After watching the QL this month on Warframe I was interested in it. I DLed it, played it for a bit and at work the next day I could not stop thinking about playing it. When I finally got home I played more but then that flame I had at work kinda died down. I use the Starting Bow in the game and the melee staff, my warframe is just Excalibur so I have not sunk any money into the game yet but I am thinking about it. Have any of you played for free and had a better experience when you payed for some things?

What about playing with other people? Is that better than playing alone. I know that's an odd question to ask about a game that encourages 4 player co-op, but let me explain. I played with other people only once. I am the type of player who likes to explore, not a whole lot, but a fair amount for being a new player. However the people who I was playing with wanted to just rush the whole mission. I don't know about you but rushing things in games like Warframe or Diablo just feels like work to me, I don't get to enjoy what the game has to offer.

What source do you recommend for learning how the leveling system works, how upgrades to all the gear works. I'm having trouble with understanding how the "Capacity" works with upgrades. How can I get platinum with out spending real money? Things like that.

I want to like this game, The first few hours I played where really fun and I want to understand more Help is appreciated

Thanks

The multiplayer can be awful sometimes. I've played several missions where people dash the objective then dash to the exit leaving, depending on the number over players, between one and three other people swapped by all the enemies they've agroed in their wake. Awful.

@tjmasterk: also a noob here but from what I can gather basically the leveling works on a per item basis, so the more XP you gain with an item the higher it's level will be and you'll be able to use more mods, it's all about the mods apparently, and when you have a high enough level item or warframe you can start fusing mods together to get higher bonuses.

There's also the rank but have no idea how that goes up or what it influences.

Also I believe that the only way to get platinum without paying for it is to trade items with other players, but I've been told that any and every item in the game can be obtained by using the ingame currency, you'll just have to buy the blueprints and make them yourself, it's just very very time consuming, that aspect it's kinda like monster hunter in a way.

I pretty much represent the extreme other end of the spectrum at Mastery Rank 16. Sorry, I realize this post will be a bit mechanically heavy... so feel free to let me know if you need further explanation for something. Also, it's not strictly necessary for you to understand all of this fully just yet, so don't panic! (also, I'm rank 16... so you'll get the complicated answer :s )

The others have explained "capacity" on [Warframes/Sentinels/Weapons/etc], and I feel that is pretty much spot on. Normally, every rank your [item] gains will give you 1 capacity to use on mods PER rank of that item. So at rank 1, you'd have 1 capacity, at rank 30, you'll have 30. This works the same on every Weapon, Warframe and companion in the game. (mods can also be ranked up, but that's an entirely different story).

Worth mentioning also, is that Warframes (and melee weapons) have a 9th slot that other items do not have. This is the Aura slot (Stance for melee weapons). What's interesting about these is that they actually don't COST capacity, but rather PROVIDE capacity. Unfortunately, it may be a while before you get access to Auras (as I believe they are only available from Alerts).

For completeness sake, I want to mention 2 "advanced" concepts related to capacity, though: supercharging and polarity.

• Supercharging is the act of consuming Orokin Catalyst/Orokin Reactors into your weapons, warframes and sentinels. Doing so doubles your capacity per rank - Rank 1, you'll have 2 capacity, rank 30 you'll have 60 capacity. (veterans will often refer to an orokin reactor or orokin catalyst as a "potato")
• Polarity is... well, some items have slots with a little icon in the top right (you may not have encountered this yet). Putting a mod with a matching polarity (icon turns green) in that slot will consume HALF the normal capacity it would (so a mod with a cost of 10 would only cost you 5 capacity) - allowing more/higher ranked mods. However, if you place a mod in that slot which does not have a matching polarity (icon turns red), you'll pay an additional capacity fee of 25% (so a mod with cost of 10 would be 13 - rounded up).
  (You will eventually be able to alter polarity on items...but let's wait with that...)

In regards to your "account rank" ("Mastery Rank"), @dudeglove was just missing a minor component from getting it all right :)

When you gain affinity (Warframe's name for experience) you will eventually level up items. Every time you level up an item you gain Mastery. Mastery is your "mastery rank" affinity - and is only awarded from each unique weapon once. So once you've earned rank 30 with your Braton, you've earned all the mastery from Braton's that you can gain. Even if you buy another Braton from the store or reset your existing Braton's rank, you will not gain more mastery for it.
However, Braton-MK1 and Braton Prime would still give you mastery until you hit rank 30 with them.

