New player question: prime frames

[bioP1RATE]

I’m new to warframe and had some possibly silly questions. 

1. What does it mean when a prime frame is vaulted?

2. Is hydroid prime vaulted?

3. Other than grinding is there anything that prevents a player from unlocking a prime variant of a frame before the standard frame?

4. If it’s possible to farm hydroid prime is it better to farm relics, or buy blueprints off market? (Is this possible)

 

[Tesseract7777]

14 minutes ago, bioP1RATE said:

I’m new to warframe and had some possibly silly questions. 

1. What does it mean when a prime frame is vaulted?

2. Is hydroid prime vaulted?

3. Other than grinding is there anything that prevents a player from unlocking a prime variant of a frame before the standard frame?

4. If it’s possible to farm hydroid prime is it better to farm relics, or buy blueprints off market? (Is this possible)

 

1). To obtain prime parts, you get relics from certain mission rewards and these relics have their own drop table for potential prime blueprints. Relics are cracked in fissure missions in order to obtain prime parts. Something being vaulted means you can no longer grind for those relics in missions. However, someone who still has those relics yet can crack them open. Eventually, those relics will come out of the vault again.

2. Yes, Hydroid Prime's relics are currently vaulted and cannot be obtained by grinding in game. 

3) No. Apart from grinding, there is nothing in the game infrastructure that stops you from buying/building/obtaining a prime before you build/buy/obtain its vanilla counterpart. 

4. Hydroid's relics cannot be actively farmed, but there are multiple ways you can get Hydroid Prime.

a) You can use platinum that you buy from DE, or get from other players by trading them goods, to buy his parts from other players.

b) you can use said platinum to buy the vaulted relics from people who still have them, and try your luck grinding the relics yourself. 

c) You can just do random fissures with random public groups and hope the occasional person will be cracking a Hydroid relic (not recommended if you actually want to get this prime anytime soon). 

I would recommend grinding and selling stuff for plat and just buying Hydroid Prime's blueprints from someone. If you like Hydroid and want his prime version, you will find he is not particularly expensive for a vaulted frame. 

Always check Warframe Market, even if you aren't going to get an account there, before buying anything. It will give you a good idea for the going price of a particular prime and their parts. Right now, it looks like the median price for a Hydroid Prime set is about 110P.

[McCIoud]

15 minutes ago, bioP1RATE said:

1. What does it mean when a prime frame is vaulted?

The relics that it's parts drop from cannot be obtained

15 minutes ago, bioP1RATE said:

2. Is hydroid prime vaulted?

Currently yes

16 minutes ago, bioP1RATE said:

3. Other than grinding is there anything that prevents a player from unlocking a prime variant of a frame before the standard frame?

Mastery rank

16 minutes ago, bioP1RATE said:

4. If it’s possible to farm hydroid prime is it better to farm relics, or buy blueprints off market? (Is this possible)

If he were unvaulted, relics would be better, no need to trade plat.

[sauceyboii11]

1 hour ago, bioP1RATE said:

I’m new to warframe and had some possibly silly questions. 

1. What does it mean when a prime frame is vaulted?

2. Is hydroid prime vaulted?

3. Other than grinding is there anything that prevents a player from unlocking a prime variant of a frame before the standard frame?

4. If it’s possible to farm hydroid prime is it better to farm relics, or buy blueprints off market? (Is this possible)

 

yes hydroid prime is vaulted and a prime means you cannot get the prime.

[RazerXPrime]

1. What does it mean when a prime frame is vaulted?

Vaulted means the relics that contain the prime frame are no longer obtainable as drops in the game. Relics you obtained before they were vaulted will remain in your inventory as normal and you can still use them to obtain said prime parts. 

2. Is hydroid prime vaulted?

Yes

3. Other than grinding is there anything that prevents a player from unlocking a prime variant of a frame before the standard frame?

There are three ways to obtain a prime frame: 1. Buy Prime Access with real money. 2. Farm relics and open them in the game. 3. Buy Prime parts from other players by trading for platinum. Options 1 and 2 are time limited because of availability and Vaulting. Option 3 is always possible, but do note that once the required relics are vaulted prices for prime parts in trading will skyrocket.

4. If it’s possible to farm hydroid prime is it better to farm relics, or buy blueprints off market? (Is this possible)

Hydroid's relics are currently not available as drops in the game as they are vaulted. If you really want him the only way you can get him is by buying from other players with platinum. Hydroid Prime full set trades for about 120 platinum.

 

Farming and trading are two different ways to obtain things. The first one is a time investment and the second one a platinum investment. It's upto the player to decide whether they want to spend time or platinum. In most cases people choose to spend time instead of platinum. 

[Soy77]

I’m new to warframe and had some possibly silly questions. 
hi, tenno! and welcome to warframe

1. What does it mean when a prime frame is vaulted?
it means they're put in a save, and will not be available to be obtained in the game. aside from buying the parts from people who keeps them.

2. Is hydroid prime vaulted?
yes he is.

3. Other than grinding is there anything that prevents a player from unlocking a prime variant of a frame before the standard frame?
no. you can get frames in any order you want

4. If it’s possible to farm hydroid prime is it better to farm relics, or buy blueprints off market? (Is this possible)
farming relics is the main method of getting prime warframe parts. everyone get their prime parts from relics. and since hydroid prime is vaulted, no you won't find relics containing hydroid prime parts right now.
there are two markets in warframe. the first one is the in-game market. you can find this on console left just before the ramp on your ship. for warframes, it generally only sell vanilla frames. so no, it won't have hydroid prime for sale.
and then there's the player's market. most people go to warframemarket. this is not an official market. this is how players trade with other players. you can't trade vanilla warframe parts between players, the game doesn't allow it. but players mostly buy and sell prime warframe parts here. so you can buy hydroid prime parts here.

seems to me you just want hydroid prime. which is cool.
a little bit of warning, though. p2p trading is not a thing that i can recommend for rookies. people should only trade between players after they have a firm grasp of how warframe generally works. what parts you need to make a warframe, how to actually turn them into warframe, how trade works, how chat works, how tax works, how platinum works, what are the ways to get it, how much is considered cheap or expensive in the game, etc.
also, hydroid is not one of the best frame out there right now. he's pretty old. majority of other frames simply outclasses him.

=================

my suggestion to you: why not familiarize yourself with the game, and with hydroid.
you can buy his main blueprint from market console on your ship. and farm the parts from the boss on earth, vay hek.
once you actually got him and played with him, you can decide if it's still worth it to spend platinums and buy the primed version from other players.
by then you must've possess better knowledge about the game.

with a little bit of luck, we might have hydroid "unvaulting" event along the way. it's basically a period of time when some warframe that are vaulted, made temporary available for everyone to farm from relics.