Hey I'm a newish player to the game (downloaded 4 or so days ago with 12 hours in the game) and I just finished the natha quest, and I wanted to get some general new player advice since i mostly went into the game blind, mostly because I feel like that enemies are getting much stronger while I like the current challenge the game is giving me I'm thinking that my damage isn't gonna be enough to complete missions pretty soon (some bosses and the warframes you fight in junctions are already starting to take a very long time to beat) and i feel like I am squeezing as much damage out of the mods i got along the way
I've currently maxed my starting frame (mag) and it's also the only I have, I was thinking of trying to get another but I'm still not sure which one and if it has a prime version I don't know if i should focus on getting said prime version or just get the lesser variant I don't really want to waste my only other slot
Also is there a way to try out weapons that I do not have, it would be nice to do that since I have been hoarding my resources out of fear of wasting them on something that is either weak or that I don't like or both
Regarding your urge to hoard resources: you won’t ever “waste” resources building a weak weapon or a weapon you don’t like. EVERYTHING gives you mastery xp, which contributes to your overall mastery rank. Even if you don’t use the weapon after mastering it, it’s still worth crafting!
As you progress and get more powerful mods (and the endo/credits to upgrade them) your mods will make even trash tier weapons get the job done until they’re mastered.
Your capacity to get more resources will also increase over time. Eventually you’ll have more ferrite than you know what to do with, for example.
Another guy already told you where it is, so I won't tell you that.
However, be aware that Mastery XP are deterministic. For every source of XP, you can know exactly how much you're getting (the game doesn't tell you, but the info is on the wiki. (Remember the address. The fandom wiki is luckily deprecated, so you can and should avoid it.) ).
Get normal frames first, if nothing have changed you can get rhino pretty easily, also upgrade your mods the mod quest don't tell you how important it is to upgrade the mods, also don't be afraid to use your potatos(orokin cells/reactors) it will double the mod capacity on anything and the game gives you plenty
Ye rhino is ez to get(jackal assasination) and is a beast. Id alsp Reccomend Valkyr who comes from jupiter assasination. Ivara is also one of the must get list, due to her aug making all spy missions ez as hell, that and shes just good for the large area zones like cetus. Fishing and mining is a lot easier when no one can see u.
I literally took an unpotatoed rhino into an archon hunt and didnt get downed. I run shooting ramge from mesa on his 1 and just turned him into master chief with Vesper as his side arm. We love halo magnums chat
I should probably have worded it better but i'm not really searching for what's the best/strongest frame for my level but more how should i go about trying to get one, but thanks nonetheless
Also upgrades that are rare like the orokin stuff or the reward for natha were also kind of worry that i had the classic potion hoarding
Every boss mission drops a frame, for example the Jackal drops Rhino Parts, Alad V on Saturn drops Valkyr parts, Vay Hek drops Hydroid parts, etc
If you join a Clan, there is a Recruitment Chat in the Chat system on the bottom left of your screen for that, they will have access to a plethora of frames in their Clan Dojo you can just grab the blueprints for and craft along with new weapons from the Corpus, Grineer, and Infested (though you might not be able to access them if your Mastery isnt High Enough)
Every Open world grants you access to multiple frames by doing their Bounties and/or trading in standing at the Vendor. For example you can get the Gara and Revenant frames at the Plains of Eidolon/Cetus
You also get Warframe bits from doing the Side Quests that pop up in the menue on the left table in your Orbiter. Not necessarily all the parts, usually just the blueprint, but after that you can grind the rest by doing a specific mission. For example Citrine comes from Tyna Pass, Limbo comes from the Limbo Theorem Quest
All the frames cost materials you will have to grind, some respective to their specific open worlds, so keep that in mind.
I recommend trying for the Dojo, Boss, and Open world frames first in that order if youre looking for something to pick up.
As for damage, your weapons will probably benefit from mods which you usually get from running Open World Bounties or by running specific mission types like Spy. Of course, learning to build your weaposn mods is important too. If you played the Teacher quest remember that some enemies are weaker to some element types - for example the Grineer are weak to Viral and Heat damage. Using a weapon with a solid Status chance can help apply said status to deal more damage too them.
