The frozen wasteland of Orb Vallis is a dramatic improvement over Warframe’s last open-world area. Not only is it bigger, but it's packed with far more interesting things to do, too. If I get bored of randomized missions, I can whittle away the hours catching robotic fish or exploring ancient cave systems looking for rare minerals. Better yet, I can grab my trusty tranq rifle and head out into the wilds to track the local (and adorable) wildlife that roam around this terraformed slice of Venus. Or I can just hop on my cool new hoverboard and practice grinding rails while avoiding local patrols of Corpus troops. There's a lot of great stuff in the Fortuna update, and I want nothing more than to just binge on it.

But Warframe doesn't want me to do that, and that's supremely frustrating.

Fortuna, which launched just yesterday, is structurally similar to Warframe's previous open-world expansion, The Plains of Eidolon. Intrepid players can venture to Venus and, after a lengthy introductory quest, are then set loose with nearly half a dozen activities they can invest time and resources into. The problem is that most of these activities tie into Warframe's Syndicate system, which doesn't function all that differently from the reputation grind you'd find in games like World of Warcraft or Destiny 2, except for one major restriction: You can only earn a certain amount of reputation points in a day. In World of Warcraft, that's not a big deal, but the way reputation works in Warframe ends up limiting what I can do each day in a very annoying way.

Come back tomorrow, Tenno 

Just about everything in Fortuna is centered around the Solaris United Syndicate. As I help various people around town, I earn 'standing' with this band of half-human rebels. Earn enough and I can rank up to unlock more valuable items from shops. But Solaris United standing isn't just points that fill up a meter to unlock new stuff. It's the currency that I spend to buy that stuff, too. It'd be like if, in a normal RPG, I could spend my experience points on a new set of armor. In Fortuna, though, just about every meaningful activity is locked behind Solaris United standing. Fishing, mining, animal conservation, gun crafting—all of these things require me to spend some amount of Solaris United standing to access them. 

What's so frustrating, though, is that I can only earn so much standing per day, and it's really not that much. Though Warframe doesn't have typical levels like a normal RPG, it does have a system called Mastery Rank that's a kind of rough approximation of your power as a player. Leveling up your Mastery Rank unlocks more powerful weapons and cooler quests, but it also has secondary effects like increasing how much standing you can earn with a given Syndicate each day. After a hundred hours or so, I'm only Mastery Rank 9. That means I can earn 10,000 standing with Solaris United each day. That might sound like a decent chunk, but I quickly blew through that in an hour or so buying a few items and upgrading my rank.

Because I'm a newer Warframe player, I'm arbitrarily restricted from enjoying more of Fortuna on a daily basis. I haven't even had a chance to craft my own gun or build my own robot dog companion because I spent all my standing elsewhere. Meanwhile, veteran players who have a much higher cap on standing can, effectively, enjoy Fortuna for much longer each day than I'm allowed to. It makes sense that more serious players would have an advantage, but something is wrong when that advantage is just being able to continue having fun.

What's just as annoying is that part of the appeal of these side activities is that they, in turn, reward standing with Solaris United. So even if I go out and hunt animals or fish just for the sake of it—the features that I already paid Solaris United standing to unlock—I won't get any Solaris United standing because I've already maxed out for the day. There are other rewards to doing these activities, but it doesn't feel good knowing that I won't benefit fully. The message is clear: Come back tomorrow.

I understand the necessary evils of time gating in certain circumstances. As big as Fortuna is, if Digital Extremes let players gorge themselves on it they'd be complaining in a week that there was nothing left to do. It makes sense to place soft barriers that slowly diminish the returns of playing for more than a few hours each day. World of Warcraft does this by only offering so many daily quests, so players who binge eventually have to find something else to do in-game. But those daily quests are also just a small part of an expansion like Battle for Azeroth and they don't actively prevent me from experiencing more of it.

Warframe needs a system that's more generous, because the current limit on how much standing I can earn feels too strict and too stingy. Being a newer player already means I don't have access to as many cool toys and activities as veterans, but why limit my ability to benefit from the ones I do have? It's a shame because, for a free-to-play game, Warframe places very few restrictions on players. The few that it does, like this one, are frustrating. While I have no shortage of things I can do in other parts of Warframe, what I want to do is experience all the cool new features in this massive, exciting update. Why won't Warframe let me do that? 

The Fortuna expansion for Warframe was always going to have bugs, but we didn't expect one as large and as literal as this. Players have warped into the expansion's new hub zone to find a colossal robot spider lasering everything. To be clear the hub is supposed to be a peaceful place where players chat to vendors and buy equipment. It is very much a no spider zone.

Multiple players have seen the bug, though we don't exactly know what's causing it quite yet. User OrganicView posted a handful of selfies with the monster on Imgur. User Hanzo535 reported another sighting of the errant Exploiter Orb. ShaveTheWhales even got some footage. You can see the whole video here, but we've included the clip above. 

These monsters, called Orbs, roam the frozen wastes of Warframe's new open-world zone called Orb Vallis. They're meant to be indomitable bosses that show up if you make too much of a ruckus, but somehow one managed to worm its way into the town hub of Fortuna.

