Arbitrations

Arbitrations are a special Alert variant hosted by the Arbiters of Hexis, featuring "elite" versions of endless missions with additional modifiers for greater difficulty. They were introduced in Update 23.10.

Mechanics

In order to access Arbitrations, players must have completed all nodes on the connected Star Chart, including Dark Sectors, Lua and the Kuva Fortress, as well as the lone nodes of the Orokin Derelict. The only two exceptions are the disconnected Assassination nodes of Mutalist Alad V and the Jordas Golem on Eris. Players can check on what nodes they need to complete by talking to the Arbitration representative in the Arbiters of Hexis' Relay enclave.

Note that this also entails completing the Ropalolyst node, which requires players to have completed the Chimera Prologue and all the story quests leading up to it.

Once players have Arbitrations unlocked, it will be displayed on the Operation window. There is only one Arbitration alert up at any given point on the Star Chart, changing nodes on an hourly basis. Arbitrations will only select nodes with endless missions (Survival, Interception, Defense, Excavation, Defection, Infested Salvage or Disruption) and the enemy level range will start at 60-80.

Rules

• Once a player loses all their Health, they do not enter the Bleedout phase; they die instantly. Furthermore, they are not allowed to revive themselves.
  •  Sacrifice does not work in Arbitrations, and neither will Inaros' Undying Passive.
    • However Nidus' and Wukong's revival passives, Loki's  Savior Decoy, Oberon's  Phoenix Renewal and Khora's  Venari Bodyguard still function normally.
    • In general, only effects that do not enter the bleedout phase at all will work.
  • Note that the absence of Bleedout also extends to the player's Companions. Kavats can prevent death by being equipped with  Tek Assault, and Sentinels equipped with ( Primed)  Regen or  Reawaken will function as normal.
  • When a player dies, a Revive Tower will appear at their place of death with a waypoint, and Arbitration Shield Drones (see below) will begin to drop Resurgence Tokens on death.
    • Resurgence Tokens function identically to Index Points: Picking them up will give the stacking Resurgence Burden debuff, which lowers Warframe maximum health and shields and constantly drains energy.
    • 5 Resurgence Tokens are needed to revive a dead player, but they do not need to be carried by the same Warframe. Warframes carrying a cumulative total of 5 points must bring them to the Revive Tower at the same time.
    • If a Warframe carrying Resurgence Tokens dies, all the tokens they are carrying will be lost.
    • Resurgence Tokens are unaffected by  Vacuum and  Fetch.
    • Once all players are revived or the dead players leave the mission, excess Resurgence Tokens will disappear, removing the debuff.
• The missions sport modifiers unique to each:
  • Excavation: Excavation time is increased from 100 seconds to 180 seconds.
  • Survival: Life Support Capsules are worth 75% of usual.
  • Interception: Enemy towers fill twice as fast.
  • Defense: The defense objective is a Hexis Operative NPC armed with Telos Akbolto. Unlike Sortie Defense, the Operative follows a chosen player instead of roaming by themselves, and can't be given a weapon by a Tenno. Downtime between waves is reduced to 2 seconds. Like players, the Operative will not enter Bleedout, and their death will be an instant mission failure.
  • Defection: Rescue targets cannot be revived.
  • Infested Salvage: Consoles have half their normal health.
  • Disruption: Demolyst and Demolisher beeping range is halved and are marked when within 15 meters of a Tenno (from 30 meters).
• While quitting the mission will not yield any rewards, failing the mission keeps any rewards earned at the end of a rotation, but not any resources or credits enemies may drop.

