I hit this point (around Jupiter) where everything just became ridiculously hard. I go from full shield/health to dead before I can even blink. Not only that, I'm doing like 5 damage per shot to the enemies. It can take an entire clip to kill one guy.

I think I understand the basics of the game. I've leveled up my mods for my Warframe. Anything that increases my Shields/Health/Armor I pretty much maxed out. My Warframe is at 0/30 capacity, and it's nearly all in Redirection, Steel Fiber, and Vitality. I have 600 shield, 500 health, and 100 armor. The problem being; I'm still getting owned in a split second, and I can't upgrade my Warframe any further.

I'm in the same position with weapons. I got rid of the Mk-1 and bought the regular Braton. Got the Cronus instead of the Skana, etc. I've put any mod into my weapons that will increase my damage, and maxed them out until I have no capacity left. I still damage enemies a stupidly small amount, even with all my stuff at level 30.

I know the idea of this game is to grind (I've lost track of how many times I've farmed Apollodorus for mods), and get better stuff, and I have gotten a few weapon/warframe blueprints. However, I'm missing one component for nearly every blueprint I have. And I can't get those components because they are past Jupiter, and I can't even get through one mission on Jupiter, much less unlock the planets after it. So I feel stuck. I can't even grind the things I need... I need better weapons/warframe to get past Jupiter, yet the components I need for those better weapons/warframes are on planets past Jupiter that I don't have access to...

I figure there has to be something I'm missing. I know I'm not that bad at video games. I've been playing first and third person shooters for decades. I just can't do any damage, or take any damage. I could be the best player in the world, but with the pathetic amount of damage I do/take there is still no way for me to win.

Any advice would be great, thanks!

First things first, Armor is kind of a useless stat on almost every frame besides Valkyr. 100 armor will make a negligable difference for survivability. Switch that out for something better. (Faster shield recharge, increased energy efficiency/capacity, etc.)

But beyond that it kind of comes down to individual frames. Each frame has skills suited for surviving (some much more than others) and you'll want to utilize your skills well to survive. Also, if you're not opposed to spending a little plat, buying an Orokin Reactor can make a huge difference, as it will instantly double your frame's mod capacity. (You can also wait until one shows up for free as an alert, but they can be rare.)

As for weapons, the mods you use are going to play a huge part. If you don't have a reasonably high level serration mod or the proper element mods to exploit weaknesses (Grineer are very weak to Corrosive (Lightning + Poison) btw) then you're going to have a tougher time. Sometimes it's also more worthwhile to level your best mods than trying to fit lots of weaker mods on a weapon.

If you didn't pick them up at the start I recommend buying the MK1 Kunai. They are easily the best of the Mk1 weapons, as they're only slightly weaker than the normal Kunai and still comes with two V polarity slots. They also deal primarily pierce damage, which is very effective against Grineer.

And if all else fails, group up with some people. This is a multiplayer game after all. (I'm assuming you're soloing, because I highly doubt you'd have that much trouble with a few people.)

Edit: I just remembered Jupiter is a Corpus planet (I was getting it mixed up with Saturn), so some of that info is slightly less relevant. Corpus are weak against impact damage and extremely weak against Magnetic. (Lightning + Cold) There aren't a lot of great impact weapons early on unfortunately, so those element mods will make a huge difference.

Edit again: I take that back, you should totally be able to make the Karak by that point, which is a very solid Assault Rifle that does good impact damage. Assuming you've reached mastery rank 2 it's a big improvement over the Braton.

@zeik: I just barely had enough credits to buy the blueprint, and make the Karak. It'll be done in 24 hours, so we'll see how that goes. I also got rid of that armor mod, and added something else. Just feels like I'm having to do a ton of stuff to squeeze even 1% more effectiveness out of my warframe, and weapons.

One thing that I think is holding me back is mods. You mention things like "Magnetic" damage, but even after farming places like Apollodorus a million times, I still don't have any of those elemental damage mods for my primary. I have a couple (toxic and freezing) for my melee weapon, just nothing for my actual guns. Do all mods have a chance of dropping even in lower level missions and I just need to grind a ton more until I get them, or is this another case of "I probably don't have the planet that drops them unlocked yet?"

As for multiplayer. I'd love to have people to play with on every mission, but I think this game has some serious connectivity issues. My experience thus far is basically me sitting at the planet screen waiting for a squad and never getting one. If I do manage to get into a squad it's super laggy, and/or inevitably does the "Host Migration" thing, and then usually disconnects and boots me back to my ship. I never really have any issues in other multiplayer games, and I've opened all the ports that Warframe uses. It's still not any better. So yeah, not sure if this is a problem only I am having or not, but it really hampers my ability to team up on missions.

