[Steam, free] Warframe: mission based fps that is unique and damn fun.

[Lantyssa]

Yeah, you have to be efficient in a lot of the mastery tests.  Though I dislike having to do it, I really advise hitting the wiki ahead of time to know the constraints of the Mastery tests.  Passing or failing often does come down to whether you have the right frame, right companion, and right weapon equipped going into it.

[Engels]

The first test is one of the hardest there is. It gets very easy after that, till around rank 9ish. However, you point at the larger problem with the game, which is endemic to many good games; the devs see the game from a 'veteran' player's perspective and forget to include clear information. The wiki is essentially a must and having a group of friends playing the game helps enormously, since you can ask the basic questions without having to dig about in player-written guides. I for one would not have lasted 48 hours in the game without the folks in the clan helping me along.

[Rasix]

I think with the first 4 tests you just need to keep one thing in mind: get out of the middle. Just run from pillar to pillar. I suppose these could suck if you picked shitty starting weapons (which could happen).  I found them easy once I figured out how to approach it, but I pretty much picked the easiest starting weapon combo (mk1 braton, lato, skana).   For the rank 4 test, you should enter with full energy and just backpedal the entire time, or you'll get swamped.

As deep as the rabbit hole is early on, it just gets deeper.  There's still a lot of shit I have only the faintest clue about, and I'm still pretty terrible at producing decent builds.

edit: For the record, I randomly failed my first rank test.    

[01101010]

I bombed the hell outta that first test because: I had no clue you could leave the circle and I didn't know you could use abilities.

[WayAbvPar]

I am still completely clueless about this game. Even the wiki isn't much help, and I hate to monopolize the TS channel asking stupid newbie questions. Stuff I would like to know-

When do I get another frame?
Which planet should I unlock first?
Do I have to grind up a bunch of mastery before I can buy other weapons from the marketplace?
Should I grind everything to 30 before moving on?
Which missions are most solo-friendly? Will the missions change on the planets, or does each sector always have the same mission type?

I feel like I am beating my head against the wall and not seeing much progress for it. I fail almost every mission type except defense or extermination, which leaves me with a tiny pittance for my trouble. It is discouraging.

[Rasix]

I am still completely clueless about this game. Even the wiki isn't much help, and I hate to monopolize the TS channel asking stupid newbie questions. Stuff I would like to know-

When do I get another frame?
Which planet should I unlock first?
Do I have to grind up a bunch of mastery before I can buy other weapons from the marketplace?
Should I grind everything to 30 before moving on?
Which missions are most solo-friendly? Will the missions change on the planets, or does each sector always have the same mission type?

I feel like I am beating my head against the wall and not seeing much progress for it. I fail almost every mission type except defense or extermination, which leaves me with a tiny pittance for my trouble. It is discouraging.

Addressing your questions in order:

Another frame can be either be bought from the cash shop, or you can kill a boss multiple times to get the helm, chassis, and system blueprint.  It's a random drop (of the 3), but it normally doesn't take too long to get all parts.  You construct these parts and then buy the frame blueprint from the market.  Budget out about 60-100k credits for this, and you'll likely need to farm some building material.  

The issue becomes, what kind of frame do you want?  Do you want big DPS numbers? Tanking? Utility? Rhino is decent DPS/utility and great survivability. It's pretty much what Excalibur would be if it were designed by non-idiots.  Easily farmable. Nothing we've tried to farm thus far has been really that difficult.  Some bosses are harder than others.  So it really just depends on what you'd like to do.

Planet unlocks can be gotten from beating bosses.  We can do this at any time really.  But Venus/Mars should be easy first unlocks.

There are a lot of weapons you can get with zero mastery, there are some gated at 1,  more gated at 4, and various others gated beyond that. Latron is a great rifle and it's zero mastery to use. A Bolto is a good sidearm and can build off your Lato once you're done with it.  Also, zero mastery.

It's best to get shit to 30 before dumping it.  Once you've got a frame you won't insta-die in, we can do Kappa (a mobile defense) to grind up weapons if you need to finish leveling something off.  It's best not to be rushed into Kappa, because I don't think it gives you a good feel for the game.

