Warframe In The Playground - The Grustrag 03

[Brother Oni]

I also completed afew sets but the trade chat is just filled with Rivens which is making it hard to sell them but it's not much of a problem.

I would highly recommend warframe.market to list your sets for sale, rather than trying to deal with trade chat.

If you must use trade chat, then use the filters to remove sell posts and rivens; off the top of my head, -WTS and -Riven will catch most of them and you can spot any common words in the remaining spam that makes it through and add them to the filter.


In other news, trying out Gauss and he's very entertaining, kind of like a more controllable but much less tanky Zephyr. I haven't taken him out to the open worlds yet - that's next on my list of things to do when I get over my Kingdom Come: Deliverance addiction.

[Wraith]

I like Gauss well enough. His '1' is lots of fun and his '3' is a pretty good "emergency button" for when you're getting mobbed and need to drop a bunch of guys suddenly - didn't really spec for his '2' and kept forgetting to use it, but it didn't seem to do me any harm.

I feel slightly underwhelmed by his '4' - Redline ability. I've triggered it a bunch of times, and I'm still not actually sure what it does apart from activate particle effects and change his armour. I know it must being doing something as I've read the description and the progress bar on the right counts up and down.... but it's far more passive than I expected. Unless you're spec'ing VERY heavily into ability power it hardly seems worth bothering with. *shrug*

[NEO|Phyte]

iirc, his 4 makes you faster and moving and shooting and all that fun stuff, and also lets you charge past the redline. When you're over the line, your movement emits zappy bits that hurt nearby enemies, and when the ability expires it releases a blast of energy based on how overcharged you got.

[Spacewolf]

So for Kurbow and Kavat breeding can you actually get a more powerful genetic code or is it only patterns etc that imprints effect? I've never really been sure about that.

[Squark]

So for Kurbow and Kavat breeding can you actually get a more powerful genetic code or is it only patterns etc that imprints effect? I've never really been sure about that.

The imprints are just for appearance and breed. You can't get a more powerful pet through breeding.

[Spacewolf]

So the final part of nightwave has begun and

Spoiler

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We get to fight some random guys while using a lamp, it really reminds me of another boss fight but I can't remember which game that was from.
Meanwhile Eris is apparently waking up and Arlo has disappear. Again it feels abit underwhelming.

[Leon]

the story felt underwhelming.

[Wraith]

At the start of this event, the devs stated their intention to make it easier for players to get to the end of the rewards track, as the first Nightwave took a lot of dedication.

I feel that they have gone a little too far the other way. I got to the end of this rewards track by the end of Chapter 3, so now that we've reached Chapter 5 I've not had any reason to play in... what, 6 weeks or something?

I really *like* Nightwave, it gives me stuff to do that I normally wouldn't. Now I've done even that though, and as I already have Vauban and all the alternate helmets from the old style of Alerts, there's only so much Nitain that I need to buy!

[Squark]

At the start of this event, the devs stated their intention to make it easier for players to get to the end of the rewards track, as the first Nightwave took a lot of dedication.

I feel that they have gone a little too far the other way. I got to the end of this rewards track by the end of Chapter 3, so now that we've reached Chapter 5 I've not had any reason to play in... what, 6 weeks or something?

I really *like* Nightwave, it gives me stuff to do that I normally wouldn't. Now I've done even that though, and as I already have Vauban and all the alternate helmets from the old style of Alerts, there's only so much Nitain that I need to buy!

Yeah. I hit rank... 52? And there's still 2 weeks left. I mean, I can use the kuva from the credits, but it's a bit of a slog witbout variety to the rewards.

[Spacewolf]

I've just been using it to get Catalysts and Reactors.
I'd agree it's underwhelming but sounds like it might be building to something with Eris.

[thatSeniorGuy]

So, the floodgates have opened and The Old Blood has dropped. I haven't tried it yet, but I've got to say ... the Kuva Lich system doesn't look too enticing. As far as I can see,

Spoiler: Kuva Lich stuff

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to vanquish/recruit the lich, you need to:

1. Kill the Lich's thralls to learn which Reqium mods you need. From what I've seen, the process looks to be painfully, painfully slow. Oh, and you don't know which order the mods need to be in, you just learn which three you need.
2. Do Kuva floods and siphons to get the Reqium relics necessary for the mods. Kuva floods are supposed to give them all the time (they don't at the moment), and you only get one of them every hour or so. Kuva siphons only have a 30% chance of giving a relic. So you better damn hope that you get the relic you want.
3. Do a fissure to get the mod. Realistically you want to rad those relics to give yourself an actual chance to get the mod. You should have plenty of traces right? Oh, you're fresh out from the last prime access? Better get farming! Oh, you didn't get the mod you need? Better luck next time! Go back to the previous step and pray you get it!
4. Great, now you have the mods you need. You still have to learn the order to put them in! Have fun trying out combinations!
5. Yay, you did it! Now you have ... maybe a slightly better weapon than average, or you have a buddy who ... might pop up sometimes??

