Probably_Asleep Posted February 13 Share Posted February 13 I've been doing a lot of grinding lately in my pursuit of MR30 (with the self-imposed handicap of only using/ranking Mag/Prime). In so doing, I've been able to compare the various mechanism for obtaining rank-able equipment: Buy it with Credits Buy it with Platinum Buy it from Darvo with Platinum Buy it from Daily Special with Platinum Buy it with Regal Aya Buy it with Standing Buy it with Ducats Buy the Blueprint with Credits Buy the Blueprint from the Dojo with Credits Buy the Blueprint with Standing Buy the Blueprint with Nightwave Creds Buy the Blueprint and Components from the Dojo with Credits Buy the Blueprint and Components with Standing Buy the Blueprint and Components with Mission-Specific Resources Buy the Blueprint and Components with Nightwave Creds Obtain the Blueprint as a Random Drop from an Enemy Obtain the Blueprint as a Mission Rotation Reward Obtain the Blueprint as a Bounty Reward Obtain the Blueprint as a Duviri Circuit Reward Obtain the Blueprint and Components as Random Drops from Enemies Obtain the Blueprint and Components as Mission Rotation Rewards Obtain the Blueprint and Components as Rewards from Bounties Obtain it from a Quest Obtain it from a Daily Tribute Obtain it from Vanquishing a Nemesis Obtain the Blueprint from a Quest Obtain the Blueprint from a Daily Tribute Obtain the Blueprint and Components from a Quest Obtain the Blueprint and Components from Void Relics Trade for it from Another Player Trade for its Blueprint and Components from Another Player Incubate it with Nothing Incubate it with Infection Incubate it with Genetic Imprint Win it from a Gift from the Lotus Event Win it from a Content Creator Event Win it from a Digital Extremes Event Construct it from Modular Components Is this an exhaustive list? Can anyone think of a method of obtaining equipment that isn't in here? Anyway, there's obviously a lot of things to do in Warframe. As you can see in the list, there are varying degrees of effort involved in each method, with subsequent (though not always proportionate) degrees of satisfaction from each method. I won't lie, I've definitely spent some real cash on the Platinum/Regal options, especially if there's a discount and the equipment in question relies on a low-chance RNG drop rate. I've personally done all but two of these. At the start I went with the low-hanging-fruit like buying it or the blueprints with Credits and Standing, but as those options dried up I've had to delve more into the random drops and Nemesis fights. Throughout all of this, I avoided the Modular Weapons. It seemed like it would be frustrating and convoluted having to get the parts, construct the weapon, rank it up, gild it, and rank it up again. And compared to just buying an MK1, of course it would seem convoluted. But now I'm looking at it through more experienced eyes. Now I've had to repeatedly get to ESO's Round 8 solo with Mag. Now I've had to do Kuva Floods and Requiem Void Fissures just for a 20% chance to get the Requiem Mod I need to beat my Nemesis. NOW I've had to run Railjack Missions on repeat for days to get a blueprint you can't even buy anywhere. NOW I've had to do research on my smartphone seeing only the sliver of content between fandom.com's aggressive ads (not DE's fault). NOW I've had spend weeks without my favorite companion because the Incubator's random incubations just won't give me the last Kubrow I need. So after all of that, I took a second look at Modular Weapons, and it is just so easy. My shopping list for Zaws was: Alloy Plate 5100 Azurite 40 Breath of the Eidolon 1 Cetus Wisp 23 Condroc Wing 15 Coprun 180 Cryotic 9000 Devar 30 Ferrite 3600 Fersteel 320 Fish Oil 550 Fish Scales 390 Grokdrul 155 Iradite 140 Kuaka Spinal Claw 55 Maprico 57 Mortus Horn 55 Nano Spores 3200 Nistlepod 45 Plastids 7800 Pyrol 900 Rubedo 5900 Salvage 4500 Veridos 30 Which may seem like a tall order, but it's really not that bad! The 4-digit numbers pretty much take care of themselves as you go through the normal Star Chart. The exception of course is Cryotic, which you'll have more than enough of if you go for all of the Incarnon Genesis Adapters in Duviri's Steel Path Circuit. (If you're going to Zaw's early-game, then this could be a bit of a grind...) I actually had just about all of the materials I needed, save for two: Fish Oil and Pyrol. (Because I ended up selling all my Fish Oil, thinking I'd never need it; don't sell your Fish Oil!) As for the Pyrol, it comes in sets of 5-10. If you happen to have a Resource Booster active, then that doubles, and if you have Smeeta Kavat with Charm (until they nerf it), then you'll occasionally get even more. Crucially though, Pyrol is a common mineral, so you'll find a lot of it in the mining spots right by the entrance to the Plains of Eidolon. If you go deeper in, then you'll probably get all the other gems/minerals you need by the time you get all 900 Pyrol. What's great about this system though, is that it has variety. Fishing, Mining, Eidolon Hunting, Star Chart, Conservation (or the opposite of conservation...), Foraging, and Bounties. Not only that, but the parts themselves only take an hour to craft. So you are encouraged to go back to Cetus to cut fish, buy parts, and trigger new bounties, while occasionally going up to your Orbiter schedule more Foundry Jobs. The only thing that actually seemed tedious was forging the gems and minerals. Because they're