The spider seems quite at home moving around in this confined space. How can this even happen? Is it a bug, or a half-finished mission or event? We know that Digital Extremes has plans for those big orb spiders in future updates.

The massive Fortuna expansion is proving to be a lot of fun so far. If you're jumping in, here's a guide to earning Solaris United standing so you can start buying some of the Solaris' finest wares. Want to soar around Orb Vallis looking at the giant robot spiders far below? Steven explains how to use the Archwing in Warframe: Fortuna.

Hoverboards are cool and all, but if you really want to get places quickly in Fortuna, Warframe's biggest open-world update ever, you'll want an Archwing. These flight suits connect to your warframe exoarmor and let you jet around the enormous frozen wasteland of Orb Vallis with ease. But how do you unlock the Archwing for use in Warframe: Fortuna?

It's a bit of a laborious process (especially if you're brand new to Warframe). But if you plan on spending any amount of time exploring Fortuna, it's worth taking a few hours to grind out these steps so you can use one while exploring Venus.

The first part of this guide will cover how to unlock the Archwing for beginner players. But if you already have one, scroll down to the section that covers exactly how to unlock it for use on Venus.

How to unlock the Archwing for beginners

If you're brand new to Warframe but have already made your way to Venus and watched with envious eyes as your more experienced team mates have zipped off into the sky on their Archwings, I have some bad news. It's going to take you a little while before you can do the same. Have no fear, though, this is something you need to do anyway, so taking the time to do it now is a good idea.

To start, you need to unlock the Mars Junction on Earth, the planet where all new players first start. This requires completing several objectives that are listed if you mouse over the junction on the star chart. It's a bit of an involved process though and you'll have to complete all of Warframe's introduction. Again, this is something you'll need to do anyway so don't fret.

First, complete quests titled Vor's Prize and Once Awake. These two quests will take you from Earth all the way to Venus and Mercury, and you should definitely take your time to complete every mission along the way. Once you've done that, the three other Mars Junction objectives are easy: Kill Grineer troops, harvest Rubedo (the red crystalline blocks found on most missions), and complete Suisei on Mercury.

Once you've unlocked the Mars Junction and defeated the guardian specter there, you'll unlock The Archwing quest that, through a series of missions, will let you build your very own flight suit. If you need step by step instructions for this quest (don't worry, it's all very easy), this guide will help. Now that you have your Archwing, it's time to build the components that will let you fly it on the Plains of Eidolon and Orb Vallis (Fortuna).

How to use the Archwing in Fortuna

Right now, the only way to unlock the Archwing for use on Fortuna requires a bit of grinding in Warframe's older open-world zone called the Plains of Eidolon. It feels like an annoying oversight on developer Digital Extremes' part, so we'll keep this guide updated just in case things change.

This step cannot be completed until you have reached Mastery Rank 5. If you're new to Warframe, just continue completing quests and leveling up new gear until you're ready.

Now that you have a fully built Archwing, the first thing you'll need is the Archwing Launcher Segment. This piece of gear augments your Foundry back on your ship so that you can build Archwing Launchers. A year ago, this item used to be a consumable that you'd spend every time you boarded your Archwing but, thank god, Fortuna changes this so you only need to build it once and it can be used an infinite number of times.

First, you'll need to have the Archwing Launcher Segment researched in your clan dojo. If you're not a part of a clan, there's no way to get one without buying one from the market for 175 platinum (Warframe's premium currency). You can find clans on the Warframe subreddit's recruitment thread or just ask in the Recruiting channel in-game. Most clans should have the Archwing Launcher Segment researched already.

Assuming this is all done, head to your clan dojo to pick up the blueprint. You need to be Mastery Rank 5 to use it. Now, in order to build this you'll need the following:

• 100,000 credits
• 50 grokdrul
• 50 iradite
• 1,200 oxium

We'll also need some materials to build the actual Archwing Launcher so we can summon the Archwing while on the Plains of Eidolon or Orb Vallis. Here's what we need:

• 7,500 credits
• 50 grokdrul
• 50 iradite
• 30 fish oil
• 600 circuits

The credits, circuits, and oxium are easy to find and you should have plenty. The grokdrul, iradite, and fish oil, however, can only be found on the Plains of Eidolon and will take several hours to farm.

Where to find grokdrul

This resource can be found in containers often located in Grineer outposts on the Plains of Eidolon. It is also awarded by bounties given by Konzu in Cetus. The best way to earn grokdrul is to take on as difficult a bounty as you can manage from Konzu and then head out into the Plains of Eidolon. More difficult bounties increase the drop rate of resources, so you'll earn the 100 grokdrul you need much faster this way. While your attacking the Grineer and stealing their grokdrul, complete the bounties as well. You'll need Cetus standing points to spend on a fishing harpoon so we can harvest fish oil later.

Where to find iradite

Iradite is easy to find on the Plains, but again, if you take on a difficult bounty from Konzu you'll increase the drop rate. This mineral is harvested from these oddly shaped rock formations that are scattered all over the low-lying areas of the Plains.

The problem is that iradite formations blend into the environment really easily and are hard to spot. My suggestion is to steal a Grineer Dargyn and use it to fly around the map at a low altitude, making the formations much easier to spot from above. You can shoot the formations using the Dargyn and then jump off to collect the iradite, hop back on, and look for more. You'll need 100 iradite.