Oh, and your Reqium mods are consumed! But have they three charges on them, which is ... nice I guess?

Suffice to say, this looks like a whole lotta farming for ... not a lot of reward. If I see a Kuva larva in a mission ... I'm just going to let it be.

On the plus side, I gave the reborn Ember a go, and she seems really fun now. The whole turn Immolation on/use fireball and Inferno to build up your DR/use Fireblast to reduce your gauge when it gets too high is a really nice loop, and I bet you could build her to be decently tank now. Plus, pelting things with flaming meteors is just so fun! Need try out Vauban as well.

[Leon]

Ignoring the actual lichs and just doing the requiems for riven bits or Amber stars is enticing

[thatSeniorGuy]

True, another way to get rivens is nice. It's 10 slivers a pop though.

[D-naras]

Personally, I find the addition of the Liches to be great fun. To be fair, I did buy the pack with the requiem mods to dive right in so I skipped all relic-related farm and I killed 2 liches since Friday. I wouldn't call the new weapons "a bit stronger". They are legitimately fun and very strong. I got the Ogris and the new Chakhur. Kuva Ogris is an entirely new weapon compared to the original,thanks to its firing mechanism (it's semi instead of charge). The base damage is lower but the status is increased from 35% to 47%. However, all Lich weapons get another bonus to their damage based on the Lich. For instance, my Kuva Ogris got a massive +41% bonus impact damage, that takes it over the original Ogris' damage.

The Chakhur is a massive cannon (no self-damage) that fires exploding shots and comes 50% base crit chance and 2.3 crit damage.

The Lich guns are at least as good as prime weapons and in my experience, take at least as long to farm from scratch, considering how each prime weapon needs in order:

1. farm the relics
2. farm the traces for the relics
3. crack the relics
4. build the thing

With liches, you spend the same amount of time to farm the murmurs required. Requiem mods function for 3 lich takedowns so that gives you plenty of time to stockpile them.

It's a grindy, slow system. It's not meant to be rushed, nor can it be rushed. For me, it works great for now, since I had nothing else to do. Also, I am sure that in a patch or two, they will speed up the grind eventually, since there are a lot of legitimat complaints, but, it's a great addition to the game and it opens up a lot of avenues. I am excited to see what else they do with the Liches.

[NeoVid]

Turns out the Kuva weapons work like the Paracesis and go up to rank 40 if you use enough Forma on one. Wouldn't have found that out for myself, since my first Kuva weapon happened to have perfect polarities, along with everything else being amazing... except the name. Wish I'd gotten a better named archenemy than "Ahgg Gadd."

The Kuva Lich mechanics have kept me playing more than I have in months, so I'm hoping they'll add something like it for the other factions. In retrospect, it now seems kind of weird that the Infestation isn't evolving special units specifically to take down Warframes...

[D-naras]

Turns out the Kuva weapons work like the Paracesis and go up to rank 40 if you use enough Forma on one. Wouldn't have found that out for myself, since my first Kuva weapon happened to have perfect polarities, along with everything else being amazing... except the name. Wish I'd gotten a better named archenemy than "Ahgg Gadd."

The Kuva Lich mechanics have kept me playing more than I have in months, so I'm hoping they'll add something like it for the other factions. In retrospect, it now seems kind of weird that the Infestation isn't evolving special units specifically to take down Warframes...

Considering what happened with Arlo in the last nightwave, that's what's probably going to happen eventually.

[Excession]

The first weapon I got the was the new hammer. It's good, possibly really good, but melee is hard to compare right now. The second was the Kuva Brakk, and it's just nuts. 100% sc, 80% cc, and crazy high fire rate. Even in high level missions it can one-shot trash mobs, and rapid firing in the general direction of anything heavy kills it within a second.

I suspect I'm going to get bored of fighting high level Grineer soon though. We have multiple factions for a reason. Expand to other factions please ... and give me a Kuva Synapse. Some massive space hulk derelict ramming into the Kuva Fortress and invading it could make for a good event too.