Exterminate are the easiest missions.  The rest have various amounts of solo-ability. I wouldn't even attempt the following solo: survival, defense, mobile defense, excavation, interception.

[01101010]

I am still completely clueless about this game. Even the wiki isn't much help, and I hate to monopolize the TS channel asking stupid newbie questions. Stuff I would like to know-

When do I get another frame?
Which planet should I unlock first?
Do I have to grind up a bunch of mastery before I can buy other weapons from the marketplace?
Should I grind everything to 30 before moving on?
Which missions are most solo-friendly? Will the missions change on the planets, or does each sector always have the same mission type?

I feel like I am beating my head against the wall and not seeing much progress for it. I fail almost every mission type except defense or extermination, which leaves me with a tiny pittance for my trouble. It is discouraging.

I'll take a shot, but I have only been playing a week now... but I like the depth of this game so I been paying a lot of attention to things.

1. You aren't going to like this... but you have to either buy a frame with real money platinum ...or grind 3 types of blue prints for the frame and then farm credits for the frame blueprint. In essence, you have to kill the boss who drops the frame piece blueprints you want multiple times for all three pieces: Helmet, Systems, Chassis. For example, to get Valkyr, you kill Alad V for drops (all praise RNGesus). You need all three pieces to fill the actual frame blueprint you buy off the market. So you get the helmet and then need the mats to build that... which takes a rare drop piece along with other mats. I think the helms take a neural sensor which is a bitch to get to drop at times - other pain in the ass is Control Module mats (which these mats don't drop on the lower planets so if you don't have up to Uranus done, hope you have platinum). Do that for the other pieces and once you get those done, buy the frame blueprint (25k credits on the market) and get an orokin cell to drop because the frame bp needs one of those two. Then it is a 72 hour construction time for the frame. 12hours for each piece.

TLDR; farm piece blueprints for specific frame - build all 3 - buy main frame BP from market for 25k credits - build frame - wait 72 hours. Helmet+Chassis+Systems+Orokin Cell = frame. Farming times will vary.

2. Unlock whichever you prefer. Planet unlock tree here. Mercury gets you both Mars and Venus branches.

3. Certain weapons will have mastery rank requirements, yes. Mastery Rank goes up only as you rank up different frames and weapons and complete new missions on new planets... If you are maxxed out on those and replaying the same missions to farm stuff, you'll be stuck ranking it up. You can replay the same missions over and over, but you will need new weapons to advance mastery rank. That said, there are a lot of weapons you can get at mastery rank 2 - the boltor is pretty nice and is the regular braton. The really crazy shit requires higher mastery though.

4. Yes, grind everything to 30 for the mastery rank increases. I made the mistake of taking the bow and throwing knives in the training mission... pretty much sucked till I built a braton. The knives are ok... but the bow is just a sniping weapon. However, I maxxed the braton and built a boltor and intermittently played with the mk paris. Finally ranked it all way and sold it. Only sell stuff after you max it out for the mastery I say! but yeah... It pays off to grind everything to 30, as unfun as that may get.

5. Solo friendly... Exterminate missions I like because there are a set number of enemies so you know what is what. I also like sabotage missions because you have a single goal to take out a target and get your ass out. Capture missions are doable, but you have to take care because those chucklefucks run and run fast through a shit ton of enemies so catching them can be tedious and your chance of losing them is high. Rescue is hit or miss with me. I don't care for them and they can take a long as time, but they are also doable. Defense and Mobile Defense I have yet to complete solo... ever. Assassination is a boss fight which you can solo, but you need a ton of modded out gear.

I don't have a clan and mostly run PuGs which when trying to complete planets is frustrating as all hell. I am stuck on Phobos and Sedna because there is one mission in the branch and no one plays it (mainly because it is a shitty rescue mission). I will try with different frames once they get built though... (have Valkyr, Rhino, and Nyx being built currently).

[Rasix]

Control modules become less of an issue if you get dragged through a couple low level tower missions.  It was a struggle for the first few, but now I have like 70 unused.

