Welcome Back To Warframe! Here's What You Missed...
We've seen a number of people who used to play Warframe coming back (both in-game and on forums like these). Since Warframe is still in beta (/Warframe/Lotus/language/CBA_en.rtf to review the agreement if you've forgotten) and gets constant updates, there's often a lot for a returning player to catch up on. This thread will attempt to give a brief summary of the most important changes to the game that returning players should know about, in order to catch them up on big changes to mechanics they were familiar with, and show them new stuff to check out.
The updates will be listed in the order of the approximate time they came out (bundled by major update), so you can use the dates and such to try to see where you left off and catch up from there. If you want to see the full patch notes, they can be found here on the wiki or you can browse the update section of the forums.
This guide is intended to summarize what's made a big impact on what players do and can accomplish in Warframe starting with U8 (because if you left before that, you might as well be re-learning the game by now). Things like "New weapons!" and "New tilesets!" won't be mentioned because they go without saying, and there have been so many of those that it would waste time to filter and list them.
2013, May-July: Update 8 (Rise of The Warlords)
The Void was added, a new mission category/location where you can earn prime parts and blueprints as rewards. You access void missions by using keys you obtain as random rewards in various other missions, each key corresponding to one specific type and difficulty of Void mission, each mission type+difficulty having it's own loot table.
Clans added. They don't have all their functionality at this time, but the dojo and clantech/research are mostly functional. The Dojo gives players in a clan a customizable map place to hang out in, while clantech is gear that clans can pull together to research.
Forma added. You can use these to add or change polarities on your gear, allowing you to stick more, expensive mods on them.
Modern alert system implemented, more or less. (Can give resources and other such things.)
Artifacts changed into Auras, which give additional mod points to Warframe loadouts but otherwise keep their function and give it to the whole team.
Nightmare mode added. Some missions can go into nightmare mode, where enemies are much more powerful and all players are afflicted with one or two randomly-chosen negative mechanics. Beating these missions rewards one random mod from a new pool of powerful, rare mods.
2013, September-November: Update 10 (Shadows of The Dead)
Orokin Derelict added. Access granted by keys you craft from reusable blueprints, Derelicts hold mostly infested and have their own drop tables and uses.
Survival game mode added, replaces raid. In Survival you run around killing endless enemies while trying to obtain and activate life support capsules to keep air in the mission from running out. An endless mission type in normal cases, rewards are granted every 5 minutes you last.
Syandanas added, the start of multiple types of Warframe cosmetics.
Changes to enemies and lore to give Grineer their own spoken language and such.
Vaults added, holding Corrupt mods, a new type of rare mod that greatly increases one stat, while decreasing a different stat.
Damage 2.0 introduced. Adds combination elements and changes how elements work in general. Every entity in the game is made up of certain parts and materials, which have varying strengths and weaknesses.
Trading capability added to dojos. If at least one player has access to a clan dojo, they can use the trading post in there to trade a limited subset of in-game items, including platinum. So now you can hunt rare parts/mods and sell them to other players for plat.
The Codex has been added. using Codex Scanners in-game, you can scan enemies and objects and learn about them. Their weaknesses and strengths can be learned, as well as their drop table with enough scans. Also includes info on player equipment, and some specific entries have lore written about them.
Invasions can now take place, you can side with the Grineer or Corpus to fight eachother or the Infested, gaining battle pay from whichever side you help. Harvester/Zanuka-Hunter has been added, who will, in Stalker fashion, go after the player if they help the Grineer fight the corpus too often.
2014, February-March: Update 12 (Zephyr Rises)
Interception game mode added. It's basically Warframe-style capture/domination, where you try to maintain control over terminals spread across the map.
The in-game HUD was totally redesigned.
All prime parts from the void can be traded through the trade system.
The G3 were added, they are the Grineer counterpart to Harvester/Zanuka-Hunter and will, in Stalker fashion, attempt to take out players that help the Corpus too much in invasions.
2014, April-July: Update 13 (Dark Sectors)
Melee 2.0 update hits. Stance mods are like Auras for weapons, granting additional points while giving you access to combos. Charge attacks have been replaced with Channeling, you can go into full-melee mode (holding just your weapon), and more.
The ability to unequip weapon slots was added. You can now take less gear into missions to help level specific items faster, add a challenge, or whatever reason you have.
Dark Sectors added, basically beefed-up farming spots controlled by a clan or an alliance. Initially created with a voting system of sorts, where clans can offer battle pay and then players run missions for one side or another to determine who takes hold of the sector.
Hive Sabotage missions added. These are infested missions that throw additional environmental hazards at you as you progress through them.
