Weapon advice for new players

[Helpless_Kittens]

I just downloaded the game a couple days ago on PC for my son and I (mainly my soon to be 15 year old son).  It's already his favorite game, and he'd like to spend his allowance on some platinum to get different weapons (and its a way for us to support the game as well).  Right now we have Excalibur with the blade, the pistol, and the bow.  He is up to the fight with Vor (which we'll likely lose), and we'd like some better weapons.  I have several questions.

1) I read a lot of advice from players that if you buy weapons from players in trade instead of the market we save a lot of money.  Is this correct?  If so, do weapons from players come with everything that the market versions do?  Also, if a new player gets a weapon from another can they use it immediately regardless of mastery level, like the market versions?

2) Can one learn to "play the market" in the sense of buy low, sell high?  If I tried this, what items would I look for, and how much initial investment of platinum would be good to start off with?

3) Finally, neither myself nor my son intend to be top tier players EVER.  We just want to have a lot of different levels/maps/enemies to try out.  With that in mind, what are some affordable melee, secondary and primary weapons you think he would enjoy that would also sustain him through mid game and beyond?  He'd probably like to try one of every type - rifle, bow, shotgun, beam weapon, pistol, blade, blunt, etc.  But there's little point to buying a weapon that has cool effects but won't be any good in the game, which is what I'm trying to avoid by asking the question.

P.S.  I know that it's the MODS that make more of a difference, and I'll be working on that as well.  Thanks!

 

[Hezekiah]

don't buy weapons with platinum.  Buy weapon slots, so that you can craft weapons and have a variety of them to choose from as you develop in the game.  If you find a weapon that you really like THEN purchase a few Orokin catalysts to upgrade them.  Remember to place an Orokin Reactor on every frame.  Don't buy weapons with plat, buy blueprints from the market and harvest for resources to build them.  Weapon slots are the only thing you cannot farm, so buy those first.

 

[trunks013]

1- plat is for trading prime part , rare mod  and slot ( weapons and warframe). Dont try to pay 2 win it wont work the market price are too high ^.^ 

2- You can try but honestly warframe community is often prety fair on price. You can find item that worh a lot and sell them at their price but dont try too much to raise prise it might bring toxic situation

3- For melee its always up to personal taste the broken war is optainable via a quest and is a prety good weapon. I rly like the jat kittag but its not easy to get for starter. Almost all weapons can be good if modded correctly ( even you machete ) . 

A lot of tenno use rly powerfull weapons that are actualy not that hard to get

Primary : tonkor 

Secondary: Sonicor

Those are prety common

 

Edited October 12, 2016 by trunks013

[crazyN00b]

1-Buying weapons from market is rather pointless. You can get parts of prime weapons by trading with other players so you won't get the catalyst and slot with it. BTW not point in rushing so I wouldn't recommend beginning with buying weapons.

2-I would say it's too risky and unrewarding to do such things.

3-Take whatever you like, it's the mods that are important. While some weapons will perform better than others, they all can be good enough most of the time.

[Prime_Reckoner]

Also do NOT sell your Broken Mods, no matter what others tell you. Broken variants of Flow, Streamline, Stretch, and others will be extremely important long way into the game.

[FLSH_BNG]

9 minutes ago, Prime_Reckoner said:

Also do NOT sell your Broken Mods, no matter what others tell you. Broken variants of Flow, Streamline, Stretch, and others will be extremely important long way into the game.

They really aren't. What information do you have to posit that?

[MegatronG1]

1. Try to look and see if weapons have BLUEPRINTS first before deciding whether you want buy it or not. Market weapons only benefit by coming with a Orokin Catalyst, which give extra mod space.

Syndicate weapons don't need blueprints and can be traded, so you and your son may want to choose different syndicates so you can trade with each other all the weapons.

2. Market buying/selling requires watching a few people and see what they are selling at and what people are buying stuff for. You will also want to check if the item is rare, uncommon, or common before seeing if the price is far. Mod usually will sell for less than PRIME parts, unless they are event specific or rare stance mods.

