintenance on the game and The First Descendant is back online. I can confirm that you can login with no delays or latency.

As compensation for the hours of downtime today, Nexon is gifting all players who log on in the next five days a collection of 3-day, 30% gain boosts for Gold, Kuiper Shard, Descendant XP, and Weapon XP. Players can redeem their compensation rewards from the mailbox at HQ, and the boosts will activate immediately upon redemption.

Hopefully, day three will go a lot smoother for The First Descendant, which needs a strong win to secure a healthy future.

If you're reading this, you're probably like me — still experiencing server issues with The First Descendant. Nexon did warn that there would be server instability for a while when the game came back online, but players (including myself) are experiencing more than simple instability. The previous server connection issue preventing players from even getting past the main menu is rearing its ugly head again.

Hopefully, it really is a temporary side effect of all the work Nexon likely had to do on The First Descendant servers today, and our hours of (involuntary) patience will result in healthier, more stable servers moving forward. For now, though, it seems like Day Two of The First Descendant is going to dominated by server outages and issues, with players once again prevented from even setting foot in Ingris.

Descendants have been waiting for a long time to resume the war against the Vulgus, and it appears the gates are beginning to open once more. The First Descendant team at Nexon has confirmed that servers are coming back online and players will be able to attempt to connect again, but there is a caveat.

According to Nexon, the issue with Microsoft's Azure network still isn't 100% resolved, so some players may still experience server instability when playing The First Descendant. Hopefully, those issues are uncommon and are squashed quickly. Either way, it seems we're finally on the other side of The First Descendant's first descent into server hell.

Hours later, and we finally have our first proper update from The First Descendant team at Nexon. According to the update (which you can see below), the server outages still affecting the game were "mainly due" to an error with Microsoft's network. The use of the word "mainly" suggests there may be other issues that need to be resolved, too.

As for the rest of the update, it stands to reason that The First Descendant uses Microsoft Azure for its server infrastructure (alongside hundreds of other games, companies, and products). Apparently, an external issue on that end is contributing to The First Descendant server outage. The Nexon team is seemingly waiting for that issue to be resolved by Microsoft.

It's unclear if this is at all related to the Xbox Network server outage that occurred yesterday, which is linked directly below.

Just so you don't believe I've abandoned you, here's a short update on The First Descendant server outage. For a while now, the game has been in an official maintenance mode started by the Nexon team, so you're not even able to get to the main menu.

This offline maintenance mode is an intentional move by Nexon, and will likely continue until all backend server issues have been resolved, at which point the game will come back online.

Time for a rapid-fire update! Less than five minutes after this post was published, The First Descendant team at Nexon posted an update on Twitter (or X, whatever) acknowledging the ongoing server issues, so we're officially not hallucinating the outage. It seems the team is investigating the cause and working on a fix — hopefully, we don't have long to wait until the servers come back online.

It seemed, for a moment, that The First Descendant would narrowly avoid the nearly unavoidable launch day issues of many major multiplayer game releases, but the effect was merely delayed. We're going into day two of this co-op looter shooter's existence, and the servers have taken a sudden turn for the worse, rendering many Descendants completely unable to enter Ingris.

To be precise, players first starting the game are experiencing a never-ending, repeated error code when first attempting to connect to the game servers and are unable to get past the main menu. Players who were in the game — even in the middle of a mission — experienced sudden disconnects, leaving them in the same places as players logging on for the first time today. It's unclear if all players are affected, but the outage is obvious on social media (and it affected the Windows Central team, too).

Right now, we're either waiting for the server issues to resolve themselves or for The First Descendant team at Nexon to acknowledge the issues and set about investigating a solution. So far, neither has happened, and there aren't any workarounds that we know off to sneak past the server outage.

We'll keep you posted on the situation, though, as we're certainly interested in rejoining the battle, too. You can check out some of the other The First Descendant known issues and launch bugs for more problems players are encountering, but none are as egregious as a full-blown server outage.

Honestly, though, I did fully expect server issues to crop up sooner rather than later, so as long as The First Descendant team works diligently and transparently to restore the game it won't discount The First Descendant's chances of becoming one of the best Xbox games. It is frustrating, though, considering that the Xbox Network just experienced an outage yesterday.

When The First Descendant does come back online, be sure to check out our guide for setting up cross-play and cross-save in The First Descendant so you can play with your friends. If this is your first time tuning in, you may be better off with our The First Descendant character tier list or even our general purpose The First Descendant FAQ.

The servers may be down right now, but The First Descendant is now available on Xbox Series X|S or Xbox One, Windows PC via Steam, or PlayStation 5 or 4, and you can download it for free at Microsoft Store (Xbox).