Mid-game Progression (lvl 40+)?

[hairlessOrphan]

I've finished the star chart, started my various faction grinds, and I'm working on grinding up MR. All good, all fun. However, it feels like these will all give me sidegrades, and I'm not sure where to upgrade, from here.

I can currently solo everything under 40 asleep, and I can do level 40-50 missions with effort; soloing Pluto/Hieracon and Lua/Apollo for Axi relics takes me like 10 minutes. There's a significant performance gap before I'd be ready to solo the Requiem artifact fissures, and I'm not sure how to cross it. So:

1. What's the next incremental step for me to shorten that 10minute time frame and work up to lvl 50-60? Then 60-70?

2. Are the higher MR weapons really that much of a jump?

3. Do I start the Forma grind, and what are some of the more expensive mods I'd need?

For me specifically, I'm still MR6, relying on a Soma Prime (I don't know where it came from) / Broken War to carry me through ranking up mastery fodder. But I'd be interested in more general answers, since I haven't found any useful advice for players hitting the lvl 40 "end of star chart" phase. Thanks!

[Darth_Predator]

With Hieracon you can really speed up the process cause the time to excavate is basically fixed. Unless you loose an excavator every now an then. If latter is the case you can try using some defensive or cc frames like Frost, Nova, Limbo, Vauban. Also considering you are fighting corpus there, you may also try to build your weapons for toxin damage, it bypasses shields and directly damages health.

Apollo farming fast requires some gear. I do it with wukong built specifically to eliminate demolishers with melee with formaed cedo + condition overload nikana stick for some bs damage. Also Corpus again, you may try toxin.

1) General answer will be to get some gear. In more specific way, I saw this on reddit the other day, might help as a general pointer

Спойлер

I'd suggest building your MR to 8 or 9. You'll get some real strong weapons there. Like Fulmin on mr8 for example. Also you can pay attention to Fortuna, get some rep there and build yourself a powerful kitgun, but considering your MR getting high rep will take a loooooong time. You can start it now and do like a bounty or two in between your other activities a day. All and all I'd say you are doing reasonable job in those missions. 10 mins is not an awful time, don't aim for those 2 min clears as of yet. That all will come with wider arsenal and practice.

2) Depends. Some "lower" MR weapons are fine. Like Atomos, for example. Some higher MR weapons are... lacking. I personally did the whole starchart with just standard Bo from MR4.

3) Forma grind can be started basically any time you feel like it. It will always give you power. So if you think you need it, go grab a couple. Soma Prime you have can use a couple to fit some more mods. Just dont exclusively concentrate on getting only forma from relics. As of what you need, RazerXPrime mentioned corrupted mods and they are great. Apart from that probably Condition Overload for melee in the future, but I'd suggest trying to farm it first untill you'll actually need it right here and now, don't spend your plat on it just yet.

27 минут назад, hairlessOrphan сказал:

Hmm, does that mean I need to join a clan to progress?

As RazerXPrime said, no. You'll probably need to find a group for vault runs though, cause having all 4 on you at the same time will be punishing for you atm. I see you try to solo things and don't know the reason, but still suggest you try to group those.

Anyways joining a clan will give you access to a lot of weapons and some warframes. Starting your own clan, if you thought about it, at this point in your progression will be way too expensive in both resources and time.

 

MqToasty's pointers are also a good plan to follow. You can finish the map to get to arbitrations. People's activity there depends on a number of things like current mission, buffed frames, etc. With your stated gear you will have trouble killing stuff, but if you can provide some support (energy regen, cc, buffs etc) and not die, I'd say your teammates will not  really pay attention to that. You can even use warframes that don't have a buff provided currently, those are personal anyways. In short: don't be a dead weight and it will be fine.

Railjack can be started without having one yourself and as mentioned is whole another progression path that will bring you some endo/credits in the process. You can follow the advice of leaving it to after you are done with open worlds and abrbitrations or you can try it and see if you actually like the thing, it is tough to start from scratch.