3. All the weapons of the same class function similarly, with some minor changes in between stats.

I personally like the:

Rakta Cernos (Bow)

Opticor (Assault Rifle/Beam Weapon)

Prisma Grakata (Assault Rifle)

Sonicor (Pistol)

Ack and Brunt (Sword and Shield)

Vectis/Vectis Prime (Sniper)

Edited October 12, 2016 by MegatronG1

[FierceRadiance]

58 minutes ago, Helpless_Kittens said:

He'd probably like to try one of every type - rifle, bow, shotgun, beam weapon, pistol, blade, blunt, etc.  But there's little point to buying a weapon that has cool effects but won't be any good in the game, which is what I'm trying to avoid by asking the question.

Avoid Sniper Rifles.  I love them myself, but the consensus among players seems to be that the tilesets usually don't offer the kind of range you need to really make good use of this class of weapons.

Hammers and Heavy Swords tend to be slower than most types of Melee Weapons.  Not really a "problem", but IMHO it's more fun to use a blade that swings faster. Your mileage may vary.

Several of the best weapons (not all) are "Mastery-Rank locked", which means you have to have earned your way to a high enough Mastery Rank to 'unlock' them and be permitted to use them. (You can buy them and build them, you just won't be able to equip them.) Just be aware if a weapon requires the player to be of a certain rank before you buy/build it.  (FYI, you gain Mastery Rank by leveling weapons and Warframes.  It really isn't that hard, and you can advance to the current 'unlock-all' level of MR 12 relatively quickly, depending on how much you and/or your son plays.)

Be careful with weapons that lob bombs or grenades - YOU CAN BLOW YOURSELF UP WITH THIS CLASS OF WEAPON!!!  That said, they can also be fun to mess around with for exactly the same reason.

Some weapons have 'perks' that may not always be obvious. For example, you can buy a weapon from Cephalon Simaris at a Relay, the Synoid Heliocor hammer, which automatically scans an enemy when doing a killing blow on them.

The Wiki is your friend! So is the Warframe Market (for player-to-player items-for-plat purchases, outside of the official Warframe game).

Edited October 12, 2016 by FierceRadiance

[Helpless_Kittens]

Does this mean that the weapons on the market with a higher mastery than we are currently, we would not be able to use now even if we bought them?  If so, why would the game do that, since its PVE?

I see many players mention playing in the "Void" to get things to then sell.  What skill level/weapons do you need to be to go there?  Like I said, we haven't even beaten Vor yet.

Thanks a lot.

[Phoenixian_Ultimatum]

15 minutes ago, Prime_Reckoner said:

Also do NOT sell your Broken Mods, no matter what others tell you. Broken variants of Flow, Streamline, Stretch, and others will be extremely important long way into the game.

Please don't troll the new players.

 

Anyway to the OP ...

1) First off, the weapons you buy from the market can't be traded. The only weapons that can be traded are either the parts/blueprints for Prime weapons or "Special" Weapons (Prisma Weapons, Weapons from the Syndicates, etc. That said do not buy weapons from the market using platinum, every weapon that you can get from there can be crafted fairly easily through in-game means. The only advantages buying weapons from the market has is they come pre-enstalled with a catalyst which is not worth it (you can buy catalyst for 20p in the market), and by-passing the MR lock (which the ones in the market aren't that high and shouldn't cause any problems). So you'll be better off and save a lot by just crafting the weapon normally and then install a catalyst later on if you enjoy the weapon. Spend the plat on weapon slots instead.

2) If you go in trying to play the market like that you're only really setting yourself up to fail. Most Warframe players sell at the same price and if theres a "hot item" everybody is likely selling at the same price or in the ballpark. I mean you could try to sell that 20p Prime Part for 30p, but unless the person is that desperate, they'll likely just wait for somebody closer to market average. A decent way to make plat is once you unlock the syndicates to get up to the max rank in one of them and sell the augment mods and weapons from them. They may not sell for that much, but you get them for "free" (passively gaining rep through them just by playing the game, assuming you have there sigil equipped). The other way is by running a bunch of Fissure missions to get Prime parts. My advice would be to keep at least one of each part and try selling the rest. If nothing else every other weekend when Baro Ki'teer shows up theres quite a few people that will buy the common prime drops in bulk (5 parts for 10p is the average amount). If you're looking to make platinum without bleeding your wallet every now and then these are the two ways I'd recommend doing it.