Anyways. I appreciate your advice thus far. It's given me a couple things to try. Cheers!

@mast: As long as you have access to all 3 factions you have access to all the mods that aren't event specific.

@mast: Different missions and enemies have different drops, so if you focus too much on a specific mission you might not see what you want. For example, your best bet for Cryo Rounds (rifle cold mod) is probably defense missions at round 15+. (Cold is a good substitute for magnetic early on.) Defense and Survival missions give different rewards depending on the tier of enemies you're facing, generally changing every 5 waves.

You've got to get rid of that Braton as soon as you can. A lot of the guys in the guild recommended the Boltor to me when they realized I was still using the Braton, and when I got one it was like a whole new world. The Braton is complete garbage, it may seem fine but that is just because as new people we don't know any better and got used to it as our only option. Get a new weapon and throw that Braton in the trash.

@mb: Get the Karak. It's the best weapon that isn't super expensive/impossible to get now.

@mast If you don't mind my asking, what mods do you have on your weapon? What levels are those mods?

@corevi: I already have a Paris Prime and a Latron Prime, working on a Soma Prime now.

@amethon: For my primary, I have the ones that increase my slash, and puncture damage (upgraded to 15-20% each I think). I also have Serration, but I only have a damaged version of it, and I've yet to find a regular version. It's upgraded to +40% which I'm pretty sure is as high as it will go. Lastly, I have an electricity mod installed, it is +15% to electrical damage if I remember right. This ends up being all 30, or nearly all 30 of my capacity points.

It's much the same for my other weapons. Anything that increases damage, and then an elemental damage mod if I have one, then I level them up until I don't have any capacity yet.

The mods I have left over in my inventory are pretty "meh". It's all faster reloads, larger magazine, etc. I'm using everything I have that increases my damage at all. I'm starting to feel like my biggest problem is lack of mods. I just don't seem to have the ones I need.

Sorry if this wasn't as exact as you wanted, I'm going off of memory because I'm not in a position to log into Warframe atm. If you want/need more exact details I can post them later today, but this is the gist of it all.

@mast: I'd recommend you upgrade your electricity mod. It's much better than the slash/puncture mods.

@mast: The thing about not having mods with the right elemental damage, you won't get any mods adding magnetic damage. That kind of elemental damage is added to your weapon when you combine other mods. Here is a handy little list of what the different factions are weak against, and what to combine in order to get that kind of damage:

What I do is use the loadouts on each weapon as loadouts for each kind of enemy. So Loadout A is Grineer for instance. Then I always use the two kinds of elemental mods I need to make the right damage, plus the kind of physical damage they are weak against. Also always use the pure damage mods, like Serration. Then it's a matter of what you want/can afford. More ammo, shorter reload. Or just the "Bane of [insert enemy faction]" if you want extra damage.

Oh, and the Karak is awesome. Love it.

Yeah tell me about it, 50 hours in and I still have no good weapons, just a karak and a boltor for primary and a magnus secondary which are good enough for low lvl enemies, but once things start getting just a little more challenging they are as good as nothing pretty much, bought me that Magistar melee weapon to help a bit with corpus since it has a high impact dmg, but fuck me that thing is slow, to the point of being useless, waste of creds and resources... I wish they had something that let you test the stuff before investing on them.

Plus I got myself a rhino, which in many ways feels way worse than my starting excalibur...as far as I understand the only advantages of it being a higher health and shield at mas lvl because the abilities SUCK ASS, aiming for a ash warframe now, already have all the parts crafted only need a blueprint but got no creds.

But really the progression in this game moves at the speed of molasses, if of course you insist in not spending any real money that is, if you do give in and buy some platinum you'll have the most awesome stuff possible you can get day one, otherwise you'll need to put at least a couple hundred hours to get any really good gear, between grinding for blueprints ,creds and resources.

I like it though, my entusiasm for it kinda took a heavy hit when I found out that all you get by default are 9 weapon slots (shared between primary, secondary and melee) and 2 warframe slots, want more slots? pay up, and that's not so good for a loot focused game if you ask me... but it's still fun ton play sometimes, help the clan a bit with my meager earnings and so forth.

