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KnightOfJustsice

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    Warframe Overview: A comprehensive guide on what to expect when you start your Warframe experience

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by KnightOfJustsice

    Hello and welcome to this topic. With the Fortuna update on the verge of release, featuring a fabulous landscape and some intriguing mechanics, it is safe to assume that many people would like to start their Warframe experience and of course, many have started already. Thus, it would be nice to know what to expect when you start playing this game; What you may encounter in the early hours of your experience and of course, your pathway to endgame content.

    Before I start, I’d like to say that I’m less experienced than more than 80% of this game’s playerbase; so, to all the people reading this and finding mistakes and misleading things, I’ll be happy if you let me know.

    Let us begin, shall we?

    - What is Warframe?

    Well for someone who hasn’t started the game, this question seems bizarre, but the moment you enter the game, you find the answer. Other than of course being the name of the game itself, Warframe or to be more exact, “Warframes” are the playable characters you begin to play with. For a simple definition, Warframes are robots and each of them have special abilities that you can utilize in the game. As you progress through the game’s story – yes, this game has a story and it’s actually well written and deep – you’ll understand that Warframes are merely not just robots. I won’t explain more since it will spoil the game’s story.

    But let’s talk about the game itself too. Generically, Warframe is a Free to Play Third Person Shooter game. The game features tons of different mechanics that enables the player to deeply customize their character and their weapons of choice. As we progress through this overview, I’ll try my best to explain each mechanic as simple as I can.

    If I want to do a comparison – although not a totally accurate one – Warframes are like DotA heroes. They all have different base stats that gets better as you level them up. However, instead of merely having 6 slots like DotA for customization, you have 10 slots, and it’s not just your Warframe you can customize, your weapons which comprise of one Primary Weapon, one Secondary Weapon and one Melee Weapon, can be customized too. Later on, you’ll get access to Sentinels and Companions that have customization options too.

    - What exactly is customization in this game?

    Other than the looks of your gear and Warframe which is vastly customizable in this game, let’s say, their inside is also customizable. The things that you use to customize in this game are called Mods.

    Mods are upgradable modules that can be acquired by killing enemies, completing missions, destroying breakable things or opening containers. Each mod has different stats and also impacts your gameplay experience in a different way. Each type of usable thing is this game has different mods, meaning you can’t use Secondary mods on your Primary and vice versa. Modding is an essential part of this game and it can highly effect almost everything. Back when I was going to start digging into this game, I came across a wise sentence by a wise person: “Even a modded bad weapon is better than an unmodded god weapon” and more or less, this statement is more than 95% accurate. So, you better get good at modding, if you want to be good at this game.

    Each mod comes with a polarity. The mod’s polarity is depicted by an icon on its top right. Mod slots may be polarized or not. There is also a limited capacity of modding. Not only the slots, but also the room (In game it’s called rank) all mods in total can take when customizing is limited. If you put a mod in a polarized mod slot and they have the same polarity, the mod will take half the room than when it’s put in a non-polarized slot. With all this in mind, you are however able to polarize your mod slots using Forma. Forma is a craftable resource that can be used not only to add polarity to a mod slot, but also alter it or even remove it.

    Modding capacity is increased by each rank the gear is leveled up, capping at 30. However, this cap can be doubled by using either an Orokin Reactor (Used for Warframes, Sentinels and Companions) or Orokin Catalyst (Used for weapons). Both these mentioned Oroking thingies are also craftable resources. In addition to this, Warframes have a special mod slot, called “Aura” slot. Putting a mod in that slot also adds to the modding capacity of Warframe. (Double the rank added, if they have same polarity. Reduced added room if they have mismatching polarity. And the same amount of rank added if the slot has no polarity at all)

    Melee weapons also have a special modding slot which is only for Stance mods and same rule for aura applies to them.

    As mentioned before, mods are ranked. So, they can be upgraded. Mods can be upgraded using a resource called Endo. Endo can be obtained same way the mods can be (Killing enemies etc.) and also, but extraction from a set of world pickup items, called Ayatan Treasures.

    Mods come in 4 (Actually 5) rarities: Common (Bronze colored), Uncommon (Blue colored), Rare (Golden), Primed (White with cyan-ish colored) - and Peculiar.

    Duplicate mods can be sold for credits, or turned into Endo.

    - How does ranking system works in this game?

    This question sometimes, is one of somehow problematic aspects of the game for new players to understand. There are two types of ranks in this game: “Mastery Rank” and “Gear Rank”.

