Syndicates

Syndicates are groups of interest operating throughout the Origin System separate from the Corpus, Grineer, and the Tenno. These factions have their own ideologies and goals regarding the fate of the system, with some inevitably in disagreement with another syndicate. Syndicates are unlocked once a player has reached Mastery Rank 3.

Players can choose to perform various quests, missions and alerts for a particular syndicate, raising the player's affinity with that group and earning access to unique offerings. Raising familiarity with one group however can raise the anger of another group, and even lead them to launch hits against a player, so choosing which syndicate to gain standing with is important.

There are currently 6 known Syndicates, each having their own unique themes and goals. Every syndicate has a particular relationship with other syndicates, favorable or otherwise. Earning reputation with a particular group also earns reputation to a group they have favorable relationships with, but decreases reputation with another group that they oppose.

Standing
Standing is a special resource central to the Syndicates mechanic, which indicates a Tenno's favor with a particular syndicate. Players can begin earning Standing once they reach Mastery Rank 3.

Earning Standing with a syndicate is largely a matter of wearing that syndicate's Sigils, a cosmetic item received from Syndicates. To equip a Sigil, the player must go to the Regalia section of the Appearance tab in the Arsenal, select the location of the Sigil (Front or Back of the Warframe), and then select the desired Sigil. When wearing a syndicate's Sigil, approximately 2.6% of any affinity earned will be converted to Standing with that syndicate. Higher tiered Sigils also grant a multiplier to Standing gain depending on the Sigil's rank, ranging from +5% to +15%.

Syndicates offerings can be purchased by spending Standing with that syndicate, essentially trading on "favors" that the Tenno has performed for that syndicate. Syndicate offerings are gated by rank within the syndicate, and syndicate rank is gained by achieving certain amounts of Standing. In essence, a Tenno can choose to spend earned Standing on lower-tier offerings, or save up Standing to gain access to higher-tier offerings. Standing gain has a daily cap that players cannot exceed, which determines the maximum amount of Standing they can earn daily. This amount is calculated as 2000 * Mastery Rank + 2000 per day.
 * Ranking up requires obtaining the maximum possible standing at the current rank, and a sacrifice requested by a syndicate (credits and either a rare resource or a Prime component). ALL of the Standing earned will be spent in the rank up. For every Rank up you can choose a Gift from the Syndicate (this can only happen once for each rank up).
 * Ranking down happens when standing goes below the minimum value for the current rank. This can be caused by aiding an opposed or enemy syndicate, or spending more standing than one currently has.
 * A player with Mastery Rank 18 would be able to gain a maximum of 2000 * 18 + 2000 = 38000 Standing in one day (+ 19000 for the associated allied Syndicate).
 * The reward Standing from Syndicate Alerts do not affect or count towards the daily Standing cap however.
 * Playing a Syndicate Alert with a reward of 1600 and wearing the highest Sigil (+15%), will reward 1840 reward Standing (+920 for allied) and will not be subtracted from the daily cap limit. All other standing received with the primary Syndicate in this mission for killing, completing challenges etc. will be subtracted from the cap.
 * Syndicate Medallions do not count against the daily cap, thus they can provide additional Standing even if the cap has been reached.
 * An affinity booster would, in effect, double Standing gained since Standing is based on affinity earned.

Standing with a syndicate can be negative, which occurs if a Tenno has been performing favors for a rival syndicate. However, there is a lower limit on how much negative Standing a Tenno can have with a syndicate, currently capped at -44,000 Standing. Tenno can achieve two negative rankings within a Syndicate. If players wish to regain favor with a particular Syndicate, they must earn positive Standing, then provide sacrifices in order to escape from any negative ranks they have attained.