Arbitration Shield Drones

Arbitration Shield Drones will spawn among the enemy ranks. They function similarly to Shield Ospreys, but instead:

• Grant complete Damage and Warframe Ability immunity to nearby enemies (except other Arbitration Drones). They are also immune to Warframe abilities themselves.
  • The ability immunity extends to Limbo's Rift Plane, in that they are unable to enter it and therefore cannot be killed by someone inside the Rift even while inside a Cataclysm. You can still switch to your Operator to damage the drones as it cannot enter the Rift Plane either. Enemies protected by the drones will not damage players inside the rift.
  • Builds focusing on area of effect damage might be difficult to employ as most enemy squads are being escorted by Arbitration drones. As the explosion of the drones provides a form of area damage and crowd control, focusing on single-target damage can be more viable to some.
  • Despite being weapons, the drones are also immune to all damage and effects from all Exalted weapons.
• Explode on death, dealing 3000 Blast damage to all enemy units, including other Arbitration Drones, in an area of effect.
  • It's recommended that players deal with the drones as quickly as possible. Projectile launchers or weapons with large projectile hitboxes such as Arca Plasmor are ideal for this task, as the drones are fairly small and move around quickly. Sniper rifles are also a good choice to pick out the drones from afar.
  • The death explosion can damage nearby Arbitration Shield Drones. Use this to your advantage.
  • As of Hotfix 23.10.7, Arbitration Shield Drones do not benefit from the Ancient Healer's damage reduction aura.

Bonuses

• To encourage gameplay diversity, players are given a +300% Ability Strength bonus and a +300% Damage bonus to a random Warframe and Weapon for each alert. The affected Warframe and weapon change from one player to another: for example, one player could be given bonuses for playing with Excalibur and/or a Skana while another player can be given bonuses for playing with Mag and/or a Braton.
  • The bonus can also be applied for Warframes and Weapons the player does not own.
  • Bonuses will also apply to any variants the Warframe or weapon may have (Prime, Syndicate, etc.).
    • Note: Mutalist Cernos and Mutalist Quanta are considered separate weapons from their other counterparts, and receive bonuses separately.

Rewards

Mission

Arbitration Alerts reward one unit of Vitus Essence for every rotation completed, with more of it being an uncommon drop from Arbitration Drones. Players can use their collected Vitus Essence to purchase unique items and mods from the Arbitration representative in the Relays' Hexis Enclave.

Rewards are on a AABBCC... rotation, as opposed to the AABC rotation used in normal missions. After the first four rotations, the Arbitration will continue on the C rotation endlessly.

Rotation A		Rotation B		Rotation C
900 Endo	44%	1200 Endo	44.5%	1500 Endo	33%
Ayatan Ayr Sculpture	9%	Ayatan Piv Sculpture	12%	Ayatan Orta Sculpture	20%
Ayatan Sah Sculpture	9%	Ayatan Vaya Sculpture	12%	3 Vitus Essence	7%
Ayatan Valana Sculpture	9%	3 Vitus Essence	7%	Seeding Step Ephemera Blueprint	5%
3 Vitus Essence	7%	Arcane Blade Charger	5%	Arcane Blade Charger	5%
Arcane Bodyguard	5%	Arcane Bodyguard	5%	Arcane Pistoleer	5%
Arcane Pistoleer	5%	Arcane Primary Charger	5%	Arcane Primary Charger	5%
Arcane Tanker	5%	Adaptation	2.5%	Arcane Tanker	5%
Adaptation	2%	Combat Discipline	2.5%	Aura Forma Blueprint	4.5%
Aerodynamic	2%	Shepherd	2.5%	Combat Discipline	3.5%
Combat Discipline	2%	Aura Forma Blueprint	2%	Melee Guidance	3.5%
Aura Forma Blueprint	1%			Swift Momentum	3.5%

Up to date as of Hotfix 28.0.7

Arbitration Honors

• Vitus Essence is used to buy items from the Arbitrations Vendor NPC in the Arbiters of Hexis room of any relay.

