Excalibur and Excalibur Umbra

[spyroxion 168]

Heya guys. So recently I found out that while I was not playing Excalibur Umbra was released so now I started on doing my backlog quests and will be making my way up until I get Excalibur Umbra. 

While looking at videos of him I saw that he has new mods, Umbra (?) mods and it takes 25k endo and 5m credits to max ONE out. Well I don't have enough to do it and since I am only MR10 I got more things to do rather than maxing such expensive mods that fits best only one frame (yes yes I know, some frames can use it as well just you need to forma couple of extra times).

I was thinking, is it possible to mod Excalibur Umbra without those mods and if I do so, will it be stronger than normal Excalibur? And how would I mod Exalted  Blade? Build I want to go with is of course focused on Exalted Blade. Any tips on building? (screen shots preferred if possible).

And what would be nowadays build for normal Excalibur and his blade?

Thank you to anyone who can answer and help with building! Didn't play my Exca for looong time and would like to unleash him again :D 

[(PS4)abbacephas 9,555]

You can. But just know that if you forma out the Umbral slots he comes with, you can't get them back. He has some minor stat boosts over regular Excalibur, but he's not significantly better as far as abilities (or modding him) is concerned.

[Redfeather75 244]

If you plan on wanting health/armour/power strength on him then you don't have to rank up the umbra mods very far before they surpass regular mods. Because they get boosted with all 3 umbra mods equipped.

[FLSH_BNG 2,427]

Excalibur Umbra has the same stats as Excalibur Prime, but with unique mod slot polarities that cannot be gotten back if you change them.

The Umbral mods that Umbra comes with are all considered legendary/primed mods and so they cost the same to rank up both in credits and endo to max out.
The cheapest/easiest way to max them out if you haven't the resources is to do sorties and hope against hope that you can acquire a legendary fusion core as a reward.

Aside from those few differences. as with all prime warframes, they are only marginally better (if at all) than their standard counterparts so feel free to mod them however you like and are comfortable with.

[spyroxion 168]

7 minutes ago, (PS4)abbacephas said:

You can. But just know that if you forma out the Umbral slots he comes with, you can't get them back. He has some minor stat boosts over regular Excalibur, but he's not significantly better as far as abilities (or modding him) is concerned.

Well I can always Forma other slots, or putting wrong polarity mod into umbra slot gives some capacity deduction?

6 minutes ago, Redfeather75 said:

If you plan on wanting health/armour/power strength on him then you don't have to rank up the umbra mods very far before they surpass regular mods. Because they get boosted with all 3 umbra mods equipped.

Well some of umbra mods I have primed (1 or 2, don't remember, not home yet) rank 8-10, what about surpassing them?

 

And how do you build both Excaliburs and their blades? From when I last played him quite a bit of time has passed and and have way better mod arsenal than back then.

[spyroxion 168]

2 minutes ago, FLSH_BNG said:

Excalibur Umbra has the same stats as Excalibur Prime, but with unique mod slot polarities that cannot be gotten back if you change them.

The Umbral mods that Umbra comes with are all considered legendary/primed mods and so they cost the same to rank up both in credits and endo to max out.
The cheapest/easiest way to max them out if you haven't the resources is to do sorties and hope against hope that you can acquire a legendary fusion core as a reward.

Aside from those few differences. as with all prime warframes, they are only marginally better (if at all) than their standard counterparts so feel free to mod them however you like and are comfortable with.

Oh whops, wanted to insert your quote to my previous post via edit and ended up making new post....
 

but well question is same as above, how do you build them nowadays?

Edited December 12, 2018 by spyroxion

[(PS4)abbacephas 9,555]

2 minutes ago, spyroxion said:

Well I can always Forma other slots, or putting wrong polarity mod into umbra slot gives some capacity deduction?

Putting mods in unmatched slots increases the drain of the mods (ie. if you have matched polarities, the mod drain is half. So if your mod has a drain of 10, it will drop to 5. However, if it is unmatched, the drain will increase to 12, or so).

[Acos 5,262]

Umbra Excalibur comes with Umbra Polarities that are not currently possible to get back, and we don't know that it will BE possible to get them in the future. I would strongly advise against using a Forma to get rid of the Umbra polarity. 

The Umbra mods cost a lot of Endo to max, but it shouldn't cost substantially more to get them equivalent to their non umbra variants and have the same level of performance as a normal Excalibur. Having all three of them equipped simultaneously gives a heavy boost to each Umbra Mod, so its' pretty simple to get him going. Continue to upgrade them as you play, and you probably won't notice the heavy Endo cost. 

At the endgame side of things we also have a new game type called Arbitration. The mission-type asks that you be pretty tanky, but does not take a considerable amount of player skill beyond choosing a loadout that doesn't die easy. Arbitration regularly rewards sculptures as a reward, which can then be infused with gems and sold to Maroo at her Bazaar for a large amount of Endo. That might be pretty far down the line for you depending on what mods/frames you have available, but if it sounds like your cup of tea then you might give it a try. 

