Get ready, Tenno. (Warframe)

[rhoenix]

Baro Ki'Teer, the Void Trader, has Primed Flow this week. If you don't already have this mod, it costs 150 ducets, and 10,000 credits to get.

He also has Primed Fast Hands, and a cosmetic shoulder item. But seriously - if you don't already have Primed Flow, go get it.

[rhoenix]

A good, quick video overview of the five different Schools one can choose:

[youtube][/youtube]

[rhoenix]

Additionally, the best current places to get r5 rare fusion cores are:

- Triton, Neptune (still works)
- Heiracon, Pluto (works very well, as well as for t4 keys)

[rhoenix]

The new Exilus mods (the Drift series) are an excellent addition to the game. They don't add anything overpowered in terms of stats, but they can help add that little extra edge in terms of stat boosts.

All of them are dual-stat, and can be found from the Challenge rooms on the Orokin Moon, or of course traded for in the Trading chat.

Agility Drift: Reduces damage while airborne by 12%, and reduces enemy accuracy when targeting you by 6%.
Coaction Drift: +15% aura strength and effectiveness boost.
Cunning Drift: +12% slide range, -30% friction while sliding, +15% to power range.
Endurance Drift: +15% to max power, and +12% to parkour movement velocity.
Power Drift: +15% power strength, +30% chance to resist knockdown.
Speed Drift: +12% sprint speed boost, +15% cast speed boost.
Stealth Drift: +18m enemy radar range, +12% aim glide/latch time.

I normally use Cunning Drift, Power Drift, or Speed Drift, depending on whether I need a bit more power strength, power range, or a speed boost. Having the versatility to give a minor boost to one of those stats is rather nice, though.

---

And in obsessive-compulsive news, my Trinity Prime is now considered done. I've added an Exilus slot and 3 forma (one to change the aura to a - polarity, and adding V and - polarities), and now I can set it up either as an excellent EV-built Trinity (focused on giving energy returns to allies very fast), or as a tank that will never ever die.

[B4UTRUST]

I don't think I really had to Forma my Trin P for EV. Now, granted I don't have maxed out range or negative duration on it but I've not ran into many situations where I need it. Range is at 235 and duration at -40.

[rhoenix]

I don't think I really had to Forma my Trin P for EV. Now, granted I don't have maxed out range or negative duration on it but I've not ran into many situations where I need it. Range is at 235 and duration at -40.

Your Trin did damn well in Draco, so I can believe it.

[rhoenix]

The funny part is that I've actually put more Forma in my Nova Prime and Excal Prime than I have with Trinity Prime - four on each, as opposed to three on Trinity. That said, I can do some truly offensive mod setups with them as a result of it, so this is in no way a complaint.

Ivara setup with a very high range (using Overextended + Stretch, as long as you have another mod or two to buff power strength back up) works hilariously well in missions, since that amount of range lets you pickpocket someone across the room while stealthed. Going at a slow, steady pace means you basically get double the drops from enemies during a mission along with a metric shit-ton of affinity for all the stealth kills.

Reminder - Santa Baro Ki'Teer is showing up again this Friday, on Christmas. Make sure you have some ducets stashed, and if you don't, just run a few Void Survival, Sabotage, or Defense missions for random parts to trade.

[rhoenix]

I'm going to add a longer post about this on the Warframe forums, but here's a brief synopsis.

2015 was a great year for Warframe. It brought us some really good new Frames, it rebalanced some of the older ones, it gave us some shiny new Primes, and best of all, it set the bar much higher in terms of storytelling with Natah and The Second Dream.

Unfortunately, the great advances made also highlight some low points - the plethora of weapons and things to get, especially Prime parts, is growing unwieldy, and feels very disjointed. We older players know the tricks and hidden places for most of the fun stuff, but newer players are nearly required to check the unofficial Wiki for the game to get a handle on them. In short, most of the important stuff is unexplained to the player, and feels disjointed to play as a whole.

The gameplay itself is, and has always been solid. The problem is with the things that are attached to and affect gameplay, which isn't very obvious.

