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Build the Mandachord and find the cause of Cephalon Suda's erratic behavior.
—Quest description

Octavia's Anthem is an optional solo-only Quest, released in Update 20.0 (2017-03-24). After expressing their interest in music and tasking the Tenno with crafting a Mandachord, Cephalon Suda experiences unusual glitches that may have dangerous implications for her.

The tie-in webcomic What Remains can be found on the official website (Archived).

Walkthrough[]

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“You're not supposed to be in here! You're going to ruin the surprise!”
The following article/section contains spoilers. Please finish the quest before proceeding.

The Octavia's Anthem quest can only be unlocked once players have completed The Second Dream.

The quest is started by visiting Cephalon Suda inside a relay where Cephalon Simaris will abruptly tell the player to disregard anything Suda says, complaining about her obsession with music (which he regards as a pointless waste of data). Suda will greet the player and begin expressing her thoughts on music. She will also be noticeably erratic in her train of thought. From there Suda will ask the player to build the "Mandachord", an artifact blueprint given to the player by Suda. Simaris will immediately mock Suda's interest in music, and suggests she be decommissioned due to corrupted precepts.

Collect the Mandachord Components: Sao, Neptune[]

Enemy Level: 29-31
Tileset: Corpus Outpost

On accepting the quest, the player will receive a blueprint for the Mandachord. In order to complete the Mandachord, players must embark on a mission to find the remaining three components - the Mandachord Body, Mandachord Fret, and Mandacord Bridge - on a Corpus base in Neptune.

Once the player enters the mission they will be accompanied by an unknown white light that leaves behind a bright purple trail as it moves accompanied by music. The player must follow this light as it will guide them to each individual component's location. The components will be inside a container where the player can press the context action to pick up the component.

Once the Mandachord Body, Fret, and Bridge have been collected the light will fade away and Suda will tell the player to extract.

Build the Mandachord[]

On finishing the Corpus mission, Suda will ask the player to craft the Mandachord.

Manufacturing Requirements
Credits64
5,000
Morphics
3
MandachordBody
1
MandachordBridge
1
MandachordFret
1
Time: 10 sec
Rush: Platinum64 0
MarketIcon Market Price: N/A Blueprint2 Blueprints Price: N/A

Once the Mandachord is built and claimed Suda will begin explaining why the Mandachord is important before going silent and not finishing her statement. After some time Ordis will ask Suda what she was going to say about the Mandachord, to which she will respond as though confused, then claim she made an error and did not actually have any data about the Mandachord.

Suda will relay Ordis coordinates to the next mission location, though Ordis will express his concern about Suda's state to the player.

Find the First Song Fragment: Stephano, Uranus[]

Enemy Level: 20-20
Tileset: Grineer Sealab

The next mission will be a Grineer underwater base in Uranus, with Suda musing about the relationship between the song fragment and the base. The player must find an Orokin artifact the Grineer have recently uncovered called a Hydraulus. On using the Hydraulus with the context key, a special UI will appear, composed of a concave table with several rows and columns, which then begins playing music, and Suda recognizes the music as belonging to "Octavia's Anthem". In order to proceed, players must add resonant beats to the song by activating the appropriate bar positions (out of three possible) in the top row of each column as indicated by the height of the glowing blue symbols that appear on top over of the chart each time the beat passes it. Once the beats are correctly added, Suda remembers that more of the song can be found on Lua, with players being able to extract at this time.

"Effects Intensity" needs to above 0 in the accessibility settings or the glowing blue symbols will not be visible to the player

Find the Second Song Fragment: Tycho, Lua[]

Enemy Level: 20-20
Tileset: Orokin Moon

On the Orbiter, Simaris urges the Tenno to discontinue their quest and destroy Suda lest her corruption affect the other Cephalons. Ordis and Simaris get into an argument regarding their course of action with Suda, with Ordis wanting to help, while Simaris mocks Ordis' "compassion-glitch" and tells him that his actions could endanger both themselves and the Operator.