Don't pick up the iradite while piloting the Dargyn. There's a bug where it says you've collected it but once you actually leave the Plains of Eidolon, the iradite will disappear. You have to collect it by hand.

Where to find fish oil

Fish oil is the most complicated resource to farm for the Archwing. To get it, you'll first need to acquire a fishing spear from Hai-Luk in Cetus for 500 Ostron Standing points. Our Plains of Eidolon beginner's guide has a more detailed walkthrough of how to fish, but the gist of it is this: Equip the spear, find a body of water out in the Plains, and wait for fish to appear and then throw the spear at them.

These fish can then be taken back to Hai-Luk and filleted, earning you a bunch of resources including fish oil. Check this chart to see what each fish will earn you as you catch them so you know when you've caught enough to make 30 fish oil.

Building the Archwing Launcher Segment

Now that you have everything, head back to your ship and begin building the Archwing Launcher Segment. This build will take 12 hours, which is a bit of a bummer but you should have plenty else to do while you wait. Once it's done, you'll already have all the resources to begin building the Archwing Launcher. The blueprint is already in your Foundry, too.

Fortunately, the Launcher only takes 30 minutes to construct. Once it's done, you can equip it to your gear wheel and head to Orb Vallis. Once you're out in the snowy wasteland of Venus, use the Launcher to call your Archwing and take flight.

Depending on how far into Warframe you were when you started this, it's likely that this whole process to a couple of days. But now that you have an Archwing and can quickly traverse Orb Vallis and keep up with other players, it'll be well worth the trouble.

Welcome to our guide to earning Solaris United standing in Warframe's Fortuna expansion. Solaris United represents the oppressed occupants of Fortuna. They work all hours of the day to work off Corpus debt. As a civic-minded Tenno you might be tempted to help them, out of the goodness of your heart, also to earn standing and gain access to their coolest loot. It's all for a good cause.

There are six levels of standing if you include being neutral. The expansion is fresh so we're still discovering the requirements for the highest tiers.

NeutralMaximum standing: 5,000

OutworlderMaximum standing: 22,000Sacrifice: 13 Training Debt-Bonds 

RapscallionMaximum standing: 44,000Sacrifice: 12 Training Debt-Bonds, 15 Shelter Debt-Bonds

DoerMaximum standing: 70,000Sacrifice: 10 Training Debt-Bonds, 15 Shelter Debt-Bonds, 13 Medical Debt-Bonds

Cove (TBC)Maximum standing: 99,000

Old Mate (TBC)Maximum standing: 132,000

Thanks to the Warframe wiki for the early details.

One very important thing: Your Mastery Rank determines how much standing you can earn every 24 hours for each faction in Warframe. To know your limit, multiply your Mastery Rank by 1,000 and then add an additional 1,000. So, if you're MR 10, you would have a daily cap of 11,000 standing.

As you can see, unlocking higher rankings with Solarus United requires a lot of standing, so increasing your MR is something you shouldn't ignore. You do that by leveling up new weapons, warframes, and basically anything else that has individual ranks like sentinels and kubrows. Check the wiki for more information.

Here are a few ways to work your way up through the ranks.

Take bounties from Eudico

You'll find Eudico perched at the end of the entrance hall to Fortuna. Once you've completed the introductory quest you can take bounties that will reward you with Solaris United standing.

In addition to Garuda blueprints, relics, mod sets and resources, bounties can also reward you with Debt-Bonds. You can visit Ticker to exchange these for Solaris United standing, or hold onto them to meet the sacrifice requirements you need to rank up.

Buy and exchange Debt-Bonds from Ticker

As you can see from the gif above, you'll find Ticker at the top of a ramp to your left as you enter Fortuna. You can buy the Debt-Bonds of poor Solaris workers facing punishment. You can then trade in these debt tokens for Solaris United standing, or hold on to them to meet the sacrifice requirements for your next rank.

There are five debt types arranged in three tiers of effectiveness.

Common: Training Debt-BondUncommon: Medical Debt-Bond, Advances Debt-BondRare: Familial Debt-Bond

Trade gems

Smokefinger is ahead and to your left when you enter Fortuna. He's represented by a little pickaxe symbol. Speak to him to buy the Sunpoint Plasma Drill, and then use it in Orb Vallis to mine ore and gems. 

When you return to Smokefinger with your loot, you can trade it in for Solaris United standing. You can also buy gems using Warframe's real-money Platinum currency to save time.

Tranq animals

You need to spend some standing to make standing using Fortuna's animal conservation system. To start conserving you need to spend standing on a Tranq Rifle and Echo Lures from The Business. He's just to your left as you enter Fortuna, beneath Ticker.

With your Tranq Rifle and Echo Lures equipped to your gear wheel, head out into Orb Vallis to track creatures. The minimap will indicate last-known animal sightings. Activate these, follow the trail, set out the correct lure for the beast, then stealthily shoot them with the Tranq Rifle. You get standing immediately for each successful catch.

Catch robot fish

The Business will also sell you shockpods and stunnas to catch servofish from Orb Vallis' coolant rivers. You also need to spend some standing on bait. Check the descriptions and pick bait based on the servofish you're trying to catch. You don't get standing for the act of  catching a fish, but you can turn them in to The Business in Fortuna using the 'provide servofish' option to earn a bit of standing.

