A Specter is an AI-controlled ally unit that will fight alongside a player for the duration of a mission. They have their own set of weapons and/or abilities that they can use against enemies and are generally summoned via a consumable Gear item.
Tenno Specters
- Main article: Specter (Tenno), Specter (Enemy)
Warframe Specters can act as allies or enemies depending on the circumstances. As allies, Specters are AI-Controlled Warframe-replicants employing customizable load-outs (which are configured via the Foundry). They can be summoned via consumable Gear wheel items in all Missions except Archwing and Sanctuary Onslaught. Enemy Specters are primarily encountered as guardians of the Origin System's Solar Rail Junctions, and must be defeated to unlock connections to new planets and destinations on the Star Chart. Specter-like enemy Warframes also serve as enemies during specific Quests.
Warframe Specters were also used to guard a Clan's Solar Rail during Solar Rail Conflicts, before this game mode was discontinued. Contesting Clans would have to face these Specter Regiments in order to seize control of territory. A Specter Regiment was to be created through researching it in the Clan Dojo's Orokin Lab. As mentioned, however, the entire Clan-conflict mechanic and the associated Regiments were eventually removed from the game.
Acquisition
The blueprints necessary to build Specters are automatically rewarded by Rescue missions upon completion, with the type of Blueprint dropped depending on the node that was played, and how many points were acquired. In total, three points can be attained in a mission: one point for rescuing the target, another point for not triggering the execution sequence in the process, and one more point for killing all the Wardens.
Points | Easy Rewards Level 1-15 |
Medium Rewards Level 16-25 |
Hard Rewards Level 25+ |
Nightmare Rewards As it Occurs |
1 | None | ★ Vapor Specter BP |
★★ Phase Specter BP |
★★★ Force Specter BP |
2 | ★ Vapor Specter BP |
★★ Phase Specter BP |
★★★ Force Specter BP |
★★★★ Cosmic Specter BP |
3 | ★★ Phase Specter BP |
★★★ Force Specter BP |
★★★★ Cosmic Specter BP |
★★★★ Cosmic Specter BP |
The Vapor Specter (or Bronze Specter) blueprint is rewarded from Easy and Medium difficulty Rescue missions, and yields 10 Specter uses per build. Spawns at the current level of the enemies in the mission. There are no AI differences between specter ranks.
Manufacturing Requirements | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
15,000 |
7,500 |
5,000 |
Time: 8 hrs | ||
Rush: 20 | |||||
Market Price: N/A | Blueprints Price: N/A |
The Phase Specter (or Silver Specter) blueprint is rewarded from Easy, Medium and Hard difficulty Rescue missions, and yields 5 Specter uses per build. Spawns at the current level of the enemies in the mission, plus three levels. There are no AI differences between specter ranks.
Manufacturing Requirements | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
30,000 |
750 |
5,000 |
5,000 |
1,000 |
Time: 8 hrs |
Rush: 20 | |||||
Market Price: N/A | Blueprints Price: N/A |
The Force Specter (or Gold Specter) blueprint is rewarded from Medium, Hard, and Nightmare difficulty Rescue missions, and yields 3 Specter uses per build. Spawns at the current level of the enemies in the mission, plus five levels. There are no AI differences between specter ranks.
Manufacturing Requirements | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
50,000 |
1,000 |
1,000 |
1,000 |
1,000 |
Time: 8 hrs |
Rush: 20 | |||||
Market Price: N/A | Blueprints Price: N/A |
The Cosmic Specter (or Platinum Specter) blueprint is rewarded from Hard and Nightmare difficulty Rescue missions, and yields a single Specter usage per build. Spawns at the current level of the enemies in the mission, plus ten levels. There are no AI differences between specter ranks.
Manufacturing Requirements | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
60,000 |
500 |
1,000 |
5,000 |
1 |
Time: 8 hrs |
Rush: 20 | |||||
Market Price: N/A | Blueprints Price: N/A |
Syndicate Specters
Access to Syndicate Specters can be acquired by taking allegiance to the desired Syndicates and attaining the first tier in their ranks. Syndicate Specters can be purchased by spending 2,500 for a bundle of five. Only one instance for each type of Specters can be summoned. Summoning another one while an identical Specter is active will kill the one already out.
Their blueprints can also be acquired from Syndicate death squads, with the type of blueprint awarded depending on their respective Syndicates.