Mastery Rank is primarily Warframe's method of gating users from more powerful items ("having something to work towards").

As for the multiplayer... I feel like you need to have different mindsets going into a multiplayer game vs playing on your own. Explore on your own, but conform to the team when you are in a group.

Personally, I play a lot of solo - even some of the most difficult current content I'm challenging myself to play solo (it's possible, but difficult), but really, Warframe, like most games, is at it's best when you mix in other players - especially when something goes wrong (oh, it still goes wrong in veteran groups ;) ), but Warframe in group becomes a lot more about blitzing down corridors at breakneck pace - almost in a competative nature.

Exploring is really best left for solo-play, certain sabotage missions (earth, I believe) and void missions (though don't worry about void for now).

Hope that helps more than it confuses :)

@dudeglove: The Wikia is considered pretty good. Eventually, teaching people to fish is the best way to go, but I try to help new players with direct answers - the wiki is even more detailed than I am, and I feel like new players may drown there :)

Affinity is your weapon/warframe/sentinel experience - you'll get a little bit of affinity for pretty much everything you do (and everyone else in your game does). Exactly where the experience goes depends a bit on each action that rewards affinity - but normally the weapon(s) you use and your Warframe will get the lion's share of affinity in a mission.

@mnemoidian: just a little question about that orokin stuff that it wasn't very clear in the wiki, I can apply it at any given time and it will be all the same? like if I were to apply one to a warframe at lvl 1 would I see any benefits as opposed to applying it at lvl 30? also is it permanent or a timed thing? if I apply a orokin reactor once to a warframe the mod capacity will be doubled for good?

@onarum: Yeah, sorry that wasn't very clear.

Adding a Reactor (for Warframes or a Catalyst for Weapons) will permanently double the capacity per rank of your item, so the timing/rank doesn't matter, a supercharged rank 30 item will have 60 capacity. As long as you don't sell the item, there's no way to remove a catalyst/reactor that has been used. Effectively, it's a function of the level, with no worries about when to use it to get the most out of it (which becomes sooner the better, as you'll have the benefit of it sooner)

Worth noting that reactor/catalyst blueprints are very rare, most reliable after the developers have their livestreams (usually 24 hour alerts), but can appear as random alerts as well.

Because of the rarity, most make sure they like an item before they supercharge it.

Should add that one such livestream just finished (they're generally every other Friday), so there should be an alert up right now on all tree platforms (it's an Orokin Reactor blueprint on PS4).

I'll also link the Giant Bomb Heavy INC clan thread here so you can ask questions there or even ask for an invite! Some pretty good duders on there and they helped me out during the time I was playing Warframe.

I've put hundreds of hours into the game and I've never found it to be a great solo game. I only play solo when I have no other choice. True, certain mission types many players will try to clear it as quickly as possible and rush to the exit as soon as they can (mainly because there's little reward for exploration in many of those modes), but the game excels more at the longer more cooperative focused modes like Defense/Mobile Defense, Survival, Interception, Excavation, etc. Players are much more incentivized to work together, and that's really where all your work at making good weapons and frames matters.

@mnemoidian: umm I see, Imma keep my starting platinum so I can buy a reactor when I decide what warframe is my favorite then heh.

Thanks for the help.

@mnemoidian I have a couple of questions. What are the dots on the bottom of the Cursor when you are playing, and when a mission says "level 1-3" or what ever # it puts upthere what does that mean? is that # for your rank or your warframe level?

1) The dots are your 1-4 skills.

2) That's the level of the enemies you'll encounter on that level. There's no hard or fast rule for you to know whether you're ready to fight that level of enemy; you simply have to feel it out yourself. My frame could be level 30, for example, but if I don't have any defensive mods (Vitality, Redirection, etc.) equipped, I'm going to get shredded almost as fast as a level 1 frame. The same goes for weapons. Ranking up your weapon doesn't inherently add any dps; what it does do is give you more capacity with which to equip mods (those mods are what increase your dps).

