Problems getting Mastery Ranks playing solo. Is this is a real thing or do I just suck?

[Zengur]

I have something like 48 hours of logged time in (but seriously perhaps 20 hours of actually doing missions, 50-60% of the time I'm in some menu doing nothing on the Orbiter, dabbling with weapon and mod builds or the game runs in the background) and I'm STILL at mastery level 2, though inches from MR 3.

For the past 17 missions or so I have averaged to the tune or 240 mastery points per successful mission. I counted.

I take all the Void Fissure missions I figure I can handle alone, and lately have played a ton of defense and exterminate missions (also infestations to get credits, they are plenty easy to frag for quick cash - at this MR at least) trying to kill as many enemies as possible as fast as possible to gain affinity and rank up my weapons. But going is slow as hell.

Also I'm stuck on Earth/Venus because the Space Crab JACKÀ$$ in Venus stomps me to minced Tenno Armor (I bet the ***er eats the metal after with Sriracha sauce) or shoots blue 5$|-|17 on me which causes me to die. Granted, I am not very good at the Parkour element of the game but after I die a couple of times I go back trying to find a Fissure, a mission I have yet to complete or take a survival or defense gig and try to level up something. I recently fixed myself up with a Kraken and Furis MK-1 just for Mastery Fodder but oh boy are the fun to play for the first 1 to 5 ranks. 

How do the veterans of the game rank up their unranked new stuff? Personally, I pick an easy defense or exterminate mission and do as much as I can with my new peashooter and kill whatever causes me trouble with another backup weapon or Skana which is a whirlwind of death against almost any faction at this stage of available missions. 

Since I have access to just about nowhere my inventory is overflowing with Ferrite, Rubedo, Alloy Plate, Polymer and generally stuff you find in Earth/Venus but not much else. Which in turn cramps my style hard if I try to forge just about anything on my blueprint list, never mind those I can buy.

Mods and weapons make the Frame in the end but being rank 2 (3 in an hour or two, I hope) seriously cramps my options though. What missions I can take, what weapons I can buy and use, how many slots I have free, how many loadouts, you know the drill. I've heard it mentioned several times over playing with a squad will result in faster advances in Affinity. This true?

Oh, and I don't _like_ playing solo, but I'm currently in a network with Strict NAT 90% of the week and the guys in this organization would laugh until they pass out even thinking about making changes to their routers because some semi-random IT guy wants to play a computer in the evenings. 

Bonus question #1: Should I spend a potato on my level 30 Excalibur? I like it. Perhaps because I can't try anything else though? I already bought some damage mods since they weren't dropping so I don't mind spending the worth of a single lunch to get a bit of Plat and spend a bit on delicious Potatos. But in general I try to play for free.

Bonus question #2: I forgot it while typing. Oh yeah, now it returned to me. Should I try to get my hands on a sniper weapon, is Vectis good (if I can gather the materials ?) and go wander around the Plains of Eidolon or Orb Vallis to get some variety to this eternal grinding against level 1-16 enemies that results in nothing. 

Opinion: The Taxon is plenty fun to have around, it's like a GoPro drone that does target spotting for me either draining shields or slowing down space monsters while spamming blue rays so it makes it easier for me to spot them! Hooray!

Anyway still an awesome game, love it, I'm not in a hurry to run through everything within a week and just enjoy the ride but feeling like I'm doing something wrong and a bit stuck in here.  

 

 

[Zengur]

5 hours ago, (PS4)Jacobivan said:

Good choice of mods upgraded, those will serve you well till late game. It' s ok to melt duplicate mods for endo, i would leave at least one unranked copy of each, though. Will help you level new stuff a little easier. 

For solo mr farming with benefits i recommend Gabi on Ceres. That mission gives you extra 25k credits on completion, double that if it's you first mission of the day. Used to be my best source of income till i could do Index. Also Orokin Cells drop there. 

People answering gave you a lot of good advice, i agree with most of it. I'd like to add a couple things:

Go to the Codex console on your orbiter, start and do any quests you can. Most of them are quite fun, and rewards are usually well worth it- from new frames to try and get mr from, to space doggies, archwings used in open worlds and some planet missions, new lore and spoiler abilities, even new planets to explore later. 

Do Nightwave. Free slots, mods, cosmetics and weapons. Some things you won't be able to do solo just yet, but you should be able to progres and get cool stuff. 

Try to beeline to junctions on all planets you unlock. You have to complete some tasks to be able to access junctions and kill specters, but they give new quests and weapons. If you have trouble with any specter, farm Mag warframe. Her second ability makes junctions specters a joke. 

Good luck have fun, Tenno. 

Lot's of great tips, I was low on Endo at one point and sold stuff that would have been useful for new, unranked items and it bit me in the buttocks a bit but I learned my lesson. I'm trying to make sure I have a highly ranked mod and an unranked/low ranked one for at least every basic weapon mod for each type of arms (damage, elementals at least). 

