Warframe is a sci-fi third person shooter, where you get to wield a warframe with special abilities and tear with it through thousands of enemies with almost nothing to stop you. Almost. But this is not about what kind of enemies could harm your beautiful suit but about why this game is one of the best games you could ever play if you’re into sci-fi shooters:
1. Continuous Development
Years after it appeared, the developer team only grew since the original release of the game, and with it, the amount of content the players can fiddle with. While at first there were 8 warframes, a few dozens of weapons, a single enemy faction and just a tileset for the maps, the game boasts now over 30 original warframes with Prime variants of them adding up to a current total count of 53 Warframes (with soon to follow a new variant of them), hundreds of primary, secondary and melee weapons, a huge amount of tilesets as well as infested variances for some of them.
After that, since October 2017, the players can enjoy an amazingly built 2.25km² area called the Plains of Eidolon that can be found right on the starter planet, a new safe area in the form of a small city named Cetus that is connected to the Plains. New NPCs and vendors are introduced with new items for players to obtain with the new resources acquirable from the plains. And this is not all. Reportedly there are new warframes to come along the way, a new variant of the warframes called Umbra as well as transporting vehicles, which is something completely new, and the list continues. But, this is not the only good reason why this game is awesome.
The Plains of Eidolon
2. Loot Boxes
Ok, not loot boxes per say, but they respect the basics of a loot box: You receive them, you open them and based on your luck you might get something good out of it or not. In Warframe, they are known as Riven Mods, a type of mods released in 2017 that require the player to complete the challenge that is written on it before seeing for what it is for. The challenge can vary greatly in the types of task you have to complete as well as the overall difficulty of the challenge. You can deal with the easy challenges like “Kill 200 enemies in 1 day” (which can be completed in a single 10 minute or less mission) up to difficult ones like “Protect a Defense objective against high level enemies without the objective being hit once while wearing a debuff item”; and if the game really hates you, it will also ask you to complete it in solo mode.
The only disappointment in receiving such a challenge would be the reward from unlocking it since the riven mods prizes do not scale with difficulty: You can receive a very sought Riven from a very easy challenge and viceversa. But do not despair: If you deem the riven mod to contain a too difficult challenge, you can sell it for platinum, the real-money currency in the game, to another player and purchase yourself a new one with an easier challenge from another player.
There are 5 types of Riven Mods: Riven Mods for Rifles, Shotguns, Pistols, Rivens and Zaws. While technically they are the same, they were split into categories so the player will have a better chance in what he wants rather than having a one type altogether at the hundreds of weapons available in game.
If you are interested in the story behind Warframe, check out the First Volume of the Warframe Image Comics and get it in paperback format from Amazon
Now to actually explain what Riven Mods are: They are specific mods that are attached to only one kind of weapon (and their variants, like Prime, Wraith, Dex). When unlocking one Riven you receive information about the specific weapon it is used for as well as a set of random stats. If the player does not agree with the stats he received, the mod can be rerolled for a new set of stats which again is based on luck. To reroll a mod, you need a specific resource named Kuva which can be found in a specific set of mini-events which will be discussed at a later point. With each re-roll, the amount of Kuva needed to do it, increases for the first 10 re-rolls, after which, the price will stay the same for all the further re-rolls.
Upon unlocking the Riven Mod the player will also have to obey some requirements set by the mod like the Mastery Rank which ranges from 9 to 16 and the type of polarity it uses. The Riven Mods can be acquired through 2 ways: A random chance after completing the Daily Sortie set of missions or by purchasing them from other players that got theirs through the first or 2nd way.
Overall, I consider them the best type of loot boxes available in the gaming industry. The developers offer them for free, they can be unlocked only through skill, money has no power here, and they can be a strong addition to your collection … or wallet, depends on what you want to do with yours.
In-game Riven Mods
3. One of the Best Gaming Communities
Whether you are a complete newbie that has no idea what to do or where to begin from, or a veteran with hundreds or thousands of hours of experience but forgot one little detail about something or want that harder-to-get item, you can always rely on the community. Be it from simple players or a Guide of the Lotus (which are distinct by the average players due to their purple chat and nickname and they are handpicked by the developers themselves), you have a huge chance to get the answer or help you seek. And some people will simply not stop from giving you just an answer.
There are proofs that the players will gift, even more likely to a newbie player, items that will help them get through enemies faster, be it prime weapons and warframes or rare mods, there is no limit to the kindness you might receive. The community will also help you level up a weapon faster, take you to harder-to-complete missions and help you deal with them quickly and with almost 0 chance of failure. The Warframe community is considered by many content writers and producers, one of the best and helpful communities you will ever have a chance to encounter. I should know this, I am one of the helpers.
The Warframe Mobile Codex is a useful application that can help you access all the information you might need in Warframe with regular updates. Click on the link to get the application from Amazon and gain access to this in-game guide!
And it doesn’t stop here: There are various websites, Discord bots and Android applications which are meant to help both newbie and veteran players alike in getting the most out of the game, with alert notifications, wikis, relics, warframe and weapon builds and so on at their disposal.