File:BallSpawnerAncientHealer.png | File:BallSpawnerCharger.png | File:BallSpawnerCorruptedLancer.png | File:BallSpawnerMoa.png | File:BallSpawnerRoller.png | File:BallSpawnerShieldDrone.png |
Ancient Healer Sanguine Eximus Specter (New Loka) |
Charger Parasitic Eximus Specter (Red Veil) |
Corrupted Lancer Leech Eximus Specter (Arbiters of Hexis) |
MOA Blitz Eximus Specter (The Perrin Sequence) |
Roller Leech Eximus Specter (Steel Meridian) |
Weaponized version of
Shield Osprey |
- Syndicate Specter x5
Manufacturing Requirements | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
7,500 |
2,500 |
2,500 |
2,500 |
Time: 8 hrs | |
Rush: 10 | |||||
Market Price: N/A | Blueprints Price: N/A |
Miscellaneous Specters
Shockwave MOA
- Main article: MOA Cabinet Spawner
Friendly Specter-like Shockwave MOAs can be manually spawned from hackable cabinets located throughout certain Corpus tilesets.
Clem Clone
- Main article: Darvo, Weekly Mission
The reward for the final mission of the A Man of Few Words quest is a Clem Clone Blueprint, which works in the same way as specters, deploying a clone of Clem to fight. The blueprint is a one-time use item and produces 5 clones, and like normal specters deploying one in a mission will use one of them up, regardless of whether it is alive at the end of the mission. Additional blueprints can be acquired by undertaking a weekly "merchandise acquisition" Survival mission for Darvo. This weekly mission can be started by talking to him in his shop and asking if Clem needs help.
Clem Clone Specters have similar AI to Tenno Specters and will act as bodyguards.
Manufacturing Requirements | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
7,500 |
2,500 |
2,500 |
2,500 |
Time: 8 hrs | |
Rush: 10 | |||||
Market Price: N/A | Blueprints Price: N/A |
Corrupted Bombard
- Main article: Corrupted Bombard
The Corrupted Bombard Specter Blueprint was introduced as a Baro Ki'Teer exclusive specter, available for 100 and 50,000 between February 24 - 26, 2017 on PC. The blueprint is a one time use (providing 5x specters) and includes a Corrupted Bombard specter and an accompanying Orokin Drone. The drone does not and cannot obtain shields, and the limited 200 shield is gives to the specter will not recharge once depleted unless the Drone is killed and respawns, doing so in 30 seconds of being destroyed.
Manufacturing Requirements | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
7,500 |
2,500 |
2,500 |
2,500 |
Time: 8 hrs | |
Rush: 10 | |||||
Market Price: N/A | Blueprints Price: "Ducats" wasn't found in Module:Resources/data 100 + 50,000 |
Corrupted Heavy Gunner
- Main article: Corrupted Heavy Gunner
The Corrupted Heavy Gunner Specter Blueprint was introduced as a Baro Ki'Teer exclusive specter, available for 100 and 40,000 between May 4 - 6, 2018 on PC. The bundle provides 5x Corrupted Heavy Gunner specters and an accompanying Orokin Drone. The drone does not and cannot obtain shields, and the limited 200 shield is gives to the specter will not recharge once depleted unless the Drone is killed and respawns, doing so in 30 seconds of being destroyed.
Equinox
Equinox's Duality augment for Metamorphosis creates a temporary specter of Equinox herself armed with whatever weapon or gear item (the specter will not use gear items of any kind) she is currently using. The specter will take the form of Equinox's opposite half (i.e. swapping to her Night Form results in a Day Form specter and vice versa), will not use abilities, and her Warframe and equipment stats will take into account of any mods installed, while also dealing increased damage (not modifiable). The specter will only last for a set duration (modifiable via Ability Duration) and will instantly die if it walks in range of a Nullifier Crewman's bubble or a Nul Comba's/Scrambus' aura.
Duality's Specter has similar AI to Tenno Specters and will act as a bodyguard.
Wukong
Wukong's Celestial Twin creates a permanent specter of Wukong himself armed with whatever weapons in his arsenal. The twin will cycle his weapons in response to Wukong's equipped weapons (i.e. swapping to primary or secondary results in the twin using melee and vise versa), is affected by Cloud Walker's invulnerability and health restore per meter traveled, and will mimic Defy and Primal Fury, and his Warframe and equipment stats will take into account of any mods installed. The twin takes continuous health damage if it walks in range of a Nullifier Crewman's bubble or a Nul Comba's/Scrambus' aura, although nothing will happen to it if Wukong himself is affected by a Nullifier bubble.
