Beginners Guide

Greetings Tenno. If you are new to Warframe and are interested in some tips, tricks, and otherwise answers to the plethora of features and functions of the game, this page is designed to help you with all of that.



The attached Crash Course video is an excellent source of standard information. Please note that there has been some alteration to the look of the solar system and the mission selection since this video. For everything else it does not cover or that you did not understand, please continue reading.

This page is a little intimidating with its length, but know that it is just a lot of short sections designed to give new players an idea of features. This page can be used as a kind of index for the whole WARFRAME Wikia. Feel free to skip around this page for info.

If you feel there is something major missing from this page, please let us know with comments on the bottom or by leaving a message on an admins' wall.

The Basics
Prior to the start of the game, please familiarize yourself on the game's settings, UI navigation and other basic functions.

Key Bindings
Please familiarize yourself with the default key bindings, or change them to your liking. Warframe uses a slightly unconventional default key binding set.

Tutorial
When you first start the game, you will be guided to a Tutorial mission. The mission is tied to the Warframe PS4 E3 Trailer: The Call. From there, the Lotus will guide you through a series of basic movement and combat tutorials. Also note that you cannot die in the tutorial; your health will only drop to a minimum of 3 health points. The tutorial can be replayed through the home screen of the game, by clicking the Personal Statistics section. More information will be detailed directly below.



Personal Statistics
You can view your personal statistics by clicking the progress bar on the upper left corner of your home screen. From there, you can access your player rank, the Lore of the game, and the Tutorial. The progress bar shows you your Mastery Rank in the game, and the avatar to the right can also be changed to your liking by clicking it. More information about Mastery Rank will be detailed below.

Settings
There are a wide range of settings that you can change to your liking. Notable settings include gore, network options, HUD toggle and of course graphics options. Warframe is Nvidia PhyX supported, so it is highly recommended to enable it if you have a high end Nvidia graphics card. Also, if you have a low end graphics card, it is recommended to turn Local Reflection off, since it is the most graphically intensive option. The settings can be accessed by clicking the 'gear' button on the upper right corner of the home screen.

Mode Selection
On the top of your home screen is the Mode Selection. From there you can alter the mode of your missions, these modes include: Online, Private, Invite Only and Solo mode. Online lets you play with a random group of people in your region; Private enables your friends and Clan members to join your session; Invite only enables you to play with people that you have invited to your session; and finally Solo mode lets you play in solo. Note that you can be revived by your teammates if you are defeated during a squad mission, however this ability will be disabled in Solo mode.

Contacts
Contacts is a place where you can manage your friends and view your clan member list. From there you can join your contact's session, invite your contacts to your session, and more.

Chat
Chat is a place where you can communicate with your clan and players in your region. There are three constant channels channels: Region, Clan, and Recruitment. There are 2 conditional channels: If you are in the Design Council, you will also see the Council chat. While in a session with other players, the squad channel will be available. You can type "/?" for a list of chat commands.
 * Note that recruitment is designed primarily for recruiting players in your region to your session or Clan.

Other UI Buttons
Details regarding Arsenal, Market and Foundry can be found in the sections below.

Your Arsenal
The first thing to know is that you are playing a space ninja! But not just any kind, you are equipped with one of many different armors that grant special powers and shields along with many Weapons, a side kick known as a sentinel, consumable equipment, and persistent abilities called Auras.

The Armor Suit: "Warframes"
This armor is the Warframe Suit. Though the lore for the game is still being held by Digital Extremes, the creators of the game, we know that the warframes were designed by the Orokin, the predecessors of the Tenno, a very long time ago. The powers of the warframe are equipped after the frame has leveled up a few ranks by fighting with the weapons available to you (explained below).

For more information on the warframes, see the pages of their explanations and see these videos:

Choose Your Weapons
Second, you have weapons! There are lots to choose from. Every Tenno may bring 3 separate weapons into battle: a Primary weapon, side arm, and a melee. All these and the warframe are equipped in the arsenal. These weapons can vary slightly to being completely different concepts. Various weapons will perform better or worse depending on how they are equipped and what faction you are fighting.

For more info on weapons, see all their pages or visit The Hidden Redcoat's channel

Sentinels
Sentinels are flying robots that have a mix of utility and offensive capabilities. All are equipped with a weapon and have programmable slots known as "precepts" that will change the functionality of the pet. Like the warframes and weapons, each work best in different styles. Notice that you will not have one from the beginning. It takes some time to get one of these.

