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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, Agents are stripped of all their gear, specializations and perks when starting the game mode. 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 run’s final boss. 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.
TL;DR
- Your main character’s gear does not carry into Descent — you draft weapons, talents and perks from scratch inside each run.
- Rooms are color- and difficulty-coded; harder rooms give better loot but push you toward the boss fight with less power.
- A rising Nemesis meter forces a boss encounter that mirrors your own loadout back at you.
- Two currencies matter: an in-run currency spent at Supply Shops, and NSA Tech spent between runs on permanent meta upgrades.
- Deaths on a boss room typically wipe the run’s accrued progress, so a bad late pick can end the whole run.
Where to Start a Descent Run and How Access Works
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. Access Descent from the Mega Map, Castle Settlement Door, Matchmaking Station, and Helicopter Pilot to activate the simulation. You can run it alone or bring a squad, and the mode caps groups the same way most Division 2 activities do: you can play Descent either solo or in a group of up to 4 party members, 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.
Step-by-Step: Descent Run Walkthrough
Tip
Room colors telegraph the reward before you walk in. Rooms leaning red tend to hand out offensive talent picks, so if your run is starving for damage, steer toward them rather than defaulting to whatever’s fastest.
Follow this sequence to get it done fast.
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1
Queue in and accept your starting kit
you spawn with a basic weapon loadout and no specialization; if the opening pistol and rifle roll looks bad, exiting and re-queuing to reroll is a common early move.
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2
Read the room before you commit
each door shows its difficulty tier and the reward it offers, so you can weigh currency and Nemesis progress against risk before stepping through.
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3
Clear the room and take the talent draft
rooms with a heavier offensive color signature (triple-red doors, for example) hand you a choice of offensive talents on completion.
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4
Spend at the Supply Shop when you find one
some rooms contain a shop where in-run currency buys ammo refills and extra resources like armor kits and grenades.
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5
Push toward the loop's arena room
after clearing a floor's standard rooms you're funneled into a boss arena before you can advance to the next loop.
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6
Decide whether to bank or push past the Nemesis
once the heat meter maxes out you face the Nemesis fight; beating it banks a large reward, but pushing deeper without banking risks losing everything on a wipe.
Descent Run Structure: How Choices Compound
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 Into the Dark season guide for anyone still working on that side of the endgame.
Where Descent Runs Typically Collapse
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: if you fail to beat the boss encounter in a sequence, you’ll lose your accrued rewards and will need to restart, which is why pushing for “one more loop” without banking anything is the single riskiest habit in the mode.
Warning
A wipe on a loop’s boss room can erase the credits, talents and gear you built up that run. If you’re deep and unsure of the next fight, it’s often smarter to bank what you have than gamble it on another loop.
Best Descent Run Approaches Compared
| Approach | Speed to Nemesis | Effort/Risk | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy-room rush | Fast | High risk at the boss | Players who just want a quick Nemesis attempt |
| Balanced hard/medium mix | Moderate | Moderate | Most players learning the mode's drafting logic |
| Full hard-room clear | Slow | High effort, lower boss risk | Experienced players chasing NSA Tech and deep loops |
| Co-op squad run | Variable | Shared risk, needs coordination | Groups who can communicate on talent picks |
Descent Rewards: NSA Tech, the Vendor, and Exotic Caches
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 the Season 3 and Title Update 20 release, 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, a Descent-exclusive weapon. The Vindicator’s cost is confirmed at 350 NSA Credits from the Descent vendor, making it one of the more concrete, farmable exotic acquisitions in the game rather than a random drop. For readers chasing exotics broadly and wondering how Descent fits into that hunt, the exotic farming guide breaks down every other acquisition route.
Common Misconceptions About Descent
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.
Our Take: Is Descent Worth Playing?
Our Take
Descent is worth running for the drafting puzzle alone, but it’s not where you go to gear up your main character.
The mode’s real value is that it forces a different kind of skill than the rest of Division 2’s endgame. Solo Legendary Stronghold clears and exotic farming routes reward knowing your build cold before you walk in; Descent rewards reading a room, weighing a talent tradeoff, and adapting when the draft doesn’t go your way. That’s a genuinely different muscle, and it’s why players keep coming back to it even after they’ve built out their main loadout.
Where it gets grindy is the NSA Tech curve — meaningful meta upgrades and a reliable path to the Vindicator take repeated runs, and a single deep loop with a squad can run long by design, since the whole system is built around escalating risk the further you push. If you’re after guaranteed loot on a schedule, this isn’t that. If you want a mode that punishes lazy decision-making and pays out in exotics you can’t get anywhere else, it earns the time.