In short, DE is a victim of its own success - the idea has grown into an institution, and the underlying flaws are becoming more and more plain by virtue of the good things added so far. The RNG of the Void drop tables, the Clan Research, and the different varieties of mods are all growing overwhelming in their breadth, if not their scope, and this issue only promises to become greater over time.

The thing is, this is still a great game, and the gameplay itself is excellent. With some fixups to various issues, this game could serve as a Prime example of what a F2P game should aspire to be.

[B4UTRUST]

I still chuckle that DE called this the year of 'less grind.' Less grind my shiny tenno ass!

[rhoenix]

I still chuckle that DE called this the year of 'less grind.' Less grind my shiny tenno ass!

Yeah... not so much. Nitain Extract? What?

[B4UTRUST]

I still chuckle that DE called this the year of 'less grind.' Less grind my shiny tenno ass!

Yeah... not so much. Nitain Extract? What?

You'd say that but there's an average of 4 Extract alerts per day so you have 4 shots a day of getting one so it's not near as bad as other things. Like Ivara. Or Nezha. I've ran every sortie every day since they started and I've gotten 1 Nezha part. I've got more lenses than I know what to do with and go them coming out of me ass. Everyone was afraid they'd be a pain to get. Nope. Want some? I'll sell em to ya cheap! Hell, I'll damn near give em away I've got so many. Oh. And Dera Vandal parts. I've got that gun 3 or 4 times over now I think. But I've only seen one Nezha part drop. The drop rates and such a large drop table mean that it's damn near impossible to get except through sheer dumb luck. You can't even grind it properly since you can only do 1 sortie a day.

DE is getting ridiculous

[rhoenix]

You'd say that but there's an average of 4 Extract alerts per day so you have 4 shots a day of getting one so it's not near as bad as other things. Like Ivara. Or Nezha. I've ran every sortie every day since they started and I've gotten 1 Nezha part. I've got more lenses than I know what to do with and go them coming out of me ass. Everyone was afraid they'd be a pain to get. Nope. Want some? I'll sell em to ya cheap! Hell, I'll damn near give em away I've got so many. Oh. And Dera Vandal parts. I've got that gun 3 or 4 times over now I think. But I've only seen one Nezha part drop. The drop rates and such a large drop table mean that it's damn near impossible to get except through sheer dumb luck. You can't even grind it properly since you can only do 1 sortie a day.

DE is getting ridiculous

Artificial restriction to encourage trading, is my take on it. The fact that DE isn't letting up at all on the RNG on RNG crime is what makes me think that they're planning on adding a proper auctionhouse soon.

If you still have a set for the Dera Vandal, I'd like to give it a try. I think I have a few goodies stashed still I can trade for it.

[B4UTRUST]

Let me check what parts I've got left. You're welcome to them for whatever I've got. Didn't know you can trade those...

An actual auction house would be nice. The trade channel is well and good, but lacks some stuff that would be great to have, like search abilities and such, instead of trying to read through chat that scrolls at about 20 lines a second.

[rhoenix]

So, I figured I'd add in my favorite Warframe-themed Youtube channels, since others may not know about them.

1. Mogamu gives a good broad overview of all new things added, enough to give you a good idea of how frames and weapons perform, along with some good commentary. If you just want an intro to specific things added, this is a good starting point.

2. H3dsh0t takes pretty much everything to 11. His channel is pretty much all about maxing things out, getting to know the minor details of how a given item works, and pumping enough Forma into it to handle the most powerful mods. If you run Draco for daily Focus XP / Syndicate Rep, as I do, using his builds as a guideline isn't a bad thing, as with the experience you'll be getting, you can max out a weapon or two from Unranked in 4 rounds.

3. Tactical Potato goes over the basics of weapons and frames, along with How-To videos on little nuances of the game, such as the best places and ways to farm for resources or fusion cores. He also gives a good overview of all weapons and frames, along with a proper Irish brogue.

4. Quite Shallow is a person who uses a text-to-speech program to be a giant smartass. Her videos are hilariously sarcastic, though short.