We'll update our guide in future with optimal ways to earn standing, and dig into the rewards that are worth buying. For now if you're just starting out check out our beginner's guide to Warframe.

Update: The stream is now over and Warframe: Fortuna has been released. You can go download it now, and please look forward to our coverage and guides that we'll have coming over the weekend. If you want to watch the stream, you can do so here.

Original story: Though a release date was never specified, Warframe's next open-world expansion, Fortuna, will be available in just a few hours. Right now, developer Digital Extremes is racing to fix the last few bugs before shipping the update so that players can finally download it and dig in. You can watch this all happening live on Twitch, as game director Steve Sinclair is streaming live from his desk. Over 40,000 viewers are tuned in, eagerly awaiting the news that Fortuna is finally ready. In the meantime, Sinclair is giving viewers a precious insight into what's behind such a massive release.

Like the Plains of Eidolon update that released back in 2017, Fortuna adds a massive new open world to explore with up to three other friends. Instead of the brown pastures of Earth, though, players will be heading to the frozen wasteland of a terraformed Venus.

Tom checked out the update and the new blood-thirsty Garuda warframe last week and had a hoot using his K-drive hoverboard to pull off cool tricks while skating around the environment. That's just the tip of the terraformed iceberg too, as Fortuna also adds animal tracking and conservation, a new slot of weapons to build from scratch, and expanded fishing and mining. It looks beefy, so hopefully Fortuna lives up to expectations. Developer Digital Extremes has already said that they've learned a lot of lessons from the Plains of Eidolon and that Fortuna won't have the same super-intensive economy.

Warframe: Fortuna will be out in just a few minutes. We'll update this post when it is live.

The highly anticipated Fortuna update for Warframe is dropping this week. Fortuna introduces a large open-world location on Venus called Orb Vallis where you can jump, grind, and surf on K-boards. The zone features cave systems, underground Corpus facilities, and a neon-lit hub city full of vendors.

There will of course be new guns to craft, including modular Kitguns developed by Fortuna's new faction, Solaris United. If you tire of completing bounties and raiding Corpus bases you can mine, fish, and capture animals to support a conservation project. The latter might be the best part of the expansion—just look at this little guy.

A new Warframe, the bloodthirsty Garuda, will launch alongside Fortuna. Find out more about what she can do in our overview. Basically she steals as much blood as she can (including her own) and turns that into damage. She can also rip enemies in half with a button press.

The announcement contains some exciting hints at high-level challenges to come. "The game’s four quadrants, bases of enemy operations, are patrolled by giant robo-spiders, while mid- and small-size robot spiders appear across the giant terrain." Digital Extremes has hinted that the giant robo-spiders may wake up and play a part in future challenges.

Like all of Warframe's expansions, and the base game, Fortuna is entirely free and will be available through Steam. We don't know what day precisely the expansion will launch but we'll be jumping in to get some guides together for you. Until then check out Steven's advice on how to prepare for the Fortuna expansion, and check out some of the new weapons and armour pieces Fortuna will add.

In just a few weeks, Warframe's biggest update ever will launch. Called Fortuna, this free expansion will add an enormous open-world zone on Venus where players can skateboard, capture endangered animals, and, of course, kill lots of Corpus soldiers. Digital Extremes still hasn't revealed an exact launch date, but that shouldn't stop you from doing some light prep work ahead of time so that you can immediately jump in and have some fun. Keep in mind though that only the first item on this list is mandatory. You can just as easily jump into Fortuna without doing any prep work, you just might hit some annoying barriers now and again.

This guide assumes you're already pretty familiar with Warframe and have played a good deal of it. If you're brand new, be sure to check out our complete beginner's guide, which will walk you through everything you'll need to know to get playing. Just understand that Fortuna, like Warframe's first open-world zone the Plains of Eidolon, might not be that friendly to newcomers. That's okay though, because even if you're not doing 360 flips on Fortuna's cool hoverboards, Warframe is still damn fun. 

Be sure to read the comments below this article, where helpful players have pitched in some great tips of their own!

1. Beginners only: Unlock Venus 

This might seem painfully obvious for Warframe veterans, but if you are interested in jumping into Fortuna as a newer player, you'll need to first unlock the Venus Junction. Don't worry, you can do this within a few hours. The first thing you'll need to do is complete the missions on Earth that lead to the junction. Once you've unlocked the junction, you'll see that you need to complete a series of objectives before you can actually use it to travel to Venus. Fortunately, these are pretty easy and they kind of act like a guide to help familiarize you with Warframe's different features.

To complete the Vor's Prize quest, for example, you'll need to do a series of missions on Earth that are basically Warframe's intro sequence. The rest of the Venus Junction objectives requires finding, equipping, and upgrading mods—something you'll need to do to have a hope of surviving any mission in Warframe.

Once you've done this, you can travel to the Venus Junction and fight the guardian who protects it. This fight is easy and you should have no problem bringing the guardian down and unlocking Venus and its missions. When Fortuna launches later in November, you'll find a new mission on Venus where you can access it.

