Warframe 2019: Warframes of now (so far)

2/9/2019

Where to Download:

Steam

Official site

Microsoft Store

Playstation Network

Nintendo Store

Warframe has a creepy way of sneaking in and out of your life as a veteran player. I bounced between platforms so often that I lose track of the chaos. I decided to settle down mostly on the PC. Hanging out mostly with my girlfriend, or the head-writer of the site GeekyGamerGirl87. We mess around in our Dojo, where she finds solitude. Since my “missing-in-action” I came back into it like a head of steam. I came across a few new awesome Warframes that came out here recently. I was given access to Garuda on behalf of Digital Extreme, a humble thank you to them! Back in the day I played and covered all the way up to Mirage in profile reviews. This time I am going to touch base on behalf of the new frames—at least from October 2017 and onward. This is excluding any primes. — My work is cut out for me, eh? If you want to take a look at my previous article you can find it here. Other articles reviewing each Warframe will be coming in the near future, but for now, I do not want to overdo it here beyond what the focus is for this article. Which is my impressions of the game of now, since a while ago.

Like many games in the genre, it’s hard to keep coming up with quality content, keeping the consumer in mind, and keeping them interested. Warframe keeps the format alive with its blend of Borderlands, Diablo, and exploration all rolled into one package. Still being unbelievably free to play. A lot of arguments about the game having means to boost past certain requirements leaves new players wary since even the whole loot-crate thing a bit ago, which to this game, along with a few others out there keep it completely fair to earn platinum and be able to boost, if you choose to do so with trading via past rank two. At first, coming back into the game the market place blooms with many community member creations that came from the workshop minds on Steam voting. Which most look freaking fantastic.

Warframe on Switch image by: Destructoid

The many new updates the latest with a new open world in Venus named Fortuna; a snowy and Corpus filled base wonderland of loot and exploration with a side of CPU intensity. For those who are new to Warframe, you hunt mostly for parts, and mods for your Warframes, which you control, in various types and variations. The mods are usually dependent on region, planet, or mission. They enhance passives or status points which enhance your Warframe. Which is the whole goal of the game next to making new Warframes, and fancy new weapons. Since I am addicted to trying out new weapons often this game gives me that rush of finding out about new weapon builds and seeing what they will think of next. With the venture, you will feel a sense of accomplishment whenever you finally get that new weapon to build, or finally farmed that last part for let’s say Hydroid Prime (which I am still looking for his systems.)

Gara – Came out: October 12^th, 2017

Abilities:

Shattered Lash – A tossable glass ability, does fair damage, is used with Mass Vitrify to smash your huge wall damaging giant damage. Hold it to do a melee like attack in front of you to also smash down the Mass Vitrify wall.

Spinter Storm -Used as a aoe ability that protects Gara and allies if they touch the shattered cloud. Very useful!

Spectrorage – Used a a damaging trap.Enemies freak out, shoots at the spinning carousel of mirrors. Die pretty quickly.

Mass Vitrify – Her bread and butter next to Spectrorage. Creates a massive wall(depending on your height off the ground, hint hint). If a enemy is caught in its casting it intensifies the walls damage deduction. This comes from the enemies their health and shields. Once Crystallized.

Gara is one of those seemingly perfect maidens for defending locations with ease, while also dishing out massive damage in larger hordes of enemies if built right. She is easily compatible with Frost, Limbo and others who can hold down a fort with little effort. Her Wall(Mass Vitrify) itself is a huge damage dealer and one of my own guilty pleasures when I smash it down, at the risk of leaving the objective open. I found it a delight to pop it when there are just a few hard-hitting enemies coming around or when I notice my teammates wonder out of the wall feeling their inner lone wolf syndrome come out to play.

She’s worth the effort of just farming (which I did, and boy the grind is a little rough with certain materials locked behind rank time locks). Otherwise, just farm some prime parts, some riven mods, and sell them to other players for legit Platinum.  The only downside to her is she’s ok with enemies one on one with her Splinterstorm, but she shines with defensive and Survival if you and a Hydroid are laying it down farming materials. Better safe than sorry. However other missions I never found her as effective obviously with things like Spy missions or whatever else, as most of her abilities are stationary. “But I use her for everything Danny!” I reply with “That’s  good buddy!” Then give you a giant gold big o’ sticker on your forehead. 🙂

Khora – Came out: April 20^th, 2018

Abilities:

Whipclaw – A Castlevania style whip attack that does a boatloade of freaking damage, her first ability and a great narrow room clearer for a bit.  Also great for BDSM!

Ensnare – A light CC that captures a pack of enemies and  allows you to whip em’ good. Or just blast them away with your favorite means of damage.