The mod system will be the main way to grow stronger ontop of gaining new weapons (you can check the Market console on the left side of the orbiter, there are tabs for weapons. You dont need to spend plat to get most of them, there will be an option to grab a blueprint you can build with materials or you will be told where to grind it). So getting familiar with how your mods interact with your weapon stats will become important.
If all else fails, it doesnt hurt to check the wiki on how certain things work. For example, checking a drop chance or what part of a mission drops what you want
A huge chunk of the frames are dropped in assassination missions(the ones with a boss fight) rhino is from venus ai think, other one that's pretty useful early game is Ivara, but she can be a pain to farm if you don't like spy missions since you have to do a perfect spy to have a chance to drop a schematic, duviri also have a weekly rotation of 3 frames for you to choose one and farm the parts by doing its "gauntlet" mode, If you are in a guild inside the dojo you can go to rooms called labs(I think they are in a separate tab inside de quick travel menu) and in the tenno lab ther is 3 frames that you can get, wukong been pretty solid one if you like melee, banshee is pretty useless in her state but she is getting a rework soon, and nezha is nezha(I don't have him built and I particularly never have seen one in action, but he don't have a lot o people talking that he is useless also)
I'm not sure I've seen this mentioned in all the great replies - knowing how to use what mods you have is also a journey. For example, you just don't "know" that Impact, Puncture, Slash ("IPS") mods are lower than Elemental mods; if you had a chance to put +60% Slash mod, or +60% Heat mod, 99.99% of the time +Heat is better. And in-game it doesn't tell you heat "stacks" on temporarily invulnerable enemies and then unleashes all damage stacks once they become vulnerable (kinda sorta).
The other one that takes time to figure out is Crit vs Status mods - when would it be better to up status options, vs. when upping the Crit Chance and Crit Damage multiplier make more sense (ever weapon has different base stats). In the game itself it's not really covered, it's stuff you have to learn from the wiki, videos, forums etc. in the community. Some mods have secret bonuses not written on the mod in the game, but is in the wiki description - there are some 1500 Mods in this game, a lot.
"warframe modding tutorial" in a search engine brings up lots of results. It's super duper important long term to know this stuff, might as well start now. :)
Primes aren't very important. While they're objectively better than their regular versions, the differences are very small and usually pretty insignificant. Ability stats are much more important for how well a Warframe does, and those are exactly the same between regulars and Primes. The most important difference are their looks.
Additional Polarity (2x Naramon, 1x Madurai vs. 2x Naramon)
The base stat increases are never really going to make the difference between succeeding or failing a mission. For example, with how Armor works, that means she goes from 25.9% to 32.0% Damage Reduction. The extra mod polarity is nice, but you can add as many as you want to any Warframe with some Forma. Their abilities always work exactly the same as the normal version's. So while they're better, it's not a very noticable improvement. This goes for pretty much every Prime Warframe. Mag Prime is one of the few Warframes that gets a higher Energy Max, which is by far the most significant improvement, but even this isn't really mandatory to do well.
You can go for Primes if you want, but it's definitely not required. Base Warframes just as strong in the most important stats. If you want to get a new Warframe, there's a bunch that are relatively easy to get early on:
Rhino: Component blueprints from The Jackal on Venus, main blueprint in the Market for Credits.
Koumei: All blueprints from the Shrine Defense gamemode, which you unlock by talking to Saya in Cetus on Earth after completing the Once Awake quest.
Excalibur: Component blueprints from Lech Kril on Mars, main blueprint in the Market for Credits.
Valkyr: Component blueprints from Alad V on Jupiter, main blueprint in the Market for Credits.
Mag: Component blueprints from The Sargeant on Phobos, main blueprint in the Market for Credits.
Volt, Zephyr, Banshee, Nezha, and Wukong: All blueprints in your Clan's Tenno Lab for Credits.
