Isolation & Arcana Bounty Flow Changes

[[DE]Megan]

Season’s greetings, Tenno!

With Deimos: Arcana came the new Arcana Bounties. These multi-staged Isolation Vault Bounties have new tilesets, new tasks, and new rewards to earn. As you’re currently familiar with, in order to play any of the new Arcana Bounties, you first had to complete an Isolation Vault. On top of that, to escalate into Tier 2 and Tier 3 difficulty, you had to complete them chronologically each time. 

While having an increased skill path for newer high Tier rewards makes sense on paper, the process and time it takes to reach the higher Tiers and Arcana Bounties is a long haul. Not each squadmate is keen on going all the way! The below is an accumulation of Community and Dev feedback to address these concerns, and allow a less restricted path to the Arcana Bounties and their rewards.  

 

Isolation Vault Flow Changes

We have 4 main pillars of Isolation Vault flow changes. Not only do these changes significantly loosen the required routine, but they also aim to further improve the process for less new player confusion.

1. You will only ever need to complete a specific Tier of Isolation Bounty once to unlock the next Tier.

   1. For example: Complete the Tier 1 Isolation Vault near Necralisk Gates. You can then leave Deimos or even log off, and the next time you return to Cambion Drift you can go immediately to the Tier 2 Isolation Vault Bounty location and run that Bounty. No need to run the Tier 1 bounty again if you don’t want to.

2. Once the Isolation Vault Tier is completed, you can run the Arcana Bounty at that same Tier.

   1. Similar to the new Isolation Vault flow above, you can leave the session and upon returning to Cambion Drift you can go straight into the Arcana Bounty without first completing the Isolation Vault at that location.

3. Each Isolation Vault Bounty Tier now has a specific Mother location in Cambion Drift to provide a concrete flow with less confusion.

   1. Tier 1 = Mother located in ‘UNDULATUM’

   2. Tier 2 = Mother located between ‘ALBRECHT'S PROSPECT’ and ‘CATABOLIC GUTTER’

   3. Tier 3 = Mother located in ‘THE ABSCESS’

4. All 3 Tiers of Isolation Vault Bounties will be available from Mother within the Necralisk.

 

Isolation Vault / Arcana Bounty Droptable Changes

Changing the Isolation Vault flow was just the first step - the second step addresses the main school of thought surrounding Arcana Bounty rewards: the Arcana Bounty rewards are not balanced enough to be worth the journey. Now that the Arcana Bounties will be more easily accessible, it’s time to rebalance the drop tables:

1. Both Isolation Vault Bounties and Arcana Bounties now share a droptable. There are 3 different droptables for each Isolation/Arcana Bounty Tier that rotates every ~3 hours, allowing you to selectively choose the reward you seek and when - exactly how other Open World Bounties work. 

   1. This rotation follows the same window as the Bounty rotation in the Necralisk.

   2.    

2. Rewards within the Isolation Vault/Arcana Bounties have been rebalanced to provide a better kick at the can for higher coveted rewards:

 

Droptable content breakdown:

• Orokin Matrixes 

  • Less % chance overall.

• Relics

  • Midpoint % between the two old Bounty types.

• Necramech Weapon Parts 

  • Now split up among the three droptables so you can target.

• Necramech Mods

  • Similar drop % chance, but split up to allow more targeted runs.

• Deimos Arcanes

  • Significantly higher drop % chance.

• Scintillant (T1)

  • Midpoint drop % chance between the two old Bounty types

• Weapon parts (T2 & T3)

  • Slightly reduced: You only ever need 1 of the Sporothrix and Arum Spinosa Blueprint. Getting all the way to the Arcana Bounties and receiving another Weapon Blueprint is not a feel good moment. Although this doesn’t completely eliminate getting duplicates, the drop % reduction does allow for better chances towards the other rewards.

 

No longer in the tables:

Both of these were taken out to allow for better odds at getting newer/desired rewards.

• Rare Deimos Gems

• Endo

 

Our Warframe PC Droptable site will reflect these changes when it goes live.
 

BONUS: Making Sporothrix and Arum Spinosa Blueprints tradable

To balance out the Weapon Blueprint drop % reduction we’ve made the Sporothrix and Arum Spinosa Blueprints tradable. The Sporothrix and Arum Spinosa parts were already Tradable, but it’s now one step further. 

There we have it! We’re putting the final test touches on these changes to have them go live this week on PC. Unfortunately, a lot of these changes are code, meaning it will need to go through the Cert process for Consoles - expect these to come in an Update in the new year!

 

Please let us know your thoughts - thanks for reading!

[Kylo.]

Good. Thanks.