On a completely different matter, I bought a MK1-Paris as Mastery Fodder and since I don't feel like fighting  THE SPACE CRAB again today I'm trying to make some credits while upgrading my Furis MK-1 and the bow in Cobal to gain MR points and some extra cash, 15k+ per 5 waves isn't bad at this stage.

It's still a bit of a mystery to me how bows replenish arrows? I ran almost out in four waves out of 10 the first time around.

Holy crap, now, the bow is no crowd control weapon but without any damage mods I was doing 501 points of damage per shot as often as not. 4 ranks in my first Defense run.

I'ma do a few more of those and then concentrate on cleaning up the last few Earth/Venus missions I haven't completed and go for the JACKÁSS again so I can get some other resources outside of Ferrite, Alloy and Polymers...  Didn't the Space Metal Lobster become shootable after it loses one of it's leggies? And it has to be crouching for you to attack it's limbs with the Parazon? Bah gawd I hate that f**ker.

It's going to be a while before I get to Ceres and the real ca$h runs but now that I finally got to MR 3 I sort of stopped worrying about it and just enjoy testing out my new fodder MR fodder military materiel. 

Just shut my brains 50% off and grind for a few hours.

Four more weeks and I get rid of the Strict NAT... Hope I last that long ;D

 

[Zengur]

5 hours ago, (PS4)grayhyh said:

Its not you,this game sucks to level up alone,honestly with solo beginner farms its either way survival,exterminate or spy which still arent the most efficient ones and spy requires you to be efficient and not trigger the alarms in the spy vaults for the most xp(you get 3 times the xp from the spy vault if you do it without triggering alarm than you do if alarm is on) honestly just go for recruit chat and tell them you want to be carried on hydron i get that you have internet issues but leveling up stuff solo till later on sucks and even then it still sucks quite a bunch im sorry but thats warframe for ya.

Thanks for the advice. 

Where do I actually find this recruit chat? I might be able to sneak some hours in on my home network next weekend without NAT hassle.

[(PSN)grayhyh]

16 minutes ago, Zengur said:

Thanks for the advice. 

Where do I actually find this recruit chat? I might be able to sneak some hours in on my home network next weekend without NAT hassle.

I dont rmember if where you are at the game prograss the chats are on(i dont rmember lol)but,its near the trade chat tab and trade chat is the last one to the right so recruit chat is after it

[(PSN)grayhyh]

23 minutes ago, Zengur said:

It's still a bit of a mystery to me how bows replenish arrows? I ran almost out in four waves out of 10 the first time around.

 

It replinishes ammo over time but pretty slow tho ( i think it used to do it faster but they nerfed it? not so sure tbh)so you need to get good at aiming those,at least the ones with the low ammo reserves or just hope to get some more bow ammo drops from enemies.

[Zengur]

10 minutes ago, (PS4)grayhyh said:

I dont rmember if where you are at the game prograss the chats are on(i dont rmember lol)but,its near the trade chat tab and trade chat is the last one to the right so recruit chat is after it

Problem is, with the organizations router configurations UPnP or NAT-PMP are blocked. Can't do anything on the local machine to help the situation. This means I can't connect to the chat server, or see other players ingame and thus forth. .

[quxier]

Solo playing is bad... especially if you hadn't beaten something. Lot's of content is just mod/weapon/frame check. You need enough power to beat something but that power is "few levels ahead". For example, as fair I remember, you need ~5000 Nano spores for your Dog machine. However the first planet where you get Nano spores gives you very small amount. At the end of Star chart (all planet beaten) max few simple mission would give you enough.
Other aspect of solo vs team:
- less exp: there is lot of way to help your team, but not every gives you exp. 4 players means more enemies and that means more exp (to put it simply).
- random stuffs prefer team: if you play with 4 people with correct relic "level" in 2-3 you should get what you want. In solo? Forget it. You put 100 things into your relic and you can get freaking forma... or common stuff; if you want to get something from the enemy then teamwork make more enemies, hence more chance to get
- much easier: killing certain boss doesn't mean you are better... you can just have better weapons/frames/mods.

As for tip (many said a lot, I won't repeat... at least I'll try):
- leveling your pet or companion (e.g. kubrow or carrier) that can die any time is "easy" while doing spy missions. Doing another mission won't give that much exp. Companion/Pet isn't very powerful without proper mods so it won't get exp quickly, like your frame/weapon. If you don't raise an alarm you get 2x. If you get Exp booster it's another 2x, and if you are lucky you get affinity weekend boosters. Last time I leveled up my pets/companion few times during such time.
Don't equip any weapon or mod that "attacks". Just more hp/shield/armor and some utility like Vacum that gathers your loot.

ps. you are early in the game, expect grind... a lot of grind. It's Grindframe.
ps2. Maybe some VPN but I'm not into that stuff, so I don't know.