Nov 9, 2017

Digital Extremes talks evolving Warframe's open worlds and coexisting with Destiny 2

Warframe

Warframe's ambitious Plains of Eidolon update is out now on PC, and brings with it an open world playground—the first to appear in the free-to-play shooter since its arrival back in 2013. For the most part the latest offering has been received well and, despite its scope to split opinion, has doubled its concurrent players record in the process.

Against this success, I caught up with Digital Extremes' live ops and community producer Rebecca Ford, aka The Lotus, at the end of last month to chat about how Warframe is doing today, how its evolved over the last four years, and where it's headed into the future.

Following Plains of Eidolon's launch, what's the general feeling like at Digital Extremes at the moment?

I think it's like we're a mad scientist who are looking at their experiment and are saying: 'Oh my god it worked'. And now we're just keeping it all together. Now that we know it worked and people liked it that it continues to be of the quality that people want it to be. We put the lightning bolt into the crazy experiment and now it's about keeping it together, making sure that we're updating it in line with what our players want, and keeping it going.

None of us have seen a collective success like this with Warframe yet. It's been better than anything we've ever done in terms of people coming to check it out, so you're really feeling the 'all eyes on you idea' so you want to be making sure that what you're working on continues to meet those expectations.

PoE is the biggest expansion to Warframe to date, adding a considerable amount of new resources. How challenging was it doing something so big and so different?

It's sort of the ultimate in: How do we make this work with five years of game development that already exists in Warframe. We had to look at what we felt would feel the best for veteran players, but would also work for new players. Getting those two paradigms of approaching Warframe working at the same time has been really difficult. Also, technically, we're dealing with something we've never had to before. That's maybe having a level of detail that we've never had to put in a game before because out distances have never rendered this far, and having a streaming of two levels which at the same time supports multiplayer which we've never had to do before.

Everything has been loading into levels [up to now] but it's a real streaming of a town and play area that's massive, so the technical challenges have been pretty huge. At times it's been like: 'How are we going to make this work?' But we did. We still have ways to make them better but it's certainly been the rule of firsts for us here. Which is not something you'd expect five years into a game—to be reinvented something, but here we are.

Before, at most, you were looking at our assets at maybe 200 metres away. And they always on a different tile and weren't in direct line of sight. Because we have a direct line of sight across a two and half kilometre landscape, that means you have to have level of detail rendering with imposters and certain types of technology for near and far distances that we never had before. Because of this we really needed to create an asset library from scratch to support that.

How has Plains of Eidolon been received?

It's been hard to say that there's been a consensus because for me watching every area of the internet react to it has built a library of reactions, if you will, depending on how familiar someone is with Warframe. If someone is completely new to Warframe they're either like: How is this free? Or: What do I do. So the new players are either overwhelmed with the amount of free content in the game because of course they didn't pay a cent when they downloaded it. Or they're just like: How on Earth do I get started here? It's then that you see our community flock to those areas to help them out.

If people are familiar with Warframe, they usually ask [the same questions], but then they also say: Okay, so now that we have all this free stuff, how do I complete this new expansion as soon as possible, because everyone is looking to play everything at the same time. It's like this appetite to engage with the content as fast as possible, and then you just see people feeling like they've never been able to do anything like this in Warframe before. Which is a huge victory for us in the sense that we've been able to give something completely new.

Some new players appear to be struggling with the economy and rewards in PoE. Do you feel these criticisms are just?

Yeah, we've done, nine hotfixes [at the time of interview], I think—the game has only been out for ten days or so [see above]—to try and patch up all the, let's say, daunting things for new players. We've done some patches to try and speak to the economy which doesn't tie into the the rest of the game. The criticism is valid and while we've tried to do little things, I think the big things to consider are still on the board for us to address.

We need to consider: Okay, how do we not make someone feel like they're drowning and were never taught to swim? There's so much there that, yes, you can discover and explore it, but there's also a lot to be said about having a bit more of a hand-hold. We're really not sure about how far we're going to go in that direction, but needless to say if it wasn't for our community helping those new players then we'd be in a much tougher spot. Thankfully, we do have a really helpful community—but of course the responsibility is on us to keep people feeling like they have any idea what they're doing.

How tricky is it making the grind here feel rewarding, without also giving away too much too easily and spoiling players?

It's tricky. With this update in particular, it's one of the strangest integrations of grind, I'd say, because you can't really pay to bypass anything. Typically in Warframe you can buy a weapon or Warframe, but with the Plains themselves, it's an equal playing field where you're starting from zero—whether or not you're paid or a free player because it's all resource accumulation. I guess I should add an asterisk there: You can buy boosters that double your yields, but it doesn't really apply to day/night, you can't really rush past those things.

Everyone is subject to the same grind—whether they're paid or not, including us a staff. This means we have a really good feeling of whether or not any given thing is worth our time or not. In these hotfixes that I was talking about earlier, we've really been able to make it feel better. It started a little bit rocky because your economy is only as good as it is in your head, and then once it's actually tested you're like: Ah, of course, those things matter. We've been pretty good at getting hotfixes out for that and it'll only get better from there, especially now that we get to play it with our players.

What's been the biggest piece of feedback from the community that you're looking to address?

The first one is the economics of the area. We've done some pretty solid patches in that area, and while I'm not going to say we're finished, we are closer to finished with that than we are with what is currently the biggest piece of feedback is: Let players be able to extract from the plains independently. Presently, what happens is you get matched with random people. Say one person in your group just wants to go fishing, and the other person just wants to get a few resources and leave.

