So any tips for starting out? I messed around with this a bit back, and I got as far as the first mission where your not fighting the guys you first start out against, but around that point I started getting stomped pretty hard.
Let us know the following few things:
- Which warframe did you choose to start with?
- What level is your warframe and your three starting weapons?
- Have you found any blueprints or new weapons yet?
- Have you used any of the mods you’ve found on your weapons or warframe yet?
The answers I would give depend heavily on what you’ve done up to this point.
I’ve played a fair bit, and happy to answer questions. Kind of hard to give general advice aside from don’t spend your starting platinum right away. Be aware there is a one-time optional reset available at the moment, so if you did waste your platinum or don’t like your starter frame, it might be worth considering making use of that (you do lose EVERYTHING, with the exception of any beta exclusive gear you might have such as weapons with “Vandal” in the name).
For someone starting out, I would advise they seriously consider the Warframe descriptions for the starting three (Mag, Loki, Exalibur). When the Loki description says it’s for advanced players, they mean it. Don’t get me wrong, Loki is amazing, but for a new player learning the game he’s much more difficult to start with than the other two. He has the worst health, worst shields, worst shield regen rate, and lacks any sort of damage-dealing warframe ability. Where he starts to shine is at higher ranks where he has a large Power pool to play with and can freely utilize his abilities to stay alive (Decoy, Invisibility). He really starts to shine then. Starting as Loki is definitely doable, just expect a higher challenge early on. Don’t be shy about toggling your party Online and joining randoms until you get your legs under you.
For your specific situation, as Otagan says the answers to his questions change the answers quite a bit.
I’m pretty sure I started out with the Excalibur. I don’t really remember getting any new items while I was playing, but I think I got a few mods.
I think the real answer is I probably just need to take another stab at it and try to figure out the stuff I didn’t get around to messing with, but any general starting tips are appreciated. :P
This is the single best piece of general advice that can be given about the entire game, come to think of it. On top of that…
Don’t be afraid to buy a few weapons using credits. The starting weapons are all perfectly fine, but depending on what you want (powerful single-shot weapons, burst fire, full auto, heavy two-handed melee weapons, quick daggers, etc.) you can just buy a few inexpensive weapons to help customize yourself.
Never sell any mods in the early game. You can fuse them together to greatly increase their power, which you should be doing with everything you find until your inventory becomes so unbearably huge that you have to start selling some things. In particular, every melee mod, rifle mod, pistol mod, generic warframe mod and Excalibur-specific mods should be kept and fused. By this, I mean to fuse identical mods together (“Pistol Gambit” with “Pistol Gambit”) to increase their effectiveness.
Check every alert you can to see if they’re offering special rewards above and beyond credits. Those special rewards are always good, especially if they’re artifacts, weapons or Orokin Reactor/Catalyst blueprints. Even if you don’t use them now, you want as many reactor/catalyst blueprints as you can get since they’re exceedingly rare and once you need them, you’ll wish you had a lot of them.
Experiment with your class abilities and choose the one you find most useful, then use all your Fusion Mods on it to max its level out as soon as possible. Having one very effective power that you like to use is very important.
[ul]
[li]Playing with others is pretty painless. Just treat them like AI bots, if you’re anti-social (you’ll rarely have people talk much in a mission).[/li][li]Mods are the key. Leveling up your weapons does nothing other than increase how many mods (or how strong of mods) you can put into them. Leveling up your Warframe provides benefits (HP/Shield/Power) but mostly it’s about that Mod capacity.[/li][li]The enemies you’re fighting early on at Mercury are mostly Grineer. They’re heavily armored which means aiming for the head is very important.[/li][li]Make sure to fuse your mods to level them up. Any mod can be fused into another (with the second one being consumed) but if it’s either A) the same mod or B) a Fusion core, the benefit is much larger.[/li][li]Infested are very vulnerable to fire and slashing weapons. You’ll find them on a few stations scattered around the starting planets.[/li][li]Corpus can get royally screwed by Electrical damage. Corpus crewmen have armored helms, if you don’t have an Armor Piercing mod on your weapon, don’t waste bullets on their head, shoot for the chest. If you DO have such a mod, headshots do a lot of damage.[/li][li]You can buy a Braton assault rifle for 25,000 credits, which isn’t too much although it might sound like a lot right at first. I find it a good upgrade over the starting MK1-Braton, but do note that it’s more hungry on the ammo.[/li][li]I find a very good melee weapon upgrade to the starting Skana are the Dual Ether blades. Very wide arc of attack, ignores armor (great for Grineer), and as slashing weapons they do triple damage to “light” Infested (anything but the big Ancient guys). As a bonus they’re pretty easy to craft: buy the blueprint from the store for Credits, then take a look at the planets and see where you can get the needed materials. For me, building the Dual Ether is a fun starting goal/project to lend some direction.[/li][li]Be aware of Melee Combos. Jump + Melee initiates a ground slam, knocking down nearby enemies. Attacking a downed enemy performs and Execute-style attack. Charged melee attacks (when you hold down the melee key) bypass armor and hit very hard, but can be interrupted. Start the charge BEFORE you get into melee range of someone, otherwise you’re gonna get smacked in the face with a rifle. Sprint+Crouch (set a second key to Crouch if needed) initiates a slide, hitting melee in a slide creates a spinning attack. Each weapon handles these various attacks differently (The Dual Ether for example has an amazing slide attack but it’s Ground Slam is almost non-existant). The Warframe Wiki is a great reference site for all the info.[/li][li]Sprint+Jump (hold) at a wall to wall-climb. Release Jump to back-flip off the wall. Never forget you’re a space ninja.[/li][/ul]
Thanks guys!
