Orphix vs Eidolons: Farming Arcanes

[di0n08O8]

Currently, there are two ways to farm Arcanes in Warframe: Hunting Eidolons, or killing Orphixes. I thought it'd be interesting to compare the process of getting a Legendary Arcane with each of them. Based on that, I found a few problems and I've been thinking about how the current situation could be improved.

Eidolons

Availability

• Eidolons can only be hunted during the night.
• Nighttime lasts 50 minutes, daytime lasts 100 minutes.
• Eidolons will retreat at dawn.
• Operator is required.

Process

• All three Eidolons have to be hunted in order during the same mission in order to get Legendary Arcanes.
• A squad with decent knowledge about and regular equipment modded for this activity can hunt all three Eidolons in around 15 minutes
• Coördinated, experienced squads can often do this in 8 minutes.
• Apart from the day/night cycle, players can go at their own pace. 

Drops

• Every Eidolon drops an Arcane.
• 5% chance at a Legendary Arcane from a captured Hydrolyst.

 

Veil Proxima Oprhix

Availability

• Mission is always available
• Regular Railjack objectives mean players have to spend a few minutes each time before being able to do the desired mission.
• Operator is required.
• Necramech is not required to enter mission, but more or less required in order to complete it. 

Process

• Orphix follows standard AABC-... drop cycle.
• An Orphix spawns every 50 seconds.
• Players have to kill them within a certain time to keep the Sentient control at acceptable levels.
• Each Rotation drop required 3 defeated Orphixes.
• Due to the Orphix's time-based spawns, getting to Rotation C will always take 10 minutes (4*3 Orphixes = 12 Orphixes * 50 seconds = 600 seconds).

Drops

• Only Rotation C has a chance of dropping an Arcane.
• 1.41% chance at a Legendary Arcane from Rotation C.

 

Comparison

On paper, Orphix already seems to be worse. Eidolons take a bit longer, but have a 4 times higher chance to drop a Legendary Arcane. Of course, they are held back by the fact that it has to be night on the Plains of Eidolon.

I'd argue that Orphix is truly far worse than Eidolons. The main reasons for that are gear requirements and pressure.

During an Orphix mission, players have to kill an Orphix ranging from around level 55 to 90 in less than 50 seconds. In those 50 seconds, they have to move from their previous Orphix to the one that just spawned, take out the Resonators, damage the Orphix, take out more Resonators, and finish off the Orphix. Should players fail to do all of this within that 50 second period, another Orphix will spawn and they will have to catch up as quickly as possible in order to prevent the Sentient control from snowballing out of control.

Besides the very strict schedule players have to keep up with, they'll also be doing almost the entire mission in their Necramech, which is also a problem. Players will encounter hordes of Corpus and Sentient enemies, all ranging from around level 55 to 90. Sentients are known for being able to output a lot of damage, which Necramechs generally can't deal with. They only have a few ways to negate incoming damage (Storm Shroud and Shield Maiden) and are equally limited in ways to regenerate Health (Meat Hook and Necramech Repair). If this wasn't enough of a problem, if a player's Necramech is destroyed, it goes on a 60 second cooldown, which almost guarantees players will not be able to keep up with the schedule and that Sentient control will reach 100%. A Rent-A-Mech will already stop doing any meaningful damage after the first Orphix, so temporarily using one is not a viable option either.

Orphix Venom worked fine, because the enemy levels were much lower and Orphixes spawned every 90 seconds, instead of every 50 seconds. During the event, players didn't have to deal as much damage to keep up, didn't have to tank as much damage, and didn't have to worry as much about a second Orphix spawning. Overall, it felt a lot more relaxed and doable.

After 12 Orphixes in the Veil (the first Rotation C drop), the Orphixes are around level 90 and have around 1.700.000 effective health. That's comparable to the 30th Orphix during the Endurance mission of Orphix Venom. However, due to the shorter spawn time for Orphixes, players have to kill it almost twice as fast, which realistically makes it more difficult than anything during Orphix Venom.

 

Conclusion

Eidolons are far better for farming Arcanes. They're slightly slower to complete, but have a much higher chance to drop Legendary Arcanes, require far less optimized equipment, and are much less stressful. The only advantage Orphix has over Eidolons is that it's always available, although public matchmaking indicates that players rather do something other than farming Arcanes when it's daytime on the Plains of Eidolon.

 

In my opinion, Orphix could be made more desirable by changing the following:

• Railjack objectives should be limited to a few Security Nodes. This way players feel like they're wasting less time to get to the mission they actually want to do.
• Orphix and Sentient enemy levels should be reduced. Orphix levels in the Veil should range between level 45 and 145. This way, players have to deal with less incoming damage and also have to deal less damage, which reduces the required investment into weapons and the Necramech. It also makes a larger variety of weapons viable.
• Increase Orphix spawn time from 50 seconds to 70 seconds. This would make the mission less strict. Players have more time to catch up if they ever fall behind, which will make it feel less hectic and stressful. It also further reduces the damage output required from players.
• Reduce Necramech cooldown from 60 seconds to 30 seconds. This will make it less problematic if a player's Necramech dies. It also means players have to spend less time as their Operator, who struggle a lot to contribute to the mission's objective in any meaningful way.
• Add Rare Arcanes to Rotation A and B, reduce their drop chance on Rotation C, increase Legendary drop chance on Rotation C. This way Rotation A and B will feel less like a waste of time, and Rotation C's drops will be able to better compete with Eidolons.

