How to play guide for Descenders

This page serves as a basic how to play guide for Descenders.

Basic gameplay

When you select Ride from the main menu, you are presented with 4 options: Career Session, Career-Plus Session, Freeride, and Daily Challenge.

Career Session

Main article: Career

Career Session will allow you to pick your choice of starting location: Highlands, Forest, Canyon, or Peaks. The shortcuts to the last 3 zones have to be unlocked first.

Regardless of starting location, the player will always start with a Basic Setup level (a 4-4-4 Steepness-Curves-Stunts rating, except for the Volcano, where Stunts is replaced by Tectonics). The goal of each level is to bike to the finish line. After completing the level, the player will be presented with a world map of the current region, from which they can choose the next track/node that they would like to complete. All tracks are procedurally-generated by the game. A player can backtrack to a node previously completed, by moving to said node and then selecting it, in order to access other uncompleted nodes. To complete a region, the player should navigate through the nodes to the Boss Jump node, and then complete that node.

While the game generates the track, it also assesses the generated track and randomly picks a bonus objective that can be achieved on that track. Completing the bonus objective will yield 1 life.

There are always special nodes in each region: a Danger Zone, where the player can earn more rep but lose double the health from bails; a Medic Camp, where the player earns 1 life from completing the node; a Helmet Cam, where the player is forced into first-person view and cannot switch out of it until the track is done; a Team Node, where the player can pick a team for a node appropriate to the team picked; and a Fire Node, which offers a lot of challenge (an 8-8-8 level rating), and changes the Boss Jump node to a fire ring variant upon completion. Each region also has a special handcrafted node called a Bonus World.

In any region, the first 7 nodes will be in daylight conditions (unless modifiers change the weather). Following that, 2 nodes will be in dusk conditions, and the rest will be in nighttime conditions, with the bike's headlight continuing to lose battery power for 2 nodes until it dies on the third node since nightfall. Should nighttime fall, daylight will only return once the player moves to the next region.

The player should try to do as many tricks as possible in order to earn Rep. There are diminishing returns for repeating the same tricks over and over. The amount of Rep earned during a run will determine the type of item that a player may receive following the conclusion of a run (whether it be by getting rekt, retiring from a session, or completing the Peaks/Volcano boss jump); see here for a full list of items in this category.

Career-Plus Session

Main article: Career-Plus

Career-Plus functions similarly to Career in most aspects, but differs in a few:

• There are 4 new regions - Desert, Jungle, Favela, and Glaciers
• The mode requires the player to have earned 250,000 Reputation.

Like Career, shortcuts to the last 3 regions have to be unlocked first. Unlike Career, there are no bonus worlds and no secret fifth region.

Freeride

Freeride will allow the player to generate a level by specifying various parameters. From there, the game will generate a Seed, and then build a level on that seed. Freeride can also be used to replay existing seeds that the player may have previously saved.

The player can enter any seed from any region; however, to generate levels in-game from a specific region, the player will need to unlock the shortcut to that region first. The Volcano is the only exception; its seeds cannot be entered and levels cannot be generated in-game until the player has cleared the Volcano boss jump.

The player can add as many Crew Members as they want to the in-game generator; however, they can only add crew members that they have previously selected in Career, and only crew members with a yellow icon will be reflected in the seed.

Daily Challenge

Daily Challenge works the same way as Career Session, except that this may only be attempted once, with every player in the world getting the same session. A new session begins at 00:00 GMT daily.

Controls

These are the current bindings for Descenders. Only keyboard bindings are re-bindable.

Tips and tricks

• Try and get used to the control scheme instead of focusing on Rep gain. The more control you have over your bike, the more Rep you will typically gain anyway.
• Not all crew members are equally useful. Here is a chart by Gardalice, sorting the crew members into various tiers with explanations, and this rule of thumb can be followed for both rep-gain and regular play. This isn't a be-all and end-all guide, due to everyone's differing playstyles, but it is useful if you want to improve your modifier selection.

