Excavation Mission

[Immediately]

I'm not really that new in Warframe but I barely play Excavation missions, so I was wondering...

is it possible to play the mission without activating any excavators, except for the first one?

Trying to farm some mods and resources from excavation missions and I've always activated excavators.

[SenorClipClop]

I mean, you can. Just don't cross into the lit-up circle in central points on certain tilesets. But why wouldn't you? Add an extra objective to attain Cryotic and mission rewards. If you're not into this extra biz, just play Survival.

[--Q--Shockwave]

If you don't activate the excavators, the enemies will stop spawning after some time I think. This was a fix to an exploitation (done earlier) based on the idea you're mentioning about  

[(PSN)Feox_PH]

Depending on the excavation objective, it may be possible to just complete the excavation of the required cryotics that will allow you to extract.  It also possible to complete the mission without fully completing any excavators (destroyed extractors will still add to your total cryotics).

But you only get rewards from completed excavators.  The first two excavators (rotation A) usually reward credits or endo, the third excavator (rotation B) usually reward relics, while the fourth (rotation C) some mods.  This reward cycle is then repeated as AABC (see Excavation - Wiki).

If you got what you needed, you can still activate Excavators to distract the enemy as you extract.  If they destroyed the excavator, you still get some cryotics from it.

Edited March 3, 2017 by (PS4)Feox_PH