3) Pretty much every weapon in this game is a viable option if you have the right mods to put on it (a good portion of which you'll come across through normal game-play. Just about any weapon you pick up should be able to get you through the star chart with retaliative ease (with maybe an exception to some of the very-beginning stuff; even then they can perform alright if you sink enough Forma into them). So you should be safe with any weapon you pick up to use, my only advice is that you to make a weapon and decide you don't like it, make sure you level it to 30 before selling it (so you can get the full amount of MR out of it).

 

... I think that covers everything. If you have any other questions feel free to contact me here, message me or whatever and I'll be happy to assist in any way I can. Also, not sure if our schedules align at all but feel free to add me in game (same name as on here).

[Phoenixian_Ultimatum]

1 minute ago, Helpless_Kittens said:

Does this mean that the weapons on the market with a higher mastery than we are currently, we would not be able to use now even if we bought them?  If so, why would the game do that, since its PVE?

I see many players mention playing in the "Void" to get things to then sell.  What skill level/weapons do you need to be to go there?  Like I said, we haven't even beaten Vor yet.

Thanks a lot.

If you purchase a weapon from the market with Platinum it'll by-pass the MR requirments, and the game puts an MR lock on that stuff as a bit of a way to power-gate some of the games more powerful/heavy hitting weapons and as a bit of a way to encourage players to use a variety of different weapons an not just use the same 3 or so weapons and nothing else.

 

And the "Void" doesn't drop prime parts anymore. This was changed in an update we got in June/July. Now they drop in what's known as Fissure missions. As you play the game you'll come across (and may already have) something called a "relic". At your stage it might say something like "Lith V1 Relic" Simply click on the "Fissure Missions" tab at the top of the screen (It'll look like two curved lines), in this case since you have a 'Lith' fissure, look for one that says it's a 'Lith' fissure and load into that mission. Over the course of the mission enemies will drop Reactant (they look like little orange spheres and will have a small pillar of light coming off of it) Pick ten of these up during the mission (there will be a counter on the left side of your screen to let you know how many you have) and extact like normal, once you and your squad extract you can choose from one of the rewards up on the screen (one reward per person, assuming they brought a relic and collected 10 reactant).

To the other point, the level of the place your going doesn't matter too much but as a rule of thumb (or at least until you're more familiar/skilled with the game and it's mechanics the level of the node/planet you are on should be around the level of the frame/gear you are using. Granted this isn't always the case but like I said, for starting off you should stick with this until you've built up your mod collection and have a good handle on how things work.

[Hearsay]

Also worth noting, some weapons on the market can be purchased outright for credits.  These come completed, but do not have a catalyst.  There's a few of them, and I don't remember them all, but most, if not all, of the MK-1 weapons, the Lex, and I think the Sicarus are among them.  There's also blueprints for some other useful things on the market for credits, such as low tier restores, antitoxin kits for that one Earth mission to squeeze out an extra reward, Extractors, Ciphers, one of the kubrow fur color sets, one of the kavat fur color sets, and a couple other things not coming to mind.  Even if you don't have platinum to spare, browsing the market can be useful early on!

Also, if you're dead set on buying weapons with platinum, Darvo sells something daily at a lower cost in the relays.  The item and discount is random, so might be awhile before something neat shows up.  And good sales tend to vanish fast, so best to catch him when he resets his stock.