[Captain_Rocket505]

So it's a once you complete it, its unlocked forever? Also I kinda liked having the rare gems in there, made getting them easier. Prehaps add them to another bounty like the normal T5 ones please? Would help a lot plus the T5 bounties have a pretty small drop table I feel like

[A7roboBOT]

The Arcana bounties were a great addition, but they did take quite a bit of time. These changes look pretty good overall. Looking forwards to seeing them go live

[HunterDigi]

What about the very imbalanced stages and sometimes quite broken stages in arcana?

Like the press-use-on-flowers thing in some tiles they literally spawn outside of the max range and because of that we sometimes get like 3 flowers per power cell.

Or the sac thing scaling with players which makes it harder considering those extra players don't actually help at all with the sac hitting more enemies, they in fact make it worse because enemies get split off chasing them or they use various things that make the infested harder to group up... wisp electricity, slowing them down via aura or abilities, heck even random lich spawning makes it annoying to play that stage.

Then there's bugs like mist marks random enemies in the map as required to kill no matter how far they are from the fissure, and it also does not mark them on HUD so we're just waiting down the timer.

 

21 hours ago, [DE]Megan said:

BONUS: Making Sporothrix and Arum Spinosa Blueprints tradable

To balance out the Weapon Blueprint drop % reduction we’ve made the Sporothrix and Arum Spinosa Blueprints tradable. The Sporothrix and Arum Spinosa parts were already Tradable, but it’s now one step further. 

Wait so the bps being not tradeable was intentional? why? :| and why wasn't it mentioned so, there were bugreports on it :/

[Captain_Rocket505]

9 minutes ago, [DE]Megan said:

For example: Complete the Tier 1 Isolation Vault near Necralisk Gates. You can then leave Deimos or even log off, and the next time you return to Cambion Drift you can go immediately to the Tier 2 Isolation Vault Bounty location and run that Bounty. No need to run the Tier 1 bounty again if you don’t want to

Aactually question: what about the people who did the bounties already, will they just have them unlocked already? Also when are these changes going live?

[yarl5000]

Will this remember our past history of Iso vault runs or will we have to refresh the memory and do another full vault run to unlock all of this once the update drops?

 

also any talk of giving an endless bounty option or something where we can just keep going deeper and deeper into the iso vaults until we don't think we can do it anymore and then use the plants to pull out to the surface? 

[Styx_Prime]

Nice 👍

[saghzs]

Now if only the Arcanes were actually worth using/farming for.

[Crevab]

Huh,  actually seems a bit excessive.  I would have thougt the simple solution would be to just make it so that you can go directly to the tier you want rather than dump the idea of needing to clear the evershifting vault each time

 

Edit: Oh, any particular reason Tier 2 and Tier 3 Mother switched spots?

[(XBOX)The Neko Otaku]

Definitely a better change, i was getting frustrated with the time to sink just to farm t3 arcana bounties to only get work or other things come up as i just got to the right tier to farm

[Tesseract7777]

I am a Tenno who has struggled to get through the new content not because I don't enjoy it, or don't want to play long missions, but because I have sporadic computer crashing issues that have stymied me. Your wonderful support people have tried to help, but I just can't isolate the problem. I am pretty sure it is my hardware, and not you guys, as it has happened on another game or two now. The point is, to keep this short, I tend to play shorter mission sessions because I don't crash that often if I keep my game files verified, but longer missions make it more likely to get unlucky and lose progress. 

I don't want to mess up my squads day, or even just lose everything solo! So I have been sort of soft-locked out of finishing the new Necramech content and am only barely getting to almost level 2 in Necraloid syndicate because of this and not even halfway through building my necramech. 

This will really help me progress through the syndicate and be a part of these vault run missions by being able to do shorter runs at a time, without so much fear of crashing and either messing up my squads day in some way, or just ruining my own progress. 

Thank you so much for this!!! It is definitely very appreciated and a great change! 

[[DE]Megan]

4 minutes ago, Captain_Rocket505 said:

Aactually question: what about the people who did the bounties already, will they just have them unlocked already? Also when are these changes going live?

You'll need to run the Isolation Vault Bounties 1 more time to unlock them all forever.

Changes will come this week - still running some tests!

[weirdee]

9 minutes ago, HunterDigi said:

 

Wait so the bps being not tradeable was intentional? why? :|

my guess was that they wanted people to run these deimos missions at least a little so that they could experience the content

[Domyko]

Seems really good, thanks for your work :D

[(NSW)nin-pook]

18 minutes ago, [DE]Megan said:

Each Isolation Vault Bounty Tier now has a specific Mother location in Cambion Drift to provide a concrete flow with less confusion.