[01101010]

Control modules become less of an issue if you get dragged through a couple low level tower missions.  It was a struggle for the first few, but now I have like 70 unused.

Void Tower is invite only and me without a clan means that ain't happening unless someone blindly sends me an invite (happened all of 3 times so far). I balked at each one because I had no idea what it was and nothing at level 30. Silly me.

[Engels]

You get tower keys often from rotation rewards in earth's Cabria excavation mission. You can get up to tower III keys there.

More detail here:

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Void_Keys

That said, playing this game without a clan is madness.

[Ard]

What Engels said.  Playing without at least one other regular player is madness and will likely burn you out on the game.  Realistically you need at least 4 total to see the actual  harder content.  The game gets fairly rough at the upper end. 

Void Towers are also another source of weapons, warframes (the prime variants of both), and credits.  They take more effort, require organized people and specific frames for specific mission types, and are extremely prone to RNG, moreso than the bosses elsewhere.  While they're considered endgame content, they can be done at just about any level since the keys have varying level ranges.

Way, don't be afraid to ask questions in teamspeak, we don't mind answering them, although I'll personally likely only end up confusing you since I'm bad at explaining things.  The start of the game is extremely rough without friends, because you start out really underpowered.  The starting weapons and frames are pretty shitty, your mods are underleveled, and you don't have a sentinel or kubrow.  This is stuff that all fixes itself fairly quickly, but it can lead to a bad first experience if you're by yourself.

Part of the problem has also been that we haven't been including you in things.  That's my bad for part of it.  We've only had a small limited group with a smallish window to play together in the last week or so.  I'll try to peel off the next few times you're on to help you move forward.  I have a ton of stuff that's low level that I need to rank up anyhow.

[Rasix]

And I'll need to level Trinity, Valkyr and Frost (when I build it, goddamn neural sensors).  Definitely see if you can pull someone into a group before you start something up.  Also, in group things tend to go a lot faster, so you'll end up getting more exp, credits, mods, and components.

Although definitely get someone more experienced than just myself.  I'm still shitty. 

[Ard]

Oh I should also note, be wary of void tower missions for a few days.  They broke some things in some completely terrible ways in the last patch, most of which result in you not getting paid or rewards.

I should probably also mention that after you finish the initial story, the game doesn't really have any real structure whatsoever.  You can do things in whatever order you want, farm whatever you want, and level whatever you want.  You can be jumped forward to higher planets by someone taking you to the preceding planet's boss fight.  Once you have a planet unlocked, anyone can take you to any mission they have unlocked in that system, and it'll unlock for you after.  If you don't have the planet unlocked, you can still go, it just won't unlock.  It's extremely friendly to players that way.

If we're intending to level, we usually go to the Kappa mission on Sedna, which is a level 20ish mobile defense mission that isn't too hard and throws a rediculous number of mobs at you.  Otherwise we do Cambria for the reasons Engels mentioned.  Basically just speak up when you log on, and we can probably get people together to do one or the other pretty easily if nothing else.

[Flood]

^ ^ Previous posts are good advice. 

I played quite awhile solo and progressed along pretty easily - up to a certain tipping point in the planetary progression.  Don't feel bad about jumping into PUG's for quest objectives, farming, alerts etc.  Caveat my opinions come from when I was playing regularly, which was right before Kubrows, but a certain amount of leaching / drafting off of higher level players was an accepted practice.  As long you're not being a complete boat anchor and running to odd parts of the map or getting killed repeatedly people are pretty cool with you just tagging along and getting the rewards.  If you can stand the environment in chat (and can work with the shitty chat commands) absolutely hang out in in the appropriate chat tab and ask for invites, join farming groups, get a taxi to an event etc.