During the mission, Suda once more forgets why they came to Lua, and with a reminder from Ordis, realizes that Simaris was right, and that the corruption infecting Suda is not benign. Apart from that, the entire map will be eerily devoid of any enemies, only occasionally encountering groups of Grineer corpses. The player then finally encounters a pair of Sentient Battalysts to Suda's horror, before she is taken over by a malignant presence that Ordis recognizes as Hunhow. Having taken over Suda, Suda-Hunhow orders his Sentients to find the song fragment.

Players must fight the Sentients in order to get to the Hydraulus, and once located must exterminate all Sentient enemies within the room and any additional ones pouring in, in order to access the Hydraulus. Similar to the previous instance, the correct resonant beats must be added to the musical chart (this time in the second row with five possible positions per column) in order to complete the music. Upon completing the puzzle, Suda regains herself for a moment to ask Ordis to apologize on her behalf to the Operator, before Hunhow once again reasserts control. Ordis then asks players to extract once more, while an infinite amount of Sentients will continue to spawn during their escape.

Harness the power of an Orokin Tower: Taranis, Void[]

Enemy Level: 20-20
Tileset: Orokin Void

Another argument ensues between Simaris and Ordis on their course of action against Suda, with Ordis reaffirming his stand to free Suda from Hunhow's control, as he managed to receive the coordinates of the last song from Suda.

Inside the Tower, the player will be attacked by "Decaying" Sentient enemies, surrounded by a red aura but no less deadly. Ordis expresses surprise at the presence of Sentient units inside the Void - a fact long thought impossible - and surmises that Hunhow is using Suda's energy to shield them (though not perfectly) from the Void's effects. Upon locating the room in which the Hydraulus is located players can use a nearby console to lock the room, preventing additional Sentient units from entering and allowing players to clear the room of any remaining enemies. Only after all enemies are cleared can players start on the Hydraulus puzzle, which like the previous instances requires matching resonant beats with the provided figures.

Unlike with previous instances, solving the Hydraulus puzzle does not rouse Suda and instead attracts Hunhow's attention who claims that Suda has been eradicated. Ordis draws up a plan to make Suda hear the anthem by using the Orokin Tower to boost the signal. Players must then find a console that they can activate to amplify the signal, which will count up to 100%. Hunhow will send in Sentient units to disrupt the amplification, freezing the counter, and players must destroy them to allow the counter to proceed.

After the amplification is complete, players have to activate the Hydraulus again, which angers Hunhow, making him try to attack Ordis. Despite this, Ordis is able to point the players to the location of a second amplifier, which players must activate and then bring to 100% amplification similar to the previous one. Completing this task will make Ordis try to save Suda by directly interfacing with her, though he falls silent afterwards, but all sentients will then disappear. afterwards, an extraction marker will note to players that they can extract when ready.

Go to Simaris in a Relay[]

Back on the ship, an inbox message will open, containing a recorded transmission from Ordis stating that the Operator will only receive that message if he failed to save Suda, then asks players to go to Simaris and try to contain Hunhow before the Sentient infects more Cephalons, and finally saying farewell to the Operator after reminiscing about the past.

Speaking with Simaris in a Relay with the prompt "Suda's Datascape?", he mentions that Cephalons are able to create alternate reality datascapes for various functions, including training rooms and the Sanctuary, and questions if the Tenno wish to go after Ordis despite the risk with the Sentients entangled in his code. Players can either ask Simaris to help them ("Yes, I am. Help me"), or question Simaris more about Hunhow's intentions ("Hunhow's intention?"). Simaris states that while he won't endanger himself or his Sanctuary, he can send the Tenno to Suda-Hunhow's datascape.

Suda's Datascape[]

Upon being synthesized into the datascape, players are greeted by the virtual visage of Hunhow in the middle, and a circular ring made up of floating blocks of differing colors representing the Mandachord. As Hunhow boasts about his successes, Ordis clues in the player that they need to recreate the music of Octavia's anthem inside the datascape's Mandachord in order to defeat Hunhow. This particular part of the mission has unique mechanics:

  • A beam emanating from the center of the map will sweep around the field, which will stagger and deal damage to the player if it hits them.
    • This can be blocked using melee parry or negated with high-enough stagger/knockdown resistance.
    • The beam can be jumped over.
    • The pillars that are on the sides are high enough so that standing on them will allow the beam to pass safely underneath without touching you.
    • The beam sweeps high enough that you can simply duck under it on all but the outermost ring blocks (though one has to be careful not to accidentally duck while in motion causing you to slide off the small platforms instead).
  • Bright yellow balls will emanate from certain dark-brown platforms. Stepping on these platforms will reveal a blue musical note.
  • Red energy pillars on dark-brown platforms represent errant notes, and must be erased by stepping on the platform.
  • Stepping on a dark-brown platform that doesn't have an errant or musical note will create an errant note on that block, requiring you to jump to a different block and jump back to remove it (simply jumping upwards from the same errant block and touching it again does not count for removing the note).
  • Grey blocks are neutral blocks, and can be stepped on safely without affecting the Mandachord.
  • Falling off the edge of the world will damage and respawn you at the beginning pillar.

The player's goal is to step on the blocks with the yellow spheres in order to unveil the musical notes, while removing any errant notes while at the same time preventing the formation of more errant notes. Once the player completes the music, the notes will begin firing rhythmical barrages at Hunhow's avatar, damaging him.

Upon depleting the first third of Hunhow's health, players are ported into another Mandachord set, where they must repeat the process again but with more dark-brown platforms. In this second stage, Sentient avatars called Eradicysts will spawn, attacking players with ranged projectiles, and preventing players from activating musical notes if they're hovering over one. Despite their menacing nature, Eradicysts can be easily destroyed through most weapons fire in a single hit, having significantly weaker health and defenses than true Sentient enemies, mostly serving as a hindrance rather than a threat. Once enough musical notes are activated on the second stage, Ordis will be able to break free from Hunhow's control and join the battle, attacking any Eradicysts in the way, though he will be forced to retreat should he sustain too much damage.

A third stage will commence once the second third of Hunhow's health has been depleted, with the same mechanics but with more blocks to contend with, and a greater number of Eradicysts will spawn to attempt to stop the player. During this phase, Cephalon Simaris enters the datascape, providing fire support by spawning in virtual representations of units from his Sanctuary such as Grineer Heavy Gunners. These will invariably be destroyed periodically by Hunhow's beam, but will draw fire from the Eradicysts before then. Completing this final stage will destroy Hunhow's manifestation completely, freeing Suda from his control and restoring her datascape.

In the aftermath, Suda awakens, but does not remember recent events due to short-term memory loss. She thanks both Ordis and Simaris for saving her, though Simaris (rather unconvincingly) claims that he merely did it to preserve the Cephalons' weave. As gratitude to the player, Suda rewards the blueprint for the OctaviaIcon272 Octavia Warframe at the completion of the quest.

Tips[]

  • It is recommended bringing along strong weapons with different elemental damage mods installed to better deal with Sentients due to their heavy presence in the quest.
  • Though both the Sentients and their Decaying counterparts do not fly, Conculysts will quickly locate inclines such as slopes and stairs in order to reach you, while Battalysts will pummel you with deadly homing projectiles.
  • If the player had finished The War Within quest, using the Operator makes the fight much easier as the Void Beam removes all of the damage adaptations the Sentients gained during the battle.
    • In addition, using Amps acquired from The Quills after finishing The War Within and Saya's Vigil will prove much more effective at fighting Sentients as Amps deal more Void damage against them.
  • The final mission of the quest requires frequent jumping. Warframes with good aerial control like ZephyrIcon272 Zephyr, WukongIcon272 Wukong (using CloudWalker130xWhite Cloud Walker), and TitaniaIcon272 Titania are ideal in accomplishing this mission.
    • Warframes that either passively or actively regenerate health (such as OberonIcon272 Oberon using Renewal130xWhite Renewal) are a viable alternative for weathering the damage from the Mandachord beam, the Eradicysts and potentially falling off the map.
    • Since the Eradicysts do not drop anything on being killed, it is recommended to bring weapons with high ammo reserves.
    • Another way to kill the Eradicysts are to use slam attacks with melee. This also helps in landing on correct notes when bullet jumping and/or gliding.
  • Transference cannot be used in the final mission, and will be temporarily replaced by Transcendence while the player is inside Suda's datascape. As of Focus 2.0 this is one of the few missions in which players who have completed The War Within are forced to use Transcendence.
  • In the final mission you can avoid the Mandachord beam simply by ducking. This will prevent you from staggering and potentially falling off.
  • In the final mission you can more easily see the "Errant Notes" and the correct notes by switching your settings preset to Low. This will give them 3D shapes as well as their particle effects, making them much easier to see. Additionally, this may clear any "Errant Notes" which have become invisible or displaced due to a bug.