Death Squads
Syndicates with whom a Tenno has negative favor with is considered hated by that group, which will make them send Death Squads consisting of a large number of their elite Eximus troops to hunt down said Tenno. Similar to Assassins like Stalker, Death Squads can randomly appear in a mission, and will announce their presence via flickering lights, and a declaration from the Syndicate leader, though Death Squads will arrive immediately after a single transmission. Death Squad arrivals can be differentiated from normal Assassin arrivals by the entire squad being covered in a red light. Unlike regular Assassins, Death Squads do not have Death Marks and players do not receive messages from the opposing Syndicate as a warning, so players have no way of identifying whether they are currently eligible to be attacked by a Death Squad besides negative syndicate reputation.

Notably, killing off a Death Squad does nothing to discourage the syndicate that sent them, and has no impact upon your standing either way - even if you are allied with the faction that sent the Death Squad, you can freely assist teammates who have teams sent after them without risking your own syndicate standing.

At Rank 1 of disfavor, Syndicates will send Eximus Squads, which consist of 8 Eximus units. If a player reaches Rank 2, Eximus Platoons will be sent in instead, consisting of a much larger number of units. These Eximus units have significantly more health compared to those found in normal missions, and some may have immunity to certain crowd control effects like Chaos.

Syndicate Alerts
Syndicate Alerts are special Alert missions unlocked by attaining Rank 1 in a particular syndicate. Like normal alerts these missions temporarily replace the mission for a particular node, however Syndicate missions have a regular schedule and duration, being 24-hour alerts that are given every day at 12:00 midnight (00:00hrs), Greenwich Mean Time. The primary reward for performing these alert missions is a large set amount of bonus Standing for the Syndicate that posted them, making them ideal for earning further Standing with that group. Finally, like normal Standing gain half of the bonus Standing rewards is also shared towards an allied syndicate, though negative Standing with opposing syndicates is increased as well.

Note that the fixed Standing rewards are always tied to the syndicate that sponsored the alert, regardless of the Sigil currently worn (e.g. performing a Steel Meridian alert that rewards 230 Standing while wearing an Arbiters of Hexis Sigil will still give 230 Standing in favor of Steel Meridian). The allied standing gains and opposed/enemy standing losses may be affected if one wears a sigil from an unrelated syndicate. The Standing rewards do not affect or count towards the daily Standing cap.

Up to three alerts per Syndicate can be active per day, with up 1 - 2 alerts per planet, and these alerts can appear on any planet the player has unlocked. Moving up the ranks increases the enemy level of each mission, making them more difficult the higher the player's rank. Standing rewards per mission also increase with each rank however, making these missions overall more rewarding.

Note that players can receive Syndicate alerts from multiple Syndicates at once, with the only requirement being that the player has attained at least Rank 1 with each Syndicate.

Syndicate alerts can be identified by their mission icons being represented by the Syndicate's emblem. Like with Quests and Alerts, Syndicate Alerts have their own tab in the World State panel in the Navigation Console of the Liset, which can be used to check for active alerts.

As a final note, Syndicate missions can and will ignore regular enemy spawn listings for the tileset. This can lead to encountering Hellions in the Grineer Asteroid set, and Detron Crewmen and Anti MOAs outside of the Corpus Gas City.

Syndicate Medallions
Syndicate Alerts can spawn up to 8 Syndicate Medallions throughout the map, which can be gathered and redeemed in the Syndicate's Relay enclave for Standing. Like the alert rewards themselves, they do not count towards the daily Standing cap.

Offerings
Syndicates offer various items to players who achieve a certain rank. Each rank of offerings consists of Sigils and the items below. These items can be acquired through spending Standing points. Upon achieving the next rank, Syndicates will reward players an item of their choice of that new rank. However, Syndicate exclusive weapons cannot be chosen as the free offering, and reobtaining the rank after demotion will not allow you to choose another reward.

Rank 1
At Rank 1 in a Syndicate, Tenno can purchase Eximus Specters. 1) Although being an Ancient Healer, it does not have the normal damage reduction aura of normal Eximus Healers of this type.

Rank 2
At Rank 2, Syndicates can offer a Syndicate Void Key Pack consisting of 3 random Void Keys for 25,000 Standing. Two of the keys will be random Tower I or Tower II keys, with the 3rd key guaranteed to be either a random Tower III or Tower IV key.