[Zalabim]

The nice thing is the other factions already have persistent learning possibilities without directly trying into Kuva. The infestation obviously learns as it consumes and the Corpus can bring back the Animo Project for something like the Ambulas(es). Not that I'm opposed to crashing derelicts into the Kuva Fortress in general.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

So...possibly against my better judgment, I've gotten interested in Warframe. I've heard good things about it via word of mouth, puttered around the wiki and watched a few videos about it...but I'm still scared to actually give it a try, namely because I stick to single-player stuff and worry about the level of commitment it would require in terms of time, even if it IS free. Like, being required to log in at certain times of day or something to participate in Clan things, like how raids in other MMOs work.

The story stuff looks interesting, the music I've heard is AMAZING and all the flashy gear and outfits are cool to watch...but from the outside looking in it feels like the game's free-ness is counter-balanced by requiring a LOT of time and effort invested instead, and I worry it could end up like other, non-free games I've played where I ended up feeling it was more like work to get through them and get my money's worth rather than because I was enjoying the story, and those were SINGLE player games like the Mass Effect series...

What would you folks say to a potential n00b like me?

[Misery Esquire]

Well, the MMO-group style Raids where you all had to get together to carefully coordinate are mostly (hello Profit-Taker) gone from Warframe these days; basic cooperation will do in every case as long as you can survive (via personal skill, gear selection, or build) the content you've joined and someone knows what to do for puzzles/puzzle bosses.

There's a lot of time involved in getting new gear at first, since you need to start building resource stockpiles from scratch plus most guns/swords take 12 or 24 hours to build; Warframes themselves are essentially 94 (12 hours per part, then 72 to combine), but later on you have the resources and may just need to pickup some specifics to start build timers. Also you need to find all the basic +damage mods, which can take some time even if/after you look up where they come from. (And start ranking them up.)

Clan stuff is no worry at all, though. You sign up, build an item, and then all their stuff is available to you. Donating to the unlockables in the weapon labs is good of you, but larger/older clans are usually just waiting for the new weapons to drop to instantly fund them. Very occasionally there's an Operation where your participation in the event gives score to your entire clan, but you don't need to play with them for it to count toward that score.

You can also play solo; it's not suggested, but possible. Playing with pubs is essentially solo, except there's a chance that one of the other players annihilates the map as they rocket through it.

[Wraith]

I think that there's enough easy-to-access content that you should be able to give it a try and not feel pressured into an exhausting routine, while you decide if it's for you.

I won't lie, there can be a lot of grind in the game if you're trying to collect one of everything - the high ranking "Prime" gear can be very tedious to get a hold of, BUT you don't necessarily *need* any of it. There are plenty of other weapons and Warframes in the game which are perfectly viable at all levels of play which you can just build in-game, with in-game resources, and the Forma system means that any of your favourite weapons can be buffed so that they hold up in high-level play.
For example: Some of the best weapons I own and have been using for hundreds of hours, are ones I got for free by earning Rep with the Syndicates (NPC groups that give you special missions to play) and you do that just by playing the game normally but with a cosmetic icon painted across your chest. It is grind, technically, but it's rewarding grind that you can also do while doing other things at the same time.

The closest thing to Raids or "timed" events in Warframe would probably be the Nightwave promotion, which runs for several months with it's objectives refreshed every week; it's very easy to play casually, and none of the rewards given through it was incredibly valuable or otherwise impossible to obtain elsewhere. For a free-to-play game, Warframe is remarkably ethical about making sure that their content is accessible, and there's very little in the game which can be bought that you can't also earn yourself over time, with the exception of some community-designed cosmetic items.
There's also a fairly comprehensive in-game marketplace for buying hard-to-acquire equipment, and Platinum (the in-game currency which can be purchased with IRL money) can also be earned relatively easily by trading in-game items, so there's multiple ways to grind at the same time. It's not perfect, but it's a lot more user friendly than some other games that I could mention.

Waiting for in-game equipment to build over several IRL-days can be a bit of a drag, but there's no limit as to how much stuff you can have building at any given time and once it's been built it will sit in the Foundry forever until you're ready to pick it up and use it. Come and go as you please, you're under no pressure to return unless you specifically want to do something.

And like Misery said; you can play the game Solo if you want to (the Story-based mission often require it, in fact) and usually playing Multiplayer might as well be with bots, as there's no need or requirement to communicate with other players unless you want to. That being said, Warframe players are among the friendliest and most helpful bunch of players I've known across several MMO-style games, so don't be afraid of us if you need something!