I'd try and move through the planetary progression and unlocks as much as you can based on level / weapons / frames / mods allow.  When you get stuck or bored (or any downtime really) get into a PUG Survival mission and play as long as you can for better rewards.  See above above about tagging along behind higher level players.  Farming and grinding is a decent chunk of the game and just slogging out a grip of Survival missions is a good way to build up resources and mods as you progress.  Playing even Mercury or Venus to 20+ minutes can be quite worthwhile, and many times there are higher level frames in there levelling or farming and you can jump in and contribute.  Check the wiki; if there's a specific frame you want spend a few PUG games farming the blue prints.  if there's an alert with a reward that's especially juicy jump into chat and check for PUGs looking to run it or get a taxi to a certain area.  Mods are a large part of your effectiveness and the best way to get them is just run a lot of missions.  After you get a frame or two levelled, some of the core mods, and some decent weapons you can try and PUG some void missions or Nightmare runs and get some higher level rewards.

Just my opinion - but if there's something you really want and you have the means - just spend the RL cash.  I haven't spent a ton of money on Warframe, but I have definitely spent more than I have in any other game that has micro-transactions / cash shops and I don't feel like a cheese dick about it.  If you get a "gift of the lotus" for a decent chunk off of platinum, go for it, and then use the plat to buy a new frame.

[Trippy]

I got the 75% platinum discount offer when I rejoined and Googling it looked like that offer wasn't that common so I went ahead and got the big pack. I found this article about what to spend platinum on and cross-checking things it still seems pretty accurate.

So far I've only spent some plat on the cheap starter frames I didn't have so I would have something to level up when I got tired of my Mag or ran out of revives on it and the Carrier companion though I'm not sure I like how it floats behind me. Basically just about everything in this game is intentionally designed to be visually distracting* and cause as much motion sickness/eye strain as possible and the way the carrier moves behind me distracts my left peripheral vision so I may remove it.

* Except for the most important stuff like when your air is about to run out or your mission timer is about to expire

[Flood]

 Basically just about everything in this game is intentionally designed to be visually distracting* and cause as much motion sickness/eye strain as possible and the way the carrier moves behind me distracts my left peripheral vision so I may remove it.

* Except for the most important stuff like when your air is about to run out or your mission timer is about to expire

Agreed, I toned some of it down in settings.  Absolutely turn off motion blur.  And 75% off?  Score.

[Rasix]

I thought that was a myth.

[Ard]

This is one of the first f2p games I actually gave developers money for because I felt like I owed it to them after like 100 hours played.

[Trippy]

The tutorial version of the mission to kill Vor doesn't drop the Mars nav fragment, just the Venus one so I've been playing all this time without access to the Mars components

[Ard]

The newer planet unlock system is honestly pants on head retarded, and a great deal less intuitive than the old star maps that they used to have.  I'm not entirely sure why they went down this road other than "because ps4".

[Trippy]

I also like the old system map better. It looked better and had a better UI (I hate the spinning radial menu thing) but yeah lol console UI.

And just to be clear for any newbies reading just do the Vor mission again and you'll get the Mars fragment.

[Shrike]

They went down that road because shiny and next gen consoles.

It does look really cool, but it's actually more confusing than the old chart was. Worse, veteran players can't help you because their shit was already unlocked and they have no clue how to tell you to progress.

Nevertheless, once unlocked you won't have to worry about it again, but they do add new nav segments here and there as new features are added. Also, unlocking all nodes on a planet will give you the option of doing nightmare missions on random selected nodes. They are NOT easy, so be warned. They do give random dual stat mods that are very desirable for more advanced warframe builds.

[01101010]

PuGs for the most part work out pretty well when I get people around my mastery level. Otherwise I am basically just chasing behind the higher level guy who has managed to wipe out the whole zone in front of me with warp speed that I have yet to figure out. Those I don't really mind when I am just working on unlocking planets - I just see it as another block opened on the map and one step closer to the boss and another planet. I do sorta mind it when the boss fight comes up and I barely get to the area before the boss is down. I never even saw Alad V until the 3rd time I ran that (fuck you Neural Sensor drop) mission.

Sometimes the synergy is there but mostly it is just a higher level facerolling the zone and me trailing behind with the vacuum.

[Lantyssa]

Also, unlocking all nodes on a planet will give you the option of doing nightmare missions on random selected nodes.