[hooperinius 164]

Those umbra mods are great and you can rank them almost all the way up pretty cheaply and get 90% of the benefit for maybe 25% of the cost of maxing them. So yeah umbra is the way to go.

[Bostew 2]

Umbral mods at R8 should perform well enough without being too expensive

[(XB1)EternalDrk Mako 8,347]

main thread on it if you want more info

[Redfeather75 244]

45 minutes ago, spyroxion said:

Well I can always Forma other slots, or putting wrong polarity mod into umbra slot gives some capacity deduction?

Well some of umbra mods I have primed (1 or 2, don't remember, not home yet) rank 8-10, what about surpassing them?

 

And how do you build both Excaliburs and their blades? From when I last played him quite a bit of time has passed and and have way better mod arsenal than back then.

They replace vitality, intensify and steel fibre. You have primes of those?

[spyroxion 168]

33 minutes ago, Redfeather75 said:

They replace vitality, intensify and steel fibre. You have primes of those?

Oh my, I just got home and have none of those 3 xD

[(PS4)Sixshotz6 25]

buy legendary cores make sure you have 1 million credits..... and you're golden.

[spyroxion 168]

9 hours ago, (PS4)Sixshotz6 said:

buy legendary cores make sure you have 1 million credits..... and you're golden.

And where can I buy them? From other players?

[Nephalem 140]

2 hours ago, spyroxion said:

And where can I buy them? From other players?

A legendary core is 300-400 plat and im prety sure you don't have the plat to buy 3 of those. I sudgest you start doing arbitrations or sedna arena endo farm.

[(PS4)Black_Adder_ 58]

14 hours ago, spyroxion said:

While looking at videos of him I saw that he has new mods, Umbra (?) mods and it takes 25k endo and 5m credits to max ONE out.

I have all umbra mods maxed and I have never had more than 2m credits at me so you definitely exaggerate the cost requirements. Also if you are geared enough to be able to solo low risk index then credits are no problem. Whenever I get credit booster from daily login or some other source (in sorties you can get 3 day credit booster), I do index for 30 min and have roughly about 1m credits. Endo also is not a problem anymore because it drops literally in all the latest contest no matter what you do.

[spyroxion 168]

34 minutes ago, (PS4)Black_Adder_ said:

I have all umbra mods maxed and I have never had more than 2m credits at me so you definitely exaggerate the cost requirements. Also if you are geared enough to be able to solo low risk index then credits are no problem. Whenever I get credit booster from daily login or some other source (in sorties you can get 3 day credit booster), I do index for 30 min and have roughly about 1m credits. Endo also is not a problem anymore because it drops literally in all the latest contest no matter what you do.

About the cost, well from what you quoted, I said "while looking at videos". I don't have it yet myself, making my way trough backlog story to get there.

Where is this index thingy located that everyone talks about?

[spyroxion 168]

Oh and another question, which I asked but no one answered, what do you do with Exalted blade modding? How do you build it nowadays (when I played last time you couldn't mod it separately)? And what do you do with Umbra polarities on him? Sentinels isn't a big thing as far as I know and since I have Primed Pressure point, wouldn't it be better to swap those polarities out? (or well at least one of them for Primed Pressure point)

[hooperinius 164]

Imho leave the umbra polarities alone and slowly max them out. Blade mods I've got berserker, organ shatter, condition overload and elementals to go along with chromatic blade. 

[corallein 44]

I would leave the umbral polarities on the Exalted Blade because even though PPP is slightly better than Sacrificial Pressure, Sacrificial Steel is significantly better than True Steel. 

3 hours ago, hooperinius said:

Imho leave the umbra polarities alone and slowly max them out. Blade mods I've got berserker, organ shatter, condition overload and elementals to go along with chromatic blade. 

These mods are pretty much what you want. 90% (or 165% for primed toxin) elemental mods since you should have enough Power Strength to get 100% status from Chromatic Blade. I also have a Physical setup for sorties with zero elemental mods, Shattering Impact, Rending Strike, and I forget what else.

[LarryYourWaiter 468]

You don’t need to fully max out the mods for them to be powerful.  In fact, I’m mr 18 and I don’t think I have a single Primed mod or umbral mod that is fully max levelled.  Those are goals for the future when I have nothing else to spend credits and endo on.

[(PS4)Black_Adder_ 58]

19 hours ago, spyroxion said:

Where is this index thingy located that everyone talks about?

On Neptune you have mission Index: Endurance test (basically arena mode). Check wiki: https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/The_Index .

The best way to farm credits is to play low risk index mission and leave as soon as you are offered the choice to stay or leave because the next wave will have same rewards but stronger opponents, so it's not worth it to stay. Also you will not get rewards if you can't reach the point limit in given time (you will not lose money invested if you still win, but you will also not get award or the "profit" if you can't reach point limit). So completely new players most likely will need to be carried by friends to actually profit from index.

