Season 4 of The First Descendant, subtitled The Great Clash, is the update that finally puts Karel on the other end of your gun. Nexon has been building toward this fight since the Iron Heart storyline began, and the payoff is a full-scale assault on Albion plus a new dungeon format built around it.
Quick answer: The Great Clash (Season 4 Episode 1) is dated August 20, 2026 on Steam, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. No public rollout time has been confirmed, and Ultimate Hailey is not part of this drop — she follows on September 17.
Season 4 release date and what follows it
August 20 is the single biggest date on the second-half schedule, but it is not a one-and-done drop. Season 4 is split into Episodes, and the season’s headline fight is followed by a ranked event difficulty a couple of weeks later. Here is how the rest of the year is laid out.
| Date | What arrives |
|---|---|
| August 20, 2026 | The Great Clash story, Karel’s mothership Mega Dungeon, Raven, 11 Transcendent weapons, Trials mode |
| About two weeks after launch | Conquest, a time-limited high difficulty with a ranking run event and first-clear rewards |
| September 17, 2026 | Ultimate Hailey and her story, Cradle of Evolution dungeon, Lounge storage and Transcendent weapon trading |
| October 15, 2026 | Another Transcendent weapon, extra Trials levels, Special Operations rework, Freyna balance pass |
| November 2026 | New Descendant Monet, Henosis Sanctuary dungeon, Inversion Reinforcement rework |
| December 2026 | Colosseum-A asymmetric PvEvP mode, Ultimate Jayber, Transcendent melee weapons |
Mega Dungeon entry requirement and Merit rewards
The Mega Dungeon is Karel’s mothership, parked over Albion, and it is larger than anything currently in the game, with interactive environments and several bosses stacked into one run. Karel himself closes it out in a heavily cinematic encounter. To get in the door, you need the main story cleared through Season 3 — there is no shortcut around that gate, so check your quest log before update day.
Clearing the dungeon pays out a new currency called Merit as a weekly reward. Reyna takes it in exchange for EXP bonuses, Transcendent Modules, and Transcendent Trait Element, the material used to readjust Transcendent weapons. The weekly cap matters here, because Merit is also farmable elsewhere without one.
Note: beating Karel does not wrap the story. Season 4 continues into further Episodes, so treat the mothership as a climax rather than an ending.
Trials: the new roguelite mode and how to unlock it
Trials opens as soon as you unlock Hard mode, which makes it the most accessible piece of the update. It runs seven zones of escalating difficulty, and after each round you choose a Variable Code — a modifier that stays active for the rest of the run. There are 20 of them, and the combinations swing runs hard in either direction.
Cracked Fissure events can also appear mid-run for extra loot and materials. More importantly, Trials is the main farming ground for both Transcendent weapons and Merit, and it carries no weekly cap. If you have just crossed into Hard difficulty, the rotational builds option hands you a pre-set loadout with proper mods on the Descendant and weapons, minus Transcendent modules.
Transcendent weapons, the Quality stat, and the pity system
Eleven Transcendent weapons launch with the season, and unlike modules you can run three at once across your weapon slots. They start dropping at Normal difficulty, so new players are not locked out until endgame. The catch is Quality, a stat that decides how strong the weapon’s Transcendent ability actually is.
| System | How it works |
|---|---|
| Equip limit | Up to three Transcendent weapons at the same time, one per weapon slot |
| Drop sources | Effectively all content, starting from Normal difficulty; also obtainable by exchanging Transcendent Trait Element |
| Quality range | Low difficulty drops low Quality; the 400 maximum is rare and comes from endgame content such as Axion Infiltration and Hard mode Void Vessel |
| What Quality does | Scales the weapon’s Transcendent ability; at 400 Quality, 150 points are randomly spread across three factors, pushing it toward AoE or single-target |
| Pity | Quality climbs each time you pick up a Transcendent weapon, ending in a guaranteed max-Quality drop |
| Sub-Abilities | Every weapon rolls with 1–2 fixed and 2 random Sub-Abilities |
| Re-rolling | The Transcendent Wave Modulator re-rolls Sub-Abilities and the 150-point spread |
Even a low-Quality roll is a noticeable jump on Normal difficulty, so there is no reason to sit on one waiting for a better version.
Raven abilities and how her Umbra resource works
Raven is the season’s new Descendant, a former back-alley guild boss from Albion built for close-range damage. She gets bonuses while holding a shotgun and stacks two debuffs: Trace, which increases the damage enemies take, and Bleed, a damage-over-time effect that scales off her shields. Several of her skills conjure their own shotgun, and those hit harder the closer you stand.
| Skill | Effect |
|---|---|
| Queen of Darkness (Passive) | Raises shotgun ATK and fire rate and adds damage on skill hits; only active with a shotgun equipped |
| Shadow Shot | Unlocks after five shotgun shots and applies Trace, making hit enemies take extra damage |
| Raven Feather | Sends a raven that creates a Blade Feather AoE; reuse the skill to teleport to it and pull nearby enemies in |
| Shadow Step | Dashes and applies Trace, then grants Veil of Night, negating the next seven instances of incoming damage and boosting Multi-Hit stats |
| Vendetta | Unleashes a shotgun barrage that scales with proximity; follow-up shots spend Umbra for extra damage |
She has no MP pool. Her first two skills are conditional and generate Umbra, which then fuels her third and fourth. Two new trigger mods also arrive with the update, and one of them, Perfect Positioning, pairs neatly with her by adding shields and ability power.
Fellow rank 40 and quality-of-life changes
Fellows now rank up to 40, which meaningfully improves their bonus stats. MP and ammo recovery cooldowns drop, so you spend less of a long boss fight sitting empty. Their upgrade materials also start dropping from Infiltration Missions instead of being tied to Void Vessel runs, where most players skip containers anyway.
The rest of the maintenance list covers a mix of combat feel and grind reduction:
- Improved debuff structure
- Easier Ultimate Weapon farming
- Adjusted monster gunfire and Normal difficulty Elite effects
- Increased EXP from Hard difficulty Field Missions
- Weapon Proficiency now also builds on your off-hand weapon, speeding up leveling and Mastery Rank farming
- DBNO improvements and a fix for Gley’s “Blood and Iron” gamepad controls
- Motion sound effect improvements
If you want to be ready the moment servers come back up, the two things worth doing in advance are finishing the story through Season 3 and confirming Hard mode is unlocked. Those are the only hard gates on the update’s headline content — Transcendent weapons will start dropping wherever you happen to be farming.
