I’m half-way through Sedna right now. I have just 1 Warframe (though I did start building Limbo last night when I remembered I did that quest) and it, a long with my best weapons, are maxed out and either at mod capacity or damn near (still need endo for a few). MR5.
I have a railjack, I unlocked the Operator, and I have so many resources and credits. But everything is starting to take forever to kill and hurts me so much. When I did the whole Drifter quest thing, I choose everything I already used but it was so much stronger. The Warframe had way more shield and health even though I have Redirection and Vitality maxed out on it. The Boltor had a super high ROF compared to what mine has and did way more damage.
How the hell do I get that kind of power on my normal stuff? I know about Forma but I haven’t even seen some of the mods for the weapons I have I’ve seen suggested for maximum damage, so I’m just hanging onto those until it makes sense to use them. Is that really the only way to get stronger?
I didn’t see the community at first and I just thought yeah that’s accurate for my life
My suggestion would be to watch a new account/F2P playthrough on YouTube and learn from that - I know Brozime did one fairly recently. Iflynn had a pretty great beginner guide too, but it’s slightly older, 2022 I think?
The answer is basically mods though - you need to learn how to mod both frames and weapons, and it can take a while (and can seem super complicated and daunting at first). The free to play playthroughs are a great starting point, since they show it step by step, without spending real money or platinum.
+1 for Brozime. Great content creator and all of his videos for warframes and weapons usually have a budget-build more accessible to new players. He does a free-to-play run almost yearly and he’s due for another one soon since some minor things have changed.
Watch his free-to-play run and join a clan to help get up to speed.
Yeah, understanding how mods interact gets progressively more important as you go. I can explain how to make your weapons better, at least, quickly:
Each ‘category’ of damage is multiplicative to other categories while all mods within a category are additive to each-other. The categories are Base (ex Serration), Elemental (ex Stormbringer), Multi-Shot (ex Split Chamber), Critical (ex Point Strike & Vital Sense), and Faction (ex Bane of Grineer).
So, you could get the Arsenal to show you high numbers slapping all your elemental mods on a gun but it won’t be as effective as using 1-2 of each category. So, make the combo element that hurts whichever faction you’re fighting and use the appropriate Bane mod and you should cut through Sedna like you’re back on Earth.
But there’s more; There’s several types of special mods that are only gotten from a few places:
- Nightmare Mods: They give two positive effects. Nightmare mods tend to cost less mod cap and give less of the effect but getting two effects from one mod tends to be worthwhile (so long as both effects are good). They’re only acquired from Nightmare Mode Alerts that show up in places you’ve already unlocked.
- Corrupted Mods: Give a positive effect and a negative effect. The positive effect tends to be larger than you could get on a normal mod when maxxed out and for some weapons or warframes the negative has no or almost no impact (ex less fire rate on a gun with 1 shot magazine, you reload rather than be slowed by fire rate). You get these buy opening the Dragon Vaults on Deimos missions which will require Dragon Keys.
- Galvanized Mods: Give a positive effect and a conditional positive effect (ex more crit chance for a few seconds after getting a headshot) these are extremely powerful mods but you can only get them from the Arbitration shop on relays, which uses Vitus Essence from the Arbitration gamemode as it’s currency. You need to do every node on the star chart to unlock it.
You can use these various special mods to squeeze even more power out of your gear, but you’ll likely need Forma to make best use of it all. And Orokin Catalysts.
You’re also at the point where you can start working on your operator. You want to enter the Plains of Eidolon at night (Set match making to solo to avoid randomly getting put into a public Eidolon/Tridolon hunt), and you can kill Vomvalysts for their cores, and find Cetus Wisps which spawn near pools of water and appear on your map as an item icon. They can also be given as a Cetus Bounty Reward if you don’t want to do laps around the map, and you’ll get other useful rewards from doing bounties. Probably best to stick to the lower level ones, nothing prevents you from accidently selecting a mission with enemies above your level range.