4. There’s Everything for Everyone
And when I say this, I mean it. As previously mentioned, there are 34 original warframes (without Prime variants), to choose from, and each of them has at least 1 thing that will be to the liking of the player. Whether you want to go feral, melee and pummel everyone in your path without a regard to what’s in front of you, Valkyr will be there for you or go be tactical and imprison the enemies right where they are, Vauban will assist you.
Want to help the teammates, heal them and give them energy? Don’t worry, Trinity does this for a living. And the list goes on. Each warframe has 4 active abilities with 1 passive ability which can be seen described in the Abilities section of the warframe. The same goes for weapons, you can use snipers, rifles, carbines, semi-auto rifles, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, bows, shotguns, lightning weapons, laser, vampiric, mini-black hole, flamethrowers and so on just for primaries.
For secondaries you have the smaller guns, the pistols, mini-shotguns, revolvers, smg’s, some of them dual-wielded, other laser weapons and grenade launchers and many others. For the melees you have swords, axes, hammers, katanas, sword and shields, whips, daggers, all of them with possible augmentations and native elemental damage.
All of these are followed by the possibility to own a pet to aid you in your fights. Be it mechanical or animal, the pet will assist you to the best of its ability. Each companion has a certain ability like making their user invisible or adding critical chance to their hits. The mechanical companions, called Sentinels, can also exchange their weapons between each other in case such thought or need occurs to the player.
Highly customizable Warframes
5. Resources and Crafting
Behind every good RPG there is a crafting system, and this game makes no exception. Within your ship you will find the Foundry, the place where you can craft any blueprint you lay your hands on. The blueprints can be for anything: Warframes, weapons, gear, access keys, quest items, etc., the foundry will do it for you. All you need to do, like at every 3D Printer, is to feed it materials with which the items are built. The materials can be found on certain planets, depending on what it is asked for the craft.
Each planet contains 1 common resource, 2 uncommon and 1 rare. Each resource can be found on 2 specific planets (the exception being the resources found in the Plains of Eidolon, for now). Now, the resources can be gathered in 2 ways: 1. Go yourself after them and take what you need (aka everything the mission throws at you) or, 2. Craft and send a Distilling Extractor; The Extractor however will only acquire one random type of resource from that planet and it needs 8 hours for the process to complete.
The crafting can take as little as 1 minute for gear items such as Team Energy Restore pods or Ciphers up to 72 hours for Warframes and Archwings unless you are too impatient to craft that new sweet weapon that just got released and want to brag to your friends on how awesome it shoots and pay with platinum to rush the crafting.
But this is not the only place where you have to craft stuff up. In order to not clutter the Marketplace in your ship, the Dojo is also a place from where items can be taken, and instead of crafting, the act is called Research but it uses the same principles of having the necessary amount of resources and then waiting for it to be researched. After that, you still have to purchase the blueprint and craft it in your own foundry.
6. Events, Mini-Events and Challenges
Warframe will always have something for you to do. Be it going through the quests, sorties, nightmare missions or even just a trip through the Plains of Eidolon, there will always be content for you to do.
The most often kind of mini-event the player will see are the Alerts, which are normal or nightmare-type missions that offer a higher-than-normal credit prize and usually with the addition of an extra reward, like a rare mod or resources as well as the blueprints necessary to build the Vauban warframe.
On the second place, you will find the Invasions where you can decide which of the fighting factions (Grineer or Corpus) you want to win to receive a prize from them that is mentioned at each invasion-type mission. However, what you want and what the rest of the players want might not always be the same. The fight is decided by the amount of players that fight for a certain faction. Even after this, you are required to do the invasion three times, but the mission type might change during the invasion.
Followed by that are the Syndicate missions where you will do their bidding in order to get in their good graces and receive unique prizes from them. They behave like any normal mission with the exception that you will also receive Standing (or experience), for the Syndicate you fought for, half of that amount of that to the Syndicate allied to the one you did the mission for, and the same 2 amounts but in negative form to the 2 Syndicates that are against those you fought for.
Next are the Void Fissure missions where you are required to bring Relics which also behave like a lootbox, but unlike the Rivens where you have to do a specific challenge, you play normal missions with the added objective of collecting 10 special items named reactants in order to crack open the Relic. The HUD will assist the player in knowing how many of the 10 reactants they have collected as well as how many reactants his teammates have collected. If someone doesn’t get the 10 reactants needed by the time the mission ends, that player won’t have his Relic opened, he will not be able to get a reward from it and the Relic will return back into his inventory.
Sorties are the last in the mini-events and the hardest out of all of them. The sorties are a daily set of 3 missions that drop some of the most expensive rewards available. You are required to do a set of 3 random missions, where the enemies start out at level 50 in the first mission and end up at double that in the last one; the missions will also have requirements/debuffs/enemy buffs that the players will have to face like using a certain type of weapon only, the max amount of energy is considerably lowered or the enemies have their damage output buffed.
Considering that the missions on the hardest planets do not pass level 40 without them being in an arena that is saying something. After the completion of the sortie, the entire group will receive the same reward which range from Riven Mods to resources and even a Legendary Core, which is able to rank-up any mod you desire to max without paying for the upgrade. Due to the difficulty of the sorties, Rank and Gear requirements have been put in place such as the player must have a minimum of Mastery Rank 6 in order to attend to them and must use a max ranked warframe.