Venari – your pet, or Kavat creature that dishes out some condition damage, or does as per usual pets do. Helping you with loot, knocking down a enemy, or just smacking the taste out of your choice of wonderful flavored enemies! Mine is usually cherry!

Strangledome – Like Frost, or (fill in the blank here)’s dome ability entraps a enemy. Whipping the dome dishes out a considerable amount of damage. Great for area holding or just feeling frisky with a large crowd of pesky enemies. For this ability: “There is no safety word” – Pinhead 2018.

More of the branch of aggressive defensive/offense frames in the game. She offers various play styles in one, where her Venari pet sticks out for the most part as a universally useful addition to her overall acting like a BDSM Ranger. You basically play her like a ring-leader where you pin down enemies with her Ensnare ability, and then smack them with her Whipclaw, dealing some great damage overall, and being on point with single target suppression.  On the flip side of the coin: Strangledome if used correctly with Whipclaw dishes out great damage. She reminds me of Vauban’s Vortex ability latching up enemies dealing small chunks of damage. She handles damage well and can survive with a great amount of ease due to her solid crowd control. She is more universal than the usual defensive frame, doubling up from standing around to rushing around with her pet Venari knocking people out. Her abilities are not super powerful but great for subduing many an enemy without a hassle. She is great for entry-level players to players who like legroom with their CC characters.

The grind for her is mostly through the Sanctuary Onslaught missions found in most hubs in the game. Look up more info on that if you want spoilers in that regard.

I personally adore her spider-like outfit and style. Feeling like I am some well-rounded dominatrix keeping enemies in a line – Just saying how I feel and I’m sure other members in the community would agree. —Her ultimate, or fourth ability feels so well made hanging over objectives, latching every enemy who comes near it. your first ability improves damage done by it by whip attacking it over and over while stacking damage, and well it does look funny. She’s worth the farm and the purchase alone for just feeling enjoyable as a sort of ranger class.

Revenant – Came out: August 24^th, 2018

Abilities:

Enthrall – Single cast, applied, makes a sense run around in your side until the timer runs out. If they die, they turn into a pillar of decent damage.

Mesmer Skin – A armor that stuns enemies if they hit you, great for melee. Also can be enthralled for free. Awesome!

Reave – A rush ability that drains shields and HP from enemies, effect doubles from bumping through your own thralls. 

Danse Macabre – a the wurlwind of death. Press and hold fire to boost status effect damage that matches a enemies damage type. Incoming damage is redirected into the beams fired.

Basically, Revenant and Garuda are based off a lineup of “dark” themed frames. Revvy (his body is ready, well mostly) being the ghoul minion master who does impressive damage with his spinning beams of death. His story being in the PoE or the Plains of Eidolon. You unlock him with a masked girl, and simply farming and grinding out rank within the community’s shtick faction stuff. It was hell. So, I ended up getting him, and count Dracula over here is legit. You can make zombies (legions of them) out of living enemies while feeding off their health and shields. He plays great in most content and goofing around with endgame stuff.

His attire looks awesome rocking this whole Victorian style to it. You can also notice fangs on his Vania head variant. He casts fire around his body of Eidolic energies. However, I am getting ahead of myself here with fashion. He sports the look well and does a sort of rebel vampire thing with his abilities that stand out. Oh, course though this doesn’t stop players from killing my legion before I get a chance to use half of them, but Darwin had a piece on the weak and strong around here in my notes. Lost me, crap.

His abilities work wonderfully in hordes of enemies. Enthrall sort of working like a Saryn cast where other enemies can be infected by enemies who explode in their close area, making more enemies fighting on your side. Giving Nekros a run for his money when it comes to minion masters is concerned. Not as long out, but always a delight to see the corpus do my work as a sort of “Taxman” who do my good work causing damage amongst their kin of old. He feels good to play, but also awkwardly feels like he needs a slight rework in the feeling more powerful is concerned. Danse Macabre is the apparent fan favorite ability as it blocks most damage and dishes it all back well. As “She is a maniac” plays in my head as he spins around with his knee-high leg warmers drip from sweat from the passion of the dance. Or maybe I am wanting to watch more Flash Dance, who the hell knows anymore. Is he worth the investment? He is fun, but not for everyone who can’t quite manage minions, as well as sue their ultimate managing their energy correctly, he goes through that a lot. I personally like him, but I know others might be a little confused with him and just spam his fourth most of the time, which is fine.

Garuda – Came out: November 8^th, 2018

Abilities:

Dread Mirror – Steals life from enemies. As well as absorbs damage from attacks and can be cased out towards enemies for large amounts of damage. Below 40% HP she will cast instant kills on most enemies. If you roll Garuda was a glass cannon, very dangerous.