    Gear rank as it is obvious, is the level of your gear; Warframe, weapons etc. This rank can be increased by gaining “Affinity”. Affinity is what XP is called in other games. You get affinity by killing enemies, completing objectives and picking up affinity orbs. One of the beautiful aspects of this game, is that gained affinity is shared between all the players, regardless of who gets the killing blow to the enemy; Under certain circumstance of course, which is being in less than 50 meters away (Or more, but let’s not talk about it now) from the player getting the blow, in game. So, co-operation is crucial in this game and of course, leeching might happen. Level cap of all gear is 30. Leveling up your weapons, only increases their modding capacity with no effect on their damage stats. Leveling your Warframe however, increases its maximum energy (used to cast abilities), maximum health, maximum shields and unlocks your abilities and upgrades them. As an example, when you hit level 3 with your Warframe, you unlock your second ability, or when you hit level 30, your 4th ability (Let’s say your Ultimate) is upgraded to rank 3. To Forma a piece of gear, it needs to level 30 and doing so will reset the level to 0 (All miracles require Sacrifice).

    Affinity gained has a distribution mechanism:

    - Affinity gained by killing enemies with Warframe abilities, all go to the Warframe itself.

    - Affinity gained by weapon kills is divided in half: One half goes to the Warframe, One half goes to the weapon.

    - Environmental Affinity (E.g. gained by standing near a player who is killing everything, or completing an objective) is also divided in two parts; 75% of it goes to weapons (Meaning that if you have all the 3 weapons equipped with you, each will receive 25%, or if you only have 1 equipped, all the 75% goes to that one), and the remaining 25% goes to your Warframe.

    Affinity boosters can rarely be found by playing the game or can be bought which we will later discuss.

    Now that you know about the Gear Rank, it’s time to understand the Mastery Rank.

    Mastery Rank, in general, is an indication of how much content of the game you have been into. However, you can’t earn it by simply playing the game. Each weapon you level up, gives you Mastery Experience, same goes for Warframes. Also, unlocking nodes will also give you Mastery Experience. But let’s talk numbers. Each weapon level gives you 100 Mastery Experience or Points, meaning that by leveling a weapon to level 30, you gain 3000 Mastery Points. Leveling up Warframes, Companions and Sentinels however, gives you 200 Mastery Point per level, summing up to 6000 for each of those, leveled to 30. However, Formaing your gear and your Warframe, does not make you eligible to get the Mastery earned from that piece of gear again. Gaining Mastery Point is a one time only event. Forma your gear 100 times or even more, you won’t get more Mastery Point from it. Each node also gives you about 67 Mastery Point and each Junction gives you 1000 Mastery Points.

    In order to level up your Mastery Rank, after getting enough Master Points, you should do the Mastery Test which is a challenge that determines if you have mastered a specific part of this game. Some gear and Warframes are locked behind Mastery Rank. Same goes for some important mechanics of the game too. Higher Mastery also comes with bonuses. Mastery is also capped at 30, but there hasn’t been enough content in the game yet for someone to get to that Mastery (As of August 13th, 2018).

    - Let’s talk about the gears in this game.

    As mentioned before, other than Warframes, there are other types of Gear in this game. Everything in this game needs to be crafted, or let’s say, can be crafted. Crafting requires resources and funds, and both of these can be found by exploring the world. Some resources are limited to special planets, some are not. Some resources can be found more frequently on a planet and less frequently on a different one. You can see the resource each planet has by looking to the bottom right of your Star Chart screen.

    Speaking of which, Star Chart or let’s say, your “Navigation” panel is where you choose what mission to start, what planet to go and so on. We’ll talk about the Star Chart later on.

    As I said, other than resources, you need funds for crafting too. Funds in this game are called “Credits” and they can be acquired just like Endo and Mods. After acquiring enough credits and resources for a piece of gear, you may craft it in your Foundry. Each gear takes a certain amount of time to be crafted, and that crafting process can be rushed using the premium currency of this game, called “Platinum” or “Plats”. We will also talk so much about Plats later. After you’re done with crafting your equipment, you can equip them in your Arsenal and proceed. You have limited room for gear in your inventory. So, you can either sell your useless equipment, or you can buy slots, again using Plats. Selling our equipment (Which will give you credits and you’re actually scrapping your things, not selling it to people) does not remove the Mastery Points you earned from it; so, don’t worry about it and sell your useless weapons or even frames. You can also always craft the ones you sold, later.

