Warframe: Mobile Touch Control Guide

[[DE]CoreyOnline]

Warframe’s arrival on iOS also marks the introduction of a new control setup.

If you have experience playing first or third person shooting games on mobile, you may be familiar with touch controls generally. For those who are new to mobile gaming, or those who want a complete breakdown, we’ve created a Touch Control Guide for Warframe:

CORE TOUCH CONTROLS

Movement & Camera:
The screen area is divided down the middle. The left side is used to move the character, and the right side is used to move the camera.

• Move character: touch anywhere on the left side of the screen to activate a virtual joystick. Continuing to hold and drag in any direction will move the character in that direction. Running and walking is dictated by the distance of your thumb from the starting place.
• Move camera: touch anywhere on the right side of the screen to activate camera movement. Continuing to hold and drag in any direction will move the camera in the desired direction.

Note: we'll have the correct updated image to accommodate a visual look at the current Mobile Touch Control Guide soon! Thank you for your patience!

Virtual Buttons:
Virtual buttons unlock as you progress through the game and their functionality becomes relevant. Some of these are context sensitive and will only be shown if there is something that can be done by tapping them in that instance.

• Aim: appears center left of screen. Hold the icon to toggle the aim view. Continuing to hold while dragging in any direction allows your character to move while aiming.
  • Players can set ‘toggle aim’ instead of ‘hold to aim’ in the settings.
     
• Shoot: appears center right of screen. Tap the icon to shoot or hold to shoot continuously. With Automated Shooting enabled, the Shoot Icon will be hidden until the player uses the Aim button.
  • Manual shooting can be useful for interacting with non-hostile objects.
     
• Bullet Jump: appears below the Jump button. Tap and release the icon to Bullet Jump. Players can still combine a crouch and jump to perform a Bullet Jump, but the dedicated virtual button is meant to make things easier on mobile devices.
  • While holding the Bullet Jump button, you can aim your jump by adjusting the camera on the right side of the screen. Release the Bullet Jump button to execute the maneuver.
    • Note: A Bullet Jump can still be performed by pressing ‘Crouch’ then sliding your thumb to ‘Jump’ and releasing.
       
• Jump: appears below the Shoot button. Tap to jump. Tap again while in air to initiate a double jump.
   
• Crouch: appears below Jump and left of Melee. Tap to crouch and tap again to stand. Tap the button while moving to roll. Hold the button while moving to slide.
  • Players can set ‘hold to crouch’ instead of ‘toggle crouch’ in the settings.
     
• Melee: appears right of Crouch and below Jump. Tap to melee attack. Hold to melee attack continuously. With Automated Melee enabled, this button is hidden, but will appear when there is something destructible within melee range.
  • Manual melee can be useful when there is a destructible object blocking the way.
  • Melee button can be set to always on by disabling Automated Melee in the settings.
     
• Abilities: four icons on the bottom right side of the screen. Tap and release to activate a Warframe’s ability. Holding allows aiming for abilities where aim plays a role.
   
• Cycle Weapon: appears on the bottom left side of the screen. Tap to cycle between Primary and Secondary Weapons. This widget displays the equipped weapon, ammo, and level.
   
• Alternate Fire: appears on the right side of the screen, left of Jump. Tap to initiate a weapon’s alternative fire. Hold to use the alternative fire continuously if the weapon supports continuous fire.
  • This dynamic button differs based on the functionality of the equipped weapon.
  • If the equipped weapon does not support an alternate fire, this button will not appear.
     
• Operator: appears left of Alternate Fire. Tap to switch to Operator / Drifter Mode. Tap again to switch back to Warframe mode.
  • This button will not appear if Operator mode is not currently available.
     
• Contextual Button: will appear left of the Jump button. Tap to initiate action. A contextual button will appear when there is something the player character can interact with.
  • This includes hacking consoles, using zip-lines, performing stealth kills, etc.
     
• Gear Wheel: appears right of Abilities buttons. tap to open the gear wheel, and tap again to close it. When the gear wheel is open, the player can drag to browse equipped items. Release to activate the item.
   
• Menu: appears on the top left of the screen. Tap to open menu.