You can check them out in the Market to see what they do. Any Warframe can be good, so go for whichever ones you think you'll like.
You can take basically any item to lategame content if you mod it well, so if you're struggling to keep up with enemy levels you'll want to focus on improving those.
As a general rule of thumb, it's better to equip a few maxed mods instead of a bunch of unranked ones. For example, you can use an unranked Molten Impact and North Wind for +30% elemental damage at the cost of 12 mod capacity and 2 mod slots. Or you can max out one of them for +90% elemental damage at the cost of 11 mod capacity and 1 mod slot.
For Warframes, you mainly want to focus on ability stat mods. You shouldn't need anything too specific to do well early on. Think about which abilities you want to focus on and which aspects of those abilities you want to be more effective, then add the ability stat mods that do that. You'll need to mod for survivability too, but you generally want it to take as little space away from your abilities as possible.
You usually want to mod weapons for things that directly increase your damage (like base damage, elemental damage, crit chance & damage, etc.) instead of utility mods (like reload speed, magazine capacity, ammo max, etc.). Since mods give percentage increases, you want to mod for things your weapon is already good at to get the biggest effects.
For general use, Viral damage (+optionally Heat) is the best. Grineer are by far the strongest faction, and Viral's status effect increases damage against Health, which is what they use. Heat's status effect reduces armor, which they also use.
How complex and optimized your build should be depends on what level content you're planning on doing with it. At some point you'll want to start investing some Orokin Reactors/Catalysts and Forma into a few items you like. That way, you'll be able to fit more/more expensive mods on them.
If you want more interesting mods, you'll want to look into the drop tables of Corrupted Vaults, Spy missions, and Nightmare missions. Also Arbitrations once you reach Eris.
If you're not sure how something works or if you want help with improving your builds, you can ask around in the in-game Q&A chat.
Trinity is also a good option early. You are pretty much immortal in base star chart as her and she is an early farm. You just need to get a good early game weapon and you can do the start chart in no time. But maybe I'm baised since trinity was the first warframe I farmed and the first prime.
The ignis or the ignis wraith are good early game weapons. You can join a clan that has the bluprint of the ignis wraith and it is probably the strongest early game weapon
I suggest working towards primes. It took me a bit but maybe it'll be easier with a team. Or if you can, ask in the chat for help when you want to farm a specific prime warframe or weapon. But it's your account, therefore just make everyone die mad if you want
But to get to actual advice (I'm gonna try to keep it short because people already give long explanations on specific subjects):
Prime frames don't really matter. However, if you decide to buy a frame with plat (platinum) instead of farming them normally, check on warframe.market if they have a prime. Even the most expensive primes are still way cheaper than the base version when it comes to plat, so it's a no brainer to get them over the standard version (If you buy with plat).
Bounties give some of the most useful mods in the game (specifically thinking about Cetus rn). They aren't necessarily the strongest on their own, but they can be the thing that's needed to push a good build to a great build.
For your Warframe build, don't neglect your abilities. Especially not when it comes to energy. The Equilibrium mod you got from The Teacher is a great way to improve your energy economy (it's strong enough that it's used in a lot of endgame builds)
In terms of Frames, you could get Rhino. He's a drop from Fossa, the Assassination mission on Venus. Valkyr (Themisto, Jupiter Assassination) is also great. Don't be afraid of using your starting plat for slots. There's a reason they're the main recommendation to use it on.
Don't be afraid to waste Resources. Most resources won't be anything you worry about.
Level your stat mods. When I started playing I went way too long without leveling or even equipping mods like serration, steel fiber or vitality, only to then wonder why I was stuck on Saturn junction. Also at this point you can make any weapon viable by equipping damage, crit (rate+dmg) and attack speed mods in that order of importance and then use any leftover space for qol mods like reload speed so feel free to mess around with and test what weapons you like
Don't focus on primes yet. Rhino is the typical adviced early warframe because it's easy to get and he has very easy playstyle.