Notes[]

  • If a player has purchased the OctaviaIcon272 Octavia Warframe from the Market with Platinum prior to completing the quest, they will receive a Pistol Riven Mod on completion of the quest in lieu of the normal blueprint reward.
  • Once Suda has been taken over by Hunhow, players affiliated with her syndicate will not gain any visible standing with her until the quest is complete, nor will she speak to the player on entering a mission for her. The standing is still accumulated, however, and will be added to the existing amount after she has been restored.
    • Oddly enough, if the player visited Suda before talking to Simaris in the final mission, she will somehow act normal as if nothing happened at all. Her syndicate can also be fully accessed as well (possibly a bug)
  • Ordis' corruption in mission 4 does not prevent Ordis' purple overlay of Lotus.
  • Talking to Suda while the quest is active (and before she was taken over by Hunhow) will occur a special dialogue, in which Suda will question if the player has constructed the Mandachord since she "can't hear its music".
  • Completing the quest also unlocks a special mission called "Incident Archive 2318-H" in Suda's room, which is a replay of the quest's final level, but with a leaderboard. Incident Archive 2318-H is merely an obstacle challenge, and will not reward anything when completed.

Bugs[]

  • During the first mission, the blue light guiding the player toward the next part for the Mandachord might get stuck near doorways, spinning in circles without proceeding to the next movement node. Walking into a new level chunk/level segment will teleport the light to the player and begin its movement cycle anew.
  • After the last mission, when the quest ends, the game tends to freeze the keyboard & mouse inputs; the only way to "fix" it, is to close or alt+tab out of the game and reopen it.
  • During the last mission, the Mandachord may glitch and will not enter the next stage of the battle.
    • There may be an invisible, broken note. Watch for red pixels over the neutral spaces when the beam crosses.
    • It's much clearer to see upon turning the game to lowest settings (PC).
  • During the 'second song fragment' quest, if a door closes between you and a sentient, the door will never open and you have to restart the mission.
  • During the 'Second Song Fragment' quest on Lua, you may enter the room with the Hydraulus but be unable to interact with it. This may be due to killing a sentient at the very start of the quest (through the first door) which may be non-hostile. Do not interact with this Sentient (or any others that you may come across) until the conversation between Cephalon Suda and Ordis remarking at the presence of Sentients (roughly 100-200 metres away from the quest objective).
  • During Third song fragment quest, Amplification consoles may not trigger correctly.

Media[]

Mandachord_Tutorial_for_Octavia_-_Warframe

Mandachord Tutorial for Octavia - Warframe

Patch History[]

Update 35.5 (2024-03-27)

Quest Changes

Quest Blueprint Build Times:

We reduced the following Quest-related blueprint crafting time to 10 seconds, and updated the Rush Cost to be 0 Platinum:

  • Mandachord (Octavia’s Anthem)

Update 35.1 (2024-02-20)

  • Fixed an objective marker in Octavia’s Anthem Quest leading players into a room that has a difficult to find exit. The marker has been adjusted to properly guide players to where they should be going.

Hotfix 33.5.2 (2023-06-21)

  • Fixed a script error in Octavia's Anthem Quest.

Update 31.6 (2022-06-09)

  • Made minor adjustments to Cephalon Suda’s appearance at the end of Octavia’s Anthem Quest.

Update 30.7 (2021-09-08)

  • Fixed incorrect spacing in Ordis’ subtitles during the ‘Octavia’s Anthem’ Quest.
  • Fixed an issue where using Void mode to sneak past Sentient enemies in Octavia’s Anthem would prevent Ordis’ transmission from triggering and stopping progress.

Update 28.0 (2020-06-11)

  • Fixed the Mandachord not displaying notes correctly during Octavia's Anthem Quest.

Update 27.3 (2020-03-24)

  • Fixed a script error when solving the Hydraulus puzzle in Octavia’s Anthem Quest.