The problem right now is that you're kind of at the mercy of whether or not someone is going to cooperate with you. If that person wants to stay fishing, they might hold you hostage, so to speak, until they're done. We're looking at ways to give extraction a little bit more autonomy for each player. You can only rely on human nature for so much in videogames, and while I'd like to think that cooperation is something that everyone will do, the reality is that the goals in Warframe can be so conflicting between parties that it's just not shaping up that way.

Given how much Warframe has changed over the years, is there ever a worry that introducing PoE so early to new players might give the wrong idea about what Warframe is?Yeah, so I'm always in a perpetual state of worry with: How will this make Warframe feel for someone who doesn't know what is it? Because we put it right on Earth, which is one of the new planets, and if you're playing Warframe and are hopping around node to node, that sort of gives you a cadence of what to expect. But then, all of sudden, you have this area that's an open area and is unlike anything else in the game.

Luckily we've been working on this for so long and players talk to one another. I think it's really difficult to play online games in a vacuum, so, luckily, we have this established relationship with our players whereby we take different risks. Plains of Eidolon is what a lot of people came to Warframe for, and I think a lot of people do understand that it's The New in the centre of everything else; it's this new slice. I would give players credit in understanding what it actually is, and how it's different from everything else, simply because it's been very talked about and followed in the industry since it was announced a couple of months ago.

How is PoE going to evolve over time? Is what's available now the gist of it, or will new features expand on what players can do there already?

There are two areas, one of them I should be cheeky and say that hopefully players aren't getting too comfortable with how the Plains are right now, because you never know what could happen. And the second, of course, is the technology that it's all built on is something that we're going to add to other planets. We have the short term, which is maybe things will shake up a little bit—it's not always going to be so safe out there. And of course the long term which is just that we are absolutely going to be taking the technology that we built for this update and applying it to every planet hopefully as fast as we can. We already have planets almost halfway done.

Can we expect more open world zones, then?

Absolutely. Whether or not the new updates were received with universal love—some people have said it's too grindy, for example—I think the one thing that absolutely resonated universally was: Holy crap, it feels so good to be out in the open. And that sentiment alone is enough to smack the forge of Warframe to this direction. You can't really put into words how good it feels to go from all these spaceship levels to the open area and have both to explore.

On the subject of open worlds, your timing with Plains of Eidolon's launch rubs shoulders with Destiny 2's arrival on PC. Naturally, this has prompted comparisons between the two. How do you feel about those comparisons?

I think it's an exciting [time] to be a PC gamer who likes sci-fi because, holy crap, one of the biggest franchises ever has come to PC. First of all, I have to mention that. It's only a good thing from our point of view because the comparisons do get drawn a lot, and for me personally sci-fi as a genre is getting stronger and stronger, which is what I love to see.

For us, our game is free, it has five years of random things we've thrown in to make the open zones feel really unique: we have jet packs, we have fishing, we have mining—it's a lot more like an MMO almost at this point than just a straight shooter. And that means that they [Warframe and Destiny 2] continue to be games going in different directions. Largely, it just means that sci-fi gamers are getting a little spoiled right now, which is always a good side to be on.

Not to put words in your mouth, but you're saying Destiny 2 and Warframe can coexist on PC—is that fair to say?

Absolutely. I'm a consumer of a lot of cultures and I consume a lot of culture that I'm sure people feel are competing. From my world I just love to see genres that I love get unique entries into them.

They really are unique games foremostly. I don't know if you can fish in Destiny, for example, I don't think you can. But there's also things in Destiny you can't do in our game. At the end of the day, because the aesthetic is a bit quirky sci-fi, they do get compared. I'm just happy for players that they get the beauty that is another platform.

Given how diplomatic your answered there, I'm not sure how you'll answer this. But if you're a PC player who hasn't played Warframe and is considering Destiny 2 why should players choose Warframe?

Oh, what are you doing to me? [Laughs] I think if you're a PC gamer in the modern landscape, it's a gamer's market. For you to make a choice I think ti just depends on your time and your money. Sometimes people have a lot of one, people have a lot of the other, or they have neither so really the free download is always the thing on our end that speaks to a lot of people that can't afford AAA titles.

But at the same time it's up to you, at the end of the day. If your friends play either—I always find the social gamer pressures are the ones that make people decide. Either way, as much as my answer would be: Yay, play Warframe! I respect gamers to do what they think will fulfill their enjoyment.

Our own Steven Messner contributed to some of the questions in this interview.

Oct 23, 2017

A beginner's guide to Warframe: Plains of Eidolon

Warframe

Plains of Eidolon, Warframe’s 22nd major update, dprd more than give the free-to-play shooter an open-world shot in the arm. It also introduced a whole slew of new systems, upgrades, and activities to go with it—not to mention an entirely new economy of resources you'll need to farm to unlock those new upgrades.

As we've already said, Plains of Eidolon isn't the best place to be spending your time as a new player. It offers too few of the valuable resources you'll need early on, so you're better off sticking with the main campaign until you've completed The Second Dream and War Within main story quests.

That said, Plains of Eidolon is a vast and beautiful zone, and we wouldn't blame you for wanting to spend some time there even if it's not the most efficient way to gear up as a newbie. But whether you're a veteran or a new player, Plains of Eidolon's new systems like mining, fishing, and monster hunting are a lot to swallow in what’s already a tremendously complex game. For that reason, we’re breaking down the basics of what makes this new update tick—plus a few general tips on how best to spend your time.

First things first

Before you even step foot on the wide-open Plains of Eidolon, it would behoove you to research an Archwing Launcher Segment—assuming your clan hasn’t done so already.