    Each piece of Gear in this game can be also bought with Plats and if so, it will bypass the Mastery Rank required for it.

    Some gear in this game have variants. Different varieties include Prime, Vandal, Wraith and Mara. They can be crafted too, however, you need to have parts of them in order to craft them. One of the most wanted variants in this game, is Prime and some weapons and some Warframes have Prime variants.

    Before discussing Prime gear, let’s talk about crafting Warframes.

    In order to craft a Warframe, you need 4 parts for it (No matter if you want to make a Primed variant, or a vanilla one): Chassis, Neuroptics, Systems and of course, the Blueprint. Warframe parts are usually dropped from killing Bosses (Each boss drops parts of a certain Warframe) but they also drop from special enemies, game modes etc. Most Warframe Blueprints can be bought from the Market and some are ONE TIME ONLY rewards of some Quests. After you get the blueprint of all parts and craft them, then you may use the main Blueprint and craft the Warframe.

    Crafting Prime Warframes is basically the same, you need Neuroptics, Chassis, Systems and main Blueprint to craft the frame. However, these things do not drop from enemies. They can be obtained by opening Relics, which we will discuss later.

    For crafting special variants of weapons, you need to have parts, e.g Reciever, Stock etc. These parts do not need to be crafted however.

    Regarding the varaints, different variants have different stats but just like the vanilla type, ranking them up only increases their modding capacity (And max shields, hp etc. for Frames). They are better looking in general and sometimes they have a new feature. But all in all, Primed and non-Primed are not so different. What I’m trying to say is that for example, Lanka is a sniper rifle with no Prime or any other variant. Vectis is another sniper rifle that has a Primed Variant. But when it comes to comparison, you can’t say Lanka is bad because it’s not Primed or Vectis Prime is good, because it’s prime. They are both good and have their own usage. However when it comes to comparison between vanilla weapon and Primed variant, let’s say most of the time, Prime is better. It is important to consider that this regulation is not true about Warframes. Different varieties of Warframes only differ in base stats (Shield, HP, Energy) but not in their powers’ strength. As an example, a Vanilla Warframe number 1 skill requires 25 energies, so does the Primed variant. That number 1 skill deals 100 damage, no matter your Frame is Primed or not. Again, you can’t say for example, Harrow as a Warframe is not good because he’s not Primed, but Mirage Prime is good because it’s Primed. It is totally irrelevant. They are different frames, with totally different abilities and usage. As of now, there are more than 450 pieces of gear in this game, including Warframes, Sentinels, Weapons and so on.

    There is no bad gear in this game. I might be exaggerating, but everything has its own use in this game, even if it’s just a fodder for your Mastery Rank.

    - Let’s talk about Star Chart.

    Star Chart was mentioned before in the topic. Now is the time we understand it better. Basically, Star Chart is the map where you choose where to go and do things. Star Chart includes the whole Solar System planets along with two moons of Mars and an area called Void as playable grounds. As said before, each planet has different resources available in it and different factions occupy each planet. Each planet has a set of nodes with certain game modes on them, and generally, each planet has a Boss that you can fight. In addition to the base nodes and their respective game mode, Alerts may occur that may have a different objective to complete. As usual, there is war between factions of the game and despite all of the being your enemy, sometimes you can fight alongside them, and actually, sometimes you should.

    Different game modes and different possibility of world render, makes almost each run of missions unique. When you try to load into a mission, you are shown your space ship, that you can’t freely control, YET. When playing missions, you can go and wage war against every living creature, or just stay stealthy and shred your enemies without letting them know what hit them.

    Since it’s an online game, requiring you to stay connected to internet all the time, you can also party up with other people and do the missions. Or you can do it entirely solo. Not long ago, two certain missions required at least 2 players. Now however, as far as I know, everything, EVERY SINGLE ACTIVITY in this game can be done solo. Some activities even force you to do it solo.

    - How are the interactions with other players?

    Warframe, is basically a co-op game. It does have PvP which is called “Conclave”, but I’d say that PvE and PvP aspects of this game are completely separate and have minor to no effect on each other.

    Just like every other video game, you can find nice people and toxic people in Warframe. However, thanks to the spirit of the game which encourages players to cooperate with each other, toxicity is rather rare among the players.

    You can trade with other players, play missions with them, join clans and alliances and have a lot of fun. There are social hubs implemented in this game where you can go and meet other players and enjoy infinite potential of beauty in this game.