@onarum: I've been using Rhino as my second frame for about the last 25-30 hours or so, and let me tell you, it is OP as hell. It's a tank frame - it's abilities are meant largely for CC and survivability. Not only is there armor which lasts forever until depleted and then can be instantly restored to full (OP) but the armor prevents all status effects, staggers, knockdowns, and interrupts. Roar grants the entire team 50% increased damage 15 seconds at max rank...that is nuts right there if you use it right. Finally, his Stomp does huge AOE damage and slows every enemy in the area by 97.5% for 8 seconds...it's so good, it's silly how useful and amazing it is.

Give Rhino some more time dude, it's so good I don't even want to move on to another frame right now.

Oh, and I have been buying extra weapon and frame slots with platinum I'm making by selling extra prime parts and prime blueprints in the Trade channel. Last night I sold enough extra parts to buy two Warframe slots and a complete Frost Prime set. It didn't cost me any real money at all.

@onarum: I'm not the biggest fan of Rhino, I think he's kind of boring, but his moves most definitely do not "suck ass". Iron Skin will give you a huge buff in health/damage reisitance early on that doesn't even have a timer like most Warframe skills. Rhino Stomp is one of the best cc moves in the game. With some range and duration mods you can disable every enemy in a large radius for a long time.

I've also taken the Karak into end game missions before and performed fine, with the right mods. Mods are the most important thing in the game for combat effectiveness, trumping even the weapon itself. You can turn a shitty weapon into a decent weapon with good mods, but an awesome will weapon will suck if your mods suck.

Something worth noting about element mods that has not been mentioned is that their damage buff is a percentage of the weapon's overall damage, not just a percentage increase of a single stat. So if your weapon does 100 total damage split between slash, pierce, and impact, adding a + 50% electric mod would give you +50 damage, while doing the same with a slash mod on a weapon with only 30 slash damage would only give you +15 damage. This is why element mods are so good.

As for slots, that's really something that is ideal to spend your starting plat on, but if you've wasted it all already there are other ways to make plat. I have all but like 2 warframes and probably over 30 weapon slots at this point and it was all funded by in game trades.

@mb: The problem with Rhino is he can teach you bad habits. Iron Skin is great but when you get to level 30+ enemies it will take it off in one or two hits.

@mast: That's quite all right. Generally, those mods that increase slash/puncture/impact are pretty bad compared to the elemental ones, and you shouldn't use them if you have the elemental mods. If I get any extra elemental or serration mods, you can have them. My in game name is Akhiris (on PC) if you want to run any missions.

@zeik: @mb: I dunno.. was playing the other day, popped iron skin and lasted for, I kid you not, a couple of seconds, that's it, and it wasn't even a high lvl mission or anything. Granted there were a lot of dudes shooting at me but still.. I hoped it would give me enough time to at least get the hell out of there, I only find it useful when dealing with few enemies and low lvl ones at that, that buffer just will not last long enough otherwise.

as for the other ones I much prefer excalibur's slash dash over the charge and that blinding thing over the roar, the roar in particular is very so so since the dmg bonus it gives is not that much substantial, only lasts for like 10 seconds and costs 75 energy...

And yeah I know about trading stuff and whatnot but that just feels like work to me, if someday I get a few parts worth a damn I might do it just so I will have platinum to buy more slots but it's not something I enjoy at all.

But all those limitations are of course understandable since this is f2p and they gotta make money somehow, they let people trade items for the paid currency which is not something you usually see so I totally respect their business model, might even just give in and buy one of them sweet packs someday when my financial situation stabilizes a bit.

@onarum: What is your Rhino's level and what are the mods you're using? At max level it's 3x as effective as when you first get it. It's also affected by power strength mods. A maxed Intensify will give you another 400 armor. Unless you're just standing still against like a dozen enemies that should be quite a bit of extra damage absorption.

Excalibur's blind is one of his best moves, but its purpose is kind of the opposite of Roar. To get more out of Roar you'll want duration mods or energy efficiency mods.

@zeik: it's at lvl 18 right now, I have vitality rank 5, redirection rank 3, fast deflection rank 2 and steel fiber rank 1

@onarum: That sounds like your problem. At level 18 I believe Iron Skin is still only like rank 1, so it's only half as good as it can be. Roar and Rhino Stomp are also significantly less effective than they will be.

With the way the ability system works now, a lot of frames won't see most of their potential until near level 30, because a lot of the better skills don't actually rank up much until after level 20.

@dudeglove: Ha, that's pretty good.