Find the Quills in Cetus to trade in the cores for standing to rank up their syndicate and purchase the parts for your first amp. Anything is better than the mote amp, but the first amp you will make will probably use the Raplak Prism, Pencha Scaffold and the Clapkra Brace. Most of the resources needed to craft these components are found on the Plains of Eidolon by fishing/mining. Amps crafted this way are modular items and will require you to take the crafted components back to Onkko to assemble them. Amps can be leveled to 30, and then brought back to Onkko to be guilded. This lets you name your amp, colour it, and put arcanes into it (not relevant for your current progression but does become important later on). To change your amp, go to your orbiter* Pause > Equipment > Operator > Equipment, and you should see the option to equipt another amp. *Should also be able to do this from any of the open world hubs, not an option in relays.
If you talk to Konzu at night, you will see the Eidolon Bounties available. At your current level it is probably best to avoid them. The first Eidolon will be doable in a squad but I still think think it’s probably too early for you’ve currently progressed. It is a good source of items to trade for standing with the Quills though.
If you’re having trouble finding them, you should be able to fast travel there from the pause menu. You will see a stone door there, use operator mode to enter it. If you don’t have the option to fast travel there, you want to start from the gates and hug the left wall and go up a staircase until you find a stone wall, and use operator mode to enter it.
Ah so that’s where I can use him. Unless a quest told me to change, I haven’t been using him at all. Is there another part like the Drifter side quest? As a Souls fan, that was hella fun.
The main uses for Operator/Drifter are for certain bosses, utility and for killing special enemies that have two phases like Vomvalysts and Thrax. The most useful focus school for new players would be Zenurik. You want to unlock Wellspring which lets you create a marked zone by pressing
1(assuming you’re on PC) and standing inside it with your warframe will give you an energy regen buff. There are some other quests that do make use of your operator/drifter too, and a game mode focused around playing as the Drifter (Duviri: Experience - feels very different from base warframe though and controls could be a little less clunky).If you didn’t pick Zenurik as a starting school, you can find ‘Zenurik’ Focus Lenses them as a potential reward in Cetus Bounties at Konzu. (These reward tables rotate so they won’t always be available). They can be installed on any piece of equipment that is rank 30 by going to Arsenal > [pick any piece of equipment that is rank 30] Upgrade > Actions (at the bottom of your screen) > Focus Lens. This will convert a portion of affinity gained to Focus which can then be used to unlock a new Focus school once you have 50k points accumulated within the respecitve school. Warframe is unfortunately a little convoluted, you want to make sure you’re using an Zenurik lens if you’re trying to unlock that Focus school. Just play the game and you will gain standing passively.
To change your focus school, Esc > Equipment > Operator > Focus > Pick a school to swap to/unlock if you have enough points in the specific school you want. *You might be able to convert Eidolon Shards as an alternative to farming focus but this is later progression wise, I think you might still need to go through initially unlocking a specific school using it’s respective lens.
*I’m mostly going off memory, if you don’t have access to operator yet by pressing ‘5’, it’s currently only enabled for quest progression. It becomes useable in game after completing ‘The Second Dream’.
You’re talking about Duviri right? If you’re using melee on drifter it has to be there. Yeah, it’s a whole area that’s mostly independent from the main game. You can get a lot of different upgrades from Duviri.
Could you post your favourite loadout, in terms of the frame you use, the weapons you use, and their mod configs? I can give more tailored advice with that information.
Warframe’s early game is a bit of a mess balance-wise, and has very little guidence.
Make use of nightwave for some useful Aura mods, and you can get some weapon/warframe slots for ranking it up. Any challenges that aren’t completed by the end of the week just get banked and become available again once you’ve completed some of your current week’s challenges. The weekly challenges never really expire until the end of the current nightwave cycle which tends to go on for quite a while. You can purchase Orokin Reactors/Catalysts from nightwave to increase your warframe/weapon mod capacity to 60 (for a rank 30 warframe/weapon). I don’t think I would really want to use many of them on a base warframe/weapon, you’re better off using them on a Prime instead/or if there’s a base warframe/weapon you tend to use often. Once you progress further into the game, you usually have more Reactors/Catalysts than you can use.
Forma is the other way to fit more mods into your warframe/weapons, a little build restricting because they need to match the polarity to reduce the mod cost (or penalty if it’s a different symbol), but that’s where the min-max fun is if you’re into making builds.If any build guides suggest “Galvanized Mods” or weapon arcanes, then you’re looking at a guide aimed more for very late game. Modding generally follows the same pattern for all weapons, Base Damage, Crit Chance, Crit Damage, Multishot, Element, Optional/QOL.
