The First Descendant Trials: Protocol 001 vs 002 and How the Rotation Works

Trials is the endless mode The First Descendant added with Season 4 — an escalating survival run where enemy difficulty keeps climbing for as long as your squad holds. It’s the closest thing the game has to a roguelike: every run is different, and “how deep can you go” is the entire scoreboard.

Two dungeons, one rotation

• Protocol 001 is the original dungeon, tied to the Order of Truth.
• Protocol 002 arrived with the October 15, 2026 update and faces you against the Legion of Immortality.
• The available dungeon switches daily at 00:00 PDT. Check the map before you plan a session — the dungeon you want might not be the one that’s live.
• Entry requirements, Arche Activity thresholds and rewards are identical across both. The one real difference: best records are tallied separately per dungeon, so chasing records on both is a choice, not a side effect.

Rotation Builds: why this isn’t just veteran content

Nexon has been deliberate about Trials being an entry point rather than a wall:

• Rotation Builds hand you a complete prepared setup — including Trigger Modules — that changes on a schedule. If your personal build isn’t Trials-ready, you queue with something close to what the mode expects instead of getting deleted at wave ten.
• Matchmaking separates players by Arche Activity, so a freshly-geared Hard-mode player isn’t dropped into a lobby of maxed Transcendent weapons.
• That said, the deeper you push, the more your own build matters. Rotation Builds get you in the door; they don’t carry you to record depth.

The reward loop

Two things make repeated runs feel productive:

• Transcendent Weapons are the primary reward target. Trials is one of the main paths into the Transcendent Weapon Loot pool, which makes it a gear-farming activity first and a score chase second.
• Merit Tokens drop from runs and convert into rewards at the Merit Exchange. The scaling is random; the tokens aren’t. Even a mediocre run moves you forward on a predictable track — spend them deliberately rather than dumping them into the first thing you see.

How to actually play it

• Sustain beats burst. Endless scaling punishes all-in, no-sustain builds. Bring a comp that can keep fighting at wave thirty, not one that nukes wave ten.
• Treat failures as income. A run that ends early still paid tokens and loot. The mode is designed so a bad run isn’t wasted time.
• Check the daily rotation, then commit. You get one dungeon per day — plan your session around what’s live instead of hoping.
• Know which record you’re chasing. Separate tallies per Protocol means split focus halves your progress on either.

For the modules that power both Rotation Builds and personal setups, see the Trigger Modules guide. For the wider gear picture, read the Transcendent weapon farm guide and the Ancestors Modules guide.