1. Tier 1 = Mother located in ‘UNDULATUM’

2. Tier 2 = Mother located between ‘ALBRECHT'S PROSPECT’ and ‘CATABOLIC GUTTER’

3. Tier 3 = Mother located in ‘THE ABSCESS’

I gotta say, this decision seems really strange. It was always super unfriendly to the player that they had to somehow know how to trigger the next step in the vaults - usually by being led there by some other player. Nothing in the game helps the player on this.

Why not just have all the bounties available at all Mother locations?!?

[(PSN)TONI__RIBEIRO]

14 minutes ago, HunterDigi said:

What about the very imbalanced stages and sometimes quite broken stages in arcana?

Like the press-use-on-flowers thing in some tiles they literally spawn outside of the max range and because of that we sometimes get like 3 flowers per power cell.

Or the sac thing scaling with players which makes it harder considering those extra players don't actually help at all with the sac hitting more enemies, they in fact make it worse because enemies get split off chasing them or they use various things that make the infested harder to group up... wisp electricity, slowing them down via aura or abilities, heck even random lich spawning makes it annoying to play that stage.

Then there's bugs like mist marks random enemies in the map as required to kill no matter how far they are from the fissure, and it also does not mark them so we're just waiting down the timer.

 

Wait so the bps being not tradeable was intentional? why? :|

To make you do the new vaults at least to get those 

[Voltage]

Good thing I waited on finishing up the update by a few weeks.

In the future, please publish drop tables with time requirements and mechanics weeks ahead of time of the Test Cluster or before release to get some feedback on time and reward pacing. It would cut out these types of hotfixes and players would feel better about playing new updates.

1 hour ago, [DE]Megan said:

BONUS: Making Sporothrix and Arum Spinosa Blueprints tradable

To balance out the Weapon Blueprint drop % reduction we’ve made the Sporothrix and Arum Spinosa Blueprints tradable. The Sporothrix and Arum Spinosa parts were already Tradable, but it’s now one step further. 

I mean, thank you, but the Furax Wraith blueprint was tradable since day 1 of Plains of Eidolon 3 years ago. This just seems like an overdue bug fix more than a bonus.

1 hour ago, [DE]Megan said:

• Slightly reduced: You only ever need 1 of the Sporothrix and Arum Spinosa Blueprint. Getting all the way to the Arcana Bounties and receiving another Weapon Blueprint is not a feel good moment. Although this doesn’t completely eliminate getting duplicates, the drop % reduction does allow for better chances towards the other rewards.

This is awesome! Hopefully this is applied to the rest of the game. Getting a Steel Fiber or other Common Mod, Endo, or a Credits bundle in most missions, especially Steel Path is "not a feel good moment".

[DebrisFlow]

Nice changes, i only hope that the 3h rotation won't be too limiting. Thx for listening to our prayers.

[(NSW)Skyress]

8 minutes ago, [DE]Megan said:

You'll need to run the Isolation Vault Bounties 1 more time to unlock them all forever.

Changes will come this week - still running some tests!

So, after I have completed all 3 isolations vault tier once, if anoher day, I want to run directly the tier 3 vault, without the tier 1 and 2 before, I can ?

[[DE]Megan]

Just now, (NSW)Skyress said:

So, after I have completed all 3 isolations vault tier once, if anoher day, I want to run directly the tier 3 vault, without the tier 1 and 2 before, I can ?

Correct. Do the Isolation Vault Bounties once (when these changes go live) and they're forever unlocked. 

[Nasair]

Nice, and thank you!

[Captain_Rocket505]

11 minutes ago, [DE]Megan said:

You'll need to run the Isolation Vault Bounties 1 more time to unlock them all forever.

Changes will come this week - still running some tests!

Ace

[Fogg]

Thank you for the tweaks. Warframe's typical time investment per mission maxes out at around 30 minutes and this makes it very manageable for me to balance with my real life responsibilities. T1-3 was taking about an hour, plus the cleanse missions on top of them, and is just too much.

I find the blue goo tagging mission to still be unusually difficult, and very dependent on the player squad's behavior and the tile the enemies need to spawn and traverse to group up for the throws. Please consider adding one more throw before the bonus fails.

[DrBorris]

Bounty changes look great, problem is that there still is little incentive to do them. Once you get your Necramech things (which will be easier now) that's it, your done. The long tailed grind that the Arcanes have the potential to create doesn't exist because the Arcanes are aggressively bad and uninteresting.

I would like to say this will make me more likely to do vaults, but to be honest I probably won't touch them until the Arcanes are worth my time.