What Not to Do in Warframe

Since its initial beta release in March of 2013, Warframe has gone through ups and downs to become one of the most played games on the planet, reporting roughly 38 million players in March of this year (2018 for you future folks). With so many players, it’s easy to see why the game has winded up with such a strong community. In fact, I personally can’t think of a player base more supportive of new people getting into the game and willing to help each other out.

But as with most communities, there are some unspoken rules as far as what you should and shouldn’t do. As supportive as the Warframe community can be, there are certain behaviors bound to get on the nerves of both veterans and newer players alike. The purpose of this guide is to let those getting into the game no what actions you should avoid while playing Warframe

Warframe is free-to-play on Steam, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Leaving Early

Anyone who’s played Warframe is probably aware how prevalent the grinding aspect of the game is. Whether your leveling up gear, collecting materials, or just killing time, chances are if your playing Warframe you’re going to be spending a considerable amount of time mowing through enemies. For most players, this will be done in either Survival or Excavation missions.

These endless missions give players the opportunity to continuously take down enemies and collect their materials at a steadily rising level until your team is no longer able to maintain the offensive. Survival missions focus on keeping oxygen levels up, while Excavation missions have the players getting power to drill machines and defending them. One of the main reasons these missions tend to dominate when it comes to grinding is the number of time players can spend doing them.

On average, Survival missions can range from around 15-20 minutes for beginners and around 40-45 minutes for the more experienced Tenno (though some people have reported runs going as long as 3 hours). Meanwhile, Excavation missions will average around 20-25 minutes. As you can imagine, joining up to these missions can be a fair commitment, and there’s always the risk of failing the mission and losing the materials and most of the experience you worked towards. As such, when you join up in one of these missions, you expect the rest of the team to be in for the long haul alongside you.

Sadly this isn’t always the case. Chances are if you ask anyone who’s played a decent amount of Warframe, they will have at least one story about someone trying to leave a mission within the first 5 minutes. This is by far one of the biggest issues that spring up between players, as it causes issues to those trying to grind.

The way these missions work, particularly the Survival mission, having a player split from the rest can affect the group’s ability to collect experience and materials. The main reason for this is because when someone leaves like that, enemies will split from the main group to chase after them. This ends up causing a big issue for these missions.

By drawing enemies away, you get fewer chances to refill your oxygen or collect power cells for the excavation drills. This lead to the other players having their ability to earn significantly cut down. You can’t just rely on life support drops from the Lotus in Survival, and you can only defend a drill for so long in Excavation. By leading enemies off, you wind up hurting everyone’s ability to grind.

Obviously, things happen and people may need to leave the game to attend to real life, but there is a way to do it without hurting others experience. If you need to leave early, then just abort the mission. You won’t get experience and materials, but depending on how early you need to leave, you can make them back fairly easy.

If you’re a bit later into the mission and have to go, just say something in the player chat. 9 times out of 10, your teammates will understand and wrap things up. Just remember to be courteous to others, and you’ll get along with your teams much better. On that same note, if you plan to stick around for the long haul in a randomly made team, make your intentions clear at the start.

Patience is a Virtue

Continuing with the theme of Survival and Excavation missions, the concept of patience is a fairly important part of these missions. A lack of this can lead to frustration for your teammates, as well as robbing yourself of experience and materials. As to why patience is so important, it depends on what mission is being played.

In the Survival mission, the Lotus will drop life support modules which increase the oxygen in the levels. Using one of these will restore 30% of the teams total oxygen, with a new module appearing every 90 seconds. While these can help out in a pinch, most of the time you’ll be surviving off of oxygen drops from killed enemies, which restore around 3%.

Meanwhile, in Excavation missions, the excavation drills will start when a player gets in range of the spawn point. The drill will start with a 20% charge or 20 seconds. After that, you need to collect power cells from certain enemies to charge up the drill to 100%. It’s also possible to have multiple drills running at the same time.

The reason being patient in these missions are so important is because it can make the difference between getting huge gains or wasting your time. For example, if you’re oxygen is only at 90% in a Survival mission, you don’t want to run around activating and wasting your life support modules. Smart use of these can nearly double your time in the mission.

Meanwhile, jumping around and popping excavation drills can force your team to spread itself t thin. You need to have the drill finish its excavation in order to get the rewards for it, be they credits or a relic, and by having only 1 or 2 teammates covering a drill, especially late into the mission, can result in losing those rewards.

When doing these missions, you need to keep calm and not try to rush it. If you’re running low on oxygen, then consider popping 1 life support module, not every single one. If you’re doing an Excavation mission, stick to one drill at a time. It takes a bit more time, but it can maximize your rewards.

Spy Mission Etiquette

Spy missions aren’t as heavily played as others, but if you’re looking for certain part blueprints you’ll need to grind through them just like any mission. As with most of the missions in the game, proper teamwork is the best way to finish it quickly and efficiently. Almost more so than any other mission, communication with your team is invaluable.

When starting these missions, it’s best for each player to individually pick on of the three hacking objectives to complete. While this will leave one player without anything to do, they can still farm materials and experience while the rest are busy. By doing the mission this way, you can get things done fast, something you don’t always get in Warframe.

What you don’t want to do though, is bum rush into the objective areas, especially when another player has been working on it. Doing this will almost certainly trip the alarms in the level, starting a countdown which leads to failure of the objective. Even if you manage to get to the hacking console before the countdown is over, it still lowers the experience rewarded for completing the objective. As you can imagine, this is can easily get on a person’s nerves, especially if it leads to the mission’s failure.

Other Things to Keep in Mind

There are other small things you can do that won’t necessarily make or break the game, but can still go a long way in getting along with other players:

1. Hold the Elevator: To be fair this should be a thing you do in general, not just in Warframe. While it’s’ fine to mess around with friends, when you’re playing with a random team it’s just basic manners to wait till everyone is on the elevator before starting it.

2. Stick to the Right Channels: This is important in regards to the various chat channels in the game. If you want to trade materials and blueprints, advertise in the Trade channel, not the recruiting or channel. The reverse is also true.

3. Do What You Were Recruited to Do: If you join a mission in the recruiting channel saying you’ll play a support frame, like Trinity, then don’t go into the mission with something like Excalibur or Mesa. It’s also generally considered a dick move to leave a mission early when you agreed to stay for a certain amount of time, only to leave right after getting whatever reward you were looking for.

4. Share the Rewards: If you find a rare resource, like Argon Crystals or Orokin Cells, mark them for other players. There’s always plenty to go around.
5. Be a Pal, Revive a Teammate: If you can safely revive a downed teammate, then go ahead and do it. You get a little extra experience, and you manage to help your teammate not to lose theirs.

Conclusion

When playing Warframe, it’s always important to remember you are part of a team. As such, getting along with your fellow Tenno can play a huge factor in how you enjoy the game. Just being a bit more polite can wind up going a long way towards becoming part of one of the best game communities around today.