[Brother Oni]

What would you folks say to a potential n00b like me?

Further to what Misery and Wraith have mentioned, is that unlike most looter-shooters, Warframe is very much focused on horizontal progression rather than linear.

Once you hit a certain power level, your capabilities will tend towards flexibility rather than upwards. For example, the warframe ('character class') Excalibur is one of the beginner choices from the tutorial section and will quite happily get you through the whole game, including end-game content. While there are better frames for specific niches (Frost defends an objective better, Volt is faster, Rhino tanks better), an Excalibur will always do well; I have a troll Excalibur build with the default appearance but with maximised mods that I take into Sorties (end game mission chain) sometimes, to wind up the other players.

Another example of this sideways progression is that any weapon is endgame viable (some might need more modifications than others) and weapons are rarely made obsolete. As an example, the Vaykor Hek shotgun came out in 2015 and is still regarded as one of the top shotguns in the game. Players have returned back to the game after years away and are still end-game viable, unlike other MMOs.

Wraith has mentioned the real money currency (platinum), but to emphasise the ease to get it - I've spent maybe £30 on the game and have clocked up nearly 3,000 hrs in the game (and still going!). Nearly all the platinum I've gotten is by trading for in-game items that I've picked up, so if you don't want to spend money but still progress, you can easily.


There are however two real issues with new players starting the game:

The first is that the mechanics and systems are very obtuse and the tutorials aren't great. The Nightwave events are actually quite useful in that they can teach players about hidden systems during their daily/weekly tasks, but this is regarded as a wiki game.
The second is that the game doesn't hold your hand after the tutorial, so unless you're used to setting your own goals, you will end up lost on what to do. This is both a positive and a negative trait - positive is that the game rewards exploration, discovering things on the wiki or in-game, plus giving you the freedom to take things at your own pace; negative is that without a clear goal, the game can feel aimless and muddled in its direction, and suffering from decision paralysis.

That said, we're more than happy to take questions or walk you through a difficult bit and if you happen to be on platform that one of us are on, feel free to message us in-game (our contact details are in the first post of this thread).


I do really like the new intro video (will link to it when I get home) and I really hope that they get round to consolidating the new player experience and lore (*Looks at Teshin*).

[Archpaladin Zousha]

With this whole "New War" thing I'm hearing about coming in a month, would it be advisable to wait until it's here before getting started, or will that mean I miss out on the original stuff like The Second Dream and The Sacrifice when The New War arrives? They say it's going to be a "massive expansion." Do they mean like how WoW's various expansions changed the map and game so much that they instituted that classic version so people who joined later could go back and do the old stuff? Part of why I'm hesitant of getting into Warframe is sort of a conflicting sense of FOMO, like since I'm coming in so relatively late, I've effectively missed out on earlier plot-points and but then aren't ready for the new ones, like if Revenge of the Sith was your first Star Wars movie and you disnt have time to watch the other ones before going to see Rise of Skywalker next month?

[Squark]

With this whole "New War" thing I'm hearing about coming in a month, would it be advisable to wait until it's here before getting started, or will that mean I miss out on the original stuff like The Second Dream and The Sacrifice when The New War arrives? They say it's going to be a "massive expansion." Do they mean like how WoW's various expansions changed the map and game so much that they instituted that classic version so people who joined later could go back and do the old stuff? Part of why I'm hesitant of getting into Warframe is sort of a conflicting sense of FOMO, like since I'm coming in so relatively late, I've effectively missed out on earlier plot-points and but then aren't ready for the new ones, like if Revenge of the Sith was your first Star Wars movie and you disnt have time to watch the other ones before going to see Rise of Skywalker next month?

Warframe does have a bit of a latecomer problem with lore, but it's largely confined to events; The main culprit is Alad V, whose antics over the years can be a bit confusing to piece together for new players. New War won't replace old quests, thoughz and I think a trip to <Spoiler> and perhaps a few nodes on the existing System map are more likely than a rework of the current System Map.

[Misery Esquire]

We're on Star Map 2.5(?) right now; you don't miss out on not having played the original ones (Well, having played the original map made it a lot easier to skip around the solar system when the new map came out, but hey). Like Squark says; the only weirdness is when a character story advanced in an event instead of a quest, because the events don't repeat. The quests never get removed, and neither do a lot of things that seem like an idea test.

One of the things I like about Warframe is that they don't remove failures - they just don't get expanded on again. Right away, at least. We've revisited a lot of things over the years.