2. Farm Orokin Catalysts and Orokin Reactors 

Once Fortuna launches, players will have access to all sorts of new toys to play with including customizable Kitgun secondary weapons and pet robot-things called Moas—not to mention the new Garuda warframe, who just wants to suck your blood. That's a lot of new toys to level up, and every decent Warframe player knows that gear is much more fun to play with when its mod capacity has been doubled using Orokin Catalysts and Reactors. With one of these installed, you can install a much wider range of powerful mods.

Finding them, however, is a major pain, because there are only a few ways to earn their blueprints and none are reliable. Here's a few things that reward Orokin Catalysts/Reactors:

• Time-sensitive Alerts that pop up constantly throughout the day, which sometimes reward Catalysts/Reactors. Download one of the Warframe Alert tracker apps for iPhone or Android, which will notify you when Alerts start.
• Complete Sorties, Warframe's endgame take on raids.
• The daily login bonus.
• Rarely given as a reward for completing Invasions.
• Baro Ki'Teer will sometimes sell complete Catalysts for a whopping 400,000 credits and 700 ducats.

A more complete list can be found on the wiki, but the most reliable way to farm these is to simply buy them from the in-game store using Platinum, Warframe's premium currency. You can buy Platinum for real cash or you can sell items to other players in exchange for it. Check out our complete guide to trading if you're unfamiliar with Warframe's surprisingly robust player economy, and watch YouTuber Dadefuye's guide below for specific tips on how to farm Platinum. 

3. Farm Forma 

This one isn't as necessary because Forma is best spent on gear that you know you'll be using for a long, long time. Similar to Orokin Catalysts/Reactors, Forma gives you even more mod capacity but through a complicated process called Polarity. Using a Forma requires you to re-level gear, though, and the gains are small enough that you'd be forgiven for not using it on every piece of kit you intend to use while exploring Fortuna. Still, having a few extras might be nice, especially for the new Garuda warframe.

For the most part, Forma blueprints can be earned from the same activities that also reward Orokin Catalysts/Reactors, but there are additional sources too: Void Relics, Orokin Derelict Defense missions, and Arena Missions. You also have a chance to earn Forma from the music puzzle rooms sometimes found on Lua missions, and from rare Orokin storage containers found in missions that take place on the Orokin Derelict, Void, and Lua. 

4. Boost your Mastery Rank 

As YouTuber AGayGuyPlays helpfully points out, Fortuna will also add two new Syndicate factions to earn and spend reputation points with. Both the Solarus United and the Vent Kids (a gang of skateboarding youths) will require you to grind reputation to level them up and unlock cool items from their stores that also cost reputation points. But here's the thing, your Mastery Rank determines how much of that reputation you can earn per day, so leveling it up is obviously a good idea.

Now, Warframe veterans will probably have a Mastery Rank high enough that this doesn't matter, but if you're relatively new to the game and haven't reached MR10 or higher, make sure you're spending time leveling new equipment that in turn levels your overall Mastery Rank. Early on, you don't want to be hamstrung and artificially forced to wait an extra day because you hit your daily reputation cap too quickly.

5. Less important tasks 

Assuming you're sitting pretty on a pile of Forma and Orokin Catalysts and Reactors, you can also spend some time amassing stockpiles of other resources that are sure to be helpful when exploring Fortuna. For one, you could spend time farming resources like Morphics, Neurodes, and Neural Senors—all of which are rare but necessary to craft Forma and Orokin Catalysts/Reactors.

Some players are also spending time grinding the Plains of Eidolon to earn standing with the Cetus faction to purchase items like advanced mining lasers and fishing gear. It hasn't been confirmed, but these players are hoping that these items will give them an edge while exploring Fortuna.

Lastly, it might also make sense to level up your weapon mods that increase damage dealt to the Corpus faction. Since Fortuna will be almost entirely dominated by Corpus enemies, it might make sense to make space for mods like Bane of Corpus, Cleanse Corpus, Expel Corpus, and Smite Corpus.  

Take a look at the in-game market in Warframe and you'll find a staggering number of cosmetic items to customize every inch of your cybernetic ninja armor. After all, what's the point of slaughtering capital ships full of gruesome mutant soldiers unless you look stylish doing it? Most of these items can be purchased using 'platinum,' a currency you can earn (or buy) easily, but many are only purchasable using real cash. Take the Teplo Syandana, for example. It's a scarf with tattered threads that hum with golden energy, and it costs $5. But the money doesn't entirely go to developer Digital Extremes—a good chunk also goes to the artist who actually created the design. And, boy, does he need every penny.

His username is FrellingHazmot—Frelling for short—and he's one of the 30-or-so artists who participate in Warframe's unique TennoGen program where passionate players can make their own mark on Warframe's bizarre post-cyberpunk world. Every few months, TennoGen submissions open and players can submit their 3D-modeled designs to be reviewed by Digital Extremes. Those items that display a great deal of artistry and fit Warframe's unique aesthetic are then incorporated into the game and sold in the cosmetic shop for other players to wear—albeit for real cash, with a 30 percent cut going directly to the artist. And three years ago, it was that very Teplo Syandana scarf that saved Frelling from financial disaster. "I had no money," he tells me over Skype. "I was living off of government assistance, and I just went into this state of depression. It was a bad situation."