It's just that at the point when you'll be able to solo low risk index on your own credits will not be an issue anymore. For me the umbral mods on Inaros was the point when I could start farming credits in Index solo.

[Alcatraz 1,704]

16 hours ago, spyroxion said:

Oh and another question, which I asked but no one answered, what do you do with Exalted blade modding? How do you build it nowadays (when I played last time you couldn't mod it separately)? And what do you do with Umbra polarities on him? Sentinels isn't a big thing as far as I know and since I have Primed Pressure point, wouldn't it be better to swap those polarities out? (or well at least one of them for Primed Pressure point)

Just now saw your topic and I want to say first off that you should keep your polarities, you may regret changing them, or putting in all that extra work into him trying to work around them. Same goes for his Exalted Blade.

In time you will be able to get them maxed out. So for now, just see them as goals to keep you busy.

I have some screenshots of my exalted blade setups for Umbra that you can view so you can get a taste of you can do to work with on his blade. Mind you, I have lots of primed mods, and while they are all maxed out, I did start out small like yourself, and worked my way up until almost everything is max rank.

If you copy my build for Exalted Blade, remember that it is perfectly normal to use non prime versions of the mods. But the special mods that come with him, are really good together for him. Primed Pressure Point is stronger, but for a critical chance build, together with his new mods, it's really viable setup. It more than equalizes the balance between.

https://imgur.com/sqh7Dcf

https://imgur.com/zObb8D4

As an after thought, I'm going to post a link to my Excalibur's actual build even. I replaced Streamline with Chromatic Blade when I want to run that aug. Normally I just run the first build, and this one shown in this next linked screenshot. The screenshot link just above, is only using Toxin, because when I use Chromatic Blade Aug, I use blue energy color to make Corrosive, and still have maximum attack speed, crits, good damage, and a way to heal himself when needed.

https://imgur.com/7RHPdda

Edited December 14, 2018 by Alcatraz

[spyroxion 168]

5 hours ago, (PS4)Black_Adder_ said:

On Neptune you have mission Index: Endurance test (basically arena mode). Check wiki: https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/The_Index .

The best way to farm credits is to play low risk index mission and leave as soon as you are offered the choice to stay or leave because the next wave will have same rewards but stronger opponents, so it's not worth it to stay. Also you will not get rewards if you can't reach the point limit in given time (you will not lose money invested if you still win, but you will also not get award or the "profit" if you can't reach point limit). So completely new players most likely will need to be carried by friends to actually profit from index.

It's just that at the point when you'll be able to solo low risk index on your own credits will not be an issue anymore. For me the umbral mods on Inaros was the point when I could start farming credits in Index solo.

Thanks for the answer! I've read about it and it's not just hack and slash mission and going with pubs smells dangerous (especially after I went from few mill credits to 250k thanks to prime and umbra mods). To solo it on lowest risk, would it be good with decently moded Rhino prime, Tiberon prime (got with PA a while ago) and Nikana prime? With my set up I just shred trough corpus (mainly with Tiberon prime)

5 hours ago, Alcatraz said:

Just now saw your topic and I want to say first off that you should keep your polarities, you may regret changing them, or putting in all that extra work into him trying to work around them. Same goes for his Exalted Blade.

In time you will be able to get them maxed out. So for now, just see them as goals to keep you busy.

I have some screenshots of my exalted blade setups for Umbra that you can view so you can get a taste of you can do to work with on his blade. Mind you, I have lots of primed mods, and while they are all maxed out, I did start out small like yourself, and worked my way up until almost everything is max rank.

If you copy my build for Exalted Blade, remember that it is perfectly normal to use non prime versions of the mods. But the special mods that come with him, are really good together for him. Primed Pressure Point is stronger, but for a critical chance build, together with his new mods, it's really viable setup. It more than equalizes the balance between.

https://imgur.com/sqh7Dcf

https://imgur.com/zObb8D4

As an after thought, I'm going to post a link to my Excalibur's actual build even. I replaced Streamline with Chromatic Blade when I want to run that aug. Normally I just run the first build, and this one shown in this next linked screenshot. The screenshot link just above, is only using Toxin, because when I use Chromatic Blade Aug, I use blue energy color to make Corrosive, and still have maximum attack speed, crits, good damage, and a way to heal himself when needed.

https://imgur.com/7RHPdda

Thank you very much!

Actually yesterday I was playing around with it and got similar builds to yours. Just for Exalted Blade I did 5 formas and instead of Umbra mods i placed other mods mainly because I have primed pressure point and not enough endo and credits to invest into umbra mods for blade and did same thing with corrosive (just my toxic mod is normal, have primed as well but lvl1 so in future will change). It actually does feel very powerful although I didn't do higher lvl missions. With this kind of set up, how high can Excalibur Umbra go? lvl 100? 150?