Modules
Better known as just mods, these cards are used to optimize frames, weapons and sentinels to perform at top efficiency. They can add Damage Types, increase Armor, change a sentinels behavior, add effects, and extend the range of their equipment. All mods are only attachable to one set of equipment, require mod energy, and almost all have a Polarity. Mods level up by Fusion at the cost of Credits and increase their mod energy requirements. So don't go off just upgrading them all to max as fast as you can. Give your equipment time to level up first.

Mods can be accessed and equipped via the Upgrade screen of your warframes and weapons. You can also set up to three custom mods "loadouts" to change mod builds quickly between different missions. You can change your loadout on the upper left corner of your Upgrade screen where it says "A", "B" or "C".

Auras
Aura cards are very much like Mod cards, but with 2 significant differences. The first is there mod energy listing GIVES more mod energy to the equipped warframe, and the second is that the card effects the entire squad in play with that player. The cards can only be equipped to the slot hanging out on the left side of the other mods. See their page for more details.

Pickups
There are a number of pickups during every missions. Their effects range from restoring your health, energy and ammo. Mods and resources can also be acquired through pickups. Please familiarize yourselves with their appearance in game by visiting the page.

Supercharging and Polarizing
Orokin Reactors and Orokin Catalysts are used to supercharge your warframes and weapons respectively, giving you more mod space for a higher upgrade potential.

Formas are used to polarize your equipment, cutting down the cost of the mod with the same Polarity selected, again giving you more mod space for higher upgrade potential.

Please refer to their respective pages for a detailed description of their mechanics. These items can be acquired through the Market with Platinum or through the Alerts system. Information regarding these two system is also detailed below.

Cosmetics
and Sentinel Cosmetics Both your warframes and sentinels can be customized with a number of colors and cosmetic items, such as alternative helmets, scarves, and Idle Animations. All of these items can be equipped through the Appearance screen of your warframes and sentinels. Weapons can only be customized with different colors.

Inventory
You can view all of your owned items in your inventory, including acquired items, Resources, and gear. More details about Resources can be found in the section below.

Planets
Planets divide the missions of the game into groups. Each planet has a dominant faction controlling it and a range of levels of enemies. Upon a players first run in a planet, the Boss of the area will taunt the player until he has been defeated by the player. Planets except for Mercury start locked indicating that the player has not yet done the missions needed to access the Planet.

Missions
Participate and hopefully success in completing missions. There are a lot of different objectives to fulfil, like Capture, Raid, Rescue and more. A successful completion will earn you bonus experience, credits and sometimes (depends on the mission) additional rewards like mods, consumables or even blueprints. As you play through a mission, you will also collect resources, credits and mods as well as experience (affinity). Failing a mission or quitting out before extraction will cause you to loose all rewards gained in the mission except experience.



Factions
There are four Factions in warframe. The 3 enemy factions are Grineer, Corpus, and Infested. The player is considered part of the Tenno. The Orokin Void also have the Corrupted but these are just modified versions of the other factions. Each faction dominates a different planet and has different attributes and strategies, weaknesses and resistances.

Different factions and enemy types have their own vulnerabilities on different damage types. Through the use of Mods, you can modify your weapons to deal various types of damage such as Armor Piercing, Electrical, Fire, Ice etc., therefore increasing your damage output on a certain type of enemy. The exact resulting damage dealt can be calculated through a series of complex calculations involving damage type, mod level, and critical chance etc. However, one can get a glimpse on the effectiveness of a certain damage type against a certain enemy type through visiting the Enemy Vulnerabilities page.

Bosses
Every factions have a number of bosses. They possess superior weaponry and powers compared to the normal infantry. The bosses contributes a big part in the Lore, as they all hint significant back stories regarding their factions. Upon defeating, they have a chance to drop various Warframe blueprints and rare resources. They can only be found in Assassination missions.

Currently, the bosses are undergoing massive redesign in order to make them more sophisticated and interesting to fight. So expect changes and new appearances in upcoming updates.

The Stalker
The Stalker is a rogue Tenno who will show up at random after you have killed at least one Boss. He is very strong, but not unbeatable. With the right weapons, or a good team, he can be brought down for a good prize.

Powers
Each of your warframes possesses four unique abilities. These abilities are detailed on the warframes page. They are all assigned numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4. The 4th ability is an "ultimate." Using powers costs Energy.

Maneuvers
Agility is a very important component in the game. Each of your warframe is capable in doing various combat maneuvers, swordsmanship, and various types of free-running skills. These include wall-running, sliding, stealth kill etc. These abilities defines the Tenno as the true master in both weapons and martial arts.

