The First Descendent: How To Beat The Executioner Boss (Normal & Hard Difficulty)

The Executioner is a difficult boss in The First Descendant who has both a Normal Mode and a Hard Mode. It is one of the Void Intercept Bosses, and while it is not the highest-level boss, it is one of the ones you can also fight in Hard Mode. In the main game, it is the third Boss you can face in this mode, while it is the first boss you can face in the post-game in Hard Mode.

The First Descendant's bosses each have their own strengths and weaknesses, as do the Descendants fighting them. To unlock Hard Mode, you must have finished Heart of the Fortress, the last quest in the main storyline. Otherwise, players will have to focus on the Normal Mode Executioner.

Related The First Descendant: How To Get The Tamer Machine Gun One of the strongest machine guns in The First Descendant that you can get is the Tamer, a weapon with great stats geared toward overwhelming offense.

How To Prepare For The Executioner

Descendants & Weapons

This will be different depending on whether you are going into Normal or Hard Mode and which Descendants you have unlocked. At the point in the game where you have made it to the Executioner the first time, it is unlikely you have unlocked many Descendants other than your starter if you are not paying for Caliber. It is possible you have unlocked Bunny by now, and you will not be able to acquire Freyna until after the Executioner is defeated.

The Executioner has some interesting resistances, which you can view below:

Element Resistance Fire Strong Electric Very Strong Ice Normal Poison Very Weak

Of the starting Descendants, Bunny has some pros and cons for this fight. She will have resistance to the Electric attacks, but that also means her attacks will not do as well. She is very good at clearing the ads, and she is fast, allowing her to cross the map to heal teammates if you are playing multiplayer in The First Descendant.

However, for the Normal Mode fight, any Descendant you have can likely finish the fight if you prepare well. You will want to equip as much Electric Resistance as possible and try to buff your weapons with Toxic Damage. If you do that, you should be prepared for the Normal Mode as much as possible.

In Hard Mode, you will likely want to run Freyna or Gley, and Bunny is also a suitable Descendant for ad clearing and staying on the move while fighting. To pick a weapon, you can run something big like Eternal Willpower in The First Descendant, as well as a strong Sniper and a Scout Rifle, all loaded up with toxic enhancements and high-damage modules.

Eternal Willpower Stats Tier Rare Type Assault Rifle DPS 232 Crit Damage 1.5x Reload Time 1.9s Range 35mm Movement Speed 500 Rate of Fire 499

How To Defeat The Executioner In Normal Mode

Recommended Level: 34

You will encounter the Executioner as your third Void Intercept Boss in The First Descendant. The main strategy is to first focus on the shoulders of the Executioner, as those are removable parts that will stagger him. You will want to pay attention when the Shoulder Pads turn yellow so that you can grapple up to the pad and deal extra damage.

The knee is another potential source of extra damage, but it is not as effective as the shoulders. Another damage source you want to pay attention to is its back when it goes into a Frenzied state. A blue tube will appear, which is the only way you can damage it.

The other thing to watch out for is the significant AoE attack that the Executioner can perform. Oborrok on YouTube points out that the screen will turn white, and all Descendants will be pulled up in the air toward the Executioner. To get away from this attack before it hits you, you will want to dodge/roll out of the circle as soon as you land on the ground.

The last main tip for this fight is that there will be Kingfishers who appear above the boss and are connected to him. You will want to take these out immediately, any time they appear. Other than that, stay on the move, hit the weak spots, and revive your friends as soon as possible.

How To Defeat The Executioner In Hard Mode

Recommended Level: 102

What makes this fight difficult is that this is the first Hard Void Intercept Boss that players will face, and your characters will be coming right off the main game and have not reached their full potential. Later on, you can defeat some of these difficult bosses in under a minute using some of the best builds for Descendants like Jayber.

Toxic Damage and Electric Resistance are very important here, so make sure you have as much of those two buffs as high as possible. The main thing about Hard Mode is not to give up. Particularly when you first face the Executioner you will get to the at the end of the timer for the fight. Likewise, you will want to revive your teammates as fast as possible, as every little bit of damage counts.

Related The First Descendant: How To Beat The Dead Bride (Boss Guide) To beat the Dead Bride boss in The First Descendant, utilize long-ranged weapons and Fire-based damage, carefully evading her Cold-based AOE attacks.

The main tips from Normal Mode are mostly the same, with the knowledge that the boss is just that much tougher. By this point, you should have a good Freyna at the least, and you will want to run her if you do not have Gley or Ultimate Gley. Freyna has the extra Toxic Damage to do even more than before. YouTuber GuidingLight has a lot of good tips for exactly what Modules to equip to get your Descendants and weapons up to speed.

One of the things you may want to do, particularly as you will not have access to some of the best end-game Modules, is use Crystallization Catalysts to give yourself more Module capacity and change the sockets of your Modules to customize it more. This will give you more opportunities to add those resistances and buffs you need.

GuidingLight also emphasizes that for this fight, you want to stay focused on those critical weak points near the shoulders even after the armor has been knocked off, and you only switch to the chest piece if you have a good opportunity. If you do all of that, you will be able to make it through the Executioner boss fight and get the bonus rewards for defeating him in Hard Mode in The First Descendant.

Source: Oborrok/YouTube; GuidingLight/YouTube