Yeah I remember fighting the Grineer a lot and not doing too bad, but I did one mission against the Infested and got owned and I think that turned me off a bit. It also seemed like all the weapon upgrades costed a fortune, but that makes more sense if mods are the key to upgrading instead of the weapon itself.
So is the game balanced such that you can always be pushing into new missions, or are you expected to go back and replay older ones a lot? It seems like the latter is the case, but I wasn’t sure.
You can push into new missions as long as you’re mindful of the suggested level. That’s the general level your Warframe and equipment total should be at before you attempt the mission. They make it entirely possible to get in over your head if you move too fast, but you’ll find that if you can party up with three other people, you can really take on almost any mission in the game short of the really high-end stuff without too much trouble.
Replaying missions is valuable later on for components that you can craft and for obtaining blueprints to new Warframes, but it’s not strictly necessary in the early game. Making a second run through any given planet is generally enough to get the experience necessary to level adequately, if you feel you’re not as strong as you should be.
At the end you’ll be replaying missions, but you can generally keep pushing and unlocking new planets. Venus is a good destination once you’ve cleared Mercury (and it’s also a change of scenery).
If you’re playing Excalibur, the Slash and Dash ability is absolutely devastating to Infested. You’ll rely a lot more on that and your melee weapon when fighting them.
Yeah, there are way more missions than you actually need to level up. +1 for Ether Blades, great weapon. Ther are only a few weapons you can buy outright with credits anymore. Of those, I didn’t like th looks of the Aklato or Sicarus. The Braton (25k) is supposed to be a solid upgrade. The Lex (50k) is fantastic if you like the idea of a sniper pistol.
If you have Excalibur, rank up your Slash Dash (by fusing, as others have described…you don’t have to use identical mods, but it is the most efficient. After that, try to use mods with the same symbol in the upper right) as soon as you can. That will help deal with large groups of infested or just get you out of a jam.
By the way there is an Orokin Catalyst BP alert up for the next 12 hours on Deimos (Mars).
Anyone still playing this? I just installed for fun, and its crazy bad-ass fun all the way! I have no idea whats happening, but its really cool!
I still dabble in it occasionally, but nowhere near as much as I once did. I clocked over 20 hours in it before I even got close to feeling that way, though, so stick with it for a while and enjoy the ride.
I still play periodically, yep. The weekly patches (and occasional huge updates) do a lot to keep the game fresh and the gameplay itself is quite enjoyable.
I’ve been playing daily and having a blast. I’ve completed about 330 missions and loving it. Earlier today, my best friend and I got our asses kicked in the most difficult alert mission I’ve seen, but we were laughing about it when we failed because it was so insane.
There is always something else to work toward in the game, a new weapon to use, a mod to level up etc.
I’m going out of town, but should have net access. The game still has very little in the way of tutorial info and it can be pretty overwhelming at first. I’d be happy to answer any questions.
Most important tip: if you don’t plan to buy any platinum, do not spend your starting 50. You will want to use that to buy warframe and weapon slots, which can’t be acquired any other way. Anything else in the game can be acquired without spending money.
Silly question for a silly named game:
How people play this game? Because in the two or three tries I have done, it was very laggy. Not what you would call a good comfortable experience for an online action game.
I’ve played the first few levels, the last time being over this past weekend and haven’t had any lag. Don’t have a ton of experience with the game though, so can’t say if it gets laggy often or not. Just during the few hours I’ve played it’s always been smooth. I have been enjoying it though. I keep meaning to look into the mod and crafting part of the game more so I can get a better understanding of how it works.
Never had network lag when I played - The game felt sluggish in the last version though, as if it was struggling with my graphics card, which is weird.
I have a lot of hours in this game. The games are players hosted, so if you have bad luck with the host, it can be very laggy. Lag can be slighly beneficial, because your hits register on the server… too much lag and you will have problems opening doors. Normally theres no lag, check if you have configured the right region in settings.
My favorite frame now is Loki, and my favorite farming spot is Xini, … used to be Giaia (in Earth). I can do void missions, if anyone need help. Is a game where is a good idea to join a active guild, so you can have access to guild-only weapons.