    - Let’s talk about currencies.

    We talked about Credits in the past, now is the time to talk about Plats and of course, introduce a new currency called Ducats.

    As mentioned before, Platinum is the premium currency of this game; meaning you can buy it with real money. I wouldn’t say everything, but 99% of things in this game can be bought with Plats, but still, the game is not Pay to Win at all. Like I said, main experience of this game is Co-Op, and in co-op, either you all win, or you all lose and if you lose, you can just retry. Platinum is rather an expensive currency, meaning that you should be careful on what you spend it on. With this, game encourages the players to grind, rather than just pay for it and have it. There’s a famous equation among players of Warframe which is “Grind+Profit=Grofit”. You grind, and you’ll profit. Sometimes, the grind is not a grind at all; For example you can get a weapon by playing for 30 minutes and then wait 12 hours for it to be crafted. Or, you can just pay 200 plats which is roughly 10$ to get that weapon. Well, the choice is yours.

    Most of the cosmetic items in the game however are only available by spending Plats. They are purely cosmetic and have no effect on actual gameplay.

    One of the outstanding features of this game is that this premium currency is tradable among the players. That’s why, Warframe has a big market and many players get to have every single cosmetic in this game, without even spending a dime on buying Plats.

    Many but not all things are tradable in Warframe. Prime parts are tradable whereas resources are not. Credits are also not tradable in the game.

    What are Ducats anyway? Ducats are a special currency required for purchasing things from a certain person in the game and it can be acquired by scraping (Better say selling) Prime Parts in Relays (Social Hubs that I mentioned before).

    Now is a good time to talk about Relics too. Relics are special rewards, earned from completing missions and certain objectives. They are tiered (4 Tiers) and they can be opened on certain missions corresponding to their Tier, called Fissures (e.g. Lith relics can be opened in Lith Fissures) Each Relic has a possibility of giving you 6 items comprising of 3 common, 2 uncommon and 1 rare reward.

    - You gave us some information, but can you talk about very basics of this game?

    This should’ve been placed in early parts of the topic, but I think here is good too. One of the important mechanisms of this game is RNG, just like any other online looting game like The Division or Elder Scrolls Online. Resource drops, Mod drops and basically, almost everything in the game is affected by RNG. It is within limit of course, for example, Pistol Scavenger mod can only be acquired in Alerts, but when will that alert happen? It’s up to RNGesus to decide.

    Another thing in this game that should be considered is the grind. The grind in this game is nothing you can disregard. Sometimes it is very intense, sometimes not, but when you fall in love with this game, it will always be pleasurable in the end.

    With all this in mind, Warframe is basically a game of farming; It can be resources you farm, a mod, a frame or even Credits. Alongside the farm which takes 95 percent of your time, there’s the story. This game has Story quests and progressing through the story is mandatory for some progression mechanisms. You won’t consider your time wasted, if you play the game’s story; not at all.

    As you progress through the game, in the end you’ll finally arrive to a place where you can go through a mission that took you 30 minutes before, in 3 minutes. This is called Endgame by some people. It might be right to consider that Endgame but the thing is, this game has no End. As you progress through this game, you’ll finally realize that you should look as badas* as possible, so you start to fashion your Warframe.

    To wrap it up, Warframe is a game that’s hard to learn, but easy to master in my opinion. Farming is intense, but is pleasurable. And if you are destined to fall in love with this game, you will in your first 10 hours and you will not hate it for the rest of your life.

    This article does not cover more than 1% of Warframe diverse universe and mechanics, so, if you're interested in learning more about this game, make sure you check the game's Wikia with a proper Adblocker xD.

    In the end, I’d like to thank you all for keeping up until the end. My article is full of flaws and I’m aware of it, large part of it being my lack of skill to script my passion towards this game and also my lack of writing English properly, as a non-native English speaker. Anyhow, like I said in the beginning, I’m ready for any suggestions and corrections.

    Online Codex resource

    in Players helping Players

    Posted

    Hello everyone.

    After playing this game foolishly for 1500 hours, I've come to realize that I need to have a complete codex. 

    However, it seems that I haven't scanned 180 types of enemies, not even once. For this, I need a full codex as a refrence so that I can know what to look for.

    If anyone has a link to an online website with full codex info (other than Wikia) or an application, I'd be glad if you can share it here.

    Thank you all:clem:

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