 

For some other things, you'll get a new weapon at most, if not every, relay.  Some alerts award weapon blue prints or Vauban, a warframe, blueprints.  The weapons aren't amazing, but they're neat, while the Vauban is a pretty cool Warframe.  Most bosses in non-quests will drop Warframe blueprint parts on defeat, each one has a specific Warframe.  Exceptions are Vor on Mercury, who drops stuff for Cronus and Seer, the Ceres Boss, who drops Miter parts in addition to Trinity pieces, and a certain boss hidden in the Void, who drops mods.  Certain bosses who appear randomly and rarely on missions after certain criteria are met will drop weapon blueprints or pieces as well.  Baro, who appears in a relay every two weeks, often has a fully built and normally unobtainable weapon as part of his randoms stock in exchange for Ducats.  Sorties, which you're a very long way off from, can reward parts for past-event weapons or for the Nezha warframe.  Syndicates at max rank and a lot of standing will sell you completed unique weapons.  Simaris, in the relay, also sells some unique weapon blueprints for standing with him.  Quests often award a weapon or a warframe blueprint, though on occasion give you a complete specimen.  And finally, some blueprints and Warframes drop from certain enemies, such as the Gorgon, the Boar, and Ash.

 

Whew... but yeah, personally, I recommend trying out the blueprints and stuff that happen along your way and, once you have a decent chunk of credits and resources, poke the market for blueprints of weapons that seem interesting.  Some weapons and warframes require being in a clan to obtain their blueprints, though with patience and grinding, you can obtain them all with a solo clan if you wish.

 

Also, try to get to Saturn as soon as you're able to so you'll have access to all of the resources without being taxied by other players.

[ClinkzEastwood]

Get Zhuge. It's the best assault rifle in the game.

Edited October 13, 2016 by ClinkzEastwood

[Zaniel_Aus]

You don't need to fret over Prime or high mastery weapons, you can get through 99% of the star chart with basic weapons built from blueprints bought with credits off the market in your ship (make sure you buy the blueprint with credits then build it in your foundry, DON'T buy the weapon itself directly using Platinum). Try and spread yourself around and get some silent weapons for spy missions and some explosive weapons. By the time you've gotten through these weapons you'll know enough about the game to make all your own decisions about what you want. If you end up buying some platinum do NOT spend it on weapons or frames, save it for buying things like inventory expansion slots so you can play around with a larger stable of Warframes and weapons. Concentrate on getting through the star chart and quests for now, you'll learn where base line Frames drop (from bosses) and also open up new resource types depending on the planets you have access to. This is important as some weapons require resources from later planets. Early in the game you will always be short on raw cash (credits) to build frames and weapons, where possible try and do alerts especially if they have good resource or credit rewards.

Some suggestions for decent cheap weapons:

Primary Assault Rifle: Boltor, Burston, Karak and later the Soma

Primary Shotgun: Hek

Primary Bow: Zhuge or Cernos

Secondary Pistol : Lex then Aklex

Secondary Auto-pistol: Twin Grakata

Secondary stars: Hikou

Melee: Kinda personal choice based on what feels fun but Heavy Blades, Polearms (Orthos) and single swords are all simple and mostly decent, there's a lot of exotic choice here.

[Helpless_Kittens]

OK, just beat Vor last night.  How do I see what resources are awarded at certain planets or missions?  Thanks again.

[Phoenixian_Ultimatum]

17 minutes ago, Helpless_Kittens said:

OK, just beat Vor last night.  How do I see what resources are awarded at certain planets or missions?  Thanks again.

You'll see a button with what looks like a drone in the bottom right hand corner of the screen (when zoomed onto a planet). Click on this button and the resorces that drop there should pop up above the button. Most resources are planet specific, unless I'm forgetting one there are 3 exceptions to this. Oxium (which drops from Oxium Ospreys with show up in most Corpus mission), Cryotic which comes from Excavation missions, regardless of planet, and Nitain Extract which is gotten from Alerts (and some Sabotage mission, with an insane amount of luck). Aside from those 3 resources are planet-specific and you can find them per what I said at the start of the post. Good luck, Tenno and congrats on defeating Captain Vor.