The multiplayer drove me away, I was new to the game and I was having a decent time with another noob then this over leveled guy joined in and BOOM we were left doing nothing as he cleared the level whilst we were trying to figure out where the fuck we needed to go. Extinguished any fire I had for the game in a moments notice.

@ajamafalous: then what's this mission level supposed to represent? They don't use the word "level" anywhere else. All my stuff is "ranks". This is confusing as hell.

edit: also couple of other questions while i'm at it. Is there any inherent power difference between enemy factions? I seem to be doing fine against greneer but corpus always kicks my ass, regardless of the mission lvl.

Another one is how do I unlock other planets?

@shagral: Mission level is directly what level the enemies are. So a level 3-5 mission you will meet enemies around that level. I do believe enemies can get tougher than that number eventually on Survival and such, but they should not exceed that level when only doing the basic mission objective.

So ranks are only used to show you how powerful you are, then you have to try out and see how you fare against the enemy.

Yes. They are all different. To battle Corpus more effecively you should equip some electricity damage I think, to take down their shields. I actually use the three loadout slots for mods on everything as Grineer, Corpus and Infected build slots. They are all weak against different kinds of elemental damage, as well as slash, impact etc. The wiki, or the in-game codex is great for that. You need to scan enemies in-game with the scanner though to unlock info in the codex.

Beat bosses. Many of the bosses drop nav info for new planets. And all of them drop parts for warframes or weapons.

I have in fact not spent any platinum on anything you can unlock in the game. I got a handful of Frames, and a lot of weapons. What you should instead use your platinum on is Warframe and weapon slots. And if you want to buy platinum, just wait til you get a daily 75% off.

@shagral: It's not THAT confusing dude. "Rank" and "level" are pretty interchangeable terms in video games. The level recomendations are basically just telling you the general toughness of the enemies you're facing. Whether you can handle it depends on how well you've modded your Warframe. Just so you know, your account mastery level has really no impact on your combat effectiveness, all it does is gate you from some weapons and a few other secondary features. Your weapon and warframe level and stats are all that matters.

You unlock new planets by defeating the bosses on the various planets. If you want to leave Mercury you need to find the assassination mission to kill Vor.

@yesiamaduck: I know I said soloing sucks earlier, but for the first handful of missions I recommend going solo. (Set the matchmaking to private or whatever to stop people from joining) so you can take the missions at your own pace. The same thing happened to me the very first time I played, so I just soloed things until I got used to the game. By the end of the first planet or two you should be able to keep up with the other players better.

@shagral: The difficulty of the various factions really depends on your weapons and your general progress in the game. Corpus are quite tough early on, as most of the early game weapons do pierce damage, which is effective against Grineer armor, but ineffective against Corpus shields. Impact weapons do increased damage against shields, but if you really want to mow them down (or don't want to change your weapon) try to get magnetic damage on your weapon. You'll need a cold and lightning element mod to make magnetic. It does an extra 75% damage to pretty much every Corpus enemy, and if the magnetic status procs you instantly halve their shields.

Eventually the Corpus become pretty easy to take down, while the Grinner end up being your toughest challenge due to some of their elite units.

As I said, it's the level of the enemies you'll encounter in that mission. Higher-level enemies will do more damage and have more health than lower-level enemies, as you would expect.

Yes, different enemies have different strengths and weaknesses when pertaining to damage types, and different units within each faction have different strengths and weaknesses as well. To keep it very,very general: you'll want puncture damage vs. Grineer, impact damage vs. Corpus, and slash damage vs. Infested. There are all kinds of specific exceptions to these rules on a per-unit basis, and there are also elemental damage types (and elemental combinations) to consider as well. Maybe give this wiki page about damage types a read, if you're interested. My guess is that (I'm assuming you just started playing) you're probably using the MK1-Paris, which is almost entirely puncture damage. If you scroll over the Statistics box on the MK1-Paris wiki page, you'll see what I'm talking about. To deal with Corpus, you'll want to try to get your hands on another weapon that either does impact damage or just more balanced damage across the damage types. Also, be sure you're equipping your frame and weapons with mods as you find them. You'll eventually want to start fusing mods too, to rank them up. Generally, when you're starting out, you should probably only fuse mods with duplicates of themselves, both because it is the most efficient and because you'll want to hang on to at least one copy of every mod you find.