done every minute, you don't feel like you can get away from the Foundry, so you'll just sit there claiming/crafting for as long as you have the materials. After all of that though, you get 11 WEAPONS (assuming you had a chance to get Plague Keewar and Plague Kripath; make sure not to miss your chance to get those blueprints when they become available, even if you don't plan on building them just yet). That's 33,000 MR points! Even at the final ranks, that's still over 20% of a promotion. It's a noticeable jump toward your next rank, and the farming itself is (in my opinion) less than many single weapons this game has to offer. But aside from just looking at it with a stopwatch, the grind itself feels less tedious. In summary, the Zaw grind is far less tedious than many systems in the game. While it's not as convenient as just buying the blueprint and using basic materials, it's still noticeably more enjoyable than many of the alternatives to getting MR-fodder. I would not complain if we had more Modular Weapons in Warframe purely for the Mastery Points. (I mean, you could make them good as well while you're at it if you wanted to...) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quxier Posted February 14 Share Posted February 14 7 minutes ago, (NSW)Probably_Asleep said: Is this an exhaustive list? Can anyone think of a method of obtaining equipment that isn't in here? What about rivens? The wiki says it gives Affinity and I see stuff like "10k affinity" after completing challenge. If it work you could potentially buy bunch of rivens, do challenges or buy riven ciphers from Uncle Teshin (you can buy some rivens as well) to unlock them (not sure if it gives Affinity) then sell them. You could do 180 rvens at time (that many slots you can have, 60 per 3 slots). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Probably_Asleep Posted February 14 Author Share Posted February 14 Oh in case you're wondering what parts I went with, I followed TekEngineer's recommendation: Link: Vargeet II Jai x 11 Grip: Peye x 6 Seekalla x 5 Strikes (using Peye): Balla Cyath Dokrahm Kripath, Plague Mewan Sepfahn Strikes (using Seekalla) Dehtat Keewar, Plague Kronsh Ooltha Rabvee Not only did I agree with his assessment, but I also like that there's a built-in memory aid for grips and strikes: Six-Letter Strikes = Seekalla Everything else = Peye (Ignore the "Plague") Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Probably_Asleep Posted February 14 Author Share Posted February 14 2 minutes ago, quxier said: What about rivens? The wiki says it gives Affinity and I see stuff like "10k affinity" after completing challenge. If it work you could potentially buy bunch of rivens, do challenges or buy riven ciphers from Uncle Teshin (you can buy some rivens as well) to unlock them (not sure if it gives Affinity) then sell them. You could do 180 rvens at time (that many slots you can have, 60 per 3 slots). Hey quxier! Is that true!? I've noticed the 10k affinity notification but I've always ignored it. Off to the wiki for me... ... Dang the wiki doesn't say. It says completing the challenge gives affinity, but I would assume that means mission affinity that gets distributed to your existing equipment for ranking up / focus points. I would love to be wrong though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quxier Posted February 14 Share Posted February 14 2 hours ago, (NSW)Probably_Asleep said: 2 hours ago, quxier said: What about rivens? The wiki says it gives Affinity and I see stuff like "10k affinity" after completing challenge. If it work you could potentially buy bunch of rivens, do challenges or buy riven ciphers from Uncle Teshin (you can buy some rivens as well) to unlock them (not sure if it gives Affinity) then sell them. You could do 180 rvens at time (that many slots you can have, 60 per 3 slots). Hey quxier! Is that true!? I've noticed the 10k affinity notification but I've always ignored it. Off to the wiki for me... ... Dang the wiki doesn't say. It says completing the challenge gives affinity, but I would assume that means mission affinity that gets distributed to your existing equipment for ranking up / focus points. I would love to be wrong though. I don't have riven to unlock. I'm stack at MR test so I don't think exp past my rank is shown in my profile. So I cannot check it. ps. I've ignored it as well as I'm past MR locks (mr 16 or so). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zakkhar Posted February 16 Share Posted February 16 (edited) On 2024-02-14 at 1:10 AM, (NSW)Probably_Asleep said: Is that true!? I've noticed the 10k affinity notification but I've always ignored it. Off to the wiki for me... I do not understand how this has anything to do with title, first post or anything, but you get affinity for every completion in game - freeing the NPC, opening spy vaults, completing mobile defence points etc. I do not see any reason why you shouldnt get affinity from rivens. But it is level up affinity, not mastery affinity. You can increase the speed of ranking up weapons by: -emptying other slots -attempting to pick a frame/focus/pet that will kill with that weapon instead of abilities PS: You can rank up amps by hacking spy vaults in operator form (or doing any other objectives while in operator form). Edited February 16 by Zakkhar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Probably_Asleep Posted February 16 Author Share Posted February 16 (edited) On 2024-02-13 at 5:29 