Gley in The First Descendant: The First Descendant Best Gley build: Skills, Modules, and Loadout

With a high-investment Gley build, bossing in The First Descendant becomes a walk in the park. This blood-mage class has a somewhat risky playstyle on the outset. However, once you get the hang of it, Gley can be good at almost all stages and encounters the game throws at you - from mobbing to Void Intercept battles.

In this handy Gley build guide for The First Descendant, we will go over her entire skillset, and what loadout can best utilize it.

How to craft Gley in The First Descendant

Gley is not easy to farm (Image via NEXON)

In order to craft Gley in The First Descendant, you need her Code as well as three components alongside their prerequisite materials:

1x Gley Enhanced Cells

246x Monad Shard
430x Silicon
38x Cooling Metallic Foil
1x Gley Enhanced Cell Blueprint
200k Gold

1x Gley Stabilizer

519x Metal Accelerant
292x Felctorite
60x Complex Carbon Activator
1x Gley Stabilizer Blueprint
200k Gold

1x Gley Spiral Catalyst

363x Nanopolymers
408x Ceramic Composite
99x Synthesized Artificial Viometal
1x Gley Spiral Catalyst Blueprint
200k Gold

1x Gley Code: Obtained from Amorphous Material 002 (drops from Magister Lab, Kingston). Here's a more Detailed guide on how to get Gley in The First Descendant.

All Gley skills in The First Descendant, explained

Gley character overview and skills (Image via NEXON)

Gley's skills in The First Descendant do various things depending on whether Frenzied mode is active. Frenzied, the first skill (Q), lets you switch Gley between her standard and Frenzied modes.

In Frenzied mode, you'll lose health gradually but can replenish it by defeating foes and collecting their Life Spheres, enabling prolonged Frenzy periods. You can exit Frenzy at will by reactivating the skill, which has a minimal one-second cooldown.

Gley Skills simplified

Skill	Type	Description
Frenzied	Non-Attribute, Singular	Frenzied mode increases Firearm ATK and Armor Penetration, but halves your Health Recovery from red orbs
Life Siphon	Non-Attribute, Dimension	Frenzied: Sipohn health from enemies around you, dealing damage proportionate to initial missing health. Non-frenzied: Gain Vigor, i.e. damage reduction based on number of enemies around you.
Increased Sensory	Non-Attribute, Singular	Frenzied: Maximize Lethality, which slows movement speed but lets you shoot firearms without consuming ammo. Non-frenzied: Maximize Recovery, which increases Health Recovery.
Massacre	Non-Attribute, Dimension	Equips Massacre, Gley's signature weapon. In Frenzied mode, this deals higher damage based on amount of missing health. In Non-frenzied mode, shots stun enemies.

Massacre's base damage matches your standard weapon. However, it can double in power when Frenzied and at half Health. This skill epitomizes Gley's risk-reward playstyle. Fighting while heavily damaged can yield significant damage bonuses with Massacre. Remember, using Massacre requires at least three Power of Life.

Thirst (Passive)

Thirst is the passive that binds the whole kit together. Gley cannot utilize Shield or MP. Eliminated enemies may drop Life Spheres. Collecting a Life Sphere restores Health and adds the Power of Life.

Thirst Passive Overview:

Gley is incapable of using Shield or MP.
Instead, when Non-Frenzied, incoming damage is reduced.
Enemies may drop Life Spheres when killed by Gley.
Acquiring a Life Sphere restores a portion of Max Health and grants Power of Life.

Best Module setup for Gley

Gley is meant to be a glass-cannon going by her kit design. In practice, Gley has plenty of innate ways to boost her Skill Power, and you'll be better off giving her quality of life. For our Gley build, we are going to pump HP, Skill Cooldown reduction, and Skill Duration to get a comfortable loop.

The First Descendant endgame Gley build (Image via Nexon)

This gives you near-permanent uptime on Increase Sensory, so you can fire away with your launcher weapon. The following is the ideal mod setup for bossing with Gley in The First Descendant:

Module Type	Module Name	Description
Skill Module	Massive Sanguification	Allows absorption of Life Spheres in Non-Frenzied state
Sub-attack	Shock Punch/Mid-Air Maneuvering	Melee attack/ability to latch on to air through grappling hook
Battle	Focus on Non-Attribute	Non-Attribute Skill Power, Skill CDR
Attack	Focus on Dimension	Dimension Skill Power, Skill CDR
HP	Battle of Stamina	Max HP, Skill Duration
Arche Tech	Walk a Tightrope/Dangerous Ambush	Extra Firearm ATK and Skill Power Modifier when under 50% HP/ Extra Skill Power against stunned enemies, and/or if enemy is not targetting you
Defense	Spear and Shield	DEF, Skill Power
Control	MP Conversion	Reduces Max MP and Skill Cooldown
Normal	Skill Extension	Skill Duration
Normal	Nimble Fingers	Skill Cooldown Reduction
Normal	Increased HP	Max HP
Cooldown	An Outstanding Investment	Skill Duration, HP Heal rate increment

If you want to use a different weapon instead of Massacre itself, you can consider getting even more Increased Sensory uptime with additional duration. The Maximize Duration and Shot Focus combo, for example, can give you a lot of additional duration as well some Firearm ATK.