There are also 2 more types of mission modes that are found freely on the planets once certain objectives have been completed:
First off you have the Nightmare mode which can be found on the planets that have all the nods completed. The nightmare mode will buff out the enemies while giving you 1 or 2 debuffs like Vampire mode, Low Gravity, or No Shields.
The second type is the Kuva Syphon/Flood missions from where you can gather the rare Kuva resource. The Kuva missions will always have the same level for enemies and will not fluctuate regardless of the planet it happens, even on starter planets. The Kuva Syphon missions will have enemies between level 30 and 40 while the Flood will turn the things to 11 and make you face Level 80-100 enemies. The difference between the 2 Syphon and Flood is that on Flood you will receive generally double the amount of what you will get in a Syphon mission. To get access to the Kuva missions, you have to finish the main quest named “The War Within”.
As for the Events they do not occur too frequently, only once about a few months. For 2 of the events the time until they take place can be followed on the Navigation menu and are directly impacted by the players’ choices in the Invasions. Besides the 2 repeating events, each other event brings something new to the table; be it a new weapon, mechanic or enemy, the events take about 1 week giving enough time to the player to get at least a minimum of rewards if he chooses to participate in it. It is also recommended to be part of such events since the rewards received from them are from rare to extremely rare and potential to become a little treasure in a not-so-far future and sell it for high platinum.
7. Gameplay Modes
The player can enjoy both PvE and PvP missions. Each type of mode has different types.
PvE has the following mission types: Arena, Assassination, Assault, Capture, Defection, Defense, Excavation, Exterminate, Hijack, Infested Salvage, Interception, Junction, Mobile Defense, Pursuit, Recovery, Rescue, Rush, Sabotage, Spy, Survival, Trial
While most of the presented modes are done in an old-fashioned way, with the feet on the ground, you can go into space with the Archwings. The Archwings have their own abilities and there are only 4 for now, each offering a different playstyle.
As for PvP, the player can play the classic modes of deathmatch and team deathmatch as well as a capture the flag mode. The 4th one stands out from the rest as it is a Lacrosse meets Sci-fi type of game, named Lunaro. The point there is to score as many points as possible.
8. Lore
Another good reason to dwelve into Warframe is the amazing story behind the game, which is still being built, with the latest mini-quest called “Apostasy Prologue” leaving most of the players puzzled and with lots of questions. The story expands over 3 periods of time: Before the Great War, during the Great War and the aftermath of it, about how everything became to be as it is in the moment you, the Tenno, wake up. I will not expand on this because it is best to be left to be discovered by the player. An intricate story, with lots of characters, more complex than most of the stories in games nowadays.
If you would rather read the Warframe comic on your desktop or mobile device, get the Kindle version of the book series now via Amazon!
Apostasy Prologue Cinematic
9. Be Part of a Team!
Unlike so many MMO Co-op games, where being part of a clan or alliance means just being in a group, Warframe offers to the clans a Dojo, a clan’s headquarters. In there, the owner and those he chooses as his second in ranks, can build various rooms that can be for either cosmetic purposes like garden rooms or actually useful types like labs from where you can research and purchase blueprints. There are also entertainment rooms made for players to play against each other like a Duel Room which enables the possibility of PvP between players and an Obstacle Course where players can compete against each other to get the best time on the course. Each player, be him the owner of the clan or just a grunt, can contribute to the growth of the dojo or to researches with their own hard-earned resources.
It is also far easier to do events within the clan and dojo and keep it relevant for a long while. The presence in a clan is also kind of required due to the dojo’s blueprints being available only there and they are not tradeable. You can leave without them, but if you want some of the best weapons and to increase your Mastery Rank, you need to be in a clan.
10. Free To Play!
And probably this is the best argument that it can be brought about this game. And when I say Free To Play i am not talking about Freemium or Pay 2 Win or any other shady practice over a great game. With the exception of some cosmetics, every single part of the game can be played without the need to spend a dime. You can get yourself the warframes and weapons you want by buying or grinding for blueprints and the resources they need and the Prime variants of everything with the exception of the time they are released. Then you can spend real money to obtain them, otherwise you grind for them.
If you ever need the real-money currency, you can just go and gather prime components, rare mods and other similar things and sell them to other players for that delicious currency (do not actually try to taste it though, it is platinum, bad for you).
Everything besides slots for your weapons and warframes, and cosmetics can be obtained via grinding with no need to spend any cent of your hard-earned cash and this is what makes the game a true competitor against fully priced triple A games which make you pay 60$ for the game and still force you to buy loot boxes in order to obtain those sweet items that will give you an edge over your enemy.
Warframe is an example of what gaming can be, from the transparency the developers provide through their weekly Devstreams, the huge updates and extremely quick hotfixes, to the business method they chose, leaving in shame huge companies like Electronic Arts and Activision that will stop at nothing from getting every dime you have in your wallet. If you want to play, you can start right away by downloading and installing the game via the button below:
