I know I want to play, so basically I have two questions:
Does the starter frame matter much? I am looking at the Volt to start with. I’ll be honest and say I don’t think I want to pick the Excalibur since I won’t be able to get a Prime of it, and it sort of leaves a bad taste in my mouth (no offense meant to founders as I believe they should have something later adopters can’t get) to invest a lot of time into something I won’t be able to play the top version of.
Is the current Prime Access (Chroma) worth a purchase? I’m going to buy some platinum anyway since I always increase my inventory space early so I was thinking of picking up the Starter pack. That said, I also read in one of the previous posts from back in July that Chroma was one of the two hardest frames to farm. Accessory-wise I don’t have any background to know if what is currently on offer is good or not, but the 90 day boosters on affinity and credits look very tasty. I’m not shy about spending money on games I intend to play, so the question is focused on is the current Prime Access a good value as opposed to is buying anything worth while.
And yeah I know I need to get logged into Discord. I just moved so I expect to get that setup and get into the game by the weekend.
Starter frame really doesn’t matter as you’ll eventually want to collect most, if not all, frames.
Prim versions of frames are icing, but not required. In fact the first few prime frames had no stat differences from the base frames, just added polarities. For example, when Rhino Prime came I had just gotten back into the game and picked up the Rhino/Nyx prime pack. Strictly speaking there isn’t anything that I have done with Rhino Prime that I could not have done with Rhino. To be honest, the impact of Prime variants of frames/weapons on my play has been for me to hold off far too long on improving the base versions because there’s the feeling of “well, this’ll be a waste once I get prime…”
As for Chroma, he’s annoying to farm, yeah but not the most annoying by far (Hawwo Harrow!) But I honestly don’t use him that much. I farmed base Chroma (with much help from Thorm), then farmed up Prime, and he’s one of my least used frames. But that’s because playstyle changes from frame to frame and his just doesn’t mesh with me. I wouldn’t get Chroma prime. The only reason I got Rhino Prime and Nyx Prime was because, at the time, Rhino was my most used frame and getting the bundle was only slight more cost than just getting Rhino Prime alone.
Is there a good resource (wiki, guide, etc…) for playstyles and such associated with each frame? I have a certain playstyle I prefer over others so being able to read and learn about who each frame plays would be very helpful for me.
If there is I am not aware. And, honestly, outside of the broad strokes of what a frame does frames in a similar class can feel quite different.
For example I found this site (which is outdated). It lists Mesa and Saryn as “10/10” for damage. This is true, both bring the damage to the level. But the way in which they do it is completely at odds from one another.
Mesa is a gunslinger, right down to her design. She excels at shooting the crap out of things and her ult lets her mow down enemies in style. Meanwhile Saryn’s damage comes from a DoT which infests nearby mobs when the first mob dies. Think an epidemic running amok through the enemies. She can force this to occur with melee attacks.
But to say Saryn is a melee frame means she might compare to Valkyr; but Valkyr is a brutal, in-your-face, melee slaughterhouse that cannot die. No, seriously, in her ult she cannot die. How Valkyr and Saryn play are as different as how Saryn and Mesa play yet in broad strokes we’re comparing Damage to Damage and Melee to Melee.
It really is one of the things I didn’t understand when I got into Warframe. “I want to do X role, who does that role” is really the wrong question to ask. And given that you gain MR via leveling weapons and frames the game encourages you to at least dabble in all weapons and frames to find out for yourself what you like or dislike. Some of the frames that Thorm swears by I just can’t get into. And I’m sure he’s looking at my 4-Forma’d Prisma Gorgon and shaking his head. But damn do I love that gun in Mesa’s hands.
So would you recommend just playing a starter frame up until 30 or so and then trying out different things? I have a Frost and Trinity from Twitch drops and I think I started with Excalibur.
OK, if I were just starting brand spankin’ new but knew the mechanics but not my preferences with 3 frames to choose from?
Get each frame to 15 and see how it feels. 15 is the first level when all your frame’s abilities are unlocked. Then if one of the frames clicks for you, get that frame to 30 so you have a go-to frame. Basically the first goal is to get a frame, primary, secondary and melee you’re comfortable with to 30 each.
This gives you one set that you can use for progressing content and farming mats. Then when you want to farm Mastery or try other things you can pop into other frames/weapons whenever you feel like it.
At what point are we useful enough to join the clan? I hit 15 on my starter frame and am still just learning the controls lol.
I also didn’t even realize until tonight that all the mod slots are open…and I’ve been running around with only 1-2 on my stuff because there isn’t anything in the game pr on the wiki that tells you the “blank” ones are active just no affinity. So now I have stopped getting creamed on Cetus by getting thrown in squads facing enemies I can’t even dent, and am finally on Venus working towards the Mars unlock for the Archwing quest so I can get past all the nodes gated by that equipment. Haven’t done any of the void fissures yet even though I have a couple relics since I don’t even know what I should be picking.
There is definitely a lot to learn about this game - which is awesome. I get the feeling there is so much I just don’t know even though I’ve spent a few hours on the wiki, so I’ll be hanging out in discord as much as I can this weekend in case there is someone who wants to ramble away on all the finer aspects of the game.
Thorm’ll chew your ear off. I’m surprised he hasn’t popped up here, yet.
Mod wise you want to get a few good mods rather than a little of everything. The reason being is that mods have a minimum power requirement. Take Serration for example. It is the goto rifle mod. It costs 4 to get 15% increase in damage. Now, you could put another mod on that gives you a slight boost. But say it costs 4 as well. 4 more into Serration gets you to +75% damage! Another 60% for the same cost as the base of the mod.
With that said, don’t aim to get Serration to max any time soon, that takes 2 mil creds and a metric buttload of Endo. A good stopping point would be rank 4 or rank 6 (aim for multiples of 2 on cost).
And yeah, I guess I should have warned you to not go in on groups in Cetus or PoE. They were added well after everything else so have a gear floor that is slightly higher than the planets they are on. I’d say you could start dabbling in them after you’re comfortable with Jupiter or Saturn.
Bank the relics for now. They offer you prime parts, Forma BPs, etc. Most of which you won’t be able to do anything with until at least Saturn.
When I started I figured I had a bunch of solo play to get through so I picked the bow, knives, and staff to mess around. Still haven’t picked up a gun yet, so I end up using the bow a lot in regular missions, the knives in defense, and a lot of beating on stuff since I tend to get up close and personal real fast if there are more than 2 enemies coming. Needless to say my bo staff is my highest affinity so far lol.
Thanks for the pointers. I’m going to keep plugging away while keeping in the twitch streams since that’s been tossing me a lot of credits.
Warframes is a pretty good game to burn time with. the starter frames don’t really matter much however please note that there are limited number of warframe slots on your account unless you buy slots with the rmt currency. if you want to stay free you must either trade for it after the freebee points are gone. anything in the prime store will be available for grinding up eventually… well most will be. some have said that after some things are out of rotation they will never be coming back again but that is debatable.
things to do to maximize your experience. make sure to open up the map so that when an alert pops you will have accesss to them. this means getting through each checkpoint to advance to the next planet and making sure that every mission is in an unlocked state. this will take quite a while. if you are part of a clan you can watch for important alerts and then join a group running it to get access to the reward and the map as well, unless they changed it. Potato alerts for both the weapon and warframe cata is very important early on. if you cant potato your warframe and weapon it is basicly running at half tilt after leveling it. Mods are important, more important than levels or mastery rank progression. if you dont have an optimal mod setup its going to hurt progressing. Forma blueprints, always have them being made. formas will allow your weapons and mods slots to gain a modifier allowing you to match mods to that slot for half the slot price. Do the quests for freebe gear, weapons, frames, and slots. participate in events. join an active clan to gain access to their dojo to buy blueprint copies of their clan only gear and ask questions and advise as you’re progressing. if you buy stuff in the ingame store make sure you’re buying blueprints with credits so you can produce it yourself. gear purchased in the cashshop come with a weaponslot and potato though, it really depends on how much work you want to put into the game.