The American nightmare 

Like any nerdy kid, Frelling grew up drawing Megaman and Mario on his school binders. He dreamed of making videogames for a living, so when the time came to make the paralyzing decision of what and where to study after high school, Frelling chose art school. "I just had a really strong passion for art and videogames and the whole development process," he says.

Eager to start his life and make his dream come true, Frelling packed his bags, left his home in the Midwest, and flew to California to get a degree in art. After a year in Santa Monica, Frelling switched schools and relocated to San Francisco where he enrolled in the Academy of Art. This was 15 years ago.

It was a gamble, Frelling knew, but this was also the 2000s, and he was optimistic. "I couldn't work because school was so demanding," he explains. "I tried doing it and I almost got kicked out for missing classes." Despite living in one of the most expensive cities in the world while getting by entirely through student loans, he believed everything would work out in the end. After all, isn't that how getting a degree works?

Four years later, Frelling graduated with a Bachelor's of Fine Arts in 3D character art and was excited to jump into the workforce. He dreamed of getting a job at Blizzard and moving down to Irvine. The 2008 economic crisis had other plans. After trying for a year, Frelling realized he was living in an apartment he couldn't afford in a city with no work while carrying a mountain of debt. "There just weren't any jobs," Frelling tells me. "I ended up having to move back home because I couldn't afford living out there anymore." 

Frelling was determined to make the best of it. He applied to jobs and tried getting freelance contract work to help tide him over, but he was financially screwed. While living in San Francisco, he paid his student loans and life expenses with credit cards, placing his debt in the hands of those who are the least forgiving and who charge the most interest. "It was a big mistake," he says.

With his debt quickly spiraling out of control, Frelling couldn't keep his head above water. "It's so debilitating," he says. "Just being in a situation like that, you feel trapped. You feel isolated. Having to rely on other people makes you feel really low at times because you should be able to provide for yourself but there's just times in your life that you can't. That was the situation I was in. It was just all spiral ling down."

Though his parents could put a roof over his head, Frelling had to rely on food stamps and government assistance to take care of his basic needs, and applied for a health insurance program typically used by homeless people.

That's when one of his college friends who did get a job in the videogame industry surprised him one day with a gift: "He bought me a ticket to go to the Game Developers Conference that year and helped me get my portfolio up to date. I got my first freelance gig that year with a company based out in Oregon."

It wasn't glamorous work—Frelling didn't even make enough to get off of welfare let alone pay his debts—but it was a start. With his embarrassingly outdated computer he had first purchased when starting college, Frelling was finally able to put his degree to work.

It was during this five-year period that Frelling began playing Warframe. "I was pretty much just playing Warframe during that time," Frelling says. Without any money to go out and socialize, Digital Extreme's free-to-play shooter became "an escape during those hard times." That's when Frelling heard that Digital Extremes had partnered with popular 3D artist community Polycount on a unique competition: Artists could submit designs for cosmetic items that would be sold in-game, with artists making a generous cut. It was, as Digital Extreme's community director Rebecca Ford tells me, a new chapter in the long history of Warframe being shaped by its community.

Players turned artists 

The full history of Digital Extremes is a fascinating one. But the abridged version is that, after the success of Unreal Tournament, Digital Extremes struggled to build a game that was wholly its own property. With no publisher willing to fund it, the company gambled on self-publishing Warframe as a free-to-play game. It was an enormous risk for many reasons—the least of which being that, at the time, free-to-play was an obscene concept for Western players.

But, amazingly, Warframe flourished thanks to the dedication of a few thousand fans. And that close-knit relationship between developer and player is why Rebecca Ford and lead artist artist Kary Black joined forces in 2015 to launch a new experiment letting players contribute cosmetic designs to be sold in Warframe. Anyone with the tools to 3D model could participate. After a successful trial run, the two formalized the program as TennoGen. "It was the powder keg that set off a three-year amazing program," Ford says.

Every month or two, artistic-minded players can submit 3D modelled designs through Warframe's Steam Workshop for consideration. Then Ford and her team take time to review each one, choosing those that meet a series of technical and stylistic requirements. While not every submission is accepted, Ford says the team works hard to make sure that those who don't make the cut receive meaningful feedback and are encouraged to iterate the design and try again.

To date, around 30 artists have successfully submitted a total of over 200 items. Artists can design everything from warframe skins to special helmets, weapon skins, and Syandanas (which are basically cool alien scarves). Each time a player purchases one of these cosmetics, the artist receives a 30 percent cut while the rest is split between Digital Extremes and Valve, which takes a portion of all transactions on Steam estimated at 30 percent. That might not sound like much, but considering Warframe has millions of players and is growing steadily every year, it ends up being life changing.

Kaz Adams is a weapons artist at Digital Extremes who got her start in the Tennogen program back in during its first round. She says it was her dream to work at Digital Extremes ever since she first started playing Warframe and hoped TennoGen might help. Her first design was accepted, which gave Adams the motivation to begin applying for jobs at Digital Extremes while simultaneously submitting more designs. Eventually, she was hired. "To see your own work in this game that you love is an indescribable feeling," she tells me. "And on top of that, you get to make money from it."