For a primary weapon you want:
Serration, Point Strike, Vital Sense, Split Chamber and your other mod slots are for an elemental combo/option mods (reload speed, fire rate, etc). You might have noticed a planet will suggest an element type like Viral, you would go into the mod screen for your weapon and type in “Viral” into the search box and it will filter mods that can be used to make that element.
Secondary Weapons: Hornet Strike, Pistol Gambit, Target Cracker, Barrel Diffusion, element and optional mods. Melee: Stance Mod, Pressure Point, Organ Shatter, True Steel, element and if your melee weapon is slow then you will want a mod like Fury on to increase the attack speed, otherwise this mod falls under the optional category. If you have the Skijati, that weapon comes with the Sacrificial versions of point strike/organ shatter along with the polarities to use those mods, so use those instead of their base versions.One last thing is if you haven’t joined a syndicate yet, pick one and rank it up. Either pick New Loka, Perin Sequence and Red Veil OR Cephalon Suda, Arbiters of Hexis and Steel Meridian. Someone probably can probably do a better explanation on how these syndicates work than I have time to write right now/there should be existing guides which should be able to explain how they work in a much less confusing way than I would explain it.
Just want to add: forma are for when you’ve run out of capacity after you’ve installed a reactor/catalyst. You can install them before, but it’s really inefficient.
Also, if you put all the basic mods on a weapon, and it still feels weak, take a look at its base (unmodded) crit and status chance stats. If, say, base crit chance is significantly lower than base status chance, then replace crit mods with more status/status chance, and see if that feels better. Same principle for frames: some frames have really low base shield, or their abilities don’t need range, or they don’t need to worry about energy management, so you’re better off swapping out some mods for others.
The “I have one warframe” is a problem too. Limbo isn’t great either, unless you build it one specific way (and it’s buggy iirc). Best to target a specific powerful warframe. Rhino is a great one that’s incredibly easy to get. It’s extremely tanky and has some crowd control. Saryn is basically a kill aura when you build it right. There are some that favor specific playstyles. The game favors meele weapons and AoE. I’d tell you what I have but I sadly have the game uninstalled right now. Overall, it shouldn’t be a problem for you to build an insanely overpowered frame + weapons combo and wreck the game.
Limbo isn’t great either, unless you build it one specific way (and it’s buggy iirc)
I tried him out at least on one mission and it took a minute to even understand what he does lol. Being able to become invulnerable whenever I want seemed like it might work for spy missions but since the enemy is still aware of you I’m doubting it would make you able to cross beams and stuff without trying to go around them. Correct me if that’s not true because those data theft missions can get annoying.
Limbo can’t cross the beams without being detected. However Ivara can if you get her special augment for her invisibility power. Unfortunately you get Ivara’s pieces from doing Spy missions without the data-destruction timer being activated for any of the three vaults.
Limbo works for going through Lua spy vaults and I think corpus green lasers. There are still much better choices though. I typically just use Wisp because I’m invisible as long as I’m airborne and I can teleport to the 2 to bypass lasers.
Limbo has a bit of a learning curve and is also one of those frames where it’s very hard to be good Limbo.
Fair enough, I didn’t know that. For me I have one of my warframe slots reserved for Ivara just in case I ever have to do another Spy.
Limbo sounds great on paper, but ultimately is incredibly "meh’. The invulnerability is a trap - time to kill in warframe is incredibly quick. Either you survive, or you don’t (and get basically oneshot). Running missions where you would usually die but using a gimmick not to, only results in you going through sub par gameplay, and ultimately leads to less fun with the game.
Have you done void relics? Sounds like you might’ve skipped prime weapons / frames altogether, which would help you a lot, and sometimes is easier and cheaper to get than the “regular” version. I do remember getting ivara prime before the actual ivara, since as you and other people mentioned spy missions suuuuuck.
What you need is a really good frame, a good meele weapon, an ability to move through the game quickly (control + space, aiming where you want to go, is disorienting at first). Try for the ones I mentioned previously, especially Rhino. Frost is a good early game frame, but I think you already are past the point where the bubble is sustainable.