Celestial Twin's Specter has similar AI to Tenno Specters and will act as a bodyguard.
Excalibur Umbra
Excalibur Umbra exhibits sentience when not piloted by the Operator, functioning as a specter and will fight on his own with whatever weapons in his arsenal. Sentient Umbra can use abilities (with the exception of Exalted Blade), and will arm himself with a melee weapon (if he has one equipped) whenever an enemy comes within close proximity, and his Warframe and equipment stats will take into account of any mods installed.
Sentient Umbra can be harmed and takes full damage from any source, and once his health is depleted, he will stop moving and attacking until the Operator pilots him again. However, Sentient Umbra cannot die and will not use up a revive.
Sentient Umbra has similar AI to Tenno Specters and will act as a bodyguard.
Aggression and Pathing
- All Specters who don't have the "bodyguard" AI type will only follow the player if they do not detect any enemies. If they detect an enemy nearby, they may do the following:
- Corrupted lancers will sprint for cover and stay in that cover until enemies get near or until the enemy it detected dies (even if it is in another room).
- Rollers will roll towards the enemies and continue to attack until (easily) being destroyed.
- MOA specters are one of two Specters that will take the initiative to follow the player, often walking backward as it fires at enemies. It too, however, can get stuck as it notices many enemies, in which it will decide the enemies are a bigger priority than the player.
- Charger specters have a slightly smaller detection range and aggression towards enemies but never attempt to follow the player if enemies are nearby and its weak attacks often miss enemies who walk backward to avoid its attacks.
- Ancient Healer specters will slowly walk towards enemies until they are in range, and then charge as a normal Healer would do.
- Clem will stay close to the player most of the time, and sometimes stop to engage the enemy for a while.
- Shield Ospreys have both the "bodyguard" AI and the normal enemy AI; they will attempt to stay close to other deployed specters, defense objectives, or other high-value allies even if they detect enemies. If there are no high-value allies nearby (players don't count) it will simply drift into the enemies instead.
Tenno Specters Behavior
- Main article: Specter (Tenno)#Behavior
Tenno Specters don't rely on Energy, instead of utilizing a short cooldown system for their abilities. As their health, armor, and shield scales with the mission level, their Effective Health will generally scale far past the player's Warframe. When spawned during a Nightmare Mode mission, specters will attack the player instead of enemies, forcing players to play without an AI partner.
Depending on the Warframe being used, each of these specters has its own specific AIs tailored to assist the player Tenno in their endeavor. Abilities used by Specters have different values from their regular versions.
Warframe | Ability Casting Behavior |
---|---|
Ash |
|
Atlas |
|
Banshee |
|
Baruuk |
|
Caliban |
|
Chroma ( Heat element) |
|
Citrine |
|
Ember |
|
Equinox |
|
Excalibur/ Excalibur Umbra |
|
Frost |
|
Gara |
|
Garuda |
|
Gauss |
|
Grendel |
|
Gyre |
|
Harrow |
|
Hildryn |
|
Hydroid |
|
Inaros |
|
Ivara |
|
Khora |
|
Kullervo |
|
Lavos |
|
Limbo |
|
Loki |
|
Mag |
|
Mesa |
|
Mirage |
|
Nekros |
|
Nezha |
|
Nidus |
|
Nova |
|
Nyx |
|
Oberon |
|
Octavia |
|
Protea |
|
Revenant |
|
Rhino |
|
Saryn |
|
Sevagoth |
|
Styanax |
|
Titania | |
Trinity |
|
Valkyr | |
Vauban |
|
Volt |
|
Wisp |
|
Wukong |
|
Yareli |
|
Xaku |
|
Zephyr |
|
Lore
- Main article: The Deadlock Protocol
Specters were developed by Corpus Founder Parvos Granum, spearheaded by his research in Specter Particle Theory. The Xoris plays an important role in the creation of specters, being able to trap energy in the form of Specter Particles. This energy is speculated to be used in infusing 'programmed behavior' into bodies such as Warframes.
Notes
- These specters do not teleport to the player and have limited AI capabilities. As such, they generally act like normal enemies such as taking cover or other similar behavior. If they detect enemies, they will take the initiative to engage them regardless of where the player is.
- Due to lack of armor or shields, the Red Veil's Charger Eximus Specter typically does not survive very long after being summoned.
- Its energy leech ability also does nothing to allies or enemies.