[hr]

Also, for those of you who don't know, Saryn got a re-work recently, and her abilities now synergize much, much better. With enough power range, she can put Viral statuses on every enemy on the map, making sure that when one enemy is damaged, all of them are.

Saryn Rework Overview:
[youtube][/youtube]

Saryn Rework Endurance Test (t4 Defense to wave 50):
[youtube][/youtube]

[rhoenix]

So, updates on the Focus Schools that I've discovered over the past week. I'll also rank each school 1-5 in terms of my favorite, with reasoning.

Basic stuff:
- To gain Focus XP with a given school, you MUST have a Lens for that faction equipped on warframe and/or weapon.
- If you want to gain Focus XP with another school, you must change the Lens equipped to match the one for the school you want to raise for, gain at least 50,000 Focus XP of that school's type, and then you can unlock the school.
- Once more than one school is unlocked, you may freely change which school of yours is Primary, which basically means "the active and passives for this school are considered active." All others are marked as Secondary.
- You still can gain Focus XP for secondary schools, presuming that you have the proper Lens equipped. However, your active 5 ability will always draw from which school you have marked as Primary.
- The passives for your current Primary school will ONLY activate once you've activated your 5 ability once during a mission, but will in general provide bonuses for the rest of the mission.
- Your Focus Pool provides a total number of bonuses and such that you can have active for your Primary school. As you rank up your active and passive abilities for a given school, you'll note that every time you rank up a node, your total usage pool goes up by one. For this reason, to fully explore a Focus school requires that you bump up your Focus Pool a good couple of times.

Specific stuff about Madurai (Fire):
- Madurai (Fire) is all about the damage. Straight up.
- It's active, Phoenix Gaze, gives a DBZ-style beam blast that causes an impressive amount of damage to enemies caught in its path.
- It's passives provide damage increases to all physical damage inflicted for the rest of the mission (up to an added 30% to impact, puncture, and slashing damage from separate passives), including from abilities.
- Other passives do things like set enemies on fire after being attacked by Phoenix Gaze, and ending it with an explosive blast.
- Rank is 3/5. There are schools with abilities I like more, but there are also ones I like less.

Specific stuff about Vazarin (Water):
- Vazarin (Water) is all about healing, though it has some weirdness to it.
- It's active, Mending Tides, sends 5/6/8/10 pulses over 10/12/16/20 seconds, each pulse giving 250 health to all allied units in range, including cryopods and rescue targets.
- Its passives have a real stinker that you should avoid putting points into at all costs: Polluted Waters. This passive will revive fallen allies in range, but will also inflict Viral and Magnetic procs on them. Why this is even in there I have no idea.
- It's actually useful passives are reviving fallen allies within range of the healing pulses (withOUT giving them procs), increases the range at which affinity is shared between teammates for kills by 10/12/15/17 meters (which is very awesome), reflects a percentage of all damage taken by allies back to enemies, giving allies invulnerability while Mending Tides is being actively cast, and gives bonus shields to affected allies.
- Rank is 4/5, as second best. The bonuses to gained affinity and the ability to heal cryopods are strong bonuses.

Specific stuff about Naramon (Air):
- Naramon (Air), is about causing subtle mayhem. It's active isn't all that useful, but the passives are very interesting if you like stealth and melee.
- Naramon's active is a confusion ability, Mind Spike, which honestly isn't that useful except when you're playing solo and get swamped.
- Naramon's passives, however, are great. They include granting 10%/15%/20%/25% bonus affinity from melee kills for the rest of the mission, granting bonus 15%/20%/25%/30% crit chance to melee weapons for the rest of the mission, and best of all, granting 5/6/8/10 seconds of invisibility after getting a critical strike from a melee weapon for the rest of the mission.
- Rank is 2/5. The passives are fun for melee-only stealth runs (and hilariously enough, the Redeemer gunblade is great for this), but the main ability is basically a low-rent version of a Loki's Irradiating Disarm. This school is fun if you want to do Loki-ish things when you're not a Loki.

Specific stuff about Unairu (Earth):
- Unairu (Earth) focuses mostly on turning enemies to stone, and messing with people's armor.
- Unariu's active, Basilisk Flare, gradually turns enemies to stone. Meh.
- Unairu's passives include granting bonus armor to yourself and allies for the rest of the mission, and letting your melee attacks reduce enemy armor for the rest of the mission.
- Rank is 1/5. The actives and passives both are... lackluster.

Specific stuff about Zenurik (Void):
- Zenurik (Void) is all about the energy, and it's great.
- Zenurik's active, Void Pulse, gives a directional Incapacitate of enemies, with pulses in a cone shape that catch all enemies in their range. Very useful if you get swamped, but otherwise not great.
- Zenurik's passives on the other hand are wonderful. Energy Overflow grants up to an extra 4 energy a second energy regen for the rest of the mission, will restore energy gained from energy orbs to allies within up to an 8 meter radius for the rest of the mission, and can affect enemies hit by Void Pulse with a Bullet Attractor effect.
- Rank is 5/5. The energy regen passives are too useful, and it's active is great for crowd control even at high levels.

[rhoenix]

A random fun thing I found out about last night with some tinkering:

The Combustion Beam mod is a rare drop from some Corpus enemies. After I got one at random, I had an epiphany - and decided to try it with the Amprex, my faithful mass electrocution gun.

I used: Serration, Split Chamber, Heavy Caliber, Sinister Reach, Combustion Beam, Point Strike, Vital Sense, and Infected Clip to make Corrosive damage.

This build dropped my damage some by having to take off Stormbringer, but it works gloriously. Sinister Reach increases the range at which the Amprex will jump to its next target, and Combustion Beam makes each dying enemy explode (with greater range due to Sinister Reach). With this build, the more closely-packed the enemies are, the faster they die en masse. I'm debating with trying to fit Shred into this build somehow for the punch-through, but so far, it's working quite well.

I haven't yet tried this build against Sortie missions, where enemies start at level 60+. However, this build works fantastically well so far on missions where I expect to clear-cut my way through hordes of enemies.

[B4UTRUST]

But does it out launch enemies like the Tenno Space Program does?

[rhoenix]

But does it out launch enemies like the Tenno Space Program does?

No. However, the Amprex does make entire zip codes extremely quiet.

[rhoenix]

As a quick FYI - one of the best places currently to get r5 gold fusion cores is the mission Hieracon, on Pluto, against Infested. After doing this for a few days (since I have some mods not maxed that need to be), I've discovered what's possibly one of the ideal team setups for such a mission.

The team is: a Trinity (setup as an EV trinity), Banshee (with the Resonance augment, high power str, and high range), Nova (setup as a slow nova), and either Vauban or Frost for defense of each extractor. With this setup, getting 3000 cryotic in a single mission (that's going through 30 extractors, mind you) is a breeze.

Additionally - Hydroid as a frame really isn't my favorite, but the Augment for his 4th ability, Pilfering Swarm, effectively acts as a nuke, and gives you double the drops for slain enemies. So if you're after farming, having a Hydroid with Pilfering Swarm as your enemy killer and a Nekros there for constant Desecrate goes quite a long way for getting more stuff.

[rhoenix]

Ok - the first event of 2016 has hit. Only those who've completed the Natah and Second Dream quests can do the event, but it's well worth doing. Not just for the free Orokin Catalyst and Reactor (not just the blueprints, mind you, but the full items themselves), but also for the rather nice new mods offered from beating up the Stalker's minions.

The event works like this - first you have to complete Part 1, which is finding more data. This consists of two Spy missions (the first vs. Grineer, the second vs. Corpus), and two Mobile Defense missions (first vs. Grineer, and second vs. Corpus). Once this first part is done, you'll get the Catalyst and a shoulder badge.

The second part involves finding one of the Stalker's Acolytes (where a given Acolyte shows up is random), and entering the mission where it appears. Alad V will excitedly give the message that he detects one, and you'll see lights flicker along with another message from Alad V once one actually appears. Beat up on the Acolyte until they run off.