 

In addition, you can try to find me in game later tonight ( I should return home and be online in about 4-ish hours ), and I can help you with doing some of the missions mentioned in the thread if you are willing to be boosted a bit. We can run some vaults for corrupted mods or whatever else.

[RazerXPrime]

Probably focus on corrupted mods? https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Orokin_Vault

Higher MR weapons not necessarily mean more power, although for some it does.

[hairlessOrphan]

2 minutes ago, RazerXPrime said:

Probably focus on corrupted mods? https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Orokin_Vault

Higher MR weapons not necessarily mean more power, although for some it does.

Hmm, does that mean I need to join a clan to progress?

[RazerXPrime]

7 minutes ago, hairlessOrphan said:

Hmm, does that mean I need to join a clan to progress?

No, you can buy the blueprints for the dragon keys from the market for credits. You then have to craft them and equip them in the gear wheel, but it will give a large debuff to either speed, damage, hp or shield (-75%).

But joining a clan is beneficial. It'll give you access to a lot of weapons and frames.

[MqToasty]

Once you've finished the Starchart, you will be ready for a few pieces of content that will provide better mods and access to more equipment.  Just off the top of my head:

A. Arbitrations and Sorties: There are some very nice mods to be found in Arbitrations, and Sorties provide rivens and boosters.

B. Open World Factions - Cetus, Orb Vallis and Necralisk: The bounties here provide some very good mods as well as access to more frames and weapons.

C. Railjack - This is kind of another system altogether, but provide some pretty good stuff.  Probably leave it for later, after you've done plenty of A and B.

D. Steel Path - This is basically Hard Mode on New Game+.  Leave this for later.

To answer your questions specifically:

1. I would first focus on A, B and other mission types you have not played enough to collect and rank up the more important mods.  The mods are much more important than the actual pieces of equipment in this game.

2. Nope.  Weapon MR requirements aren't really all that important.  While some weapons are absolutely better than others, the correlation between usefulness and MR is weak.

3. Since each Forma takes 23 hours to build, I wouldn't worry too much about grinding for it.  You will eventually be swimming in Void Relics, and once you reach that point, it's just a matter of cracking some every now and then to collect the blueprints.  Well, unless you want to build your own clan like me.  Then you should start collecting Forma blueprints early as every clan room requires a Forma.

[Gibsonx]

The mid section of the game is the grinding to get all the things recommended for specialty portions of the game. But what you grind will depend on what you want to do. 
 

eidelons? Get some focus in maduri for VS.  

arbitration? Well I consider that fun for the buffs to lesser used frames, so have all frames available I guess. 
 

Steel path? Get the mods suggested for survival like rolling guard and adaption (arbitration drops)

and somewhere in there you will want to get about 50 million credits and 100k of every resource drop. 

[Soy77]

1. What's the next incremental step for me to shorten that 10minute time frame and work up to lvl 50-60? Then 60-70? imma say up your build game. use better mods. understanding what you actually want to achieve when you equip each mods, it will be much more beneficial than just copying builds from random sites or youtubers. of course we all start by copying, but along the way you'll actually understand.
2. Are the higher MR weapons really that much of a jump? not really. they're more like combination of the weapons themselves and good mods (builds). but yeah some of the better weapons happen to have higher mr requirements.
3. Do I start the Forma grind, and what are some of the more expensive mods I'd need? you should always baking formas.

 

broken war is great, with the right mods it can slice through even SP.

i'd say start opening relics and saving ducats so you can buy primed mods when baro visits. they can really make a difference, especially in normal starchart. i don't remember slapping maxed primed pressure point on any weapon and the weapon still suck.

corrupted mods is also very important later on. but considering you're mr6, i won't put them on top of the list. just try to collect them slowly when you have the time.