As for planets, I'm not sure; maybe someone else can help me answer you. The map used to be one big star chart and you would work your way towards the connecting levels to the other planets by clearing them in order, but now it's all weird radial menus that I'm still trying to understand myself (I just started playing again this week after not having played since last May). If I had to guess, I'd bet that it's either beating the boss on a planet or beating all the levels on a planet to unlock the next one, but I honestly have no idea.

Ok thx everyone for help. Though I still stand on "confusing as hell" for the enemy lvl thing. This is like game design 101, you don't list mission level without anything to match it against. They should have called it "monster power" or "tier 1 mission" etc. jeez I don't even know why it bugs me so much :) it's like they purposely went for some extra confusion upon an already convoluted progression system

@shagral: I don't know dude, it always seemed pretty self-explanatory to me. There's plenty to be confused about when starting Warframe, but I don't feel like that should be one of them, lol.

@zeik: I don't know dude maybe it's map layout thing. I remeber trying out Warframe PC beta in 2012 or something and then they had straightforward mission progression from easier to harder missions. And now iotrying it out on PS4, have bunch of missions on 3 planets unlocked and have no idea which ones I should be farming. Some of them are piss easy even solo and some are nigh impossible for me. And that level thing is just not helping to tell which is which. Anyway, enough on this subject. Thx again for tips :)

The thing I dislike in Waframe is that some players just speedrun through the map. I do understand that they have done this so many times that they know the layouts so well that they can do them in their sleep.

It just kinda ruins the teamwork aspect of the game.

@nardak: If you want a focus on teamwork you need to play the modes that are designed to promote it. Defense, Mobile Defense, Survival, Interception, Excavation, etc. Those are the modes where Warframe shines. The rest of it is frankly filler. Outside of the void there's little incentive to do most of the other modes more than once while clearing a planet. It's not even really speed-running, it's usually just about getting the boring and unrewarding parts out of the way quickly.

It's a fun game, especially with friends, well-worth spending money on if you have some laying around. Best source of information on how things work is google sadly since the game barely attempts tutorializing. The systems are weird and plentiful and while they're second nature to me know, I still remember the struggle to understand things during closed beta.

You know something that is pissing me off the most about this game? fucking ammo drops man.. the game's downright trolling me, I have a bow equipped all I get is shotgun, rifle and pistol ammo, switch to rifle and what do ya know, plenty of bow ammo dropping around...

More often than not about 2/3 in the mission I'll be out of primary ammo(sometimes secondary too), it's really frustrating.

@onarum: Running out of ammo usually means your weapon is underpowered, or you're trying to solo a mission that would be better handled with a full team.

Still, there are mods that can help deal with ammo hungry weapons. For bows, keep an eye out for alert missions awarding the Sniper Scavenger aura mod - it will increase the amount of shots per ammo pick up for your whole team. Also if you can handle extended Excavation or Survival (20+ minutes) missions, you might be able to get an Arrow Mutation mod which will turn all unused ammo drops into arrows for your bow when you need them.

Map layouts are randomly generated rooms stitched together; people that have been playing long enough just know the quickest ways to maneuver their warframe toward the objective markers (things like coptering, launching yourself with quick wallruns, etc.).

I've been running into the same thing, even playing with people in the GB clan who were there to help me. Which they totally were helping...by blasting through everything as quickly as possible while I spent the entire time running to catch up and missing a good percentage of the pickups. I think it's just the nature of Warframe, the same as with many games like it - the key to progression and finding loot is to run maps as quickly as possible and then move on to the next one. Diablo 3 is very similar to this, too - speed clearing rifts and repeating over and over.

Warframe has been around awhile now so you just have to expect higher level players running you though levels a lot of the time. Just keep working on your frames and weapons and you will eventually start to feel like you are contributing with them. I'd also advise getting mods like Serration and Pressure Point to directly boost your weapon damage, some of these can be hard to come by but if you just ask in trade chat someone will probably give you a unranked one. Also if you want to drop money try waiting to get a discount from the daily login reward, the 3 day rewards offer the best chance. You have a chance to get 75% off which means you can get 100$ worth of plat for 25$.