PM, quxier said: I'm stuck at MR test so I don't think exp past my rank is shown in my profile. So I cannot check it. Is it the orbs? Is it them dang stinkin' orbs!? 16 hours ago, Zakkhar said: I do not understand how this has anything to do with title, first post or anything, but you get affinity for every completion in game - freeing the NPC, opening spy vaults, completing mobile defence points etc. I do not see any reason why you shouldnt get affinity from rivens. But it is level up affinity, not mastery affinity. You can increase the speed of ranking up weapons by: -emptying other slots -attempting to pick a frame/focus/pet that will kill with that weapon instead of abilities PS: You can rank up amps by hacking spy vaults in operator form (or doing any other objectives while in operator form). I'll admit this did go through a few layers of abstraction. I'd map it out as Zaws > Acquisition > Grinding > Mastery > Affinity > Rivens. Shame that Rivens only offer Affinity rather than MR points. But then again if there were to be a renewable source of Mastery then that would become a metric of how long you played Warframe over how what content you've consumed from Warframe. (Though that does bring up the question of what makes a "master" of something? Someone who spends a lot of time doing a few things? Or someone that spends a little bit of time on many things?) I did Spy Vaults a lot for Amps! They obviously had similar acquisition and grind to Zaws, but melee can be ranked up so much faster than Amps. I also tried Railjack missions while I was ranking up all my Amps, but I enjoyed Spy missions more. Edited February 16 by (NSW)Probably_Asleep Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quxier Posted February 16 Share Posted February 16 (edited) 1 hour ago, (NSW)Probably_Asleep said: On 2024-02-14 at 3:29 AM, quxier said: I'm stuck at MR test so I don't think exp past my rank is shown in my profile. So I cannot check it. Is it the orbs? Is it them dang stinkin' orbs!? Yeah, mr 27 test. Edit: I've tried few times and I've just passed it with ~2 minutes left, lol Edited February 16 by quxier Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Probably_Asleep Posted February 17 Author Share Posted February 17 6 minutes ago, quxier said: Yeah, mr 27 test. I'm sure there will be the trolls out there that say this was an easy test, but I also had to practice and build a lot on this one until I felt comfortable doing it for real. I think my build was something like this: Mag Prime Build And I set my death bubbles to sit there and kill enemies to make little pools of orbs while I was parkouring around getting the platform orbs. I got a routine down of collecting the death orbs, resetting the death bubbles, going to grab more standing orbs, and then repeating. Once I felt comfortable that the routine could be repeated, I went for the real test. But obviously I'm doing this with the Mag-Only Mastery path (Or "MOM" if you will); I'm sure there are way better options for you like that flying Warframe or the tanky ones. The NEXT test though is one that I actually failed despite practicing a ton. I won't spoil it for you, but ugh. And that's as far as I've gotten so far. I'm still 33 weapons away from MR 29 96,462 points). I have 15 unranked ones, so I need to get 18 more (13 if it's Kuva/Tenets, which is what I'll probably do). Once I get to MR 29 though then there are only 33 more weapons available in the game, which means after all is said and done I won't be able to get to MR 30 yet. Not until they either create or "unvault" 15 additional weapon's worth of points. (I really wish I had bought Carrier Prime when it was in Prime Resurgence; that gives 3 weapon's worth) So yeah unless they do some major unvaultings, I'm still probably four Major Updates away from achieving my dream of MR 30. (Really hoping World War 3 doesn't happen before then. I mean sure, I don't want the world to end, but let's face it I'm just so close to MR 30 now that it'd be a crying shame to ruin it now) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zakkhar Posted February 17 Share Posted February 17 (edited) 3 hours ago, (NSW)Probably_Asleep said: I'm sure there will be the trolls out there that say this was an easy test, Just because someone does the preperation, picks the right strategy and effectively makes something hard easy, does not make them a troll. Being able to analyse the task and picking right tools is a key. Eating soup with a hammer is pretty hard, so is nailing with a spoon. I think I did this one with Titania as this resembles Index and I do her in Index. Edited February 17 by Zakkhar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Probably_Asleep Posted February 17 Author Share Posted February 17 1 hour ago, Zakkhar said: Just because someone does the preperation, picks the right strategy and effectively makes something hard easy, does not make them a troll. Being able to analyse the task and picking right tools is a key. Eating soup with a hammer is pretty hard, so is nailing with a spoon. I think I did this one with Titania as this resembles Index and I do her in Index. That's fair. When I said troll I was more imagining someone saying something like: "That was easy! Get gud you noob!" But I wouldn't consider helpful advice and/or sharing what personally works or didn't work to be trolling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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