[Concept] Plains of Eidolon Survival Mission Mode

[Connox]

Hi,

so one of the shortcomings of Warframe i think is that the many, many assets that are already ingame are not used to their full potential. So this concept arose from thinking along those lines of trying to create new content with everything we already have ingame.

Now to the concept itself, as the title says it is about a new mode for the plains of eidolon. Something new to fill the plains of eidolon with content, with something to do, in this case a survival mode.

And i think this idea could be interesting for endurance players in a way, but everyone who likes survival missions will like this too.

To start with there is a setup of how that survival mission comes to be ingame and why we are doing that. Basically its background information and flavour text(something else Warframe is missing in most of the game, just a bit of flavour text to give a background to the things we do would be nice overall).

To be able to access and start a survival on the plains first a miniquest has to be completed that is given by the Quills in Cetus. This mission can only be completed during the day in Cetus.

Onkko: "Tenno, there was a spike of sentient energy somewhere beneath the plains. I fear the grineer have dug something up that should have stayed buried. I want you to enter the plains and go to the coordinates i send you. Find out what the grineer have unearthed."

Then you find the cave in the plains and at the bottom of the cave you find the sentient item(technologie, eidolon part, this could be for example one of those bright blue glowing root like things growing on the teralyst arms).

Onkko: "Tenno, this piece contains a high concentration of pure sentient energy. Energy like this is very rare, we cannot let it fall into the hands of the Twin Queens. Bring this piece back to Cetus, where the Quills will take care of it."

Since this is a small quest mission, optionally here could be first a short Defense mission of 5-10 minutes, where the grineer try to recapture the cave you're in. But it is not necessary.

Then when you try to pick up the sentient piece to take it back, the pure sentient energy causes a reaction when it comes into contact with your Warframe a being created to fight the sentients.

The Energy attacks your Warframe and attaches it to the Warframe draining the sentient piece of all energy in the process. I will call this "Sentient Radiation". This violent reaction transforms your Warframe into a powerful beacon of sentient energy. The story of POE explains that the Grineer are looking for sentient remnants on the plain, so they will have some kind of radar for sentient energy. And these radars are going crazy with the signal your Warframe now emits. This sends the Grineer into a frenzy and causes them to send everything they have to capture you and bring you back for research.

The basic survival mission has now started with the Grineer sending wave after wave against you.

Now i wrote in the beginning that this is a new use for existing assets. So this survival will use the basic elements of the normal existing survival missions ingame, however there slightly modified to fit the narrative of the plains.

1. The Rewards

First the A,A,B,C reward rotation which can be used as always. At 5 minutes you would get a message like:

Konzu : "Tenno, i don't know what you are up to on the plains but my contacts say they the grineer camps are in an uproar, which gave our allies the opportunity to sneak into a grineer camp....."  here would then be multpile options, like "... where they got vital information" for which you get a credit cache from Konzu or "where they could steal an artifact" which would be a relic for example.

2. Life support equivalent

Here the sentient energy comes into play again(and not for the last time). So since we are on the plains on a very wide open area it wouldn't make a lot of sense if the grineer could somewhere cut off the lifesupport of a planet so we need another reason. The sentient energy that has attached to your Warframe is constantly attacking your Warframe slowly corrupting it. This will be shown throught the normal percentage circle just that it is inverted and goes form 0-100% instead of the 100-0% of the life support. And if you reach 100% sentient corruption the integrity of your Warframe is unstable so it rapidly loses health, the same effect as when the life support reaches 0%.

Now we also need an explanation for the stuff the enemies can drop that reduces your corruption. Since the grineer are in the plains to find and research sentients, it would make sense if they have some medical equipment to protect themselves from sentient radiation.

In the same the existence of bigger medical stations can be explained. These stations can be found in the different grineer camps which are scattered on the plains. This causes a wide area of the plains if not the whole plains to become important during such a survival mission. This depends on the spawn rates of these medical stations, but it should be something long enough so that you have to cycle between at least 3 grineer camps, so you have to stay on the move.

Here is another important point which is that when the grineer detect the you they lock down the airspace above the plains. For one this explains why you do not get those beforementioned healing stations dropped by the lotus like you get in other survivals. Another important impact that the lockdown has is that during such a survival you cannot use your archwing.

This forces you to stay on the ground and actually fight the enemies and not just teleport from one camp to the next with your itzal....

