Guía de Descent en Division 2: cómo funciona de verdad el modo roguelike

Descent is a rogue-lite PvE mode where you build a character from nothing, inside the run, instead of bringing your main agent’s gear. The moment you queue in, you lose your gear, specialization and perks for the run. You start a run with a basic weapon loadout and fight through a sequence of rooms, drafting weapons, skills and talents as you go, until you’re strong enough to face the Nemesis. Beating the Nemesis doesn’t have to end the run: Ubisoft says you can continue afterwards and see how far you get, for leaderboard rewards. It sits apart from the rest of the endgame on purpose: no SHD build, no optimized gear set, no crafted mods carry over. Warlords of New York ownership is not required to access the mode, and it’s free to everyone who owns the base game.

Status on 11 October 2026: Ubisoft launched Descent with Year 5 on 9 June 2023, free for all Division 2 players, solo or co-op (Ubisoft News). Neither the Red Horizon season post (26 August 2026) nor TU Y8S3.1 (23 September 2026) lists a change to the mode. What did change is one of its rewards: the Vindicator now has a second source, covered under rewards below.

Not covered here, because Ubisoft hasn’t published it and we haven’t verified it: a talent tier list, how the room and talent pools rotate, and NSA Tech amounts per milestone.

You queue into Descent the same way you queue into most other Division 2 activities, through the mode’s entry point on the map rather than by traveling to a mission door in the open world. Ubisoft lists four entry points: the Mega Map, the Castle settlement door, the Matchmaking Station and the Helicopter Pilot (Broken Wings notes). You can run it alone or bring a squad, and Ubisoft describes it as a 1-to-4 player mode, and you must sort your group before you get into the Descent because once you enter, no one can join your party anymore. Once inside, everything you carried on your main agent is gone — you’re working purely with what the run hands you, which is the entire point of the mode and the reason build guides for the main game, like this solo Legendary Stronghold build guide, don’t translate here at all.

The core tension is that easy rooms give you a higher percentage of progress toward the Nemesis than medium and hard rooms do, so some players fill the progress bar fast by only completing easy rooms — but that means reaching the final boss with weaker equipment, making the Nemesis fight much harder. Harder rooms slow your climb toward the boss but hand you better talents, more resources and a stronger loadout when you finally get there. Every choice you make early — which weapon type you commit to, which special item you carry, whether you chase an offensive or defensive talent line — locks in the shape of the run, because you can’t undo a draft pick once it’s taken. That’s what makes Descent read as a drafting exercise more than a shooting exercise: the run rewards people who can evaluate a tradeoff under pressure, not people who already know the “right” build from playing the main game’s meta.

The mode also lets you do something the base game never allows: mix and match talents from different weapons, which is something you can’t do in the regular game, allowing for inventive builds and strategies. Early in a run, prioritize whatever keeps you alive and lets you clear rooms without burning resources — defensive talents and shield sustain matter more than raw damage when your kit is thin. Once you’ve got a stable base and a few loops behind you, that’s when it’s worth chasing the bigger offensive or crit-focused perks, since a fragile glass-cannon draft from loop one just gets you killed before the Nemesis meter even fills. This is a completely separate skill from optimizing your main-character loadout, which is covered in the PvE Dark Zone guide for anyone still working on that side of the endgame.

Most runs don’t die to a random enemy — they die to the Nemesis, and that’s by design. As you clear encounters the Nemesis percentage fills up, with harder rooms typically causing a slightly smaller increase as compensation for their tougher challenge, and when that maxes out you have to face the Nemesis, a powerful AI that directly copies your own character’s loadout. If your draft leaned too far into one archetype without any sustain or crowd control, the Nemesis fight exposes that instantly, because it’s fighting you with your own strengths and weaknesses. The other common collapse point is a boss room wipe late in a loop. Players report that failing a boss encounter ends the run, so the weapons, talents and in-run credits you drafted are gone; Ubisoft describes the mode as an infinite difficulty curve, which is why pushing for “one more loop” on a thin kit is the riskiest habit in the mode.

In-run currency and the Supply Shop

The Supply Shop offers useful perks that can be purchased using Descent credits earned during the activity, including purchasing additional resources such as armor kits and grenades, and ammo refills for your weapons. This currency dies with the run — it exists purely to keep you alive and stocked while you’re inside, not as a between-run reward.

NSA Tech and permanent meta upgrades

In-run currency can be used to replenish ammo and resources or upgrade things such as your grenade and armour kit capacity, and a second currency called NSA Tech can be used between runs to incrementally upgrade your character’s starting kit and the number of talent choices you get offered while going through Descent. This is the currency that actually compounds over time, since every run you complete makes future runs start a little stronger.

The NSA Station vendor and the Vindicator

The vendor tied to Descent has been expanded since launch: with Year 5 Season 3 and Title Update 20, there were some additions to the NSA Station, so players can now purchase various rewards from the vendor. The headline items are Reconstructed Caches, which contain unique blueprints for named items, and the Vindicator Exotic Rifle. Community guides put the Vindicator at 350 NSA Tech; the Ubisoft posts we checked don’t state the price (checked 11 October 2026). A fixed price makes it one of the more predictable exotics in the game, but Descent is no longer the only route: since Rise Up (Year 8 Season 1, 1 April 2026), Ubisoft says defeating Black Tusk Kill Squads in Retaliation gives a chance at blueprints for rare Exotics, Vindicator and Capacitor included (Rise Up). For readers chasing exotics broadly and wondering how Descent fits into that hunt, the exotic farming guide breaks down every other acquisition route.

Myth: your main-character gear or build carries in

It doesn’t, and that’s the entire premise of the mode. Every run strips your gear and specialization, so no amount of time spent gearing your actual agent — including work covered in the fast leveling and SHD farming guide — buys you a head start inside Descent. The only carryover is NSA Tech-funded meta upgrades to your starting kit.

Myth: rushing easy rooms is always the fast way to win

It’s the fast way to reach the Nemesis, not the fast way to beat it. As covered above, stacking only easy rooms fills the progress meter quickly but leaves you under-geared for a boss that mirrors your own loadout, which is exactly why so many fast runs die at the final fight.

Myth: Descent is a co-op-only or solo-only mode

Neither is true. The mode supports both, and plenty of players run it solo specifically because a mismatched squad can drag talent drafts in directions that don’t fit anyone’s build.

Sources and Confidence

Where each claim comes from, and how far to trust it.