Affinity
Affinities are experience points in Warframe. Players can earn affinities by completing various objectives, picking up Affinity Orbs and killing enemies. Affinity is essential for leveling up your equipment, and upon leveling up your item gains mod energy to equip mods and the player gains Mastery Points, as detailed directly below.

Mastery Rank
Mastery Rank is gained by leveling up equipment. Warframes give 200 mastery points per level up while weapons give 100 points. Therefore it is highly recommended to sell your equipment only when you have reached the maximum rank 30 on each of your equipment. Mastery is needed to obtain more powerful weapons. To gain a rank, a player must gain enough mastery points AND pass a test.

Foundry and Market
and also Market In order to acquire your equipment, you have to either craft them through the Foundry, or purchase them through the Market using Credits or Platinum.

Most of your equipment can be acquired in the form of Blueprints. In order to craft it, you have to gather components in game. These components include Credits, parts (also exist in the form of blueprint or actual product), and Resources. For resources and blueprints, their existence depends highly on the locations, as different Planets have abundance of different resources.

Your Clan
Clans are the basis of competition in warframe. Clans are groups of players with common interests, goals, methods, or just groups of friends. You can join an existing clan by being invited by one of it´s members or create a clan of your own with your buddies. A list of existing clans can be found on the wikia at the clan listing page. Alliances are a future function for Clans that allows clans to still connect with each other and have special actions.

Clan Dojo
The base of your clan. Here you can research and build strong weapons, test your movement skills in a parkour room, or duel with your clan mates for fun. If you created a new clan, you will have to build all the necessary rooms for these different options with collected resources.

Alerts
Alerts are random generated missions that have a chance to yield a large sum of credits, Auras, or rare equipment that otherwise can only be bought with Platinum. These missions can be monitored in game or through the official Twitter Feed.

Login Rewards
Login Rewards is a lottery system that activates once a day when you log in. The reward can be anything from common to rare equipment depending on the number of days you have logged in consecutively. Please see the page for more details.

Events
Events are world wide special missions which usually last an entire weekend. The objective requires the effort of all Warframe players world wide to complete, and the progress can be monitored through a progress bar in game. Upon completion, with a certain individual requirements, players will be awarded with a special equipment, as well as trophies for the top individual or clan. These events happen around once every month, and are announced beforehand in the official forum.

Referral Program
Players can recruit friends to play the game via the unique referral link. By doing this players can earn a number of rewards, and the newly recruited player can benefit from a number of in-game boosters.

Founders
Founders are players who have invested money in this free to play game to get some extra gear, purchase their warframes, and speed up crafting. Some gear is only obtainable through purchasing a founders pack. For players who buy the top two packs, they also get to vote in special secret votes to determine the outcome of some features of the game. Those who buy the top package will have their name show up in game as a "solar land mark" (sponsor) for one of the missions. The program officially ends on November 1st, 2013.

Tenno Lingo
Players often refer certain things in Warframe with a special phrase. Here is a list of some of them:
 * Orokin Catalyst: Silver potato/salty potato
 * Orokin Reactor: Golden potato/sweet potato (Or simply potato in both cases)
 * Grinding: Leveling up experience for warframes or weapons
 * Farming: Gathering resources in game
 * Tower 1,2,3 Void: T1,2,3 Void
 * Control Module: Cmod / CM
 * Resources: Mats
 * Platinum: Plat
 * Lieutenant Lech Kril: Hammer Boss
 * Crewman: Boxheads
 * Zorencopter: A technique which utilizes very fast weapon like Dual Zoren to gain a very fast leap.
 * Wallet Warrior: Players who acquire most equipment in game with Platinum.
 * LFM: Looking for member.
 * LFG: Looking for group.
 * Red Text: In game announcements that appear in chat from the developer Digital Extremes. The text are written in red, hence the name.
 * Nerf/Buff: Weaken(Nerf) or strengthen(Buff) of a Weapon/Warframe
 * RNG: Random number generator, the system which Warframe uses to determine drop rates of loots and rewards. Sometimes jokingly called Random Number God.

About the Wikia and Editing
is the most complete database on everything about Warframe. This Wiki is completely player supported, and is maintained by a team of volunteer Administrators.

We welcome you to participate and be a part of the community. When editing, be polite and remember that other people also spend a lot of time working on these articles. Please refer to the main article for styling guidelines.