[o.0-]

Since you are just beginning, I suggest to start trying out different options, and there are very few options that can be good to get on the Market for Credits. The only Market Weapons I would suggest, that I myself got and used are:

Primary: Braton and Strun (reacquired the Strun recently)

Secondary: Lex (get two and you can later build AkLex), I still have my AkLex. Maybe AkLato

 Also, periodically, there are Alerts that offer Blueprints for Weapons. You can look to get a 'Taxi', an invite, to these missions from players if you do not yet have access to the node or planet. Recruiting Channel, or a Clan can offer opportunities that I know of and Relays should have a Guide of the Lotus, but I know little on that topic myself atm.

Alerts can also offer Resource bundles that you may need to craft weapons, again a Taxi can help for any out of reach nodes. And the main thing to make your weapons stronger is ranking your Mods with Endo.

 

And here is a good resource for tracking Alerts: https://deathsnacks.com/wf/

Edited October 13, 2016 by SPARTAN-187.Thanatos
link

[marelooke]

If you beat Vor, he drops parts for a few weapons: the Seer and the Cronus.
The Cronus is a direct upgrade to the Skana and the Seer is a pretty good sniper pistol (not endgame material, but I like it nonetheless).

Also be sure to check out the Warframe Wikia if you haven't already it contains tons of useful information.

And especially: use the weapons you consider to be fun. One of the main risks of Warframe is getting dragged into the upgrade mill and losing track of the actual gameplay, most of the "meta" weapons aren't necessary for the content 99% of the playerbase generally deals with.

[Brasten]

It is important for your son to understand the core game-play loop that is Warframe, and not to get caught on the various Transaction Traps (some aren't that micro). Consider it a learning experience about game Free-to-Play design, and understanding developers trying to capitalize on impatience.  

As others have said, do not buy weapons from the market. Actually don't buy any Game Play item from the market for platinum: Weapons, Warframes, Companions, Gear, Resources, Mod Packs. These are all part of the core game-play loop, they are the THINGS you play Warframe for. Buying them with Plat is functionally a pay-to-skip mechanic.

There is a name for this game WarFarm FashionFrame, which sums up basically most of what you need to know.

In WarFarm you cycle through Weapons and Warframes, ranking them up to 30, then either keeping them (if you liked them) to tossing them (if you didn't). This is the Mastery Fodder cycle, to increase your account's Mastery Rank. Platinum is spent on Slots for keeping the things you like, and don't want to have to rebuild later.

1. Play missions to get Resources (Credits, Alloy Plate, Plastids, etc)
2. These Resources are used to buy Blue Prints from the Market for Credits (can also be found as drops in-game) and craft them at the Foundry.
3. Play missions with the new Weapons and Warframes to gain Mastery points from Ranking them up.
   1. Once a Weapon or Warframe is Rank 30, decide if you liked using or didn't.
      1. If you liked it, keep it. Either replace an older weapon you didn't like anymore or spend Platinum to make a Slot(s) available for it.
      2. If you did not like it, sell it. Making room for your next Mastery Fodder.
4. Account Mastery Rank is used to lock other Blue Prints and weapons from player access.

The only time you really need to worry about "good" or "meta" weapons is when you leave the Star Chart progression path and go for Trails (raids) or Sorties, and other places where the enemy Level scaling beings to creep past 80 or 100. Which in other MMOs or Looters you'd be looking for Raid Gear and the like. I've seen people take the MK-1 Braton all the way to Pluto/Senda (by cramming 8 Forma onto it), for "fun".

Long back in Closed/Early-Open beta, the community found paying Fashion acceptable, purely cosmetic items. Skins, color palettes, accessories. Things to play dress-up with. Hence FashionFrame.

Platinum expenditures the priority is:

1. Slots
2. Fashion
3. Quality of Life
   1. Buying the occasional Orokin Reactor or Catalysis (if you're having a hard time tracking down Invasions and Alerts that have them).
   2. Trading reasonable amounts to other players for very rare mod drops. (Curse you Crushing Ruin, over two years, so many Seekers killed, and only now do you drop.)
      1. Although IMO if you're playing the game you can often Trade kind for kind. Plat is only useful in that it is an accepted alternative if you don't have something else.