Endless Void missions had a change to prevent players from abusing the system. Once the first reward has been offered (minute 5, wave 5, etc.) the key is considered used up. This is to prevent players from aborting if they don't get the reward they want on a certain wave, and then trying again with the exact same key.
Arcane/stat helmets become deprecated. Only existing helmets (and blueprints for those) have stats, all new helmets and blueprints are statless.
2014, July-October: Update 14 (The Mad Cephalon)
The standard UI and menus were redone entirely. Your base of operations is your own ship (with an AI), you access various menus by interacting with various parts of your ship.
The new player tutorial was redone entirely, in the form of a questline. If you're a returning player you'll need to play through the tutorial, but you do not lose anything (you just can't access all your stuff until it's done).
Party changes. Parties are no longer broken up after using a key, people other than the leader can use a key, and people other than the original leader can host.
Kubrows were added. These are space dogs you can take into missions, using the Sentinel quipment slot. There's 4 breeds, they're hatched from eggs, and you can recolor and re-pattern them with specific color packs.
Dark Sector conflicts changed to actual PVP with inclusion of specters to fill in missing gaps.
Tactical Alerts added. A cross between an event and an alert, these are alerts with a cumulative score that earns you a prize, they last a few days but don't have as much lore/story to them as full-blown events.
Excavation game mode added. A cross between survival and mobile defense, you need to kill enemies for power cells to power extractors that dig rewards up for you.
Custom colors were changed to fix some long-standing issues with alpha and saturation, but the changes include colors looking slightly different on frames/weapons than before. There is a "legacy colors" option you can turn on in the game if you really hate the newer look.
2014, October-November: Update 15 (Archwing)
Archwing game mode added. Warframes in space, basically. There's different Archwings and Arch-mode weapons, and they have their own nodes.
Syndicates added. This is the revamped "proxy wars" feature. There's 6 syndicates/groups, you can wear their sigils on your frame while in a mission to get standing points from missions (tied to exp/affinity gain), then spend standing on ranking up or unique rewards from them.
Void Sabotage game mode added permanently in the form of tower keys.
Defense and Interception rewards now stack. This means that parties are no longer split sooner than warranted by one member choosing a reward, and it makes these two types of missions decent farming locations for their rewards whereas they weren't before.
Warframe ability mod changes. Ability mods themselves no longer exist, every frame has all their abilities internally that get unlocked and ranked up as your frame ranks up. Two of the ability mod slots on all frames were removed, and the other two had their polarity removed. This is a net gain of mod points and slots in most cases.
Relays (Hubs) have been added and are accessible by all players. This is a place where many Tenno can hang out together, and the syndicate leaders have their own rooms here where you can turn in Medallions and purchase gear.
The Void Trader will now buy your spare prime parts and blueprints, giving you orokin Ducats in exchange. You can use this new currency to buy very rare, unique items when he's available.
Spy 2.0 has been added. These missions no longer involve data masses, instead the levels contain vaults that you have to sneak into and hack the consoles of in order to beat the mission. These vaults contain new types of traps and security measures and there's multiple ways to beat each time. Rewards can include keys, Fusion Cores, and rare mods.
Stealth kill Affinity bonuses added. Killing an enemy in a stealthy way grants you a large amount of bonus Affinity, getting more stealth kills in a row will increase this multiplier.
2015, March: Update 16 (Sanctuary)
The Law of Retribution added as the first trial (raid). Taking up to 8 players through a long, tough, multi-part mission for unique rewards, trials pose a new challenge.
Cephalon Capture added as the Conclave overhaul.
- Frames and weapons that can be used are limited to a specific subset to avoid AOE spam, mods have been limited the same way.
- Weapons have Conclave-specific changes done to them to balace a small set of weapons against eachother.
- A Conclave syndicate has been added with unique rewards.
The Sanctuary was added.
- Synthesis scanning added. Progress, info, and tools are available in the Sanctuary.
- Lore entries unlock as the community completes synthesis scan progress.
- The Simulacrum was added, where you can fight virtual copies of enemies that you have complete codex entries of.
- A place to practice mastery rank tests (next rank and below) is here too.
Expansion of the modding interface, displaying weapon volume and frame attribute percentages.
An /unstuck command was added. Typing it into the in-game chat will respawn you safely in case you get stuck in the level, and when the mission ends Warframe will want to close and submit a bug report.
Players (and their waypoints) are numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4. This can show you who is the host (1) among other things like letting you know who waypointed your sentinel for laughs.
Rare resource blueprints have been added, letting you use common and uncommon blueprints to build rare ones.
2015, July: Update 17 (Echoes of the Sentient)
Movement 2.0 (Parkour 2.0) update. Double jumping, wall latching, wall jumping, gliding, and more change the way that players move through missions.