@mast: I've got an infected clip (+poison) and cryo rounds (+cold) if you want them.

@amethon: Yeah, that'd be great. I'll add you in-game and message you there.

@zeik: yep you're 100% right (so was MB), played a bunch now with rhino and lvled him up good and now he's awesome.

I still need a decent weapon though, maybe I'll go for the khom.. really want to start killing enemies you know, it's disconcerting going on void stuff with the duders and then seeing the final tally:

MB : 800 kills (seriously, he's a beast)

Zagzagowich: 700 kills

Sixsmithe: 400 kills

onarum: 30 kills

... *sigh*

@onarum: Dude it's not me, I am definitely not good at this game. It's the rifle, I used an Orokin Catalyst on it and doubled it's mod capacity to 60, and then last night I got Shred and leveled that up so my rounds are now piercing through 1-2 enemies and walls. Oh...plus it has a 90% chance to fire two rounds instead of one at no additional ammo cost. See the "Multishot" effect.

It was really the perfect setup for what we were doing with big groups of enemies coming through small doorways all bunched up, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

You guys will get there, a week ago I was where you are now. It'll all start to click soon.

@mb: @onarum: MB can tell you all about being "the 7%"

So, I think part of the problem here is the playstyle you develop overtime, playing the game. Guides, FAQs and such are great, but I'm thinking maybe just seeing how someone with more experience approaches the game would help?

It just so happens that I'm "re-leveling" Banshee (playing with Resonance! :D) and Braton at the moment - so, as an experiment, I recorded a video last night of me dealing with an Exterminate mission on Pluto (I was thinking this would be analogous to Jupiter, but challenging to me - but I forgot to take the Jupiter tileset into consideration. doh). I do appreciate that despite "raising the difficulty", that it's still, probably, much easier for me here - even if I only have 3 mods in my rank 15 (1 forma) Braton, they are Rank 9 Serration (damage), Rank 5 Split chamber (multishot) and Rank 1 Cryo Rounds (cold damage, rank 1 because I ran out of capacity! D: ), and while Banshee is squishy, I'm running a rank 10 Redirection (shields) - and of course, Banshee's second ability, Sonar (the yellow glowy spots), is picking up Braton's slack.

(Then again, I do cheat, bringing out my extremely overpowered Synoid Gammacor on the last handful of enemies - because I realized I didn't have ammo to finish them off :P)

Let me know if this helps? I could consider doing more of this if it's useful at all.

Also, I appreciate that Exterminate is a bit of a cop out - spawns are a lot easier to handle when you know that they are pretty much always in front of you :)

@dudeglove: The combat roll is the result of tapping the crouch/slide button instead of holding it. (At least that's how it is on the PS4.) I haven't found a lot of uses for it, but the major one is that it can be used to bypass those corpus lasers without getting knocked down. You'll still take some damage, but I usually prefer that to stopping and taking out cameras, because you can stay on the move without slowing down.

I've found it useful in dojo duels though never in actual gameplay. Maybe if they add a melee boss?

@dudeglove: Thanks for the write up - I was in a bit of a hurry when I posted!

re:combat rolling, it actually removes attached enemies (leeches in this case - hard to see, but occured pretty regularly) and certain debuffs, and I'm experimenting with if it helps to counter status effects (bleed, toxic).

By Grineer interior tileset - are you talking about Grineer ships or the Grineer asteroid/base tileset? But sure, I should be able to do that in the coming days :)

@dudeglove: Yeah, that rolling gets rid of things like that isn't super-intuitive, but it feels pretty good when you "figure it out".

Yeah, that's the Grineer Asteroid (had to look up the [semi-]"official" name :) ) tile set. I'll look into it! Just need to make sure I'm in the mindset to actually use those and not just mess around with air flings and such - which while great, you do need to be able to deal with wall running as well to really get the most out of the game :)

Thanks for the feedback!

Another pro-tip. A well timed sliding melee or combat roll can be used to by-pass lasers trap doors. Useful when the camera is no where to be seen.

EDIT:

There has been talk from the devs of further re-doing (re-re-doing?) some of the movement and parkour stuff in the game. Directional Melee (crouch+sprint+jump+melee while aiming radical at angle) has made traditional coptering less necessary that they even are considering the idea of removing acceleration from coptering. (https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/386267-january-16th-community-hot-topics/)

They will probably talk more about it on their Dev Stream tomorrow.

@mnemoidian: The roll also cancels Limbo's Banish, which can be useful if you have a comedian on your team.