[Inarticulate]

19 hours ago, Phoenixian_Ultimatum said:

If you purchase a weapon from the market with Platinum it'll by-pass the MR requirments, and the game puts an MR lock on that stuff as a bit of a way to power-gate some of the games more powerful/heavy hitting weapons and as a bit of a way to encourage players to use a variety of different weapons an not just use the same 3 or so weapons and nothing else.

The Market will actually prevent you from buying weapons that are locked due to MR, even with Platinum. The only way to obtain weapons that are locked without having the required MR is to buy a bundle containing the weapon (this includes Prime Access).

[RistN]

What you really need to know is next:

1.Buy platinum on discounts.There are discounts -50% and -75%.These happen as daily reward and in my experience it happens once in a month.

2.Read Warframe Wikia.This site has all of information about weapons,missions...everything.Also for trading go to warframe market to track what are the prices of parts,sets.All senders are here.I play Warframe for 2 years and I'm far in this game but I still use this site's all the time.

3.Don't let your kid buy cosmetics if he just started playing.New player should buy orokin catalysts,orokin reactors,weapon and warframes slots.Basic stuff which advance players too are buying even now.

 

[RistN]

On 12.10.2016. at 10:57 PM, Helpless_Kittens said:

Does this mean that the weapons on the market with a higher mastery than we are currently, we would not be able to use now even if we bought them?  If so, why would the game do that, since its PVE?

I see many players mention playing in the "Void" to get things to then sell.  What skill level/weapons do you need to be to go there?  Like I said, we haven't even beaten Vor yet.

Thanks a lot.

As I said earlier go to warframe wikia and search for weapon you are interested on buying and you will get all info on it and does it have MR requirements.If it does you can't use it till you get to that rank even if you bought it.And don't buy weapons with platinum.It's not smart to do that.

[(PSN)wildcats1369my]

also try to get a clan. you will have access to a dojo that have labs where you can buy additional weapon and frame blueeprints. if you are lucky the clan have researched them all. 

if you really want to support the game. prime access is there i suggest the accessory package as they give 90day boosters and a cosmetic unique for the season. the frame access is a bit overpowered as it contains a very strong weapon and the latest primed frame and will make the game too easy for you also the frame and weapons are farmable. the contained plat is in good quantity and far more cheaper that the regular plat pack. it is up to you

Edited October 14, 2016 by (PS4)wildcats1369my

[Phoenixian_Ultimatum]

10 hours ago, Inarticulate said:

The Market will actually prevent you from buying weapons that are locked due to MR, even with Platinum. The only way to obtain weapons that are locked without having the required MR is to buy a bundle containing the weapon (this includes Prime Access).

Huh, thought I heard somewhere buying with plat bypassed the MR lock (never tried it myself). Guess I was just misinformed. Thank you for correcting me.

[kuchn]

1) don't spend plat on the market (buy blueprints with credits and build the stuff in your foundry)
2) the only things u buy are slots, catalysts, reactors (play without them...if you got the frame / weapon to 30 and you like it and intend to keep it u can still put a reactor/catalyst on it) and cosmetics at some point
3) making plat via trade is possible but it requires a lot of time
4) don't rush stuff in the foundry
5) get a sentinel asap, vacuum helps you to not miss out on drops
6) don't waste horrendous amounts of plat on ember prime/frost prime (the un-primed ones are just as good / the difference is minor)
 

[LuckyCharm]

Personally I'd work out what sort of weapon you enjoy playing most and then aim for something that complements that. What I did for my warframe start was to completely ignore pistols and focus on melee and a mainhand I liked. At the time it was the boar shotgun and furax gloves. (i don't reccomend these now as they're rather weak to start off with now) because I liked the noise of an auto-shotty, and I liked punching things in the face. My brother however started with the Grakata and he quit the game soon after because he felt he'd wasted so much effort getting it and it didn't feel useful at all without the relevant mods. 

Some good advice already in this thread though so I'll leave you with this, Pick things you think you will enjoy most, else you'll just taint your experience with things you're stuck with leveling until you can get new ones.