This nonspecific-sounding device isn’t vital. It is, however, a mighty convenient tool for getting around the update’s massive map. Once constructed, the launcher will allow you to summon an Archwing, Warframe's jetpack equivalent, at any time inside the new zone. Not only does this allow you to fly around willy nilly, skipping past enemy encampments and otherwise inaccessible terrain, you can also summon Archwings for friends to use in order to keep up with you.

The Archwing Launcher Segment will make your time in the Plains more enjoyable.

The downside is that the launcher requires a considerable amount of rare resources to research and construct. It also takes 72 hours to finish synthesizing the blueprints in a clan’s Tenno Lab, plus another 12 hours to construct.

If you're brand new to Warframe, you won't be able to use your Archwing until unlocking Earth and completing several secondary objectives to unlock the Mars Junction (which lets you travel to Mars). Once that is done, you'll be able to start The Archwing quest, a relatively short series of quests that will give you all the blueprints you'll needed to craft this jetpack.

Even if you don’t plan on hitting up the Plains anytime soon, do the The Archwing quest first and start construction on both it and the requisite Archwing Launcher Segment. The Archwing will save you a lot of time hoofing it on the ground.

Where to start

Besides an admittedly nice little cutscene showing your Warframe arriving at the settlement of Cetus, Plains of Eidolon doesn’t exactly tell you where to go or what to do first. Allow us to rectify that oversight with the first few things you should do and buy on the Earth colony.

The Plains of Eidolon is entirely unlike any area in Warframe. The main town of Cetus is a public instance that can house up to 50 players at one time, while the Plains themselves are a vast open world where squads of up to four players can run around adventuring. There is a real-time day and night cycle, with day lasting 100 minutes and night lasting just 50. The daytime is safest for new players because once the sun sets towering Eidolon Teralysts stalk the plains. These behemoths are extremely powerful and can only be killed by endgame players. You can still head out at night if you want, but be prepared for a difficulty spike. There is no real in-game indicator of time in Warframe, so use this website to track when the sun will set.

Eidolon Teralysts are super-powerful enemies that you'll want three friends to help you kill.

Here's the first two things you should do, in order:

Talk to Konzu. You can’t do much of anything on the Plains of Eidolon without the currency known as Ostron Standing. When you first arrive at the new location, the only way to earn such standing is by doing bounties for Konzu. So complete one straight off the bat before doing anything else (there’s more on that in the next section).
Accept and complete the Saya’s Vigil quest. This unlocks after completing your very first bounty, after which it can be accepted from Konzu. Saya’s Vigil takes you on a guided tour of the Plains with slow, scripted teasing of various locations and events. You’ll spelunk through an ore-rich cave system, meet your very first Eidolon—the terrifying monstrosities that roam the Plains at night, and get a general lay of the land that makes acclimating to the new zone much easier. On top of that, the quest gives you something to strive for by nudging you towards finding components of the new Warframe, Gara (more on her below).
Earn 1000 Ostron Standing from completing the bounty missions Konzu offers. You'll need this first bit of currency to unlock mining and fishing, which we'll talk about more below.
Continue doing bounties, while spending your new Ostron Standing on better fishing and mining gear. For new players, head back to the main campaign and begin working towards unlocking The Second Dream and War Within quests to fully unlock everything you need for Plains of Eidolon. Veterans can begin hunting Eidolon Teralysts and grinding for better gear, which we explain below.

Ostron Standing and how to get it

The Ostron are the people of Cetus, the settlement around which Plains of Eidolon is centered. They’re also the backbone of Warframe’s open-world update. So you want to be on their good side. Luckily, their goodwill is clearly represented with “standing.” And similar to standing gained with Warframe’s existing Syndicates or Cephalon Simaris, there’s a limit to how much you can earn per day: 1000 multiplied by your profile’s Mastery Rank, plus another 1000.

Standing is used to both buy gear from Ostron vendors and to level up your overall ranking with the settlement. Each new rank opens a new tier of items that must also be purchased with more standing. The combined costs add up quickly. Which is why we’ve listed where to focus your earning and buying efforts below.

Bounties

If the Ostron are the backbone of Plains of Eidolon, then bounties are the backbone of the Ostron. The multi-stage missions set in the Plains are the most efficient way to earn standing by far—not to mention a subset of gear and crafting materials you won’t find anywhere else.

Konzu refreshes his list of bounties every two hours.

To initiate a bounty, hit up Konzu at the northmost end of Cetus. He’s just below the giant door leading into the Plains. You’ll find that his missions are split into five categories—each more difficult than the last. Of course, harder bounties also yield greater rewards. These bounties can be completed multiple times for the rare loot drops (like Gara's blueprints), but they'll only offer Ostron Standing once. Fortunately, Konzu refreshes his list of bounties every two hours (essentially after each in-game day/night cycle), so check back in the morning so you can earn the Ostron Standing again.

Once you actually select a bounty, you’ll be sent into the Plains. The quest will be broken down into several steps (with harder bounties taking more to complete). The upside is that each step rewards its own share of standing. You won’t get the bonus reward unless you complete the full bounty, but this way even a failed one is worth something.

Incursions

Incursions are basically mini-bounties. You don’t collect them from Konzu. Instead, they pop up automatically while you’re roaming the Plains without an active objective. You’ll be given a heads-up message via radio and told to reach a certain location within a certain amount of time.

There will be a one-stage mission waiting for you once you get to the incursion site. Complete it to earn a stipend of standing and a light bonus reward (usually crafting materials, credits, or mods).

