Best Afterglow Sword Build for Season 3 – The First Descendant

by JFFK · September 29, 2025

Welcome to The First Descendant Afterglow Sword Build. This Afterglow Sword Build is updated for Season 3. The Afterglow Sword was made to commemorate Neil Neldor, the legendary sniper nicknamed the Nightmare Reaper. A specialized sniper rifle that uses particularly lethal bullets.

Table of Contents:

You can also view our All Ultimate Weapons in The First Descendant list.

Afterglow Sword Summary

The Afterglow Sword is an Ultimate Sniper Rifle. It was made to commemorate Neil Neldor, the legendary sniper nicknamed the Nightmare Reaper. A specialized sniper rifle that uses particularly lethal bullets.

Name: Afterglow Sword
Type: Sniper Rifle
Bullets: High-Power Rounds
Tier: Ultimate
Unique Ability: Nightmare Reaper

Unique Ability “Nightmare Reaper”

On hitting a Weak Point, inflicts the unique effect, Death Propagation. On hitting an enemy Commander or Colossus, increases Firearm Critical Hit Rate and applies the effect to the attack.

Base Weapon Stat Info

The First Descendant Afterglow Sword Stats

Afterglow Sword Build for The First Descendant

This is a Single-Target DPS setup.

Next, let us take a look at an optimized Afterglow Sword Build for The First Descendant. The Afterglow Sword is best optimized to deal as much damage as possible with a single shot.

Here is all the info you need to create a powerful Afterglow Sword Build:

Note: High-Level Weapon Cores boost your weapons’ damage numbers into insanity. Make sure to get weapon cores as soon as possible!

Afterglow Sword Modules

Modules are an important part of every weapon build in The First Descendant. For the Afterglow Sword sniper rifle, Crit and Weak Point mods.

Elemental Damage: Adjust the elemental modules depending on what enemies you fight (Enemy elemental weakness).

Afterglow Sword Module Configuration Table
Module Slot	Module Name
1	Rifling Reinforcement
2	Action and Reaction
3	Fire Rate UP
4	Better Insight
5	Better Concentration
6	Commando Marksmanship
7	Weak Point Sight
8	Reload Focus
9	Fire Enhancement
10	Real-Life Fighter

Weapon Readjustment

You can use the Weapon Readjustment at the Weapon Workbench in Albion. Here are the best Weapon Readjustments for the Afterglow Sword:

Firearm ATK
Firearm Critical Hit Rate
Weak Point Damage
Firearm Critical Hit Damage

Try to upgrade the Weapon Readjustments to at least purple quality.

Weapon Cores

Weapon Cores juice up your damage quite tremendously. However, especially the later-level Weapon Cores are difficult to get. So start with whatever weapon cores you have available. Weapon Cores drop in the Void Erosion Purge endgame activity.

Higher level Weapon Cores drop in the higher level Void Erosion Purge levels in The First Descendant. However, you can gradually work towards the highest level. I recommend trying to get to level six as soon as possible, since it won’t require clearing many stages and will already increase the power of your weapon tremendously.

Best Weapon Cores for the Afterglow Sword:

Firearm Critical Hit Rate (Free Augmentation)
Firearm Critical Hit Damage (Hit Augmentation)
Weapon Change Speed (Precision Augmentation)
Aimed Shot Accuracy(Precision Augmentation)
Flex (Special Augmentation)

Afterglow Sword Sniper Rifle Lore

Even among the Descendants, there existed especially gifted snipers. However, there was a lack of research on specialized weapons for these talented snipers. Only recently was a new weapon announced that contained many of the current technologies.

The new weapon was the “Afterglow Sword.” It was named to commemorate Neil Neldor, the legendary sniper nicknamed the Nightmare Reaper. It boasts high accuracy and lethality, making it the perfect weapon to strike fear into the enemy’s heart.

This weapon uses the new .377 Afterglow Rounds, a bullet that penetrates enemies with razor-sharp precision and burrows into the body to inflict mortal wounds. It was clearly made to celebrate a Reaper.