[Zeddypanda]

I find the speed of the spawns to be alright. It can seem stressful, but making it slower is only going to make it less rewarding. To make it easier, one could simply reduce the speed at which sentient control grows. The Orphix on venus already has this, and you can actually make it to 12 by simply hanging around in one room and beating the same orphix over and over.

The miserable drop rate of good arcanes is a bigger deal, and reward-wise there's just no real reason to run the mode. I also agree that the levels are a bit over tuned. Orphixes themselves are fine, but sentient damage quickly gets harsh enough I found myself having to re-engage storm shroud pretty much as soon as the invincibility wore off.

An oddity I noticed is that in veil proxima, a single shot from my shwack prism would oneshot late resonators, while on venus I'd need several shots. What's the deal there?

Necramech Repair and enemy sense needs to be put back in the game. Without those, orphix is a mode exclusively for players who participated in orphix venom or have traded with those that did.

[DrivaMain]

I agree that Veil Orphix has much more unforgiving scaling for the Orphixes. Not to mention the Orphix Venom exclusive mech mods are absolutely mandatory. We need those mods back. They also need to reduce the Orphix control rate, 3 spawning at the same time makes the meter goes up too fast.

Arcane drop chance is.. okay. They are high value market items, I understand DE doesn't want them to be too available. Maybe evenly distribute it across many missions. For example, T1 Orphix will have Teralyst drop table, T2 Orphix will have Gantulyst Drop Table, and T3 Orphix will have Hydrolyst drop table. Drop chance can be adjusted to not make them overtake Eidolons in terms of efficiency.

[di0n08O8]

10 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

Maybe evenly distribute it across many mission

That's pretty much what is currently in the game. The various Orphix missions drop a specific rarity of Arcanes. The Veil mission drops Rare and Legendary Arcanes.

The problem is that only Rotation C drops Arcanes. So where Eidolons give you 3 Arcanes (1 of which can be Legendary), Orphix only gives you 1, with a smaller chance of it being Legendary than Eidolons.

Rotation A and B drop some Railjack parts and Relics, so they're pretty much completely worthless.

[WiseGuard]

Tried doing some Orphixes today. 

Pluto was quite easy, mech was easy to maintain, did AABC in no time. Got some Endo...

Veil is another story entirely. Doing it with randoms was the biggest mistake, Only one guy knew what to do and he had to use default Necramech. Doing it solo was better than in group. My only concern was mechs hp.
Tho I am still missing Repair, Rage and Fiber Steel mods.

Enemies scale too much, especially Orphixes. You can't simply trade survivability for damage, you need to use both Shroud and Artillery. Lower missions let you leverage speed for caution and vise versa.
Drop rate of Arcanes is kind of crap.

In my opinion - do not bother with Orphixes, even for fun, in Veil. It's just go fast and hard, no strategy involved, as there is no place for it.

[Paradoxoglanis]

Bring back this thread so we can remind people that warframe arcanes are still the dumbest farm in the game and pretty much just p2w unless you think farming eidolons for a year is fine.

[Lutesque]

2 hours ago, Paradoxoglanis said:

Bring back this thread so we can remind people that warframe arcanes are still the dumbest farm in the game and pretty much just p2w unless you think farming eidolons for a year is fine.

I don't agree with everything said here... But yeah pretty much this is how I feel....

 

 

 

 

 

Orphix is basically Busted in terms of Balance and Eidolons are Toxic as hell....

The best Arcane Farm is selling 20 Nidus Prime Sets and Buying 1 Rank 5 Arcane Energize... And you know what... This isn't even as hard as one would think it is... I myself am already sitting on 8 Booben Prime Sets that I got in the Last 6 Days.. 😐 and I didn't have have my Warframe Disabled or deal with Elitist who yelled at me for not bringing a Trinity...

Who even cares about the Other Arcanes ? 

As far as I'm concerned every other arcane is just Polluting the Drop Tables....

[Lutesque]

In short... Pay to Not Play....

[Paradoxoglanis]

57 minutes ago, Lutesque said:

As far as I'm concerned every other arcane is just Polluting the Drop Tables....

This is another good point. Most of the arcanes arent useful except in 1-2 niche missions, and even then the lower rank versions are useless on most of them.

[(PSN)Richtel79]

Endo is by far the worst reward in this whole farming of warframe! Small example of getting the narma bounties 2x in a row in 5 phases each Endo as a reward nice! This endo rubbish should be removed from all reward tables!

[Grommile]

7 hours ago, (PSN)Richtel79 said:

Endo is by far the worst reward in this whole farming of warframe!

I got three Quassus Blueprints from one Deimos bounty recently.

[(PSN)Richtel79]

vor 15 Stunden schrieb Grommile:

I got three Quassus Blueprints from one Deimos bounty recently.

That’s good because you’ve got a lot of RNG luck! Got my harrow p together after 5 hours

[Grommile]

1 hour ago, (PSN)Richtel79 said:

That’s good because you’ve got a lot of RNG luck! Got my harrow p together after 5 hours

No, that's bad, because all Quassus blueprints after the first are vendor trash.