Today, something a bit different is coming to Digital Extremes’ multiplayer action romp, Warframe. The Plains of Eidolon expansion is, for the first time, introducing an open-world area, the titular plains. It’s about nine square kilometers in size, and is full of secret caves, enemy camps and new missions. 

Along with this large new area, expect new gear, a new warframe, and a brand new mission type that will see you making some fancy weaponry. And you can’t have an open world without some relaxing diversions, so of course there’s fishing, and if you prefer to crack rocks instead of catching fish, there’s always mining. 

It would be a good idea to get all the mini-games finished before night falls, however. During the day there are threats, certainly, but night is when the massive Eidolon appears. It’s a huge beast that’s woken up to search for something “mysterious and dangerous” and you’ll probably need to put together a team if you have any hope of hunting it down. 

Here’s a 20 minute developer walkthrough to whet your appetite. 

The Plains of Eidolon launches today on Steam, and it’s free. 

Earlier this week, Digital Extremes hinted that Warframe's Plains of Eidolon update might be with us sooner than expected. Now, the developer has confirmed it's coming next week. 

And when it does, it'll bring with it the much-anticipated open world 'Open Zone'—a non-procedurally generated, hand-crafted environment said to offer "exploratory daytime activities and towering night-time battles"—as well as new weapons and a new warrior, among others things. 

First, trailer time:

On the warrior front, Gara marks the 34th Warframe who "manipulates glass to fracture the resolve of her enemies", which sounds pretty nasty. In doing so, she uses Shattered Lash, Splinter Storm, Spectrorage, and Mass Vitrify—a series of unique abilities, each of which leverages broken and/or molten glass as a means of attack. 

Weapon-wise our latest hero boasts the explosive slug-shooting Astilla, the punch-packing Volnus, and the glass shuriken-slinging Fusilai. 

Plains of Eidolon also adds a number of reinforcements, cosmetics—"Gara's components can be found in-game, while her Blueprint will arrive in a Quest later this month," so says Digital Extremes—skins, and decorations. Check out the Warframe website for more on that.  

Digital Extremes hasn't set a concrete launch date as yet, but the free-to-play Plains of Eidolon is coming next week.  

Warframe's much anticipated Plains of Eidolon update, which adds a huge new MMO-esque open world to the otherwise corridor-y shooter, may launch within the next 10 days, according to Digital Extremes. Writing in a new update, the studio specifies that it's a "goal" rather than a "guarantee", but it's still something.

"The goal is to launch within the next 10 days - when the official Hub site launches there will be more information there," the studio writes.

Meanwhile, a map of the Eidolon plains was rolled out (you can see it below), as well as info on The Quest for Gara. That's going to be delayed. 

"Glassframe has a name and it's Gara - inspired by the Design Council submission of 'Garasu'. Since Mirage's release we've strongly favoured releasing a Warframe's free path with quests. Gara's release will be no different," the update reads.

It continues: "However the quest for Gara is likely going to be delayed by a week, due to a scheduling conflict with one of our key Ostron actors… however, because Gara is ready, she will be in the Market for those able to support us. If you cannot, that’s fine too - we’ll be adding Gara’s parts to the Cetus reward tables to give you a head start for when her quest does release.  We will follow with Gara's story as soon as it's ready if it doesn't make the release! 

The full post is over here. Check out the map of Eidolon below:

Warframe has itself a look. It's all slimy, fleshy edges and organic industrial complexes—like if H.R. Giger designed Alien's Nostromo instead of the dripping xenomorph that stalked its bulkheads. I love it, personally, and few of the high-speed looter shooter's character classes, the titular warframes, embody that meat and metal design like Hydroid.

Hydroid was first released in 2014, with abilities that let him crowd control enemies and move around quickly as a surge of water. The slippery devil recently got a series of ability tweaks, coinciding with the release of a juiced-up variant called Hydroid Prime. Prime hunting—running missions to earn the loot needed to construct the more powerful version of each frame—is a key part of Warframe's endgame, so it's usually an exciting excuse to revisit old, favorite classes. Until a total rebirth in an August patch, that wasn't the case for Hydroid.

Prior to his rework, Hydroid was very few people's favorite anything. Which is a crying shame: the bedraggled, tentacle-faced mech who summons swarms of liquid tendrils from tears in reality has always dripped with visual flair and personality. Hyrdoid's personality simply never applied to the way most people play him. That basically amounted to strapping on a loot drop-enhancing mod and spamming the aforementioned swarm ability to farm crafting materials.

Hydroid, who looks like a chubby robot Cthulhu and melts into puddles, always deserved a gameplay identity as interesting as his aesthetic one. Thankfully, last month's rework offered just that, and I've been having a blast with it.