This also allows you to deploy extractors on the planet.  You can buy the blueprint in the market.  (Only worry about the Titan Extractors at first.)  Extractors give free resources.  How many you can have depends upon your rank, and whether you've bought a Founder's or Prime package.

To unlock all the nodes you'll need to build an Archwing.  The initial quest unlocks at Rank 2 (I believe), but you will need help as it's an excavation mission that is a lot tougher than the level range would suggest.

[Trippy]

Question about Mag and Corpus. I keep reading that Mag owns Corpus thanks to Shield Polarize but that doesn't seem to work so well for me as few if any will die when I use it, unlike when I use Pull where most will die. Do I just not have the right mods for it yet (e.g. I only have one Power Strength mod) or am I not using the power properly?

[Ard]

It's more that you aren't likely dealing with them at high enough level where their shields are a pain in the ass (high 20+).  You're probably also lacking mods to make it hit in a larger radius and harder.  Lantyssa would know more than me on this though.

[Trippy]

Okay that makes sense. I'm still putzing around the low level planets. I just unlocked Jupiter (and Mars ) last night.

[Ard]

This is true for a lot of abilties, btw.  Some of them seem really anemic without Intensify, Stretch, and/or Continuity mods to increase power, range, and duration respectively.  Unfortunately, most of these are rare mods.   Most of us have tend to have extras though, so come bug us. 

[01101010]

Question about Mag and Corpus. I keep reading that Mag owns Corpus thanks to Shield Polarize but that doesn't seem to work so well for me as few if any will die when I use it, unlike when I use Pull where most will die. Do I just not have the right mods for it yet (e.g. I only have one Power Strength mod) or am I not using the power properly?

I thought shield polarize kills Corpus shields, which leaves them with a tiny bit of health to shoot once or twice. So it doesn't actually kill them, but makes it easy to pop them off... Though I could be wrong since I didn't like Mag at all.

[Ginaz]

Just use Rhino and all your problems are solved.

[01101010]

Just use Rhino and all your problems are solved.

36 more hours till that happens... along with Valkyr and Nyx actually. 

[Trippy]

Question about Mag and Corpus. I keep reading that Mag owns Corpus thanks to Shield Polarize but that doesn't seem to work so well for me as few if any will die when I use it, unlike when I use Pull where most will die. Do I just not have the right mods for it yet (e.g. I only have one Power Strength mod) or am I not using the power properly?

I thought shield polarize kills Corpus shields, which leaves them with a tiny bit of health to shoot once or twice. So it doesn't actually kill them, but makes it easy to pop them off... Though I could be wrong since I didn't like Mag at all.

It also does AoE damage based on how much was drained.

[WayAbvPar]

I feel like I made a bit of progress yesterday (unlocked 3 more segments on Earth), but this is extremely newbie unfriendly. The client doesn't tell you shit, the map is wonky, and a lot of the mission types seem like they are impossible to solo (and there is no way to tell without spending 15 minutes getting indecently assaulted). Even if I wanted to spend some money, I have no earthly idea what I would spend it on, what is useful, etc. The dev team is doing themselves a disservice by making it so inaccessible.

[Trippy]

Just use Rhino and all your problems are solved.

Yeah, that's assuming I can get the boss to drop something other than Rhino helmets for me (3 in a row so far).

[Trippy]

I feel like I made a bit of progress yesterday (unlocked 3 more segments on Earth), but this is extremely newbie unfriendly. The client doesn't tell you shit, the map is wonky, and a lot of the mission types seem like they are impossible to solo (and there is no way to tell without spending 15 minutes getting indecently assaulted). Even if I wanted to spend some money, I have no earthly idea what I would spend it on, what is useful, etc. The dev team is doing themselves a disservice by making it so inaccessible.

Yes the game is very unfriendly for newbie soloers. One trick I use to unlock segments is find the ones with "open squads" and try to join. There's a (small) chance that you'll join a game in progress or just starting. I'm also leveling up a Loki, which I bought for 75 plat, to make the Spy missions easier.