If you are indeed using Massacre, you may need to use a stat stick build. Essentially, Massacre takes on the stats of your currently equipped weapon. For this, you can use either a weak point damage weapon such as Python, or a crit-focused weapon like Eternal Willpower.

Gley levelling build

Our end-game Gley build requires quite a few Crystallization Catalysts as well as an Energy Activator to fit everything in. You won't have all that capacity if you just got Gley and are levelling her for the first time. In this case, here's the order of priority for (high-rank if not maxed out) modules you should consider:

Sub-Attack Module (use any of them, I would recommend a Grappling Hook mod personally)
Increased HP
Increased DEF
Nimble Fingers or Multitalented for Skill CDR
Skill Expansion for additional range, which enables mobbing
Skill Extension or Battle of Stamina for skill duration

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

All Gley Skill Modules in The First Descendant

Like all Descendants, Gley has four Transcendant Skill Modules that alter how certain skills work. Here's what each of them does:

Blood and Iron: Life Orbs can no longer be acquired with the Thirst effect. Instead, Power of Life can be obtained when attacks land Firearm or Skill Critical Hits.
Massive Sanguification: Modifies Life Siphon to allow the absorption of Life Orbs during Non-Frenzied state.
Predator Instinct: Modifies Firearm ATK to increase when firing a Firearm during Frenzied state.
Supersense: Modifies the effects of Frenzied state's Maximize lethality during Increased Sensory. Fire Rate becomes fixed, but Weak Point ATK and Duration both increase.

Best The First Descendant weapon loadout for Gley

Those who have played The First Descendant will know that Vestigial Organ is the community-acknowledged best weapon for Gley. While this iconic combo lets Gley become a mobbing powerhouse, there are also other options to consider. Here's what I personally use as the default loadout for Gley:

Vestigial Organ (Special Rounds): Vestigial Organ is the iconic Gley cannon for mobbing with Increased Sensory's infinite ammo trick
Eternal Willpower (General Rounds) for regular DPS on a priority target, and as a stat stick for Massacre. The weapon has excellent crit stats, so all you need to leverage is crit and fire rate mods.
Naziestra's Devotion (High-Impact Rounds): Generally used for shredding boss DEF, Naziestra's Devotion is also a great primary damage source if you use Supersense module.

Best Reactor to use on Gley build in The First Descendant

The best Reactor to use on Gley in The First Desendant is a Materialized Phase Reactor of purple/gold rarity. This will specifically boost the base Skill Power of Non-Attribute Dimension skills, which is exactly what you need. With this, you will have additional damage on Massacre, as well as better AoE clear with Life Siphon.

Look for Reactors that increase Non-Attribute and Dimension Skill Power (Image via Nexon)

If you're farming Hard Mode for better stat rolls, here's the best stats to look out for:

Skill Cooldown
Skill Duration
Additional Elemental Skill ATK
Additional Skill ATK on Colossi

Best External Components for Gley in The First Descendant

Gley has no MP or Shield shenanigans, so picking up the external components for her is easy: go for HP and DEF-increasing ones. Specifically, target the 20k DEF milestone, after which you should get HP-focusing External Components.

Best Skill Rotation for Gley in The First Descendant

Learn how to play Gley (Image via NEXON)

Gley's high-risk high-reward playstyle is not suited for The First Descendant beginners. However, the tight skill rotations can be made far more lenient.

The higher your defensive stats are through your mods and external components, the more leeway and flexibility you have. If you have over 20k DEF and 15k HP, you can use Frenzy willy-nilly without worrying about the downsides too much.

For the average Gley build, the skill rotation should be: Q > V (priority skill, maintain it as much as you can) > C when needed > Z if you need more single-target DPS.

Gley Skill rotation tips and tricks:

Activate Frenzied (Q) to get the offensive sub-abilities online.
Activate Increased Sensory (V). this is your bread-and-butter skill on Gley, and you will want to keep it up at all times.
Massacre is generally used as the bossing tool, but you can also do plenty with your weapons.
If you are going for a high-range mobbing build, you can also press Q > C to nuke enemies around you. On the other hand, when under a lot of fire, quickly revert to non-Frenized mode and get the Vigor (non-Frenized C) up.
Predator Instinct lets you practically ignore the Life Sphere shenanigans, and point and shoot without much worry in a non-bossing scenario.
In Void Intercept Battles, you should consider using Massive Sanguification (as our build suggests). With this, you can simply do the Q>C combo without Life Spheres, and instantly be able to pull out Massacre (Z) when the boss spawns.

That concludes our build guide for Gley in The First Descendant. In closing, we encourage you to make your own alterations based on the stat rolls of your loadout, as well as the kind of situation you find yourself in. For example, Predator Instinct is simply the superior choice of Skill Module if you want to use Gley as a weapon platform.

Check out our other guides on this game:

Edited by Ashmita Bhatt