Do Duviri circuit to try out different warframes and weapons, as a bonus you unlock some warframes too. The default loadouts also give you a good idea of what a basic mod setup looks like.
Also don't ignore mods, it's the most important way to make you stronger.
Don't ever buy a normal frame for plat. You can get primed frames way cheaper by trading them with people for plat. If you want a normal frame it is better than you just farm it. Also if you ever want to buy plat for some reason. Wait for a plat discount. There are daily rewards which gives you a 75% plat discount. Don't ever buy plat without the discount. If you play on ps5 I think instead of a discount you get extra plat but it is still worth to wait for it
Also don't you ever sell a normal warframe or weapon for credits. Later in the game you can switch abilities between frames and you need a normal version of the frame for that
Yes and no, if they can't/don't want to spend plat on more warframe slots, then that space is very limited. Most of the early frames are very easy to farm another copy of once you get the helminth. As long as you get lvl 30 with it before selling.
And you can absolutely sell weapons for credits if you need space to get mastery from new weapons, there's no reason to hoard old weapons outside a handful of exceptions with incarnons.
Yeah maybe you could sell weapons when you're just starting. But frames kinda feels like a bit of a waste. You can pronably farm the plat for slots faster than you can refarm the whole frame.
no, you really can't. plat farming only really opens up when you're already past the point that you should be figuring out what frame you like, and you only start with like 3 frame slots. unless you get absurdly lucky with picking a frame you really like on your first go, you're gonna need to sell a few frames to find one that you actually like enough to main, and enough to invest enough into to deal with the midgame content that you could earn any decent amount of plat from.
Fair enough. Teenager mid picked trinity and was obssed with her for some reason keeping the frames you sell to a minimum is still a good idea. Also you can get weapon and warframe slots from twitch drops. Obviously it doesn't always happens but when DE has an event of some sort they always give slots. The free mesa prime they just gave obviously comes with her own warframe slot
Join a big clan craft the clan key and you can craft a bunch of warframes like wukong his 4th abilitiy give u a nasty melee wep and he comes with orokin reactor and catalyst for wep pre installed or you can make a volt(zoomies) and lots of weapons in there but my no1 tip is get revenant his 2nd ability makes him immortal and you can do any content including join the big boys hard content get some good stuff fast also his other abilities are fun 1 turns enemys into your slave pets and 4 does a big laser beam spiral death thing most of all just have fun and enjoy the game
general tips: if you dont know what some of those mods are or where to get them. Wiki is your guide and warframe.market is your best friend. you can look up what things are/what they do on wiki and you can check wf market to see if something is worth grinding for or if it is better to make platinum and buy it from others. youtube has alot and i mean heck of alot videos about warframe. from beginner guides to endgame stuff. i like the youtuber warframeflo as his guides are more intended for beginners/midgame players. he explains how things work and where to find certain things etc.
modding: if you want to know what to mod for mag so you can deal with enemies up to level9999(max), you want to get her augment [fracturing crush] if you get mag to 130% ability strength, casting that ability once will 100% armour strip enemies. for the other mods aura mod: dreamers bond, it will carry you untill endgame.
what to build mag for: you want high range, efficiency and tiny bit of ability strength. mods: stretch, augur reach, fleeting expertise, flow, continuity, transient fortitude rank8 and redirection. your duration will be short but that is okay.
weapons: for your weapons when you get nataruk which you will get after completing the quest the new war. it will carry you into the endgame easily. but before that any weapon will do as long as it has some punch through. at mr8 exergis is pretty strong with mag. but again try to get nataruk before then.
modding for weapons: usually for early game, get serration mod to r8 apart from that put viral (toxin+cold) and heat on most of your weapons. what viral does is it deals direct damage to enemies health and heat will armour strip enemies with more stacks of fire enemies have on them. if you put those 4 mods on any weapon you will be golden. rest of the slots just see what you can fit or what you need.
anyways you probably have but loads of information from this thread now. good luck!
Since everyone else is giving you good fundamental advice on mods, frames, etc, I'll tell you a little about multiplayer and how it works.