You can enter the Plains without a bounty to explore and complete randomized Incursions.

Turning in Materials

Besides bounty and incursion-based combat encounters, you can also turn in materials gathered from the Plains for Ostron Standing. Said materials include fish and gems, which are gathered by fishing and mining. We’ve included more specifics on both of these activities farther down. In the meantime, know that neither is the best method of acquiring standing.

Early on, about a dozen ore deposits’ worth of gems are worth just a couple hundred standing—or about what you can earn from just one phase of a mid-tier bounty. Beyond that, gems and ore are used as weapon crafting materials and as an additional cost to level up with the Ostron.

By hanging onto the resources from the get go—especially the rarer gems that can be sold for standing—you’ll save yourself a lot of grief down the line. The same goes for spearfishing. Instead of standing, fish can be converted into materials with a variety of uses—not least among them is the Fish Oil that’s needed to power your Archwing on the Plains of Eidolon.

The Quills

The Ostron aren’t the only new faction in Plains of Eidolon. Once you’ve beaten The War Within and Saya’s Vigil story quests you can unlock a more secretive group called The Quills. Head up the staircase northeast of Konzu in Cetus to find them behind a blue door. This door can be opened by switching to Operator mode—which you'll fully unlock after beating The War Within.

Earning standing for The Quills is much more specialized and difficult than with the Ostron. You need to turn in Intact, Exceptional, and Flawless Sentient Cores at the hidden outpost for 100, 500, and 1200 standing apiece. The only way to earn said cores is from killing Eidolons. You can learn all about that process in our full guide.

How mining works

Mining is exactly what it sounds like. The Plains of Eidolon are filled with rocky outcroppings marked by red and blue veins of ore and gems, respectively. You’ll almost certainly stumble upon them while exploring, but you’ll need a Nosam Cutter to actually carve out the stoney treasure troves.

You can purchase your first cutter from Old Man Suumbaat in Cetus. He’s the NPC marked with a pickaxe on your map. Although you’ll need to complete a bounty or two first to afford its 500 standing pricetag.

The most helpful tip we can offer about mining is to do it while you’re already leveling up your standing with the Ostron. Each grade of Nosam Cutter comes with built-in radar for ore deposits. If you equip it while leaping from one bounty objective to the next, you can make periodic stops to collect ore on the way. That will save you time and effort hunting the right randomized minerals for crafting and leveling up your Ostron Standing later.

How fishing works

Fishing in Warframe is even more straightforward than mining. Which is great, since anyone spending a great deal of time on the Plains of Eidolon will want to do it somewhat regularly. The reason being that Fish Oil, one of the basic rewards for fishing, is necessary to craft charges for your Archwing Launcher Segment so you can fly over and around the open zone.

To begin fishing, purchase a spear from Hai-Luk in Cetus for 500 Ostron Standing. They're marked by a fish icon on the map. Then just equip the thing near a body of water to make fish appear. When they do, you can aim and throw the spear the same way you’d fire any normal weapon, albeit with a travel time. Just be sure to lead your target.

Fishing is a bit less efficient than mining in that you can’t just clear out a vein and move on. The critters only spawn into the world when you stay put at a body of water. On the plus side, as far as fishing minigames go, Warframe’s is a lot fun and relaxing. It might not be as conducive to multitasking as mining, but it’s a great way to unwind while you grind out standing and crafting materials or wait for a blueprint to craft.

Crafting Zaws, Amps, and Arcanes

Each of these aforementioned activities—bounties, fishing, mining, and Eidolon hunting itself—are all in service of buying and crafting your way to the top. Even with its new open zone, Warframe is still a loot game, after all. Its endgame amounts to making your character as powerful as possible.

If you're immediately interested in obtaining Gara as a newer player, it's possible but it will take time. The Warframe requires three component blueprints which are randomly awarded from various bounties (explained below). From there, you'll need a combination of fairly common resources along with some mid-tier materials exclusive to the Plains of Eidolon that will require a bit of grinding in order to get. It's not an impossible task for a new player, but you might want to consider investing your time leveling up your current Warframe first or working towards the recommended newbie favorites like Rhino.

Zaws are a cool but expensive way to built a hand-crafted weapon.

The most accessible steps on that road to new power are the Zaws. This new class of melee weapon is the first-ever set of fully customizable gear. You build them from the ground up by combining different grips, links, and strikes that determine what kinds of damage, movesets, and special abilities each custom Zaw offers.

Zaw parts and upgrades are purchasable from Hok in Cetus. His shop is the one marked by a hammer and anvil on your map, but you might want to wait just a minute before visiting. You won’t have immediate access to his best blueprints right away and even his cheapest wares cost a decent chunk of Ostron Standing.

Unless you re just itching to make your own custom weapon, Ostron Standing is best saved for ranking up with the Ostron.

High level players will almost certainly have equal or better gear than the first tier of Zaws available to them. Unless you’re just itching to make your own custom weapon, Ostron Standing is best saved for ranking up with the Ostron. That way you can permanently unlock access to better gear rather than wasting your time with the lower, weaker tiers.

Amp crafting is another story. These gauntlets are weapons used in Operator Mode, powering up their Void Beam and giving them a new energy pool to draw from rather than their generic Void Energy. The system—accessible from The Quills’ secret station inside Cetus—is largely identical to the three-part system of making Zaws. The difference is that Amps are brand new to Plains of Eidolon, and are meant for for late-game players. There's plenty of room to improve and experiment with combinations as they're not a replacement to a regular weapon like Zaws are.

Arcane Enhancements are an extremely grindy way to power up your Warframe, best left to endgame players.