Even though Adams is an employee of Digital Extremes, she still earns royalties off of her TennoGen items. A clause in TennoGen artist contracts requires them not to disclose their earnings, but one artist I spoke to anonymously said they typically earned $2,000 to $3,000 a month from just a few items. Adams also isn't the only one who used TennoGen as a stepping stone to full-time employment. Ford tells me that three other Digital Extremes employees started as TennoGen artists before coming to work for the company full-time. 

Changing course 

When Frelling first submitted two designs back in 2016 for TennoGen Round 3, he was skeptical that it would make him any money. Digital Extremes rejected his designs and gave him a list of critiques, encouraging him to try again. Frelling considered just giving up. Then he noticed the buzz his Teplo Syandana seemed to be creating in the Warframe community. "I could see people starting to get excited about it, and that gave me the motivation to redo it," he explains.

In September of that year, Frelling tuned into a Digital Extremes livestream to watch Rebecca Ford and her team reveal the latest accepted designs. Then, unexpectedly, they announced that the Teplo Syandana and his second design, the Zephyr Migisi Helmet, would be included into the TennoGen program. "People were losing their shit over it," Frelling says. "It was surreal. Seeing Rebecca show off everything and then they go to my stuff ... I didn't think I'd ever get my work in a game—especially one that I had spent so many hours playing."

That moment is the one that changed Frelling's life. The Teplo Syandana was a massive hit with the Warframe community, who loved its tattered look because it resembled a special warframe variant that was only available in China at that time. Everyone wanted it. "People just fucking love scarves," he laughs. "They love them."

It had been nearly a decade since Frelling graduated college and this was the first time he made decent money in his career. "It was almost kind of like winning the lottery," Frelling explains. "I could feel something big was going to happen. It was released in Warframe and I started seeing the sales on Steam, and I almost fainted. That moment was what changed everything for me."

And not a moment too soon, either: "I was very close to having my wages garnished because all of my loans went into default by that time," Frelling explains. "I had to do something." Thanks to his Teplo Syandana, Frelling was able to start making payments against his loans, saving him from what would eventually be complete bankruptcy. Motivated by his initial success, he continued to submit designs to TennoGen, and is now one of the more successful artists with six different cosmetic items available in Warframe.

Though he can't specify exactly, he tells me his monthly earnings could easily buy him a new house (or two) and a car. Instead, Frelling has to pay for his past. "I owe a lot," he says. "If I'm very frugal, I should be able to pay it all off with TennoGen, but right now I owe around $250,000." It's still an enormous amount of debt to pay off, but he isn't sweating it. "I definitely have good problems to worry about," he laughs, "like filing for taxes, paying off debt, making sure everything is paid."

Considering that potentially hundreds of artists have submitted designs but only a few actually get in, comparing TennoGen to winning the lottery feels apt. As well-intentioned as the program may be, I couldn't help but see the similarity between TennoGen and other spec (or speculative) work programs that encourage artists to create work without any guarantee of getting paid. Back during E3 2017, for example, Ubisoft drew criticism when it announced plans to use use a similar program to TennoGen to help create art and music for Beyond Good and Evil 2. Wasn't Digital Extremes basically doing the same thing?

I asked Ford about it, and she admitted that even she struggled with the distinction at one point. "When the whole Ubisoft thing happened, I actually thought how much does Tennogen apply to this and does Warframe fly just low enough under the radar that people just don't criticize us as much?"

To Ford and the artists I spoke to, there is a difference: TennoGen is a program designed to, like much of Warframe, foster a community while letting them make their mark on the game. "It is more of a community with a light at the end of the tunnel rather than here's the ask, you made it or you didn't," Ford says, explaining that, like Frelling's first attempt, Digital Extremes tries to provide artists detailed critiques to help them eventually get into the program. Both Frelling and Adams agree.

"It's still kind of a contest where you don't know for sure whether you'll get in or not," Adams says. "But I really see it as an amazing place for growth—especially for all of the new people who are learning how to model and about professional workflows. They get to have a little bit of insight into that entire process."

For Frelling, the risk of having a design that doesn't make the cut isn't scary. His entire life has been defined by taking risks that didn't pay off. "There's really no guarantee with anything that you do," he says. Still, I can't imagine he's pondering the ethics of TennoGen all that much either. Right now, TennoGen is his sole source of income and the one thing that, after a decade of poverty, is helping him live his life. There's also the satisfaction of knowing he's contributed to a game that he loves. "It's a nice to have that security that I'll have income as long as Warframe is around," Frelling says. "I'm a part of the game."

Things are finally working out for Frelling, but his long, stressful struggle isn't an isolated experience—many other talented people are still waiting for their big breaks. Go to school, get a degree, get a job, and buy a house? That's clearly not the reality we live in when the opportunity to pay off debts with virtual scarves is like winning the lottery.

Nice blood you have there, shame if a space ninja came along to rip it all out of you and turn it into a shield. Hopefully you won't live long enough to see her turn your blood into a bomb that she uses to kill your friends. Garuda is surely the most violent Warframe Digital Extremes has created so far, but if you're going to create a blood mage archetype, there's got to be some blood.