Item	Type	Vitus Essence Cost
​ Aerial Ace​	Mod	30
Amprex Telos Skin	Amprex Cosmetic	15
Arbitration Statue	Decoration	15
Archgun Riven Mod (Veiled)	Mod	35
Atomos Telos Skin	Atomos Cosmetic	15
Atterax Telos Skin	Atterax Cosmetic	15
Ayatan Amber Star Blueprint	Resource	10
Ayatan Zambuka	Resource	50
Bleeding Body Ephemera Blueprint	Cosmetic	30
Blazing Step Ephemera Blueprint	Cosmetic	30
​ Cautious Shot​	Mod	20
​ Energizing Shot​	Mod	30
Grendel Chassis Locator​	Warframe Locator	25
Grendel Neuroptics Locator​	Warframe Locator	25
Grendel Systems Locator​	Warframe Locator	25
Illumina Judicium	Emote	75
Judicial Coils	Operator Cosmetic	30
Judicial Oculus	Operator Cosmetic	30
10,000‍10,000	Resource	25
​ Mending Shot​	Mod	30
Power Donation​	Mod	20
​ Preparation​	Mod	30
Rolling Guard​	Mod	20
Scars of Arbitration Sigil	Cosmetic	20
​ Sharpshooter​	Mod	20
Vigorous Swap​	Mod	20
Vitus Emblem	Cosmetic	5
Vitus Essence Decoration	Decoration	15
Vitus Illumina	Decoration	15
Total		605

Last updated: Update 26.0

• Vitus Essence is also used to craft items, mainly Ephemeras.

  

Tips

• The most common way to die suddenly is by enemy grenade. They are small and hard to see, but they do make a beeping noise. Be wary of them, as they can blast through even the tankiest frames.
• Do not bring self-damage weapons, unless you really know how to use them. Even then, you probably shouldn't. If your weapon is modded to do significant damage to Arbitration enemies, any self-damage will probably one-shot you through whatever damage reduction you have. Fatal self-damage will not trigger death prevention effects, such as  Quick Thinking,  Phoenix Renewal, and Nidus' Undying passive.
• The most useful non-Warframe specific mods for survival are  Adaptation and  Quick Thinking, and it is highly recommended to have at least one of them equipped.
  • Since Adaptation can only be obtained from Arbitrations, it is often prudent to trade for it, and sell the copies you will inevitably get as rewards to recoup the cost.
• Despite the presence of Warframe-specific bonuses, they will rarely make them more viable than survivability-focused frames. Survival of yourself, your teammates, and the objective (depending on mission type) is key to success, so it is wise to use a frame with high effective health such as Rhino, Nezha, Inaros, or a frame with healing and damage reduction support such as Trinity or Oberon. Killing the enemies is no harder than a sortie mission, so the large increase in Power Strength is welcome but ultimately unnecessary.
  • The bonus can open alternatives to builds however, as it will provide massive Power Strength that would otherwise require several Mod slots, capacity, and penalties from Corrupted Mods. A Trinity for instance can focus entirely on Duration and her own survivability, while the boon caps out her Blessing's scaling.
• The Arbitration Drones accompanying almost any decently sized pack of enemies heavily impacts the value of area-of-effect weapons or Warframe abilities, as the hordes of lesser enemies who would succumb to AoE damage are protected by the drones, and then usually wiped out by destroying them. The largest threats are the drones themselves and enemies who are tough enough to withstand their detonations; as such, single-target damage is generally more effective.
• Specters can be used to aid you and your allies throughout these missions, making it ideal to bring them in situations where defending a key point is the objective (Defense, Interception, and Infested Salvage). It isn't advised to use specters that do not prioritize following the player (Ancient Healer specter, Charger specter, etc) in the other endless missions (Survival, Defection and Excavation), as movement is mostly key to success there. 
  • Trinity Warframe Specters are able to heal the defense target in defense missions, while also offering great energy regeneration, making it an ideal Warframe specter to bring to this mission type.
  • Ancient Healer specters can be used to reduce incoming damage greatly for you and your teammates, and Shield Ospreys can be used to grant extra shields and a greater shield regeneration rate.
  • Other specters that have no special abilities or traits, such as the Charger or Roller specter are not really recommended as their durability is very low and they tend to not follow the player. However they can serve as a distraction, drawing aggro away from both you and your teammates.

Bugs

• The randomly selected Ability Strength and Weapon Damage bonuses may not consistently apply to all Prime Warframes and Prime Weapons.

Trivia

• Arbitrations were originally known as "Elite Alerts" when they were pitched by the Development Team.

Patch History

Last updated: Hotfix 25.7.6