Plains of Eidolon also introduces a suite of new Arcane Enhancements, permanent upgrades for Zaws and Operators themselves. These are crafted from Eidolon Shards, which you get from taking down the monstrous Eidolon Teralysts that wander around at night. They allow a bit of wiggle room when it comes to tailoring your Zaw's powers and abilities. In the case of Operators, it’s a straightforward passive upgrade.

As a newer player, your efforts are best spent on gathering Ostron Standing and spending it on fishing and mining gear, farming their resources and completing bounties. From there, begin ranking up with the Ostron while working through the main campaign to eventually unlock Operator Mode from The Second Dream and War Within Quests. Once you're closer to Warframe's proper endgame, you can begin investing your Ostron Standing in Plains of Eidolon's more costly pursuits, like Arcanes, Amps, and Zaws while also looking to hunt the Eidolon Teralysts.

Plains of Eidolon's massive new zone is accompanied by an equally large grind. But the trick is knowing which systems to focus on at which stage of your time with Warframe. You don't have to focus on everything at once, especially as a new player. Now, armed with a bit of that knowledge and where to start, you should be well-equipped to tackle Warframe’s biggest update yet.

Oct 19, 2017

How to kill an Eidolon Teralyst in Warframe: Plains of Eidolon

Warframe

Despite unlocking early on in Warframe’s campaign, Plains of Eidolon isn’t really where new players should be spending their time. That goes double for raids on the lumbering juggernauts that give the update its name: the Eidolon Teralysts. But hunting them is key to what might be Warframe’s most impressive addition to date. Killing the bosses is the most reliable way to earn 'Sentient Cores,' allowing you to rep up with the update’s new faction and access new gear. It’s also the only way to fully upgrade your Warframe character’s newly updated skill tree in the reworked Focus 2.0 system.

So let’s walk through all the steps necessary to kill one of these impressive buggers. After all, we wouldn’t want to put all those hours of grinding to waste, now would we?

The first steps

Before engaging an Eidolon Teralyst, Warframe’s new kaiju-sized bosses, it’s helpful to complete The Second Dream, The War Within, and Saya’s Vigil story quests. This might take you dozens of hours to complete on their own. That wait is worth it, though. Besides making more narrative sense, completing the trio of quests unlocks access to The Quills syndicate inside Cetus—the settlement where the hunt for your first Eidolon begins.

To find The Quills, head to the steps outside the door leading to the Plains in Cetus. Look to the right, past a small hut, and you’ll see a semi-hidden second staircase leading to a blue door. Approach it and enter Operator mode (which you should know all about if you’ve played The War Within). This unlocks the door and grants you access to The Quills’ services, as well as a free “Mote Amp” that will enhance your Operator abilities. Since you need those abilities to fight the Teralyst, this is a pretty big upgrade that you shouldn’t skip.

Next, you should consider your more conventional equipment. Not all frames or weapons are created equal on the Plains of Eidolon. You want to focus on tanky, independent frames that can take a beating and don’t rely on large groups of enemies to sustain themselves.

Rhino and Frost are solid contenders. Meanwhile, Trinity’s healing and energy generating abilities are particularly useful—especially between the multiple stages of the fight. But it’s actually Chroma (with his elemental modifier set to Cold) that seems to be an early favorite. Not only does he reduce and reflect damage directed at himself, his Vex Armor skill also buffs nearby allies with the same effect.

Whichever frame you choose, make sure you’re packing the right damage. Eidolon Teralysts have both Alloy Armor and Robotic class health. Meaning Radiation and Piercing damage types are your overall best bets. By contrast, Magnetic, Slash, and Electricity will take a dive against the creature’s outer shell. Mod yourself accordingly—preferably with high damage-per-shot, long-range weapons like sniper rifles.

The hunt begins at dusk

Once preparations are complete, it’s time to actually go Eidolon hunting. Which, in turn, means finding the darn thing. To do that, you’ll need to hit up the Plains of Eidolon at night. The Plains operate on a day/night cycle that changes based on real-world time: 100 minutes of daytime, then 50 minutes of nighttime, and so on. Eidolon Teralysts are only active during the night portion, so you can’t just go searching whenever you feel like it.

There are a number of player-made applications and websites for keeping track of the cycle, like this one here. Otherwise Konzu—the bounty vendor in Cetus—seems to refresh his stock of tasks at the dawn of each day. So you can speak to him, check his timer, and math out the minutes to get an in-game idea of when Teralysts will appear and disappear.

Speaking of which, the Eidolon’s location is telegraphed by a glowing pillar of blue light when you first enter the Plains at night. If you miss the tell, you and your squadmates will need to split up and track it down manually. Even that isn’t too bad, given how big and loud the ornery bugger is. Just make sure to mark it with a helpful waypoint if you spot it.

Phase One: Eidolon Lures

Note: At the time of release, Eidolon Lures appear to be bugged. This might be fixed in time, but for now only host players should hack and order lures to tether Teralysts. There is a chance that the devices will not function correctly if other teammates hack them instead.

Now comes the fun (and difficult) part: killing the thing.

Eidolon Teralysts start off immune to conventional damage. That is until you drain away their sliver of shields with your standard Void Beam in Operator mode. This is where the Mote Amp you acquired earlier comes in handy, as it increases your damage output, Operator health, and puts the Void Beam on a separate mana bar from the rest of your abilities.

Of course, the boss won’t take your Void Beams lying down. The Eidolon will swing its arm-like limbs in wide arcs to damage nearby attackers, fire homing bullets that are dodged by constantly moving, and create shockwaves that must also be dodged by strafing or jumping over them.