Chief among the changes is a charge system on half of his abilities. Hydroid is the first frame that can wind up techno-spells, at the cost of extra mana, for increased damage and duration. That's critical for his liquid airstrike skill, Tempest Barrage, since it can also be modified to reduce the armor of every enemy standing in it (a tremendous boon in Warframe's high-end PVE). The skill's damage output was previously a joke compared to the game's myriad offense-focused frames. Now it's a more useful support skill that sets up kills on beefier targets.

Meanwhile, developer Digital Extreme's has leaned into the character's "terror from the deep" vibe even further. When Hydroid becomes a living lake, using the skill Undertow, he can launch individual tentacles from a distance to drag foes into his mass, rather than just wait for them to walk into the trap. Trapped enemies are slowly drowned with ever-multiplying damage. Undertow can also be exited and re-entered at any time using Tidal Surge, which transforms the hero into a rushing tidal wave that drags enemies along.

I've taken to dragging enemies into place with Tidal Surge, dividing them with Undertow, then hammering their armor off with Tempest Barrage. The slick, crowd controlling combo makes Hydroid unique among his peers. While most classes in Warframe have some crowd control, few focus on it entirely. 

Hydroid now fits that manipulative niche. He gives fellow players in the co-op heavy game more breathing room: room to slide, wall-run, double-jump, and glide their way into clones and monsters just begging to be slapped to death by weird, electrified nunchaku. Or... what have you.

It's fun to do, too. As Hydroid I can endlessly flow from one skill to the next. It makes carving up the battlefield feel seamless in a way that certainly wasn't possible when the class was nothing but a glorified tentacle turret. 

That's good for a game that could sorely use a more diverse supporting cast. Warframe's sole "true" support class, Trinity, currently dominates demand. The recruitment channel is always slammed with people urging Trinity players to come restore their health and mana for free. Those that don't support probably play one of Warframe's many one-android armies, like Nidus or Inaros. These popular archetypes eat damage and spew back more of the same.

Digital Extremes loves to pile on more and more things for players to do within Warframe—such as the rapidly approaching Plains of Eidolon update, which promises "open zones," surface-to-jetpack combat, and spindly kaiju battles. But Digital Extremes isn't always as good at implementing new methods to play that content, which is what makes Hydroid such a great rework for Warframe as a whole.

With loot as their prime motivator, Warframe players naturally gravitate toward what gets them the best stuff most efficiently. So, plenty of Trinity players are happy to grease strangers' wheels. It gets them what they want, too. It also makes Warframe's sprawling selection of mission types feel awfully similar over time.

The improved Hydroid offers a new angle of attack. You can use skills much more efficiently when enemies are hung up on cosmic tendrils, drowning in robo-juice, or bunched up for grenade fire. Nothing gets my mental gears turning like the possibility of new weapon and skill combos that feed into that same thirst for efficiency as optimizing the loot grind.

At the same time, nobody is sacrificing Hydroid's original selling points. He's still good at farming drops and materials. In fact, crowd control is put to best use on the endless, wave-based missions where farming in Warframe is most popular.

He still looks good, too. I personally prefer the giant arthropod look of his original design, but Hydroid Prime's more piratical bent isn't too shabby. Just as long as I can still equip him with the helmet that gives him a cute little anglerfish dangly, I'm happy. More importantly, he looks cohesive with his new kit. All those wiggly tentacles and blubbery protrusions communicate his lurking, scheming nature before you've even taken him for a spin.

It all works in concert to make a warframe that feels different to inhabit than any other—one that will hopefully open up new cracks in the Warframe formula. The biggest reason I've been able to devote more than 800 hours to the shooter is precisely because it can feel so different from login to login. Warframe will likely never stop bolting flashy new systems onto its existing skeleton. However, if Hydroid is any indication, it seems the game can just as deftly improve the subtler, more common ways I shake things up between sessions.

Digital Extremes has released a new teaser showcasing some of the environments and action from the upcoming Warframe expansion Plains of Eidolon, which will see the launch of the game's first large, open-world "landscape." Players on the Plains will be confronted with new and old creatures and enemies, a brand-new Warframe, a day/night cycle, and "a gripping story told through interactive NPC characters who inhabit the bustling scavenger city of Cetus." 

Warframe: Plains of Eidolon will also see the introduction of the Ostrons, who scavenge biomechanical tissue from Orokin Towers, and new mission types that will enable the discovery and construction of new weapons, Warframes, and other items. "Experience a bristling new world where the wind rustles across your Syandana and the age and size of giant Orokin structures ominously looms in the background," the studio promised. "Earth will be more alive than ever before." 

We took an up-close look at Plains of Eidolon back in July, and spoke with the studio about what it has in mind for the expansion and how it expects the game will be changed once it's live. More recently, we got the details on the monstrous Eidolons that give the expansion its name: "Ten-story-tall behemoths that emerge at night to stomp across the plains." 

Today was also the day for Warframe devstream 98, which includes details on the upcoming changes to focus and a hefty chunk of Plains of Eidolon pre-release gameplay. You can watch the whole thing below, and catch the follow-up AMA on Reddit.