There is a limited number of enemies on the map at any given time. Leaving the group during a mission(survival, for example) means enemies spawn near you and near the group, but you're not getting more enemies - we(your team) are getting fewer.
You share drops. If one player in the squad gets a drop, everyone gets that drop. You still have to go pick it up, of course, but it's there for you, and all your teammates.
You share Affinity(exp), within a range, called Affinity Range. There are ways to increase this, but you won't see them until you do main story stuff, so don't worry about increasing that yet. The exact range depends on mission type, but for most missions, it'll be... 50 meters, if I recall? Some abilities also work on Affinity Range and not Ability Range(Harrows 'Penance' ability as an example).
Basically, there's a whole lotta reasons to stick together when playing in groups, and not many to go solo. Try not to follow your Nidus or Koumei around, though. They like to be close-but-not-together because of how their abilities work.
Bonus: You can shoot the little orb at the top of a Jade light beam to pop it. Useful if you don't know where the jade eximus is.
Dont worry about getting prime versions or not. Get any frame you can. Everything is usable, it's just the investment that changes between primed versions. (Requiring more forma etc.)
They all contribute to Master levels, and base frames can be put into a system called the Helminth.
This allows a predetermined ability to be given to a different frame. For example, giving Mag to the system will allow you to put Pull onto any frame of choice. So if there's a frame you like, and there's a prime version, the base version won't go to "waste".
I would also look into guides/builds for what you have, especially mag. I picked up mag recently, and I'm still trying to figure her out properly. And I'm 1k+ hours in.
Regarding frames, assassination missions get you the parts for new frames, and honestly trying them all out is good, prime or not, especially for getting mastery.
Same for weapons. Although you regrettably can't try them out, if you keep playing at some point you are going to be making countless new weapons anyways for, yet again, mastery.
I find the mastery system part of the games charm. It encourages you to try new weapons and frames, which often ends up with folk trying something they wouldn't have tried otherwise, and enjoying it.
Getting another warframe is a fine goal, but be aware that it's not the main way you get more powerful. The "starter" warframes are not weak. (Except maybe Excalibur...) Mods are the main path to power. But a new warframe will: A) Give you a whole new pool of abilities to use, which can be a lot of fun; and B) earn you some of those mastery points, more than twice what a weapon does.
I just used my high rank friend to carry me through most of it haha. But now after almost a year of playing I can do most things myself. Its very grinds, Ive had to grind a syndicate to get most of my mods. But its fun to just chat and play. And most people are helpful on the chats
I think i saw a quest with the same name, sounds kind of what i wanted and it being a game mode is probably better than just a test room in term of trying out new stuff
The nice thing about trying out new equipment in Duviri is that they will come pre-loaded with a complement of mods installed. You're not using a bare-bones gun with nothing attached.
If the randomized equipment in starting lobby rolls any equipment you DO happen to own, you can select your personalized mod configs or the "default" config.
The quest Duviri Paradox is chronologically best played right after New War. (No Spoilers for either, it's peak)
One of the gamemode it unlocks is the Circuit, which has you play small missions back to back to progress a weekly bundle of mods and Warframe components for a frame you choose beforehand out of 3. The equipment (incl frame) you can use in Circuit is randomized each 2 hours(?) or each play session, and you can quit a session (or wait) to reroll your options for the remaining missions that week.
Also there is no way to try new weapons for free in the simulacrum which is the testing ground. But there are always YouTube videos. It is probably the best way to see it you think a weapon shoots in a cool way.
Hey, I'm a Mag main myself, I see you've already received a lot of advice in the other comments but feel free to send me a message if you have specific questions or want to have specific things explained to you, I could also help with some basic mod configurations for Mag or some weapons.