Assuming you survive long enough to drain its shields, an Eidolon Teralyst will become vulnerable to mundane weaponry—but only on the glowing blue weak points at its leg and arm joints. If your team is communicating, it’s best to focus fire on one weak point at a time. Just be aware that destroying a leg will cause the boss to fire mortars of acidic goo, while each destroyed arm will produce more seeking projectiles.

You also need to contend with smaller Eidolon Vomvalyst enemies that flank the true boss. These aren’t too terrible on their own, but add to the general chaos of the fight. More importantly, they’re vital fuel for the Eidolon Lures scattered across the open zone.

To find lures, check nearby Grineer encampments. They should be stocked with one or two of the useful tools apiece. You can disable them by damaging them, then approach them to hack them in the usual method. This will turn a lure to your side, similar to a Corpus Bursa, and allow you to command them to follow or hold position.

Normally, killing a Vomvalyst converts it to a ghostly form that can only truly be killed by Operator abilities. But killing one near an Eidolon Lure causes the device to absorb that enemy’s essence, instead. Three dead Vomvalysts will fully charge a single lure, while a fully charged lure will tether the Eidolon Teralyst in place between stages of the fight. More than that, tethering two full lures to the boss just before it dies will increase its chances of dropping better loot.

Phase Two: The weak points

Destroying an Eidolon Teralyst’s weak point triggers two things. First, the enemy sends out a massive shockwave that you must run away from as quickly as possible to dodge. Your friendly representative from The Quills will usually warn you as this is about to happen.

Secondly, the Teralyst will teleport away to some random part of the map—wasting precious nighttime as you and your allies search for the beast all over again. Thankfully, the teleportation can be blocked by a single charged and tethered Eidolon Lure. So if you’re worried about how long it’s taking you to slay your prey, keep a lure handy just in case.

At this point, Vomvalysts become more of a nuisance. They’ll try to regenerate their master’s shields after its first weak point is destroyed. You can tell this is about to happen when the giant rears back and roars for help. After two limbs are severed, and the Teralyst’s health reaches approximately 50 percent, they start expelling their own AoE attacks as well. So be sure to cull the minions from time to time.

Likewise, the Teralyst itself becomes a bit more vicious after losing two body parts. It’ll rain bullets from the sky and expand the scope of its shockwave attacks. Running and jumping away are still your best methods of evasion.

After three weak points bite it, the boss’s attack patterns remain the same but they ramp up in intensity. More Vomvalysts will spawn. The Teralyst will attack more frequently. More bullets and shockwaves will need to be dodged. Just keep up the pace and focus fire on the final weak point.

The Final Phase

When said soft spot is finally gone, the giant Eidolon will fall to its knees (if you can even call them that). More Vomvalysts will appear and try to heal their fallen master one last time, so continue to pop them as quickly as possible.

Whatever health the Teralyst has left after this death knell is all it has left for the remainder of the fight. With no weak points remaining, you should pour your bullets into its head-like appendage while avoiding the same attacks you’ve come to know and love from phase three.

And that’s it. It’ll likely be a long road (at least for first-timers), but with a competent crew and the right gear, taking down the titular Eidolon shouldn’t be too much of a hassle. Just make sure to keep moving, manage your Eidolon Lures, and revive any fallen allies as quickly as possible.

Reaping the rewards

Of course, none of this would be worth it without the promised rewards. Warframe is all about that loot, after all. Here’s a quick rundown of what you can expect in return for killing an Eidolon Teralyst.

Intact Sentient Cores—which can also drop from Vomvalysts—along with Exceptional and Flawless Sentient Cores are used to earn reputation with The Quills. Bear in mind that flawless cores, which offer the most rep, only drop if you have two Eidolon Lures tethered to the Teralyst at the end of the fight.

The other Eidolon-exclusive drops are Eidolon Shards. Normal shards should also be brought to the Quills to craft into special enhancements for your Operator and frames. Brilliant Eidolon Shards, like their Core cousins, also only drop when Teralysts die near two charged lures. But they can be used to fully upgrade Way-Bound passives after you unlock them with cores.

Difficulty aside, hunting Eidolons can be awfully rewarding. The upgrades they unlock are permanent and can be shared across Warframes and Focus schools—assuming you’ve got time to grind. Just console yourself with the knowledge that it only gets easier as you unlock more enhancements and Way-Bound passives along the way.

Oct 17, 2017

If you're new to Warframe, the Plains of Eidolon isn't worth your time

Warframe

I'm willing to bet I'm not the only one who, seduced by its biggest update ever, has jumped back into Warframe. Plains of Eidolon is one of the most impressive pivots I've ever seen a game make. It adds a massive open world for players to explore, complete with new quests, fishing, mining, and deadly colossal beasts that emerge at night to tear you to shreds. While Warframe is still centered around four-player co-op, it feels closer than ever to an MMO—in a good way.

The first time I stepped out onto the Plains, I felt echoes to that moment in Fallout 3 when you emerge from the vault and walk out into the wasteland. It's a liberating experience after dozens of hours spent stalking through the cramped, procedurally generated corridors that most of Warframe's missions take place in. But, despite unlocking early on in Warframe's campaign, Plains of Eidolon feels like a complete waste of time for new players.

Welcome to grindsville

For a brand new player, Plains of Eidolon will only take about two hours to unlock. It's placed directly in a newbie's sights thanks to a mandatory new story quest, but after sinking almost 14 hours into it over the weekend, it feels like a deceptive distraction rather than a rewarding expansion for newbies like me.