 

and also... don't forget to have fun, mate.

have you make some floofs? play guitar? probably make a hoverboard that you'll never use? decorate your ship... put some decent clothes on your kid... people who only stick to the mainline contents that DE delivered seems to be hitting boredom pretty fast.

good luck!

[hairlessOrphan]

These are super helpful tips, thank you!

9 hours ago, Darth_Predator said:

I see you try to solo things and don't know the reason ... In short: don't be a dead weight and it will be fine ... if you are willing to be boosted a bit.

Snipped a little because that's exactly why I like to solo things. I don't want to be accidental deadweight on someone else's mission, and I don't want to be boosted without knowing my own frames / weapons / builds in situ first. I'm new to Warframe, but not to games with broad metas. I find if I get carried early, I don't know WTF I'm doing later. Especially in this game, I've joined a couple of pubs, and it's basically me running as fast as I can down someone else's trail of corpses to extraction. I do nothing, learn nothing, and win prizes; it kind of sucks. So I solo first.

I'd love to join a clan, but I don't have any idea how to find one, yet. I'll figure that part out later, too.

9 hours ago, Soy77 said:

1. What's the next incremental step for me to shorten that 10minute time frame and work up to lvl 50-60? Then 60-70? imma say up your build game. use better mods. understanding what you actually want to achieve when you equip each mods, it will be much more beneficial than just copying builds from random sites or youtubers. of course we all start by copying, but along the way you'll actually understand.

and also... don't forget to have fun, mate.

My biggest issue with Apollo is finding the stupid keyholders. If I could do that quickly, I could halve my time on that map. Any tips on how to locate them?

Also, farming is my fun. I farmed out three low-tier Primes (Inaros, Ivara, Titania), plus the plat to get slots and Orokin Reactors for them, as a break from filling out the starchart. Not very fast, but very fun. Hence why I want to work on (quickly) soloing Axi relics and fissures, and then learning what the next stage of farming might be, ahead of me.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

54 minutes ago, hairlessOrphan said:

I'm new to Warframe, but not to games with broad metas. I find if I get carried early, I don't know WTF I'm doing later. Especially in this game, I've joined a couple of pubs, and it's basically me running as fast as I can down someone else's trail of corpses to extraction. I do nothing, learn nothing, and win prizes; it kind of sucks. So I solo first.

I'd love to join a clan, but I don't have any idea how to find one, yet. I'll figure that part out later, too.

You have the right attitude, I can put you in one of our clans if you like, give you access to our Alliance and to finding other players interested in progressing, helping each other and and a discord full of people who can answer questions you might have.

[Darth_Predator]

5 часов назад, hairlessOrphan сказал:

I do nothing, learn nothing, and win prizes; it kind of sucks. So I solo first.

Exactly what one should do :D

I know how that feels, I "coached" some people before. That's why I added "if you are willing to". On the other hand learning all the game dumps on you by yourself can be daunting, warframe is infamously not user friendly. So I could suggest taking Zilchy's offer. Large clans and alliances will make it easier to find likeminded group to play with. If clan's people are active, it is some real opportunity.

6 часов назад, hairlessOrphan сказал:

If I could do that quickly, I could halve my time on that map.

Ironically enough, I think that depends on spawn rate. Which means that you either need to kill faster or have more people around. At least it seems like that, cause I struggle to get keys when I go solo, but drown in those when my buddies come online.

[hairlessOrphan]

14 hours ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

You have the right attitude, I can put you in one of our clans if you like, give you access to our Alliance and to finding other players interested in progressing, helping each other and and a discord full of people who can answer questions you might have.

Thanks! I'd love to join up and/or hop onto your Discord (if y'all have one) to find some people to group with; that works for me. I'll send you a PM!

More generally (i.e. for any other new players stumbling onto this thread), not sure how new players can find themselves the right clan. Most of the recruitment boards (ex: this forum, reddit, etc...) don't seem very active. I expect that's because Warframe is an established game, so most people playing are already all setup.