Gauss is incredibly fun for speedrunning a mission - its main skill is “run fast” lol.
Inaros is a “massive health pool” type of frame for armor and survivability
Khora is my favourite, with huge crowd control and absurd damage when built right.
Mesa is a very high DPS glass cannon with some survivability built in. She literally has full auto revolvers that autotarget enemies that can be made to deal an absurd amount of damage.
Trinity is great for supporting other players and for your own survivability. You won’t kill as much as a mesa would, but you will keep everything alive to do the damage.
Titania is great for speedrunning again, she can turn into a miniature archwing that scales with her ability strength, leading her to literally warp through closed doors sometimes.
Wisp is an immortal frame – she can boost speed, vitality and health regen (hence immortality) and she can stun everything around by simply standing with a buff up. She’s great for defense (some objectives can take her buffs and heal too) and her ultimate can carry you quite nicely till you get too far in enemy levels, at which point it kinda drops off in damage.
Were I you, I’d go for wisp if you have the boss unlocked already. Just go with randoms and quite often than not, there’ll be someone who is able to deal incredible damage to it. For a meele weapon - I had a reaper prime with lots of mods that made it deadly. It sweeps in large arcs, does plenty of damage, etc. No idea if it is possible to get it now or how viable it is.
Dual ichor is a weapon you can get easily by joining a developed clan - they’re cheap and can be built into a literal blender. They’ll serve you well till you get something better
I love me some Oberon/prime.
I found him pretty great early to midgame. And I still find him good late game even if he isn’t as good as some others.
But I tend to like multi-purpose over specialized .
You’re probably missing some key mods on both weapons and warframes. I know I made it all the way to Sedna without picking up multi shot mods, which are huge boosts.
Are you in a clan? Your clan should be able to help with some of the beginner rare mods and builds.
I’m just a solo player but I have my own clan for the research stuff. But I only just started that so most of the facilities are still being built.
I am missing out on some mods I’ve been suggested. I have no multi shot ones or the ROF increase I know exists. Since the damage output mods I have are already maxed and equipped to the gun, I’m just waiting to get those kind of mods before I use a Forma.
Does playing in a group increase drop rates like most co-op games or is it simply easier/faster because you have more people wrecking the enemy? The only time I’ve been going public is when I am in my Railjack because that’s actually kinda fun with more people.
Playing in a group has an impact has an impact on enemy density and also has an effect on how often enemies will target you (some behind the scenes stuff limiting how many enemies can attack at once). Enemy level does not scale with the number of players in a lobby.
Most game modes are generally better in public, sometimes you can end up in lobbies where people have “disruptive” builds like a max range Wisp slowing down enemy pathing in a defense mission. You do get more drops due to more enemies being able to spawn, and when you start doing fissure missions, anyone that manages to collect 10 reactant before extracting is able to pick one of the rewards from the opened relics. If you fail to collect 10 reactant before extracting, your relic will not be consumed but you also wont be able to pick a reward from the pool of cracked relics.
Less popular game modes like Infested Salvage actually go by faster if you’re playing solo, the mission length scales with player count.
Hopefully you haven’t gotten too far into your own clan, because the best strategy for people doing solo clans is to actually be in a clan with completed research first, replicate all of the blueprints, and then split off and do your own thing. Otherwise you are bottlenecking yourself pretty significantly.
Yes, you’ll hear about people that completed all research solo, but usually those are players that are already far into the game and are just doing it for the memes.
Total research costs on this page.
TL;DR: cut your losses, join a complete clan, replicate absolutely everything, restart your personal clan.
The Meta changes fairly often, but most of the builds you can find on Overframe are still more than viable as most of the top rated bulds are made for steelpath. You can always take a bit of inspiration from there. Just remember to read how it works.
I know about Forma but I haven’t even seen some of the mods for the weapons I have I’ve seen suggested for maximum damage, so I’m just hanging onto those until it makes sense to use them. Is that really the only way to get stronger?
Forma is extremely important. If you’re not using any that is probably your problem, you’re not modding properly. Sedna is where that’s going start showing. If you post your builds we could poke at them and let you know for sure but right now we don’t have much to go on. You can also look up build guides for the gear you like to use and try to get as close to them as possible. The element you choose for each faction can also be playing a role.