Generally they run a catalyst or reactor alert after a live stream (usually the weapon upgrade one, but I forget which one is which)

@rapid: You don't actually need to sprint to do the directional melee - just need to be in the air :) (and it's basically what I've been referring to "air flinging" here, as I couldn't think of a proper term).

Either way, I usually just deal with the cameras, rather than accept the damage from the laser gates. Unless Mirage - who can disable laser trapped doors.

@dudeglove: Personally, I feel that you shouldn't feel bad if you miss a jump. Try it out, if you mess up, do it a second time - after that, accept defeat and take the safe route, try again next time - but only if people are actually waiting for you, otherwise, keep going ;)

There are a couple of methods you can use to control yourself in the air - holding sprint and feathering crouch is what I normally do for accuracy. There is always the "melee drop" - which'll just drop you straight down. That works quite well for speed, but I've never found it very accurate.

And as Rapid says, DE has stated that they want to iron out the weirdness of the system - like how you can sometimes get flung at inconsistent speeds across the room when you wallrun. Maybe going so far as to remove coptering. (I'm conceptually in favor of that, if it is what it takes to tighten movement - though I don't want to lose the speed as to which I navigate the game currently).

Normally, you should be able to copter at any time you are sliding (more efficient mid-air) - assuming your weapon is coptering-friendly (fast weapons, typically - Dual Zoren, Scoliac, Twin Ichors, etc.). On the other weapons, directional melee is probably your best bet for getting around fast.

Also, make sure that you land in a slide, or you will most likely roll or have a "hard landing" (stuck in a brief animation) - depending the angle you land, I believe. Landing in a slide allows you to stand up, and stop moving, as soon as you are on the ground.

But I'll see if I can make a Grineer Asteroid video for you in the coming days.

They have two types of streams. There's Prime Time every Thursday, which is their community people playing the game, showing of fan art, holding contests, etc., and then there's the devstreams every other Friday. The alerts are only after the devstreams, not Prime Time.

@dudeglove: So, I wound up recording a Grineer Asteroid tileset video - not super happy with it (embaressing movement shenanigans, missing some of the tiles you were referring to), but it does show off some interesting things:

• Going toe-to-toe with a Bombard, dodging missiles
• A couple of stealth kills
• Dodging the Drahk Master's disarming halikar mace (if they make contact, you will usually drop your weapon on the ground).
• A bit of coptering and directional melee movement.
• Showing off some shortcuts/'secrets', though I there are a few I forgot to demonstrate.
• Using Helios' scanning to show "hard to see enemies" through cover.

Overall, I'm using a similar loadout (Rank 15 Banshee, Rank 16 Braton) to slightly lower-leveled Grineer (21-23) than the Corpus - though Uranus is the highest level Grineer Asteroid tileset area. I did replace the rank 0 cold damage mod I used in the last video for a rank 0 toxin damage mod.

Again, I try to avoid using my Dual Zoren (except a few situations where I feel a bit pressed for space) and Synoid Gammacor (when I run out of Braton ammo) too much, as they quite trivialize this level of content.

I may do another to show off some more shortcuts/secrets, maybe get some other tiles. We'll see.

@dudeglove: I've been testing shooting down missiles in my experiments. No luck so far - so I'm pretty sure you can't, but I won't write it off entirely.

But yeah, security panels get more complicated. They eventually fill out the entire field for both Grineer and Corpus. And Grineer ones change directions every time you "stop" it - and speeds up for every sector you "lock" down. I'm horrible at it :P

It's a shame you can't shoot down rockets, makes player interaction with bombards lame, same goes with those tracking rockets... oh and hey rollerballs are fun eh?

Yeah, I kept telling myself "don't use melee, don't use melee... oh fuck it." every time a roller showed up and practically stunlocked me. Though, really, avoiding running into corners would probably make my life easier against them.

On the bright side, we should be thankful they increased the size of rollers by 4x or so! They used to be really painful!

It's funny, though - after "years" of playing with Bombards, it wasn't until I started messing around with Corrupted Bombards that I started trying to "figure them out". I feel like I'm getting there, but still have some way to go (also, tight corridors aren't great for fighting Bombards (re:video)) - it can be quite fun to dodge their missiles.

And, of course, you can pretty much reverse-stunlock Bombards, Napalms and Heavy Gunners by continually triggering them to do their knockdown effect.. err, and I should've showed off jump kicking vs bombards. :)

I just yell at them...