But this gives also an opportunity to the K-drive to shine since that is not blocked. So if you have to rush to the next healing station use your K-drive.

So with this the basic survival mission would be finished already. However we are on the plains on earth so there are a few twists possible regarding the day/night cycle.

An addition during the day time would be that at every 5-minute mark like on lua a group of sentient fighters spawn you have to fight off.

Onkko: "The sentient energy on you spiked just now. This signal was detected by sentient fightes on lua which are coming to investigate. Be careful!"

So that would be the extent of the survival mission during the day on the plains. This would also be where the introduction quest ends after a 5-10 min survival with one set of sentient fighters possibly spawning.

Now so far this would be just another survival mission like every other survival we have. However we still have the night on the plains and you are affected by powerful "sentient radiation".

First since the plains are generally covered with sentient energy during the night, the signal spikes your Warframe corruption sends out every five minutes will not be detected on lua at night, so no sentient fighters during the night.

In their place come the vomvalysts, in regular intervalls together with the grineer. This would be a great way imo for newer players to farm vomvalysts reliably to farm enough standing for like the first 1 or 2 standing ranks with the quills.

But the vomvalysts are not the only ones attracted to the energy you are carrying around. There are still the Eidolons. And the lore says that the eidolons are roaming the plains looking for parts to rebuild and repair themselves. So what happens if such an eidolon senses a high concentration of pure sentient energy. Simple: it hunts you down.

Basically the eidolon will follow you constantly across the whole plains during the night, another reason you have to keep moving.

Of course that is not the only option you have. If the eidolon is close enough to you it will attack you directly, starting the eidolon encounter. But that is not the only thing happening, as long as you are in attacking range of the eidolon the eidolon will constantly siphon the senient energy from your warframe slowing down the corruption if not completly halting it, so during the eidolon fight you do not have to be worried about finding healing stations.

So during the night you can either run from the eidolon and between the grineer camps for healing stations or you fight the eidolon.

This is still not the end. During the day there was an energy spike created by the sentient radiation which called down sentient fighters. At night this energy spike will cause a new eidolon to emerge somewhere on the plains. This can happen every 5 minutes if the previous eidolon is killed/captured fast enough. So you can potentially farm a lot of eidolons in one night.

Now don't forget we are still in a survival where the timer constantly ticks higher and the enemies get constantly stronger. This also applies to the eidolons in the form that at minute 5, 10, 15 new teralysts spawn, while on minutes 20,25,30,35 Gantulysts will spawn, and you guessed it at 40 minutes and every 5 minutes after the energy spike is strong enough to call a new hydrolyst to the plains.

Now if you say the night only has 50 minutes or so, don't forget that we have a continious day/night cycle the survival which works together with the survival timer. So if you start the survival 20 minutes before the night, the first eidolon that will spawn will be a Gantulyst, and a hydrolyst will spawn if you start 40 minutes before nightfall. So if you are strong enough you can kill a hydrolyst every 5 minutes( if that would be a bit too strong than the spawntimer can be increased to ten minutes). Even with ten minutes you could kill 4-5 hydrolysts in one night, even so you have to keep in mind that by than you are 50+ minutes in a survival already and the grineer will not stop hunting you even at night, that is how strong their desire for the sentient energy is.

This would have to be tested, if the grineer even keep attacking you while you are fighting the eidolon. And of course the eidolons drop their normal rewards everytime.

Depending on the power of ones squad, killing and especially capturing the eidolons will requir good coordination since for each newly spawned eidolon the lures have to be prepared and if every 5 minutes an eidolon spawns you need a lot of lures to captire them all.

 

So almost forget the way to start the survival. After the initial introduction quest there can be 3 caves in the plains which each contain one of these sentient artifacts containing the "sentient radiation". These 3 caves would correspond to The Tier 1, 2, 3 difficulties of the normal game modes basically setting the enemy starting lvl. And as it is with the enemies on the plains, the farther away the starting cave is the higher the tier of the survival mission.

 

So that is my idea for something new to do on the plains which also does not include going back and forth to cetus at night for example.

And as is said in the beginning this is all done with assets that are already ingame, just that there is a bit of background story and flavour text as to what is happening, while allowing endurance players to continously fight hydrolysts while lvl 80+ or even far higher lvl bombards are shooting at them.😁

 

[(PSN)G-Dubsupreme]

Like the idea. But would add that during night time different sentients spawn not just Vomvalysts but also Mimics, Battalysts, Oculysts and Conculysts.