- Specters of this type are most useful in game modes where the mission takes place in a fixed location, such as Defense or Interception, as they can easily lag behind players or have difficulty navigating certain tiles/rooms.
- Shield Osprey Specters behave differently than all the other specters: They may stay near the objective in defense or decide to protect another specter, and will never take the initiative to actually protect the player.
- The Roller Specter is arguably the weakest of all the specters due to its relatively low health and slow attack speed, despite being able to steal health from enemies.
- Ancient Healer Specters have a short ~15m aura that reduces damage by 90% for all friendly targets such as other players, allied specters, or Defense objectives. When connected to said targets the Healer itself will gain a damage resistance boost as well.
- Damage done to you or linked allies with heal the specter as well as its own occasional healing pulses.
- Oddly enough, a specter's weapon can level up, shown in the media below. It is unknown if it actually affects the weapon or the Specter itself.
- Upon successful defeat of a certain syndicate's death squad/platoon, you may earn the blueprint to build that syndicate's specters.
- Players are able to choose to either make the specters stay in an area or follow them around by pressing X (default keybinding) when close to it.
- Doing this to a Shield Osprey specter will cause it to hold position and fire plasma repeater weapons at enemies.
- The Shield Osprey may also rarely fire its weapons when not told to wait, although this is rare.
- For clients this is unreliable and the osprey may ignore the commands anyway, and continue to fly into crowds of enemies and not be able to defend itself, being destroyed soon after.
- Doing this to a Shield Osprey specter will cause it to hold position and fire plasma repeater weapons at enemies.
- Some Specters may rarely disable alarms.
- Cephalon Suda's shield osprey specter is useful in Hijack missions, as they can instantly restore your shields.
- Its shields will not be affected, however.
- Specters will spawn at the current enemy level, plus a few extra. For endless missions, this allows specters to scale to enemy level; placing one at the beginning of the mission will be lower than later on if spawned again.
- The Corrupted Lancer and Ancient Healer specters become very powerful due to this, becoming massive bullet sponges.
- If the player kills a Specter affected by Radiation, they will receive affinity identical in amount to an enemy unit of the same type (i.e. Ancient Healer Specters will give affinity matching an Eximus unit of the same level).
- Specters spawned during Nightmare alerts and missions are immediately hostile to the player, indiscriminately attacking Tenno and enemies alike, and cannot be commanded to hold position or follow. These specters are marked with a reddish distorted glow to indicate that they have turned against the player.
Bugs
- Telling a specter to hold position may cause the specter to act strangely, including freezing in an animation or tracking but not firing upon enemies. Telling them to follow you and re-hold position can fix the issue temporarily.
- The Corrupted Bombard Specter spawns with a small shield count which will recharge slowly as long as its drone is active. However, having this shield drain completely will prevent it from ever coming back until its drone is destroyed and respawned after a period of time. This has been a bug since the Specter existed and may be due to an issue where Heavy Grineer cannot obtain shields.
Media
Patch History
Update 28.3 (2020-08-12)
- Fixed crashing when attempting to spam Specter spawns when in Titania’s Razorwing.
Update 28.2 (2020-07-14)
- Fixed a script error when spawning a Specter.
Hotfix 27.3.15 (2020-04-17)
- Fixed friendly Specters suffering knockdown when deployed and taking entirely way too long to recover.
Hotfix 27.3.11 (2020-04-09)
- Fixed a script crash when spawning a Specter.
Update 25.5 (2019-07-31)
- Any summoned allied Specters in a Nightmare mission will now have a reddish distorted glow to indicate that they have turned against you and you’ve made a huge mistake in trusting them.
Hotfix 22.11.1 (2018-02-06)
- Followers (Specters, Rescue Target, etc) no longer cancel charging if they switch targets while using a charging weapon.
Update 22.10 (2018-01-25)
- Warframe Specters are now much smarter! We've done a general intelligence pass on their proficiency with Weapons, and we've also updated their power-casting logic. Virtually every power is now castable with only a few exceptions!
- Specters CANNOT cast the following Abilities: Vauban's Minelayer, Ivara's Zipline, Titania's Razorwing, Nekros’ Desecrate and Shadows of the Dead, Excalibur’s Exalted Blade, Valkyr’s Hysteria, Wukong’s Primal Fury, Cloud Walker, and Defy, Atlas’ Petrify and Tectonics, Limbo's entire kit (save for the damage aspect of Banish), and finally Zephyr’s Dive Bomb.
- ↑ Update 25.8 (2019-10-01) patch notes