Update 27.2 (2020-03-05)

  • Fixed Osprey in Octavia’s Anthem quest having the “Hunhow” tag. That Osprey was feeling pretty powerful that day I guess.
  • Fixed a script error in Octavia’s Anthem quest.

Hotfix 27.0.12 (2020-01-23)

  • Fixes towards the Octavia’s Anthem music note FX trail disappearing when you locate and collect the first or second Mandachord part.

Update 25.7 (2019-08-29)

  • Fixed landing incorrectly on tiles in the final stage of Octavia’s Anthem sometimes resulting in the music note FX appearing faint and hard to see.

Hotfix 25.3.2 (2019-07-12)

  • Fixed Sentients spawning in the wrong location during Octavia's Anthem.

Update 25.0 (2019-05-22)

  • Fixed missing FX for the “music notes” in the final mission of the Octavia’s Anthem quest.

Hotfix 24.2.8 (2019-01-15)

  • Fixed Octavia’s Anthem quest note FX during the boss fight being too dim.

Hotfix 23.10.5 (2018-10-18)

  • Fixed inability to collect a Mandachord part in Octavia’s Anthem quest which halted progression.

Update 23.10 (2018-10-12)

  • Fixed the musical note trail moving erratically during Octavia’s Anthem Quest.

Update 23.6 (2018-08-30)

  • Fixed Ordis' glass material used in Octavia's Anthem boss battle.

Hotfix 22.13.4 (2018-02-22)

  • Fixed Sentients encountered in Octavia’s Anthem quest dropping unintended rewards. Only Sentients encountered in normal gameplay situations are intended to drop rewards like Sentient Cores, Mods, etc.

Hotfix 22.13.1 (2018-02-15)

  • Fixed Sentients not spawning during their encounter phases in Octavia’s Anthem quest which resulted in a progression stop.

Hotfix 22.8.2 (2018-01-04)

  • Fixed the Hydraulus being invisible in some missions during Octavia's Anthem quest.

Update 22.6 (2017-12-07)

  • Fixed navigation issues in the “follow the music” segment of Octavia’s Anthem Quest.
  • Fixed not being able to activate Hydraulus as Operator during Octavia’s Anthem.

Update 22.4 (2017-11-23)

  • Fixed a large amount of dialog missing when replaying Octavia’s Anthem

Update 20.2 (2017-04-12)

  • Fixed the objective marker in the ‘Talk to Simaris’ stage of Octavia’s Anthem directing you to Darvo instead of Simaris.

Update 20.1 (2017-04-05)

  • Disabled lockdowns on the first mission of the Octavia’s Anthem quest. Lockdowns were causing pathing issues for the music trail.
  • Made improvements to the music note navigation in Octavia’s Anthem quest.

Hotfix 20.0.8 (2017-03-30)

  • Fixed the Mandachord puzzle UI in Octavia’s Anthem quest having unclickable notes in fullscreen 4:3 resolutions.

Hotfix 20.0.7 (2017-03-30)

  • Fixed Loki’s Radial Disarm not properly affecting Sentients in the Octavia’s Anthem quest.

Hotfix 20.0.4 (2017-03-27)

  • Sentients no longer drop rewards in the Octavia’s Anthem quest as the Replay feature created a scenario where items could be gathered endlessly in forced conditions.
  • Fixed an issue being unable to progress in the Octavia's Anthem quest - it would appear as though the Hydraulus was inert and you couldn't interact with any objects. This has been fixed.
  • Fixed some dialogue playing twice in the Octavia’s Anthem quest.

Hotfix 20.0.3 (2017-03-26)

  • Fixed a variety of random crashes that occurred most frequently at the end of the Octavia's Anthem Quest but would have caused pain and suffering throughout the game.

Hotfix 20.0.1 (2017-03-24)

  • Fixed being able to play the last phase of Octavia’s Anthem without completing the quest.

Update 20.0 (2017-03-24)

  • Introduced.

Last updated: Update 25.3 (2019-07-06)

  1. Prelude to War is a compilation of miniquests and cutscenes leading up to The New War.
  2. While not part of the main story quest, The Duviri Paradox has very interlinked story context to several critical characters in The New War.
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