The First Descendant premium currency is 20 times as expensive as Warframe's

Modified Jul 04, 2024 14:00 IST

Warframe vs The First Descendant — The First Descendant is a poor man's Warframe, but ironically Warframe is cheaper (Image via Nexon/Digital Extremes)

Like any free-to-play game of recent history, The First Descendant comes front-loaded with a premium currency, which is called Caliber in the game. Definitively, premium currencies like Caliber must be bought with real money. But The First Descendant developers might be charging a little too much for it. Specifically, 20 times as much as Warframe charges.

As a free-to-play looter shooter with MMO-lite elements, The First Descendant naturally cut into Warframe's very specific niche. Its peak player count overtook Warframe on the very day of release, but a lot of these players are somewhat cynical about the microtransaction practices in this new game.

The First Descendant's expensive premium currency is behind a majority of its negative user reviews

Nexon has wares if you have coin (Image via Nexon)

Currently, The First Descendant has mixed reviews on Steam. About half of over 20,000 reviews are not recommending the game at the time of writing. Among various technical setbacks, a lot of this negative press is from how predatory the microtransaction practices look.

The First Descendant theoretically lets you enjoy all of its content for free, and you can get to the current end-game just fine without ever paying a dime. Yet, as good as that sounds, free-to-play live-service games end up being the most expensive. That adage permeates throughout how this game is structured.

For example, you can make a one-time increment to a weapon's or Descendant's module capacity with 'Max Capacity UP,' which costs one Energy Activator.

Energy Activator can be 'researched' or crafted with materials you can farm in-game, but it is far easier for a new player to miss that. If they were to buy it with Caliber, the premium currency in The First Descendant, one Energy Activator would cost 1500 Caliber. That is roughly $30 in real money.

Ironically, The First Descendant's vertical progression system borrows a lot from Warframe, the long-standing MMO-lite juggernaut. Warframe also has a similar consumable called Orokin Reactor (Orokin Catalyst if it's a weapon) that you can use to double your mod capacity.

Orokin Reactor costs 20 Platinum in Warframe, which at the highest available price rounds down to less than $1.5. This makes it 20 times cheaper than Nexon's latest offering.

Also Read: 10 ways to get free Platinum in Warframe

The paint problem in The First Descendant

The '20-times more expensive' connection was originally made by Reddit user goompas. A more objective observer could argue that this analogy is nitpicky and a bit of a frame-up. You can, after all, just research the darn Energy Activator the hard way.

To counter that, we present the paint predicament in the release version of The First Descendant. Paint is not cheap to come by in this game. To color your shiny new cosmetic in some other hues, you would have to buy a unit of Paint. Some of the plainer Paint colors can be obtained without spending Caliber, as part of Compensation rewards or Twitch drops.

The problem is not just the limited range, but the limited quantity. Paint is a consumable in this title. Apply it once on your chosen gear piece, and it's gone. To make matters worse, there's no way to farm Caliber in the game yet, whereas Warframe lets you practically earn Platinum by trading with other players.

Check out our other guides on The First Descendant:

Edited by Srijan Sen