Rank 3
At Rank 3, Tenno can purchase Large Team Bonus Consumables, which are reusable 10-pack blueprints.

Rank 4
At Rank 4, Tenno can purchase Weapon Augment Mods, which are mods that are exclusive to an individual weapon. These mods usually have greater effects than mods of similar function, and may sometimes add unique functionality to a weapon. Equipping a Weapon Augment mod will also make the weapon earn Syndicate Points converted from any affinity that weapon earns, which fills up a gauge that shows up beside the weapon's ammo counter. When enough Syndicate Points are collected, the gauge will reset and the weapon will immediately release a special effect in battle combining a radial elemental damage attack, a temporary stat buff, and a stat restore effect.

Rank 5
At Rank 5, each Syndicate sells a selection of Warframe Augment Mods, which are mods exclusive to individual Warframes that modify a particular Warframe ability in unique ways. Each Warframe is favored by two different Syndicates.

Special Syndicate Weapons also become available at this rank, which are modified versions of existing weapons with altered stats and innate Syndicate effects identical to those provided by Weapon Augment Mods. Syndicate weapons can be traded between players, but only when the weapons are previously unused, unranked and unmodified with Forma or Orokin Catalysts.

Finally, unique decorative Syndicate Syandanas can be purchased at this rank. Syndicate Syandanas have energy colors that glow brighter each time a particular Syandana achieves an in-mission condition specific to that Syandana.

Tips

 * Red Veil, New Loka, and The Perrin Sequence are non-hostile towards each other. Steel Meridian, Arbiters of Hexis, and Cephalon Suda also share this relationship, which means you can boost relations with either of those sets of 3 freely without worrying about losing relations drastically.
 * It should be possible to have rank 5 standing with a maximum of 4 syndicates by supporting 2 complementary syndicates, for example: Using Cephalon Suda sigil until it and Arbiters of Hexis are both Rank 5, then using Steel Meridian sigil until both it and Red Veil are both Rank 5. Supporting any other faction will reduce standing with at least one of the 4 you have chosen, therefore it is much harder to have Rank 5 with more than 4 syndicates as it would require tedious micromanagement (as shown in the table below).
 * New Loka and Red Veil are another example.


 * Supporting a combination of various Syndicates can raise your reputation with four or five groups. There will be some amount of conflict reducing the efficiency.


 * Recovering from negative ranks with a syndicate also requires sacrifices to be paid for each negative rank, said sacrifices are in the same order of price as positive ranks sacrifices, including a Forma for Rank -1 and even an Orokin Reactor or Catalyst for Rank -2 alongside significant amounts of credits. Be very wary when you choose which syndicates you want to rank up but also which ones you want to have negative standings with. DE firmly said that choosing a syndicate is meant to have a deep impact on the game and therefore shouldn't be taken lightly.
 * The more affinity you get (from kills, assists and abilities), the more standing you will receive for your Syndicate while wearing the appropriate Sigil. Thus enemy level is also an important factor. You will receive less standing from 20 waves on a T1 Defense than 20 waves on a T4 Defense.
 * The best way of farming Standing Points seems to be from doing Interception missions since they seem to spawn a very high amount of Eximus (which give about ten times the affinity of a normal enemy on the same mission). The faster they get killed, the faster more will spawn and the more Standing Points you will get. For instance, the Cerberus sector in Pluto can give you anywhere between 5,000 and 40,000 standing in four rounds (depending on the composition and loadout of a given Cell, along with the Standing Cap), and half of that amount for your allied Syndicate.

Bugs

 * There is a bug during Death Squad announcements where the Syndicate leader will appear on player screen but without saying anything, and even if the player manages to defeat the Death Squad, the image of the Syndicate leader will still remain on player screen.
 * Also happens at start of syndicate missions.
 * Sometimes the transmission portrait for the syndicate mission will show a background without the character there.

Media
Syndikate