Warframe is already an extremely grindy shooter and Plains of Eidolon exacerbates this problem by being completely compartmentalized from the rest of the game. All of the new features, like fishing, give resources that can only be used in the Plains and not in the main campaign. For a veteran who is already decked out in a powerful Warframe and weapons, Plains of Eidolon seems like a fantastic new area to explore and progress through. But for a new player who is already struggling to farm the materials needed to upgrade and craft new Warframes, you're far better off sticking with the main campaign.

This is a stark difference from almost the entirety of Warframe's main campaign, where resources always have some kind of use. While doing regular missions, slain enemies and broken caches frequently drop dozens of different materials that are used in the intimidatingly huge crafting system. But what's great about this is that, no matter what kinds of missions you're running, you're building a stockpile of materials that you'll eventually need.

Like most MMOs, Warframe is built upon running missions repeatedly in hopes that you'll be rewarded with a specific item drop. Most recently, I ran the Fossa mission on Venus several times to obtain the blueprints I needed in order to craft Rhino, a powerful and tanky Warframe recommended to new players. Meanwhile, I was incidentally picking up more common resources that I could put to use in other areas. But none of the activities new players can do on the Plains offer the same abundance of materials they need—and that's never communicated to them either.

None of the activities new players can do on the Plains offer the same abundance of materials they need.

This became clear to me after spending a few hours with the new fishing system. While exploring Cetus, I discovered a fish vendor who could sell me a spear I could take out into the Plains and use to catch fish. As someone that enjoys fishing in MMOs like Final Fantasy 14, Warframe's fishing system is fun and requires a bit of skill. Once I had an inventory full of alien-looking fish I eagerly returned to Cetus to see what I could use them for.

One of the most valuable resources gained from fishing is fish oil, a crucial crafting ingredient for the Archwing Launcher. This allows players to deploy their Archwing (a modular flightsuit that bolts onto your Warframe) in the Plains and fly around the map. That sounds amazing, except new players won't unlock an Archwing until after they complete a fairly lengthy quest from the main campaign. That quest gives them a blueprint they can use to craft an Archwing, which will take roughly two real-time hours to craft. And all that fish oil I harvested isn't used by my Archwing anywhere else in the game.

What's worse, the Plains is so large that it's clear they were designed to be explored with the aid of the much faster Archwing. I'm sometimes left behind by my group when doing quests in public matchmaking because they zoom off in their Archwings leaving me to hoof it on foot. I constantly feel excluded.

Spear fishing is a fun activity that requires a good deal of accuracy.

This is a recurring theme to everything in Plains of Eidolon and it's made worse by how obfuscated everything is. One of the vendors sells gear for your Kubrow, a dog-like creature that accompanies you on missions. Except—you guessed it—I don't have a Kubrow yet. Once again I'm leaving the Plains behind to set off on another quest from the main campaign. I didn't know how to fish or mine until I found a guide on YouTube that walked me through the basics. But now that I spent all that time learning it only to realize it has zero relevance to me as a newbie, I feel like I wasted my time.

Even the main quest that leads you there rewards you with the blueprint necessary to craft Gara, a sleek new Warframe. But in order to build Gara, you'll need find three other blueprints to craft its requisite parts. Those blueprints are a very rare drop from repeatable bounty missions offered by a quest-giver in Cetus. But here's the problem: The resources needed to craft Gara's component parts are only available until much later in the main campaign. I only learned this after looking up each of the resources on the Warframe wiki—otherwise I would've been completely clueless as to how to build Gara.

Plains of Eidolon feels bolted on and alienated from everything else.

Since adventuring out onto the Plains, I've repeatedly run into these artificial barriers where I'm excluded from some kind of activity only to find out I need to head back to the main game and progress further. It's frustrating enough to make me wonder why the Plains of Eidolon is even accessible to new players to begin with. Sure, it's an exciting update that has likely sparked interest people who have never played Warframe before. But with everything gated behind the main campaign with zero relation to Warframe's core progression, Plains of Eidolon feels bolted on and alienated from everything else.

The town of Cetus is bustling and feels alive.

Making matters even worse, the Plains of Eidolon is buggy as all hell. Bounties and open-world missions frequently break. Mission objectives often fail to trigger, forcing me and my party to abandon them and restart. At one point, I had to retry a mission almost six times before it began working properly. Looking at the forums and subreddit, it's also clear that veteran players are dismayed with how pitiful the rewards for completing these missions are. Digital Extremes is working on making the whole thing more rewarding and fixing the bugs, but I feel like I'm playing an early beta and not a final release.

That frustration aside, I'm having a blast playing through the main campaign. The last few years worth of updates to Warframe have made it vastly more enjoyable for new players, and its ninja-flavored parkour and third-person shooting is unparalleled. Maybe once I've progressed much further or Digital Extremes has had some time to balance it I'll return to explore the Plains, but for now I'm more than content to pretend like it doesn't exist.

Oct 17, 2017

How a clever plot twist completely reshapes Warframe's story

Warframe

This article contains complete spoilers for the biggest plot twist in Warframe.

It's easy to look at Warframe and assume it's a mindless shooter about space ninjas fighting space cyborgs, collecting piles of loot, and levelling up ad infinitum. When it first hit beta back in 2013, that was true. There was no story. But since then Warframe has grown in ways that very few games have, with developer Digital Extremes reinventing and rebuilding it several times over. Compared to 2013, the Warframe of today is almost unrecognizable.

The biggest surprise in that evolution is Warframe's shockingly nuanced story, built on the back of a unique setting that blends the atmosphere of Dune with cyberpunk and a dash of 90s anime excess.