Crew Member	Tier	Explanation
Landing Impact	S (Priority for Survivability)	One of the most important crew members to have as it increases the amount of force your bike can take before bailing; combining with Pump Strength (or even just normal counter-pumping) allows you to survive jumps that you might normally bail from otherwise.
Fewer Obstacles	S	Less clutter, more chances to steer away from danger when going offroad. Don't you just hate all those rocks? Increases load time slightly, but that's a minor trade-off.
Speed Wobbles	S	This crew member enables you to go faster without being thrown off course due to the micro-adjustments from the terrain. Great for lining up boss jumps, off-road maps, and just going fast in general.
Prevent Modifiers	S	Where's The Path modifiers on Canyon and Peaks can be incredibly dangerous; this prevents them outright.
In Air Correction	A (Rep gain and maintaining speed)	Straightens your bike out faster, potentially saving you if your jump angle is awkward - especially if you do berm jumps.
Bunny Hop	A	Combine with Landing Impact to jump (and survive) massive leaps; combine with Spin Speed and Pump Strength for amazing stunts.
Spin Speed	A	Makes longer spin tricks like double backflip or 720 easier/faster to perform, yielding more Rep.
Tweak Speed	A	Not great on its own, but when combined with Spin Speed it becomes A-tier, as it allows for faster acceleration on spins. With enough speed, 1080s on regular jumps become possible.
Smoother Curves	A	Straightens the curves and makes it easier to go fast. Combines well with Speed Wobbles and Extra Steepness, and also stacks with Less Curves.
Less Curves	A	Generates less (scary) curves and decreases loading time. Stacks with Smoother Curves to make Kinetic Trails into straight tracks, allowing for insane speeds.
Pump Strength	S with Landing Impact, A otherwise	Increases counter-pumping's potency by a bit. When combined with Landing Impact, allows you to survive huge jumps with ease if counter-pumping is timed right. On its own, helps you to build up speed when you slow down too much, maintaining your multiplier.
Wider Path	B (Optional modifiers)	Makes berms and curves higher, and is good up to the Canyon. On Peaks, this does not stack well with high steepness and curves levels, as the level may have a curve on a steep downhill section which can be dangerous to safely navigate. However, it does stack well with Less Curves/Smoother Curves, if combined with Extra Steepness.
Extra Steepness	B	Good for going fast and racking up high speed points. However, this does not stack well with Wider Path on Peaks. With Smoother Curves/Less Curves, this can result in insanely fast levels if the level has a Curves rating of 3-4.
Off-Road Friction	C (Technical)	Good for maintaining speed when off-road, but can be tricky to utilise. Great for speedruns where you just ignore the track and cycle as the crow flies. Stacks well with Extra Steepness, but is only really useful in Highlands and Forest, as going off-road on Canyon and Peaks is often a death sentence.
Fakie Balance	C	For inexperienced players, this is useful to save yourself when you accidentally find yourself biking backwards and need to jump + 180 to save yourself. For experienced players who are used to the default fakie controls, this helps them rack up big points easier. In terms of survivability though, this isn't that useful in the long run, as riding Canyon and Peaks backwards can prove to be fast and curvy.
Wheelie Balance	C	Increases the threshold for tipping over, meaning that you can stoppie non-stop while descending the Peaks. Wheelies themselves aren't great, but can still help you maintain your multiplier.
More Team Nodes	D (Daily)	This crew member only comes into effect next world, so ideally it is best acquired when you are in the Highlands. Can help with daily challenges requiring max steepness tracks, minibosses, or rival sponsor nodes. Stacks well with Scout Nodes, making them easier to find.
Scout Nodes	D	Only good for finding bonus nodes easier, whether to beat them (Medic Camp, Team Node, Fire Node) or avoid certain ones (Helmet Cam). Stacks well with More Team Nodes.
Extra Stunts	D	Good for areas like Highlands where you can potentially generate extra minibosses, with the Castle giving you up to 3 miniboss clears (King of the Castle, To the Window, To the Wall). Bad for Forest and Peaks, especially if you are not used to the "bogey" stunts (rocks and logs in Forest, Enemy pits on Peaks).
Heavy Bail Threshold	Garbage	Raises the threshold for losing 2 lives and more from a bail, from 50 km/h to 60+ km/h. Your goal ideally is not to bail, and even if you do, you'll generally be going at speeds faster than 60 km/h in the Canyon and Peaks anyway. While more useful for newbies due to their relative inexperience, remember that this takes away one crew member slot that could be used to improve your rep gain.
More Checkpoints	Garbage	Your goal isn't to bail, so you should not really need these.
Show Compass	Garbage	Following the path ensures you won't get lost. If you get lost in Forest however, just ride the track downhill; the finish gate will be not too far off from where you end up.

See also

• Release date
• System requirements