Harness antimatter. Nova uses antiparticles to provide crowd control and amplify damage output. She obliterates enemies by destabilizing matter itself.
This is Nova, wildly unpredictable.
Nova's presence on the battlefield is complex and deadly. Handle with care, Tenno.
Nova is a high-tech, antimatter themed Warframe. She is somewhat fragile, lacking any powerful defensive abilities and having low shield capacity and moderate health. In return, she features extremely powerful offensive abilities capable of demolishing entire waves of enemies. Nova materialized in Update 9.0 (2013-07-13).
Alternatively, upon completion of The Duviri Paradox, Nova's main and component blueprints can be earned from The Circuit. By selecting her on the rotating week she is available, players can earn her blueprints after reaching Tier 2 (Neuroptics), 5 (Chassis), 8 (Systems), and 10 (Main) rewards.
Nova. Mercurial, unpredictable and a miraculous example of harnessed antimatter.
It would be a bold fool indeed who tried to tame lightning. One such individual was Holsom Yurr, a freelance problem-solver who commanded high fees for his low morals. A deficiency that netted him great success in endeavors where a conscience would have held others back. He is the only figure known to have secured a back-channel charter permitting him to selectively raid certain rails, so long as Orokin ships were avoided. The story of Nova and Yurr survives via the captain and security logs of the Orokin vessel Masker's Theodolite. It survives because it was deemed to be... of historical importance.
Orokin investigators scrutinized every frame of security footage, each line of the captain's log, for assurance that the outcome of this encounter was indeed true.
The passenger vessel Masker's Theodolite reported critical problems with her engines.
Nova, mistress of antimatter, was deployed to relight the Theodolite's antimatter reactor before the vessel was drawn into the gravity well of a nearby planetoid. 10,800 passengers were at risk. Clipping this Protonia Syandana to herself she exited her lander. The interior of the ship was deathly quiet, but then, chaos. Behind her the section of the ship securing her lander was detonated and blown free. Stranding her, for the time being.
Nova sped toward the shouts of trapped crewmen. Eight were locked in flow control behind a hardened glass wall.
Opening a wormhole between herself and them she phased the crewmen to safety as their compartment flooded with lethal gas. Booming from speakers in every hallway, Holsom Yurr declared himself. Holsom Yurr: the man who, at one time, had run the Pluto resistance. Who spent 3 years terrorizing the rails between Jupiter and Venus just to prove that he could. Who took that notoriety and translated it into a career: security, political assassination, courier runs, torture, graft, blackmail and, in one case so it was said, genocide. There were graves already dug for him by the many who wanted him dead.
Word was Holsom already had a tomb prepared for himself on some distant moon, with a table piled high with riches and a chair just waiting for him to be sat in for eternity. A man capable of anything, and a man who would rather die than lose. A man easily recognized by the signature item before you. It was, so they say, an item of great personal significance to the old rogue.
Why, and what history it shared with him, is a matter of some speculation.
Unaware she was being led into a trap built just for her, I don't imagine Nova took any special precautions.
This Flux model helm, for example, was fairly standard. The appealing venting displayed her antimatter nature, an announcement of power as much as an evocation of beauty.
Where were we? Ah yes. Nova and the rescued crew moved for the escape pods. Once they were clear she would about-face and find some way to free the remaining ten-thousand-seven-hundred-and-ninety-two. Alas, thuds and clangs resounded as every life pod ejected into space. Empty. Yurr clarified, boomingly, that escape was not an option. To punctuate this assertion bulkheads slammed down in every corridor shipwide. The only path Yurr left open, worryingly, was the one that led directly to the Theodolite's antimatter reactor. The very thing Nova had come to save.
He had jettisoned the antimatter core. Without that it was impossible for the reactor to function, and the Theodolite would smash into the planetoid in a matter of minutes. Yurr had been paid, by persons unknown, to neutralize Nova completely. Yurr, a man who prided himself upon an ignorance of the impossible, had agreed. And devised this trap. Nova was a being created to contain and harness antimatter. The antimatter drive no longer had a fuel core. His proposition was simple: Nova would enter the reactor chamber, crack her own containment and kickstart a new reaction using her own body as fuel.
She could save 10,800 lives, but only at the cost of her own.
She had minutes to decide. With a flick of her wrist Nova's Hikou throwing stars took out every camera in eyeshot, killing Yurr's surveillance of them. This done, she turned to the technicians she had just saved.