Warframe’s opening arc begins with you awakening from cryogenic sleep on Earth, now a wild jungle world. A masked woman calling herself The Lotus informs that you are part of a clan called Tenno, warriors of blade and gun, enemies of evil, and masters of the Warframe armor. Each of the 33 Warframes is like its own RPG class, with unique abilities and playstyles that players will craft and upgrade. Once you're suited up in your first Warframe, you'll meet Ordis, a Cephalon AI and loyal caretaker of your personal spacecraft who is psychologically damaged after his centuries-long dormancy. Together, you set out to explore the solar system.

Calling this a big plot twist is an understatement.

What follows is good enough sci-fi to tempt anyone who isn't already hooked by the words "triple-jumping space ninjas." And once you're invested—deeply invested—Warframe drops a brilliant, unexpected bomb on you. It's one of the most dramatic and intense plot twists I’ve ever seen in a game, and I’m saying that as a Yoko Taro fan. But to see that twist, you really have to earn it.

Seriously, major plot spoilers for Warframe happen below.

More human than human

Almost every event in Warframe’s story, present and past, is linked to the fallen Orokin empire. Everywhere you look, you can see fragments of their unique aesthetic, like literal ivory towers grown from living bone banded with gold. This is partially reflected in the Warframes themselves, ornate armor of Orokin design, and much of the game’s story is devoted to discovering why the Tenno and their Warframes are still standing when their creators are long gone.

While the specifics are left hazy at first, characters frequently reference ‘The Old War,’ the conflict that destroyed the Orokin so completely that, centuries later, the survivors are still picking up the pieces.

Warframe loves its hidden mysteries, and they're extremely easy to miss if you're too distracted by all the running and gunning. The bits of story are sprinkled across each mission, which players tackle alone or in groups of four. Warframe's missions are straightforward, procedurally generated kill-fests centered around objectives like planting extractors and defending them while waves of enemies attack, or rescuing hostages and escorting them to the evac zone.

Every question you might ask about the story likely has an answer somewhere, even if it is tucked away in a piece of item description text in the style of Dark Souls, or written in plain sight but in an alien script needing deciphering. But Digital Extremes had been playing a clever trick on its community for quite some time. At the point where almost any other game would begin a gentle cruise into endgame rhythms, Warframe switches up a gear, introducing entirely new systems and completely upending what you thought you understood about its story. Calling this a big plot twist is an understatement.

The Second Dream

By the time most players reach the story quest ‘Natah’, they will have likely sunk 30-40 hours into the game. You’ll have explored most of the solar system, fought countless battles, and forgotten half the questions you once wanted answers to. When an encounter with a robot unlike anything you’ve seen during a routine mission causes the Lotus—your constant, reliable guiding voice the entire game—to cut contact and disappear, it’s clear that something big is happening.

Warframe, and, in part, its community, have played a long con with its story, letting you think that those first 30 hours are how it is, and always will be. The Old War is a perpetual mystery, the Tenno are just space ninjas and there probably isn’t anything more to it.

But Natah sets in motion a story arc revealing the Sentient—true rogue AIs (listen to this intricately hidden piece of audio from Ordis, your AI companion, for context) and the reason the Orokin empire fell—and The Lotus’ complicated history with them. One of these Sentients, named Hunhow, is determined to remove the Tenno and their Warframes as a threat before its plans can move forward, and it knows your weakness—one that very few players would have even imagined. So begins The Second Dream, the most important quest in the game.

Warframe’s greatest trick is in the revelation that the armored figure on-screen all this time is not you. Your Warframe is revealed as a remote-controlled proxy: A mechanical golem, puppeteered by a sleeping psionic youth so potent that their dreams can manipulate these machine-bodies across incalculable distances. In order to save yourself, you have to rescue this child from their previously safe sarcophagus hidden deep within Earth’s moon and carry it—under fire—to the safety of your ship.

It is here, nearly 40 hours into the game, you are presented for the first time with the character creation screen.

It is here, nearly 40 hours into the game, you are presented for the first time with the character creation screen. You are asked to create your Operator—the real Tenno. You sculpt their face, and assign yourself a voice. For the first time, you—your Tenno, your Operator—are a protagonist unmasked, and will have dialogue choices and internal monologue from this point onwards where previously stood a silent cipher. The Warframes are still how you fight, primarily, but you know their true nature now, and your own.

The War Within, and conflicts beyond

The Second Dream is just the beginning of Warframe’s central story, now being told in episodic updates. Many sidequests unlock after that quest, building on your newfound knowledge, as well as opening up a continuation of the central story arc. In a later quest—The War Within—you find your psychic link severed from your Warframes, forcing you onto the surface of a hostile planet without your proxy-armor, where you learn a new set of psionic powers including teleportation and powerful energy beam attacks. Essential, to compensate for the fragility of your flesh-and-blood body.

Eventually you are reunited with your Warframes, but from that point onwards, you can—at any time—teleport in to handle the situation personally, with your Operator having their own progression systems and skill tree. While used sparingly at present, the Plains of Eidolon expansion is already increasing the gameplay focus on Operators, making them more viable in combat, and their powers essential in combating the Sentient weapons waking up on Earth.

Of course, as with all things Warframe, the mystery is maintained as best as possible. While Operators appear in much of the expansion’s loading screen art (the character in the wide helmet is an Operator), and even the patch notes, they are always masked, with their nature left for players to discover for themselves. A journey worth taking, but it’s a long hike, even in the shoes of a triple-jumping space ninja.