   

Melee Touch Controls

• You can change your combat state using the new Melee virtual button (indicated by the crossed-swords icon) on the bottom left of the screen (left of the weapon Cycle).
• How to enable: Tapping the Melee Icon brings the player into Melee-only mode, where all of your attacks are done solely by your Melee weapon. This is most comparable to holding “F” (default) on keyboard & mouse on the PC version of Warframe.
• If Auto shooting and Auto Melee are disabled, Melee-only mode introduces a Light Attack, Heavy Attack, and a Manual Block Button to the right side of the UI. 
• If players are using simple touch controls (Auto Shooting and Auto Melee enabled by default) these new Melee buttons are hidden. To disable Auto Melee, go to Options > Touch > Automatic Actions > Auto-melee OFF / ON.  
• How to disable: Tapping the Weapon Cycle button will return players back to default attack mode and out of Melee-only mode. 

MOBILE EXCLUSIVE FEATURES

• Automated Attacks: in order to support Warframe’s fast, mobility-based gameplay on mobile devices, several features have been automated by default. Automated attacks can be disabled in the settings if the player prefers manual attacks.
  • Automated Shooting: moving the crosshard onto a target will make Primary and Secondary weapons fire automatically.
  • Automated Melee: positioning your character beside an enemy makes your character melee attack the target automatically.
  • Note: Automated Attacks are disabled when the character is crouching to allow stealth attacks to be performed without interruption.
  • Note: Automated Attacks are disabled when playing with a Controller.
     
• Sensor Ring: the relatively smaller screens present on mobile devices can make it challenging to keep track of important surrounding objects. A sensor ring provides directional indicators for out of frame objects to improve world space awareness.
  • Sensor Ring has 3 different sizes, indicating near, middle, and far objects
  • Non-hostile objects are represented with a white colour
  • Hostiles are represented with a red color.
     
• Bullet Jump Button:
  Tap and release the dedicated virtual button to Bullet Jump.
  • While holding the Bullet Jump button, you can aim your jump by adjusting the camera on the right side of the screen.
  • Release the Bullet Jump button to execute the maneuver.
  • Note: A Bullet Jump can still be performed by pressing ‘Crouch’ then sliding your thumb to ‘Jump’ and releasing.

 

---

 

• Read our iOS FAQ
• Learn what’s in the March 28th Dante Unbound Launch

[Metamorpholosis]

Hello may I ask how to use operator abilities? The abilities icons did not show up for operator mode 

 

and also heavy melee attack

 

Appreciate the info

Edited February 20 by Metamorpholosis

[AWMAAA2]

为什么驱魔刃不可以爆炸重击

[MaBriO]

Hello,

I'm using iPad Air 4 and I'm having some problems
1. I can't click items, or mod config links on trade chat, recruiting chat, etc.
2. Some buttons are overlapping and can't be adjusted such as the "open shop" button that is being blocked by the gear wheel prompt
And I'm sure I will find more problems with button layout in the future.

Do you have a plan to fix these problems in later patches?
Thanks

[V_Stuck]

hi,

im having issue with touch control on warframe, and i believe its because of the "square" outside of the button that make playing three finger style impossible. Since fire button will be put on top of the movement analog, you either move and unable to shoot or shoot and unable to move. Maybe you can use other shooter mobile game as a reference and please add aim assist, its kinda hard aiming accurately on mobile. Thank you

[BlackLion317]

TL;DR: I can’t press any buttons that were moved to the left side of the screen while using the movement joystick without it stopping my movement input of the joystick.
 

Hello,

I’m playing on a iPhone 12 Pro Max and use a 4-finger claw control style for most mobile titles and have developed a comfortable HUD to use which includes having the aim, slide, and jump buttons at the top left of the screen, and the fire and abilities buttons at the top right of the screen. I then use my left thumb to move and my right thumb to look around.

However, I found that inputting a bullet jump normally (using slide then jump) would stop my movement input with the joystick, so after bullet jumping I would stop moving unless I took my thumb off the joystick and replaced it in order to start moving again. I also found that the same thing happens when I use the aim button and movement joystick together.
 

I tested moving the slide and jump button to the right side of the screen and it doesn’t have the same issue. So it seems to be an issue when pressing a button and using the joystick at the same time on the left side of the screen. 
 

Hopefully this was helpful and gets looked into,

Thanks!

Edited February 21 by BlackLion317.