Garuda's '1' ability causes her to dart towards her target, literally rip them in half, and then form their blood into a square barrier that absorbs fire and charges the bomb. Press 1 again and she pulls down the deadly basketball-sized orb and throws it. If she holds down the button to charge it, the impact can send enemies within the impact zone flying.

Garuda's ultimate summons a storm of blood spikes that rotate around her, sucking enemies in and dicing them up as she calmly floats along. The Digital Extremes reps showing off Garuda's abilities suggest that this skill might be tweaked to make Garuda walk menacingly forwards rather than passively float. Either way it messed up the poor Grineer enemies in the demo. 

Garuda's other two powers manage her health and energy reserves, but they are just as bloody as her offensive powers. Her '2' ability causes a bloody spike to thrust upwards out of the floor, impaling the targeted enemy. This grisly totem drains the target's health pool to heal Garuda and her allies within a circular radius. 

Garuda is going to need that healing, because her '3' ability causes her to rip her own blood out of herself. This halves her health but gives her an energy boost to fuel her other abilities. Garuda also does more damage at low health, so you're running a balance between your energy generation ability and your horrible enemy-impaling move. At the top right of the screen you can see a damage modifier that can reach 200 percent damage if Garuda is sufficiently damaged

In action Garuda gives the impression of a cold, strutting killer that tears forward to brutalise enemies without warning—"regal" is the word Digital Extremes likes to use. She's still being tweaked, and the blood bomb throw effect looks like it's doing less damage than it really is, but there's a strong concept behind her vampiric moveset. 

Having said that, on the outset it's hard to see what she does better than any other Warframe. The rip-in-half looks like an instant kill, which is nice, and the heal offers some extra help in a team context. We'll have to see how her finalised stats look, and figure out how much damage that big ultimate can really do. Warframes aren't always about raw utility either. Playstyle matters, and dashing around tearing Grineer up does look like a lot of fun. If all goes to plan Garuda is due to arrive alongside the Fortuna update in early November.

The first time I went dashing through Warframe’s first levels, years ago, I never would have guessed it would morph into a futuristic space-ninja Tony Hawk game. And yet, on Monday I watched a Digital Extremes rep grinding rails in the open world zone of Orb Vallis. She leapt off the rail with a 360 spin and earned a few more points of approval with the region’s skater gang in the process. They call themselves the Ventkids. They live in a big vent and have developed their own brand of music, described as “Stomp meets ska”. As I said, this game has changed a lot.

This gorgeous, icy new zone coming to Warframe early November as part of the Fortuna update. Fortuna is the name of a futuristic town located beneath the ice and the coolant rivers. There you’ll find the Ventkids jamming, along with other Corpus debt-slaves called the Solaris. The new zone has bespoke crafting materials and vendors that allow you to assemble MOA pets and ‘Kitguns’ for your secondary slot. There are bounties too, and this time DE plan for you to pick many of them up in the open world—no more glitching into 12 other players as you pick up new ones from Konzu in Cetus.

Whereas the Plains of Eidolon focused on the Grineer, Orb Vallis belongs to Corpus forces, and that shows in the tech you can craft in this zone. I watched Digital Extremes assemble a Kitgun from a combination of components with names like ‘ramble grip’ and ‘bellows loader’. The results look suitably boxy and kitbashed and in-keeping with the style of Corpus’ foot troops. You can wield the results of your tinkering in your secondary slot. The MOA companion is surprisingly endearing for a big leggy robot. You can set its head, core, weapon, and legs, and then program your pal with an ‘emotion module’ that changes their sounds and posture. Wave at a cheerful MOA and they’ll wave back with a hopping one-legged motion. An aggressive MOA will simply ignore you and sulk.

The expansion is full of small personable details like this. There will be conservation sub-objectives in the open world that involve setting bait and stealthily tranquilising animals to preserve them. You can use EMP spears to catch 14 species of robot fish from rivers of coolant. In addition to military outposts and a Corpus temple, there are hidden caves everywhere with their own biomes. Oh, and there are mushroom forests full of useful crafting materials.

The mix of activities, and the fact that you can pick up bounties in Orb Vallis and roam around with them, is part of an effort to try and give Fortuna a better sense of flow than the Plains of Eidolon. Ventkids are scattered throughout the zone, and you can talk to them to trigger hoverboard races. With activities like this, DE hope to keep players there longer pursuing layered objectives and working towards the zone’s new gear. Like Plains of Eidolon, it sounds like Orb Vallis will be a self-contained grind. You do missions to earn Fortuna materials to spend on Fortuna loot. We’ll see how this feels when the update is out, but that structure made Plains of Eidolon feel a bit segregated away from the main star chart progression, as Steven noted on launch.

DE isn’t talking about high-level challenges in Orb Vallis yet, but there are huge dormant spider bots that may awaken in a future update. We did get to see some smaller spider bots during the guided tour though. In Orb Vallis killing Corpus causes the zone’s security levels to increase, and tougher enemies start showing up in waves. You can lay low to bring security levels down, or shoot siren pillars. It sounds like triggering high security alerts might be an efficient way to complete certain bounties.

The Fortuna update doesn't have a precise release date, but expect it some time in early November. If all goes to plan, we should get a new Warframe at the same time: the blood mage Garuda. As with all of Warframe's updates, it's free, cementing the game's position as one of the best free to play games on PC.