Blood Altar – She sticks enemies creating blood wells, which heal insane amounts of HP.

Bloodletting – Convert 50% of your HP to replenish your MP.

Seeking Talons – A charge ability like Dread Mirror’s secondary cast effect. Charge and release to hit up to eight enemies with her talon spears. This causes Slash damage. As well as staggers said enemies with a mark over their heads.

One of the more damaging supportive healers in the game, next to Oberon. I have heard horror stories of her being lackluster or lacking that punch people wanted out of her out of the gate, from a general perspective of myself, I wanted to try her out as blind as possible aside from the light leering at others using her. In my opinion, she hits hard and does some outstanding healing from my mixture of duration/strength build I have for her. Can she do with a buff for some certain quality of life adjustments? Sure, other than simply putting formas into her a few times, I can honestly say she is a lot better then what people made her out to be. An early opinion of her? “What the hell does any of this do?” By level thirty grinding her out in Hydron and various mission runs, I got her maxed out fast. I figured out mixing up ability one (Dread Mirror) plus ability two (Blood Alter) gave me some pretty positive results. Seeking Talons with its Slash damage is a hit and miss for me, it does do good bleed damage but honestly, I mostly juggle with first two abilities then going with the 4^th, which is a smart player’s sense I suppose would give you out more damage. But I try to conserve my energy than try to bleed it too hard on heavy casting. If I am not near too many enemies, I go for my Bloodletting ability but not when I see too many enemies lurking, due to well, I would get rocked.

I really enjoy her challenging play-style as it keeps you on your toes, and really suggests a solid glass cannon playstyle as opposed to being too tanky. It promotes you to keep tabs on your own HP and dish out some crazy good damage. Her supportive healing role I think is the grand slam from her set up, and if anything, if you own a highly damaging gun or two, just go tanky, and focus your skill traits on doing Blood alters for survival missions, becoming your groups new best buddy in survival, and keeping the poor Hydroid/Hydroid Prime in one piece, he goes through a lot! She does come at a lengthy cost if you do not mind farming, and the usual ranking up with Fortuna’s main hub. Ranking up is a bit of a chore overall in the game, it’s not shy about it. I do not mind this sort of thing, usually. Before going into a tangent about ranking up in the game with each faction or whatever else, I will leave it brief at that. Overall, a lot of busy work, tons of timed lockouts for rank points. Then the wait for cooking the said Warframe’s parts in the foundry for up to 3 days when you get all the pieces for the frames. So, crafting her frame along with the likes of Equinox is crazy. I had less of a grind with Revenant aside from ranking slightly. I went through a few runs to see the process of farming her. And it was less painful. However, trying to go into the open world, on most CPU’s is brutal. Which can be a normal issue with their open world’s climate weather going off, or the general scale of it all (it is freaking huge).  Aside from that, I think most who handled PoE with the settings turned down can go through this landscape to farm materials. Which at times again due to the timed lockouts can be a little bit rough. As soon as you rank up to near max with the Fortuna faction, your good to go. Just time, patience, and farming the bounties for her pieces.

Baruuk – Came out: December 18^th, 2018

Abilities:

Elude – Your chain of defense against all projectile damage, great for those “oh crap!” moments.

Lull – Lull is a large ground based casted ability of which puts all enemies (exception to a few) to sleep, giving them a reset forgetting you exist, great for dodging raindrops, or sizing up enemies for Serene Storm.

Desolate Hands – A personal favorite cast ability. Used also as a way of defense with disarming a group of enemies depending on your strength stat. Mix it up with Elude and expand your range on the casts. The cool thing about the daggers is they are also applied to allies.

Serene Storm – built kinda of like how Nidius builds his mutation stacks, Instead using abilities like Desolate Hands, and Lull build a sizable restrain removal, which in turn once maxed out, or a small to mid-portion is drained can allow you to cast this exalted fist based weapon tossed out waves of large damage. It is a Puncture based ability of which stacks with Melee mods and elemental mods well. It uses restraint as apposed to energy costs. Filling back up your restraint.

Being the newest addition to Warframe, Baruuk sleeps enemies, applies damaging boons to himself and friends alike. Personally, one of my favorite new frames to come out! He is inquired by doing various tasks with the Fortuna faction under a certain requirement which this time around is not as insane, unlike the other Warframes. Sure, you got to grind/farm, but not as fierce. He is useful for Defense missions or most things except spy missions. As he is a more in your face kind of Warframe that doesn’t benefit from sneaking around then just rushing at enemies with full of daggers floating around him CC’ing (crowd controlling). At first, he looked very basic as a frame with not so much as a flashy appearance as opposed to other frames like Revenant or Khora. He sports more of a man-bun – yes, a man bun haha —A floppy man bun that at first, I sat here with a good laugh from it, then realized that as each frame has a theme it is somewhat like a cultural statement. So, I just obviously accepted it and got a kick out of it flopping, until I swapped for the Lazy Town Girl Scott beret head variant. The rest from there was history for my fashion statement. He reminded me a lot like a Dragon Ball Z/Super character in terms of Goku, so you perhaps noticed his color scheme. I was going to aim for ultra-instinct, but the usual orange and blue worked well with him.

Is he worth the trouble to farm for? Yeah, or just simply purchasing him to bypass the grind is optional too. I ended up obtaining him from my girlfriend when she saw my interest in him and grind like a fiend to try to get him. She too scored herself a copy of him as well. He is a lot like a face tanking monk which is like Atlas, or Valkyr. All of which is fine by me, as I personally love monks in most video games. He feels overpowered, and that is a good thing. To me as the PVP in the game is basically null, I do not hear the AI enemies complaining about the damage scales of the warframes you play as. So those who complain about it, Shawt up! And stop ruining awesome frames like this. Takes the fun out of them. I highly recommend him to those fighting anime fans out there like Baku or DB/DBZ/DBS/DBGT. He is a blast to play!

With the list of Warframes here at this point and time, all of which really offer quite a refreshing and fun way to approach each of the games many game modes. With even more of the buggers coming out, I feel we all who already play the game have our work out for us. Honestly, the grind is the whole fun of the game, assuring the new content they throttle it down on purpose, so we do not blast through it and become bored on the drop of the dime. At the same time, the option of just buying the darn things is always there if you farm a pile of prime parts people want too. Which in turn seems like a mixed option for many out there, who like the challenge of just farming out every part with time and hope of RNG being a kind mistress. For some out there that I know sadly cannot access the current Fortuna content due to the hardware strain. As many feel it with hard CPU slams from the arctic winds within its explorable world.

As I mention CPU slamming, I also think of how far this game has come in the last six years. Constantly growing more and more, adapting its own content to slick ideas, and innovative dungeon crawling. Originally back in its early days, it had a straight forward narrative and simpler graphics. As I log in every other day’s improvements, and zany looking effects get tossed into the game so often my head spins. It’s a craft of love that while I can easily walk away from it to play other games. However, the game is always busy with players (new and old) coming on with conversations about whatever, to asking the best price for their Prime weapon parts. It all feels like an ever-growing world of growth that never feels too small to wander around. Getting lost in it and finding something else new that I never knew yet about it.

For those who are still wary about getting into it, think of it like this, it plays just like any other MMO, but has its own flair and style that is reachable to even folks who do not want to spend a dime on it. Which is my next point to this article. I have heard a few people, not like the fact they “had” to spend money to advance in the game. Which You Never Have too. Yup, After rank two, you can do the trade. Which in terms of what you can farm what people need, and trade that to them, obtain their Platinum, and never spend a dime of your own money to do so. All you got to do is research the market. Which in hindsight is like any other economy. I usually earn some platinum here and there for potatoes (used to enhance or unlock more points to place in mods, and their cost to apply to your Warframes and Weapons.)  The argument at the same time is an honest take from another perspective of not wanting to spend any money, but also at the same time is not as structured to say it breaks the game for anyone as anyone can advance with patience. Which sure also can be a pain if your crafting stuff in your Dojo or cooking a Warframe and weapon in your Foundry. So, it really hurts the hardcore player slightly, but also does not if they know the whole economy thing mentioned before to speed things along without really an issue.

The Bar by GeekyGamerGirl87 and myself.

The only time I really sit back and shake my head is that there is a one million credit cost with trading primes between players. Which I understand it locks out the idea of people feeding new players with overpowered mods. At the same time seems silly if I was planning on gifting my girlfriend with a Primed Continuity when she could not get one for herself with the trade of no Platinum. Not even Dojo tax. It might be a minor complaint about people who make millions of credits who fart the stuff out, for myself who spends the stuff a bit often for constantly trying out new weapons or parts for “fill in the blank” its heinous. Besides my minor complaint, I truly love building and spending time with my girlfriend Tye playing the game often, doing missions, helping her with the Dojo and watching her awesome work unfold.

As time goes on expect more coverage for Warframe and many other games we cover here on The Daily Gamepad. If you want to play the game after reading this Check out the links above for your respective link to download and play it, it’s Free!