Although it feels like PvP is someone's baby, and they can't let it die.

[NeoVid]

With this whole "New War" thing I'm hearing about coming in a month, would it be advisable to wait until it's here before getting started, or will that mean I miss out on the original stuff like The Second Dream and The Sacrifice when The New War arrives?

The main story missions unlock in chronological order, so you have to play through all of the older story missions to be able to see the new ones. The sooner you start, the sooner you'll be able to play the new stuff.

That said, rushing Warframe's progression isn't easy, and it's better not to try. You can hit Mastery Rank 5 not long after starting the game, so long as you know to immediately swap out any rank 30 gear for something new, but after that it slows down a lot, and most restrictions in WF are by MR. Also, once you've gotten a fair way through the story and completed The War Within, that will unlock [spoiler]mode, which is an entire new set of mechanics for the game to throw at you. The future story missions rely heavily on [spoiler]mode since it's plot-critical, and you should definitely stop and get prepared for using it in the future once you have it.

But any decent clan should be able to give you the info and mods you need to be able to do all this. The community in WF all lived through the game's total lack of in-game info, they know what you're going through.

[Brother Oni]

With this whole "New War" thing I'm hearing about coming in a month, would it be advisable to wait until it's here before getting started, or will that mean I miss out on the original stuff like The Second Dream and The Sacrifice when The New War arrives?

There's a series of plot mission chains that are always available and are mandatory to advancing through the star chart (equivalent to getting to new areas on the world map):

Vor's Prize (tutorial chain)
Once Awake
The Archwing
Stolen Dreams
The New Strange
Natah
The Second Dream

The story continues after this point, but while the subsequent missions are not critical to advancement around the star chart, they are critical to unlocking new mechanics:

The War Within
Chains of Harrow
Apostasy Prologue
The Sacrifice
Chimera Prologue

If you no-lifed the game, money was no object and you had someone hand holding you through it, you could hit the Chimera Prologue in just over 5 days. If you focused on it with a more reasonable play time, you'd get there in about a month or two.

That said, if you focus on advancing the overarching storyline, you'd miss out on plenty of other quests and both open world areas, each with their own plot - taking your time to enjoy the game, it might take you 3-6 months to get there. This is not an indication of the grind involved, but of the sheer volume of content there is - Warframe has been going for over 6 years now.

[sihnfahl]

There's a series of plot mission chains that are always available and are mandatory to advancing through the star chart (equivalent to getting to new areas on the world map):

Also, howl of the Kubrow introduces the animal companion mechanic. Then that's followed up by getting Kavats later on, although they're more of a pain to acquire.

Kubrow - Earth mission, bust apart Kubrow den, acquire egg, incubate
Kavat - Acquire kavat incubator module. Go on derelict missions, for which you need crafted keys, wander around looking for kavats, scan them (and they go hostile when you do). Get CHANCE of getting a genetic scan (25%, IIRC), of which you need 10, before you can incubate.

And you'll need those scans, as well, if you get the Bondage Frame Khora.

In the end, though, I find Kavats more fun to play with than Kubrows. I got my Vascakitty recently on top of my Crittycat and Buffcat.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Can you gain favor with multiple factions at once, or do you have to select one to actually join and possibly gain the rewards of the others through trading?

[NeoVid]

For the 6 normal syndicates, every syndicate is allied with one other and opposed to two others, so no matter which syndicate's symbol you wear (wear them by going into your Warframe's Appearance options and choosing Regalia), you'll gain standing with two and lose standing with two. It's theoretically possible to rank up four of those syndicates at once, but that's a huge pain that you shouldn't try for as a new player. As for the planetary syndicates, their standing doesn't directly affect any others. I recommend picking up a bounty or two a day in Cetus and Fortuna once you have access to them, so as to rank up their standing and get the unique rewards at a good pace without grinding. (There's also a second syndicate hidden in each city, but they're late game only.) Finally, there's Cephalon Simaris on the Relays, who gives standing for doing his daily scanner quests, and scanning any random stuff during missions.

Ranking up syndicates gets pretty expensive, so that's another obstacle for a new player. Don't stress too much about it, and if you're going to be stuck at the max standing for a rank for a while, spend it instead of gaining extra that would just be wasted.

Speaking of expensive, it's hard for a new player to make credits. The most efficient credit gain before you reach Neptune is from Dark Sectors, the couple of mission nodes on every planet that give a percentage boost to drops/affinity, and a minimum of 10k credits per run.