How to beat Pyromaniac in The First Descendant: Best combos, rewards, more

Out of all the boss fights in The First Descendant, beating Pyromaniac is one of the most challenging tasks. A Colossus with a flaming body, it’s a Level 66 Void Intercept Battle that you unlock after completing Karel’s Trap Quest.

Its Attack Attribute is Fire, making it weak against the polar opposite Attribute, Chill — meaning you’ll need Viessa in your team out of all the Descendants to stand a chance of beating this boss. Although she belongs to the B-tier in our character tier list, she’s the ideal choice in this situation.

With that said, apply our strategy below with the right characters and weapons to easily beat Pyromaniac in battle.

Best Descendant combos

A team of Viessa, Freyna, Gley, and Ajax makes a lethal combination against Pyromaniac. Considering this boss has the Fire attack attribute, Viessa is the first choice against it.

• Its Attribute Resistance against Chill is very weak. This will allow her to freeze and slow down the boss and can also unleash Cold Snap-like attacks at will.
• Pyromaniac’s Attribute Resistance against Toxic is Normal. This makes Freyna the second-best Descendant in beating this boss, as she can deal passive damage in great numbers.

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Have a teammate who’ll play as Gley since her Frenzied state is very powerful — which significantly buffs her damage output. But make sure Gley utilizes her Grapplehook wisely, as her Frenzied state slows down health regeneration, so playing from a distance or from a high ground would be ideal.

You can keep an Ajax in the team as his Orbit Barrier can block incoming damage. You can even replace Ajax with Jayber for his healing abilities. An opportunity for HP regeneration can be crucial especially when going head-to-head against a strong boss like Pyromaniac.

Things you’ll need

Before attempting to defeat Pyromaniac, make sure you have completed the following steps:

• Your Descendant needs to be Level 40
• Level 65 weapons
• Maxed out Modules and Reactors for the Descendants and weapons at their levels

Best weapons & modules

With those steps completed, there are some clear choices for the weapons and modules you’ll want to use when heading in to fight it:

• Primary Weapon: Thunder Cage
• Secondary Weapon: Nazeistra’s Devotion
• Modules: Chill Enhancement

The Thunder Cage SMG has a high fire rate which will help you deal more damage in less time. This is essential for damaging its Leg Parts, Face Sensors, and Core Cover. On top of that, the SMG uses General ammo which will be available via drops on the ground, meaning restocking ammo won’t be a problem.

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Nazeistra’s Devotion Hand Cannon as a secondary weapon would be ideal because breaking the Fire Amplifier on its back will require precision. A pistol will provide you that instead of a Sniper or Scout Rifle as you’d need to zoom in to shoot those weapons.

For your Modules, keeping Chill Enhancement will add Chill ATK equal to 8% of Firearm ATK.

How to beat Pyromaniac

Phase 1

After beginning the boss fight, start dealing damage to its Core Cover and Face Sensors. You’ll see Pyromaniac’s shoulders start glowing blue — that’s your cue to shoot it continuously. Since those are removable parts, Viessa should freeze him. This will give Gley enough space and time to jump on it and remove the glowing blue part off its shoulders.

Pyromaniac will try to deal burn damage during that time, so make sure you are behind covers or using the Grapplehook to evade those incoming attacks. Ideally, the Gley should focus on the shoulders while others must continue damaging the Face Sensors and Leg Parts.

Four HummingBirds will be right behind healing it, so get rid of them immediately.

In the middle of the fight, you’ll often see Pyromaniac jumping off to a great height and your screen will turn white. When it restores, there’ll be circles with chains of fire on the ground. You have to avoid them at any cost as they inflict great damage. This is where the 2,100 Recommended Fire Resistance helps.

Phase 2

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When Pyromaniac starts becoming immune to attacks, it means the pink bar below its health bar is full. It will become Frenzied and will activate the Fire Amplifier on its back. The entire team should focus on firing it continuously while also evading its fire attacks.

It’s easy to get carried away in between such intense fights – but the key to survival is grabbing the health orbs from the ground for time-to-time HP top-ups.

Don’t forget the surrounding HummingBirds and KingFishers. They can be very annoying and must be destroyed. During the entire time, Viessa and Freyna must continue dealing Ice and Toxic attacks to slow it down and passive health loss.

Now it’s just a case of rinsing and repeating the entire process until it’s defeated. While that may seem tedious, with proper execution and patience, Pyromaniac will be down in no time.

Pyromaniac stats

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Characteristics

Destructible Parts

• Balancer
• Core Cover
• Face Sensor
• Leg parts
• Fire Amplifier (when Frenzied)

Removable Parts

• Core
• Shoulder

Rewards

Completing the Pyromaniac Void Intercept Battle will give you several Level 66 rewards:

• Toxic Phase Reactor
• Materialized Mechanics Reactor
• Shield Enhancement Auxiliary Power
• Rare weapons
• Rare Reactors

When you use the Reconstructed Device, you may either choose Amorphous Material Pattern 36 or 37 to get essential items like Valby Code, Executor Blueprint, and more.

Now that you know everything there is about beating Pyromaniac in The First Descendant, make sure you’re ranking up your Mastery Levels regularly to become stronger. If you’re still in the early stages of the game, check out our Follow Their Traces quest guide, how you can fast travel, or what you’ll need to do to unlock Gley and Jayber.