This will count as a successful "Encounter" against an Acolyte for purposes of the second part of the event, and will give you a random mod that only that Acolyte actually has. All of them are at least interesting, but several are very useful for certain builds.

The current ones appearing are Angst, Mania, and Torment. They drop the following:

Angst: Body Count (melee mod, increases combo duration by +12 seconds at max), Repeater Clip (shotgun mod, On reload add +105% to fire rate while aiming), Spring-Loaded Chamber (rifle mod, on reload add +75% to fire rate while aiming), and Pressurized Magazine (sidearm mod, on reload add +90% to fire rate while aiming).

Mania: Catalyzer Link (rifle mod, on any warframe ability cast add +60% to status chance while aiming for 9 seconds), Embedded Catalyzer (sidearm mod, on any warframe ability cast add +90% to status chance while aiming for 9 seconds), Weeping Wounds (melee mod, combo multipliers add +120% status chance), and Nano-Applicator (shotgun mod, on any warframe ability cast add +90% to status chance while aiming for 9 seconds).

Torment: Hydraulic Crosshairs (pistol mod, on successful headshot add +135% crit chance for 9 seconds while aiming), Blood Rush (melee mod, +165% crit chance, stacks with combo multiplier), Laser Sight (shotgun mod, on successful headshot add +120% crit chance for 9 seconds while aiming), and Argon Scope (rifle mod, on successful headshot add +135% crit chance for 9 seconds while aiming).

Two other Stalker Acolytes (Malice and Misery) are rumored to be joining this little party soon, but I haven't seen them appear yet. In short though, they offer some good mods, this event is actually pretty easy to finish, and it doesn't feel all that grindy. So, not too bad for the first event for 2016, I'd say.

[B4UTRUST]

I need me that laser sight. I got Argon Scope which is nice as well. But I want the Laser Sight for Vaykor Hek. +120% crit chance on Hek? Oh yes please...

[rhoenix]

I need me that laser sight. I got Argon Scope which is nice as well. But I want the Laser Sight for Vaykor Hek. +120% crit chance on Hek? Oh yes please...

I still want Argon Scope, since it works with Bows, battle rifles, and sniper rifles. All of which makes me happy.

I also want Blood Rush, but since I already got Body Count, I'm not going through withdrawls too much.

[B4UTRUST]

Got all of them except Nano Applicator, Repeating Clip and Weeping wounds from the first 3. From Violence I'm missing Maiming Strike. Paula and I somehow lucked into Argon Scope on our first run the first night the event started. We didn't realize how rare that was until everything else started coming up hydraulic crosshairs. Fortunately all of them reappear on Misery whenever he shows up. Which is good for anything that got missed. Guess I'll have to trade around a bit afterwards to get anything else, though we all know the trading market is going to be jacked up stupid high until Acolytes start reappearing later. But I've got my Argon Scope and my Laser Sight so I'm happy with those for the moment.

[rhoenix]

So, apparently there's drama happening.

The playerbase got (understandably) angry about the very paltry offerings made by the Void Trader the past two times he showed up, and now part of the development team is sulking in a corner, expecting an apology from the playerbase for thinking this particular part of the dev team is filled with pouting imbeciles for the reason that they're acting like pouting imbeciles.

Long story short, whether or not the Void Trader will show back up is a matter of conjecture, but I offer my best wishes for the drama storm to pass, people to come to their senses, and move on with their lives. However, I know better given my understanding of human nature to think that this is the most probable outcome.

That said, we're starting to run into the player limit for Clan LibriumArcana. B4 and I have talked about upgrading the clan by adding more barracks, but this would necessarily increase the costs for everything. I'm holding off on this possibility for now, as I'd like to both keep costs down and avoid the requirement of having to kick out inactive people. I'd like to keep the founding members of our little Warframe clan as members as long as possible, even if half of them have no intention of coming back at this point.

[rhoenix]

Ok, that's better. Baro Ki'Teer will be back this Friday, and will also be back the next Friday.

Time for ducet hunting.