After just one hour, Nexon changes promise to not nerf a The First Descendant gold farm

Nexon appears to have walked back a promise to not nerf a popular The First Descendant gold farm loot cave, an hour after telling players it did not wish to remove the grinding method. The free-to-play looter shooter is currently exploding on Steam, and while players were bound to find exploits in the cracks and abuse them, Nexon has just issued a statement saying it has “no plan to respond by simply nerfing certain content,” only to then seemingly do just that.

This new The First Descendant gold farm requires you to use Valby and go to the Defense Line: Vulgus Strategic Outpost, a Fortress in the middle of the map. As you water slide around the Fortress as Valby, mobs continue to spawn, dropping loads of gold, loot, and more as you go around in circles easily taking them out.

It’s simple, quick, and according to ‘Fervor Gaming’ in the video below, can net you around ten million gold after an hour of grinding in the free Steam game.

Since this TFD gold farm was discovered, Nexon has penned a lengthy statement on Discord talking about its decision to not outright nerf the loot cave. “To maintain our game, and to be adored by our players for a long time, we believe that it is wrong to just look on and leave the unbalanced content, which is providing biased rewards,” The First Descendant director Minseok Joo says.

“However, as the Valby run became popular very quickly within our community, we assume many players have researched Valby to enjoy the newly discovered content. The current issue has occurred clearly by our own mistake, but we do not wish to suddenly remove it. Because it has already become a solid content of TFD.

“So, we would like to inform you that we’re preparing a patch without completely blocking The Fortress Outpost issue and to keep allowing the players to enjoy playing like before. However, at the same time, we will update other farming locations to match the efficiency, equivalent to The Fortress Outpost.”

So Nexon is working on The First Descendant hotfix 1.0.4 to reduce Vulgus Strategic Outpost’s cooldown time, and rebalance the Void fragments. That said, an hour after Nexon’s initial statement a clarification has been shared, suggesting that other loot locations will not be brought in line with this Valby farm.

“We are preparing 1.0.4 patch to make [the] farming efficiency of Fortress Outpost similar to that of other popular farming sites,” Nexon writes, clarifying the previous statement about farming locations.

It’s a slight change in language but with massive implications. Nexon’s first statement says other farms will be brought up to match the Fortress Outpost, but this update says the opposite. It suggests that Fortress Outpost’s loot cave capabilities will be reduced instead, merely an hour after the original post. Nexon does add that it is planning to diversify the gold efficiency within Special Operations in patch 1.0.4 though, which should net you more of the currency at least.

Either way, this The First Descendant gold farm still exists, but it looks as though it will be massively nerfed with hotfix 1.0.4. I’ve reached out to Nexon to clarify its plans for the Valby farm, and will provide an update if I get one. At least the most popular The First Descendant build won’t be nerfed.

We’ve also got all The First Descendant codes you need to get free rewards, alongside breakdowns for all The First Descendant characters to help you pick who to play next.

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