[Jounixx]

12 hours ago, Metamorpholosis said:

Hello may I ask how to use operator abilities? The abilities icons did not show up for operator mode 

 

and also heavy melee attack

 

Appreciate the info

same thoughts.. Hope they patch it soon

[tacofomo]

14 hours ago, BlackLion317. said:

TL;DR: I can’t press any buttons that were moved to the left side of the screen while using the movement joystick without it stopping my movement input of the joystick.
 

Hello,

I’m playing on a iPhone 12 Pro Max and use a 4-finger claw control style for most mobile titles and have developed a comfortable HUD to use which includes having the aim, slide, and jump buttons at the top left of the screen, and the fire and abilities buttons at the top right of the screen. I then use my left thumb to move and my right thumb to look around.

However, I found that inputting a bullet jump normally (using slide then jump) would stop my movement input with the joystick, so after bullet jumping I would stop moving unless I took my thumb off the joystick and replaced it in order to start moving again. I also found that the same thing happens when I use the aim button and movement joystick together.
 

I tested moving the slide and jump button to the right side of the screen and it doesn’t have the same issue. So it seems to be an issue when pressing a button and using the joystick at the same time on the left side of the screen. 
 

Hopefully this was helpful and gets looked into,

Thanks!

I'm having the same issue and can confirm this is also a problem on the right side of the screen. When pressing any button with the right index finger and simultaneously controlling the viewpoint with the right thumb, the viewpoint will stop moving in many cases unless you touch the screen again with your thumb. 

It seems touching any button cancels out any other input that's being held down on the same side of the screen. 

[myironeagle07]

I was attempting to farm Kavat genetic code, that was going all fine and well.

However, whenever I take something out from the gear wheel, I find that the cycle weapon button does nothing, and I’ve tried going into settings etc.

Hopefully this is a bug, but it’s making scanning things much more tedious because you can’t swap back to your weapons, or at least the cycle weapon button does nothing. Please add a manual cycle button like jump and slide, the current one sucks

[J-quin]

Yo tengo problemas al encontrar el botón para realizar el ‘Ataque pesado’ lo que me impide detonar las Glaives o el disparo de la Bramma Kuva, así como accionar el disparo de las Sable Pistola. 

[Foehammer264]

Mesa gunslinger ability. Click it pops up but it doesn’t shoot. What am I doing wrong?

[Cephalon_Saryndipity]

Having a bad time with the gear wheel being right next to abilities. It seems to be locked to that place. Has anyone found a way to move it or can it be moved at all? Thanks.

[user_4968]

i cannot use the trade chat even with my controller in the sense of viewing only way is screenshotting in game to view the blue marked bits being sold and even then when i find what i need i wont be able to find the owner in time

 

[ReaperQuite]

How do you you active glaives there is no button for it I can’t complete my mission because of it 

[Kiseki22]

I haven't found a way to interact with my kubrow, is there a button or how should I do it?

[[DE]CoreyOnline]

On 2024-03-09 at 4:06 PM, Kiseki22 said:

I haven't found a way to interact with my kubrow, is there a button or how should I do it?

This is a Known Issue we will resolve as soon as we're able! You can see our Known Issues list here (not an exhaustive list, but it covers the most common reports) 

 

[MagnusHarvenger]

On the topic of known issues, In was wondering if you all knew that some Warframe noble stances won’t hold the grimore right. I know for sure wisp and Dagath are affected by this bug. I don’t have every Warframe so I can’t test them all out. 

Edited March 12 by MagnusHarvenger

[Butler0]

Hello, is there no option to have a Fixed Joystick??? it's kinda annoying and hard to have a Virtual Joystick on ios, so please place an option atleast.

It's kinda a better control for me.

Edited March 19 by Butler0
remembering other stuff

[overt_barbie]

1. Is there any way to adjust the size of the incoming transmissions from Ordis or other characters? They often cover up essential UI, and the size of the face/character frame is basically useless. For example, it blocks the Decree selections in Circuit. I need the transmissions to be like 1/4th the size or less.
2. Are the Tips tooltips supposed to be multi-panels, or a single panel? I can't tell if I should be able to swipe between the tips, or if there should only be 1 tip?
3. When people give me blessings there is a notification that says "Press [something] to thank" but I have no idea how to thank people
4. How do I do things like remote trigger grenades fired from my Penta? I can fire the grenades but IDK how to trigger them.