Stamina was removed as a concept entirely in light of the above revamp. Existing mods involving stamina directly were converted to Fusion Cores. Existing pieces of equipment that altered stamina in some way were given alternate effects.
Exilus mod slot added to frames (a slot for "utility" mods).
Toggle abilities now have energy drain affected by efficiency.
Miscellaneous UI improvements like naming waypointed mods, the ability to see frame abilities with modded stats in the arsenel, and more.
2015, December: Update 18 (The Second Dream)
The Second Dream quest added. with many reveals, a unique tileset, and lots of lore. Complete the Natah quest first to start unlocking it.
Focus system added, granting a fifth ability and many possible passive effects.
Daily Tribute system (login reward rework), has milestones and progress tracking.
Sorties added, three global daily missions that can be run. These missions have random restrictions or enemy buffs (like tactical alerts) and are high-level. Completing all three gives you a reward from the current reward pool.
Mod capacity on a weapon is now always at least the same as your mastery rank. For example if you're MR 8 and build a new weapon, it will have 8 mod points.
Sniper rifles updated with multiple zoom levels, kill combos with stacking bonuses, and more.
Reactor Sabotage missions added, with multiple ways to complete them and hidden caches.
Chat upgrade with a new look, emotes, entered message history, and more.
Warframes were all granted a passive ability, viewable on the ability screen.
2016, June: Update 19 (The Path)
Lunaro added, it's space ninja soccer/football PvP.
The star chart has been reworked. Junctions control access across various locations, missions and rewards have been shuffled around, many quests were set to junction rewards, and more.
The Void system has been reworked. Void fissures show up randomly and taking relics (previously keys) into those missions allows you to find a way to open them for a reward.
Kavats added, now there's finally space kitties to go alongside the space puppies.
Mod Fusion system was updated. Instead of fusion cores, mods use Endo as a fusion currency (and enemies and missions now give Endo instead of cores). Fusion is now clearer and faster.
You can now find Ayatan sculptures and stars in missions. These can be extracted as-is for a little Endo, or combined first to exctract much more.
Vacuum was made a universal mod for all Sentinels.
The War Within quest added, the sequel to The Second Dream, unlocking even more abilities.
Riven mods were added, mods with randomized bonuses and effects that you can reroll for an increasing resource cost.
2017, March: Update 20 (Octavia's Anthem)
Captura mode added, photo/scene composition tool for making screenshots.
Additional stats on weapons viewable in the arsenel, along with clarifications of existing stats (like Riven disposition).
Chat filters added, both whitelist and blacklisting phrases. Now you can reduce chat to only the messages you want to see (specific buy/sell offers perhaps), or simply remove any messages with phrases you don't want.
UI changes for 4K support, menu scaling, and more in the settings.
Various engine changes to improve memory efficiency and increase game performance.
Various Aura and Warframe rebalances.
Various text improvements across the UI and mod descriptions to fix inconsistencies and present more accurate information.
2017, June: Update 21 (Chains of Harrow)
Thrown melee weapons (Glaive and such) can now be wielded at the same time as single pistol sidearms.
Defection mission type added, help evacuate groups of refugees.
Melee Riven mods added with their own bonuses and penalties.
The Simulacrum now allows multiplayer, you can invite your friends.
Exterminate missions now scale enemy difficulty as they go on, spawning eximus units partway.
Tutorials updated with more information on reloading, accepting daily tribute, and more.
2017, Octover: Update 22 (Plains of Eidolon)
Plains of Eidolon added. New resources, laser mining, spear fishing, random incursion missions, a day/night cycle with mechanical changes, and more are available on the plains.
Eidolon hunting added, large roaming monsters that need specific tactics to defeat.
Cetus added, a town where you can take bounty missions, build up reputation, and spend reputation on various tools and goods.
Set mods added, equipping multiple mods in a set will grant a bonus that increases the more you have installed.
Focus upgraded to 2.0, with passive unlocks from each school you can use while in other schools, with most of the bonuses focusing on making the Operator more capable in combat.
Weather system added to the plains, with reduced enemy visibility during rain.
Captura upgraded with advanced camera controls, adding 3d text, and more.
Dojo editing overhauled. Capacity increased, new controls with a free cam mode for moving objects around, the ability for clan memembers to contribute their ship decorations to the dojo, dojo lighting controls per-room, and more.
Sanctuary Onslaught added, a survival-type simulation mission mode with special leaderboards.
2018, June: Update 23 (The Sacrifice)
Exalted weapons (Excalibur's Exalted Blade, Ivara's Artemis Bow, etc.) are now modded separately from other weapons.