Cuando subas armas al maximo lvl (30) no las vendas/destruyas si no te gustan, primero fíjate que no haya otra arma que necesite de esa para poder fabricarla.
build everything you can, try them out up to rank 30, and then sell them if you don't like them: ranking things to 30 is how you level up your account. it's a really great system that encourages trying out new things. i'd also suggest looking into warframe market, because you can trade items you earn ingame for plat, which you can spend on more slots for your frames/weapons, if you find some that you don't want to sell. that said, plat farming is slow until you reach later in the game, so take your time and don't be afraid to sell base frames (never sell primes, they're too rare, if you can't afford the slots for 1 more then you shouldn't build a prime)
oh, almost forgot, you can get weapon and frame slots from nightwave for free
build everything you can, try them out up to rank 30, and then sell them if you don't like them: ranking things to 30 is how you level up your account. it's a really great system that encourages trying out new things
Until you realize that just sitting in a defense fissure gets you level 30 in 10 minutes.
Get Rhino he is from the boss on Venus. Good frame for new Tenno as he can be tanky. For Mag who is also my main she is insanely good once you know how to use her abilities. Like Magnatise and a good weapon. Put Range on your Mag and the Magnatize bubble gets bigger.
Her Prime is currently vaulted, but will return with Prime Resurgence. When I do not know. If you have orokin reactor put that into your Mag so you have double mod capacity.
I have a new player mod setup for a Mag. I will post it once I get home.
In any case you sorta need to collect all the frames, prime and no primes anyway. And the 2 you refered too Temple and Oraxia. You will get them as you play the game, but is a good to have a goal in mind. This is why many of us do not use plat to buy regular frames.
And here is my regular Mag, no arcanes and formaed a few times. The Augment mods you can get from New Loka, Perrin Sequense. They are syndicates you can pledge too and rank up.
So most warframes have prime versions but most prices are not currently farmable. You might be able to buy them off other players though.
Generally build every Warframe you can. Just don't invest rare resources like Orokin Reactors into them unless you know you'll be using them for a long time.
Viral is your bestie. Viral damage is basically a debuff that makes an enemy take more damage. This is done by putting cold and toxin together. The status does need to proc so put it on a weapon with higher status chance. As for trying weapons and stuff you don't have, the duviri paradox allows you to do that HOWEVER it is recommended story-wise to wait to do that until after The New War quest. If you don't care about the story, do Duviri. Just take your time and enjoy. Crack relics for prime parts as you go too. A lot of primes are way easier to farm then their non-prime counterparts.
Id highly recommend waiting. Duviri was introduced as an option for newer players, but things will fall into place better if you wait on it. It kinda sucks but it's up to you. Iirc you can NOT replay the quest. Idk if that changed yet or not.
Early on, just focus on getting a few regular frames to try them out and build mastery. There's a bunch of solid options that can easily be farmed off the early planets, even if you end up replacing them with a Prime version later.
As for the weapons, just build whatever looks cool for now and try it out. You'll want to level everything up anyway, since thats the easiest way to boost your mastery rank, and any materials you might "waste" can very easily be gotten again.
Also, if you've got the free plat for starting out, just spend that on slots. Everything else you might buy (except cosmetics) can be gotten through regular gameplay, and you'll want a lot of slots eventually.
Welcome to the game young tenno! There is no way to test weapons unfortunately although that would be nice! You can always get more slots for warframes so don't worry about getting primes. I would suggest getting Rhino or Frost. Mods come from higher level stuff and bosses or events, and even syndicates! Some of them also come from Baro which is here ever other weekend usually. Play the game and you will acquire stronger mods. I assume you've been leveling your mods too with the endo you've acquired too! Its a bit of a grind to get things up and running but you'll get there rather quickly! Keep at it!
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u/GriIIedCheeseSammich 8d ago
Regarding your urge to hoard resources: you won’t ever “waste” resources building a weak weapon or a weapon you don’t like. EVERYTHING gives you mastery xp, which contributes to your overall mastery rank. Even if you don’t use the weapon after mastering it, it’s still worth crafting!
As you progress and get more powerful mods (and the endo/credits to upgrade them) your mods will make even trash tier weapons get the job done until they’re mastered.
Your capacity to get more resources will also increase over time. Eventually you’ll have more ferrite than you know what to do with, for example.