As she entered the reactor's chamber Yurr smugly assured her she was doing the right thing. Within the reactor's observation room the technicians nodded assent. This was going to be close . From the bridge Yurr sealed the reactor chamber's blast doors. Seconds later, on Nova's signal, the technicians overrode that command. The doors shot upwards and Nova wormholed out of the chamber and back into the corridor. Leaving that portal open she created another, straight up, into the vent system. On the bridge Yurr had little time to react, but react he did: ordering all prisoners to be killed. In that moment a portal flashed into existence, Nova launching herself amidst pirate captain and crew. And showed them what she was made of.
In a blinding flash Yurr and every mercenary on that bridge was deeply infused with Nova's antimatter, starting a chain reaction within them. Yurr realized what was happening, but too late. With a few precise shots from her Syrah-customized sniper rifle Nova neutralized those mercenaries who were quicker off the mark before grabbing Yurr by his brightly irradiated hair. Hurling him back through her network of wormholes, Nova sent Holsom Yurr pinging from portal to portal before tumbling out into the reactor chamber.
Yurr struggled to his feet as every molecule in his body approached critical.
Behind the glass the technicians gave him a final, grim salute before slamming the blast door closed. Holsom Yurr, pirate and legend, went nova. The reactor caught the reaction. The technicians harnessed it, and the engines of the Masker's Theodolite roared to life. It was, indeed, the boldest of fools who attempted to leash lightning. And so a notorious rogue, said to be unkillable, met his end in the attempt.
As the historical record now demonstrates.
Holsom Yurr was a notorious Solar Rail pirate who was hired by an unknown party to neutralize Nova. In his calculated plan, the pirate lured Nova onto an Orokin passenger vessel known as the Masker's Theodolite, and ruptured its antimatter reactor as it was being drawn into a gravity well of a planetoid. Once Nova was aboard, he jettisoned all of the ship's escape pods and then the antimatter core. Without the core, the ship's reactor ceased to function, threatening the lives of its 10,800 crew. Nova, a being that contained and harnesses antimatter, would be forced to sacrifice herself in order to replace the antimatter core.
Turning to the technicians she had saved, Nova threw her Hikou stars at Yurr's surveillance cameras and devised a strategy. She then walked into the reactor chamber, only for the technicians to override the blast doors to allow her to Wormhole into the bridge and Molecular Prime Yurr and his mercenaries, picking them off with her Alamos Sniper. She then grabbed Yurr and threw him back into the series of Worm Holes, bringing him into the reactor chamber, before the portals collapsed and the blast doors sealed shut.
The pirate's molecules reached critical and his body went nova, and the ship's engines roared to life. Yurr met his fate as antimatter fuel for the Masker's Theodolite.
Warframe Guides
“I am the Lotus. I will guide you, but we must hurry.”
Guides are created by users like you. They aren't as strictly regulated as most pages, so keep an eye out for dated or subjective information.
Have your own build and playstyle? You can contribute too! Instructions are within.
See Category:Nova Guides to read user-made guides on how to play this Warframe.
Trivia
Both the name and the abilities of this Warframe were chosen by submissions of Design Council being filtered by Digital Extremes then voting by the Design Council community.
Nova is one of the fastest Warframes, with a base sprint speed third to Gauss, second to Loki, and tied with Ash Prime, Mirage, and Wisp.
The term nova refers to the violent outbursts of energy that occur in cataclysmic variable stars. These variables are actually binary stars that consist of a tidally-distorted companion that accretes stellar material onto the surface of a white dwarf. In this accretion disk, the infalling matter is highly compressed on the white dwarf's surface due to its immense gravity. This process increases the pressure and temperature of the collected matter tremendously: enough to burn hydrogen. As this matter contains mostly hydrogen, runaway fusion reactions occur on the white dwarf's surface, producing an extremely bright thermonuclear outburst.
According to Nova's original profile, this Warframe was a result of Tenno High Council research. This is widely believed to be a nod to the Design Council that aided in Nova's creation.
Nova is the last Warframe with a helmet that grants statistical changes (The Nova Flux Helmet), as all helmets released from Nekros onward have since been entirely cosmetic.
Currently one of four frames that has three alternate helmets, the others being Loki, Excalibur, and Vauban.
In her Leverian entry Nova is described to have created a chain of linked portals in vents she didn't actually go through herself, as if she was able to place portals behind walls and facing the correct direction. It's unknown if this is just a dramatization or mistake on the Leverian's part for misinterpreting these ancient Warframe stories, or a capability Nova is supposed to be able to do lore wise.
Bugs
Dying while wearing a different helmet and using a different color scheme causes Nova's head to return to default coloring.