How to defeat Death Stalker in The First Descendant

The First Descendant's 1.1.4 update introduced Death Stalker, the newest and toughest colossus on the hard mode Void Intercept's ladder. Armed with deadly poison attacks and team-based wipe mechanics, it is a formidable enemy even for the strongest teams.

This guide will attempt to dissect the crucial mechanics and discuss the optimal strategy to defeat this challenging enemy.

How to prepare for the Death Stalker fight in The First Descendant

Death Stalker deals copious amounts of poison damage. Therefore, you should stack a lot of poison resistance through mods like Toxic Antibody or Perfect Antivenom. Another useful mod is Maximize Toxic Resist, though the boss' unique debuff makes it difficult to utilize properly.

Death Stalker's unique debuff reduces the maximum HP of any Descendant caught in any of its attacks. This debuff stacks up to four times and lowers your maximum HP to half. For example, any Descendant with 20,000 max health will see their health go down to 10,000 HP.

Due to this, you are better off playing with Shield-stacking characters like Enzo, healers like Yujin, or an Ajax using Matrix Recomputation and specializing in Shields than the usual HP stacking. The recently buffed Overwhelming Shield mod is a strong choice for any build.

Death Stalker's weak points are distributed across its body, but most of them are in hard-to-hit areas. As such, aim for the boss's legs, which are much easier to track. The foe has one removable part on its back, but with Death Stalker moving around so much, you must dedicate all your damage to it. A successful mount and removal will reduce its rage and knock it down for a hefty free DPS window.

Death Stalker packs a mean punch (Image via Nexon)

As for weapons, anything with a high rate of fire and a large magazine is a good choice. Enduring Legacy is the strongest option, with something like Tamer as an alternative. As Death Stalker is weak to electric damage type, weapons should be modded accordingly with Electric Enhancement and Electric Priority mods.

Also Read: The First Descendant tier list: Best characters to play

The First Descendant's Death Stalker boss fight mechanics, explained

Normal mechanics

Death Stalker will attack you with its guns throughout the fight, inflicting high toxin damage but not the HP-reducing debuff. The boss will fire a bunch of poisoned skulls that can track you down and inflict the debuff. These can be destroyed by gunfire or by Ajax's barrier.

Occasionally, the Death Stalker will unleash two expanding rings of toxin damage, similar to Pyromaniac's rings of fire attack. Aside from dealing moderate damage, these rings will inflict the HP-reducing debuff and should be avoided. A good trick is to either jump over these or use the elevation.

During its rage phases, Death Stalker will launch multiple green rings, similar to the previous attack. You are unlikely to avoid all these, so it's best to jump over as many as possible and trust your team to help you.

Death Stalker will also launch a poison orbital strike on a random player during this phase. This orbital strike functions similarly to an attack used by the game's first major boss, Greg. Targeted players should dodge it in time to avoid the damage and take care not to roll into their teammates to avoid accidentally killing them.

Shoot the back plate, remove its core, get some damage in (Image via Nexon)

Party-wipe mechanics

Death Stalker has two primary Rage mode attacks that can wipe players out. Each of them can spawn in quick succession, so stay vigilant for audio and visual cues.

The first attack we'll discuss involves the statues of Death Stalker. After getting enraged, the colossus will spawn multiple statues around the arena, with one covering its face with its hands. Stack on this statue's capture radius and survive the onslaught of orbital strikes as well as the smaller poison circles. If you step into the capture radius of a wrong statue, you will take massive damage.

The other wipe mechanic is six clocks spread around the arena. These have a capture radius, which you must stand in and prevent from counting down. The boss is damageable during this phase, so don't get distracted and miss a clock, leading to a wipe.

Dealing with these two mechanics will safely allow teams to deal damage to the boss, leaving only the standard attacks and occasional ad spawns to look out for.

Tips for dealing with Death Stalker in The First Descendant

Stack Shields. Building Shields is much more efficient than getting your HP reduced to nothing.
Wipe mechanics are timed and can be hidden behind terrain. Pay attention to the boss's HP and rage meter to handle wipe mechanics. It's easy to get distracted and miss a clock, leading to an unfortunate wipe.
Death Stalker isn't as resistant to abilities as Gluttony. Capable teams with proper setups can use Bunny to deal good damage.
Hailey is great for boosting weapon DPS and can quickly burn through Death Stalker's HP, with proper team composition.
Ajax's Orbit Barrier and Hyper Cube can block a lot of Death Stalker's abilities. Using Matrix Recomputation will also help allies be more durable.

Check out our other guides on The First Descendant:

Edited by Adarsh J Kumar