UI overhaul begins, various screens updated to a new UI style, with selectable theme options.
Better controller support added, with the ability to navigate more menus and more shortcuts.
Have I missed an update that you feel is important or game-changing in one way or another? Do I have an update in the wrong section, or is some wording incorrect? Feel free to suggest corrections.
- Updates
7/20-2018 - Updated through 23.1.1.
8/17/2017 - Updated through 21.5.
12/3/2016 - Updated through The War Within.
8/24/2016 - Changed some wording, fixed the formatting, updated through Silver Grove H3, added the capacity changes.
3/9/2016 - Updated through 18.5.x.
1/20/2016 - Slight cleanup, updated through 18.3.
8/4/2015 - Updated through 17.0.
6/5/2015 - Updated through 16.7.
3/26/2015 - Updated for U16.
2/18/2015 - Added info through 15.13.x, fixed a typo in the Void Trader section.
12/14/2014 - Added info on hubs and the trader.
12/6/2014 - Changed some stuff in the U13 section, added Hive missions.
12/5/2014 - Changed the tutorial bit to account for U15 changes. Changed the description of Interception missions slightly. Added mention of def/int reward stacking.
Question
Rydian
Welcome Back To Warframe! Here's What You Missed...
We've seen a number of people who used to play Warframe coming back (both in-game and on forums like these). Since Warframe is still in beta (/Warframe/Lotus/language/CBA_en.rtf to review the agreement if you've forgotten) and gets constant updates, there's often a lot for a returning player to catch up on. This thread will attempt to give a brief summary of the most important changes to the game that returning players should know about, in order to catch them up on big changes to mechanics they were familiar with, and show them new stuff to check out.
The updates will be listed in the order of the approximate time they came out (bundled by major update), so you can use the dates and such to try to see where you left off and catch up from there. If you want to see the full patch notes, they can be found here on the wiki or you can browse the update section of the forums.
This guide is intended to summarize what's made a big impact on what players do and can accomplish in Warframe starting with U8 (because if you left before that, you might as well be re-learning the game by now). Things like "New weapons!" and "New tilesets!" won't be mentioned because they go without saying, and there have been so many of those that it would waste time to filter and list them.
2013, May-July: Update 8 (Rise of The Warlords)
2013, July-September: Update 9 (Vor's Revenge)
2013, September-November: Update 10 (Shadows of The Dead)
2013, November-Jan'14: Update 11 (Valkyr Unleashed)
2014, February-March: Update 12 (Zephyr Rises)
2014, April-July: Update 13 (Dark Sectors)
2014, July-October: Update 14 (The Mad Cephalon)
2014, October-November: Update 15 (Archwing)
2015, March: Update 16 (Sanctuary)
- Frames and weapons that can be used are limited to a specific subset to avoid AOE spam, mods have been limited the same way.
- Weapons have Conclave-specific changes done to them to balace a small set of weapons against eachother.
- A Conclave syndicate has been added with unique rewards.
- Synthesis scanning added. Progress, info, and tools are available in the Sanctuary.
- Lore entries unlock as the community completes synthesis scan progress.
- The Simulacrum was added, where you can fight virtual copies of enemies that you have complete codex entries of.
- A place to practice mastery rank tests (next rank and below) is here too.
2015, July: Update 17 (Echoes of the Sentient)
2015, December: Update 18 (The Second Dream)
2016, June: Update 19 (The Path)
2017, March: Update 20 (Octavia's Anthem)
2017, June: Update 21 (Chains of Harrow)
2017, Octover: Update 22 (Plains of Eidolon)
2018, June: Update 23 (The Sacrifice)
Have I missed an update that you feel is important or game-changing in one way or another? Do I have an update in the wrong section, or is some wording incorrect? Feel free to suggest corrections.
- Updates
Edited by Rydian7/20-2018 - Updated through 23.1.1.
8/17/2017 - Updated through 21.5.
12/3/2016 - Updated through The War Within.
8/24/2016 - Changed some wording, fixed the formatting, updated through Silver Grove H3, added the capacity changes.
3/9/2016 - Updated through 18.5.x.
1/20/2016 - Slight cleanup, updated through 18.3.
8/4/2015 - Updated through 17.0.
6/5/2015 - Updated through 16.7.
3/26/2015 - Updated for U16.
2/18/2015 - Added info through 15.13.x, fixed a typo in the Void Trader section.
12/14/2014 - Added info on hubs and the trader.
12/6/2014 - Changed some stuff in the U13 section, added Hive missions.
12/5/2014 - Changed the tutorial bit to account for U15 changes. Changed the description of Interception missions slightly. Added mention of def/int reward stacking.
Update and typo fix.
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