Whether you are min-maxing your damage to one-shot Eidolons or figuring out what looting abilities work against a particular enemy, the following blog post aims to describe all the possible ways one can perform research in-game to test out WARFRAME's mechanics or the types of research players can perform to contribute their data onto the wiki.
Sometimes interactions are deemed "unintended" or bugged by the developers so be aware that they have the right to remove or change them at their discretion.
Cephalon Scientia 19:42, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
Missing Content
- Main article: Category:Updateme
As of 1/11/21, the wiki needs the following updates:
- Missing projectile speed numbers for some weapons
- Enemy behavior and tactics for most enemies
- Updating Buff & Debuff for new content
- Scaling damage resistances for certain enemies
Testing in the Simulacrum
- Main article: Sanctuary (Cephalon Simaris)
Disclaimer that not all behavior tested within the Simulacrum reflects on actual behavior during missions.
The Simulacrum is the most accessible location for testing anything relating to damage. It can be accessed from any Relay after purchasing a key from Cephalon Simaris for 50,000. Within the simulated room, players can switch between their loadouts and spawn up to 20 enemies up to a level based on their 5x their Mastery Rank plus 30 (for example, if you are MR 29, you can spawn up to level 175 enemies).
As of Update 29.2 (2020-09-29), the Gokstad Officer has the highest base health and armor of all possible spawnable enemies in the game, at 1,000 Cloned Flesh health and 1,000 Ferrite Armor. They can be unlocked after scanning 3 of them during Empyrean missions.
Nullifier Crewman bubbles are a great source for testing pure weapon damage without the presence of Critical Hits or Status Effects since they have the Object health class. They are neither resistant nor vulnerable to any single damage type.
Weapons to Use
Any weapon that can deal a single damage type are great for testing damage since you only have to account for one damage type in the damage calculation. Example of these weapons are:
- Tonkor (Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist. on direct hit)
- Kuva Tonkor (Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist. on direct hit)
- Glaxion ( Vandal) (Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist.)
- Lanka (Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist.)
- Javlok (Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist., keep in mind about armor-stripping procs and AoE damage falloff)
- Acrid (Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist.)
- Scourge (Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist., keep in mind about armor-stripping procs and AoE damage falloff)
- Arca Plasmor (Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist., keep in mind about damage falloff)
- Phage (Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist., keep in mind about increasing damage to health procs)
Confirmation Tests
Confirming Health and Shield Values
Certain Warframe abilities deal a percentage of the enemy's health, making them useful in confirming enemy health/shield values. Note that one must take into account damage type modifiers from different enemy health classes.
- Equinox's Mend & Maim (Day form) - 75% of damage dealt to health and shields stored
- Oberon's Smite - 35% of main target's maximum health and shields as damage with 50/50 distribution of Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist. and Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist.
- Revenant's Reave - 8% of maximum health and shields drained from enemy, unaffected by armor
- Trinity's Energy Vampire - 6.25% of target's remaining health or quarter of its health (whichever is greater at the time) is dealt as Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist. damage, bypassing shields and armor.
Enemy health and shield values can be calculated simply as:
- Total enemy health/shields = Damage dealt ÷ Percent damage conversion
Confirming Enemy Damage Types Dealt
Equip Adaptation and let your Warframe get shot at to determine the primary damage type that an enemy deals. Alternatively, some enemy weapons have a high chance to proc status effects which can also be used to determine the primary damage type dealt.
Confirming Health Classes
Equip a Synthesis Scanner with the Data-Parse Widget upgrade, purchased from Cephalon Simaris for 25,000, to view ally and enemy health classes as well as damage type modifiers.
Confirming Head Locations
Zenith's and Scourge's alternative fire reveals the location of enemies' heads.
Damage
Armor Stripping
Methods of removing enemy armor for damage testing purposes include:
- Hildryn's Pillage
- Must be casted repeated as each cast strips current armor and shield values
- Takes about 19 casts to fully strip if unmodded, takes about 8 casts at 200% Ability Strength
- Nyx's Psychic Bolts @ 125% Ability Strength (also removes shields)
- Trinity's Abating Link @ 223% Ability Strength
- Shattering Impact (works when enemy is invincible)
Scaling Damage Reduction
- Main article: Damage Reduction#Unique Enemies
Certain enemies have a unique damage reduction mechanic that is separate from armor or damage type modifiers, stacking multiplicatively with them. If an enemy has their armor stripped and the enemy receives less damage than what is listed from your Operator's Amp (Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist. damage will deal fully listed damage to all enemy health classes), that means that enemy has this unique damage resistance.
More often than not, this damage resistance scales with weapon damage per second (DPS), calculated as:
- DPS = Total damage × Total critical multiplier if damage instance crits × Total fire rate × Total multishot × Body part multipliers
Where damage, critical multiplier, fire rate, and multishot is calculated after mods and buffs are applied.
You can test this with any weapon against Noxes. You will notice that you deal less damage per hit if you are under the effects of fire rate/attack speed buffs like Valkyr's Warcry or Gauss' Redline or using weapons that have a spool-up time like the Kohm or Gorgon.
Testing Unknown Damage Stats
For sources of damage that do not have their stats listed in the arsenal (like Exodia Epidemic or Exodia Contagion), players can test for the following using their associated methods:
- Damage distribution - using weapons against enemies with different health classes
- Critical chance - attack with the weapon for an extended period of time to see what percentage of damage instances crit and use different critical chance mods to see at which threshold does the weapon start to orange/red crit
- Critical damage multiplier - calculating the damage multiplier on a critical hit for a bodyshot
- Status chance - attack with the weapon for an extended period of time to see what percentage of damage instances apply a status effect
- Damage falloff values - shooting the weapon at varying distances to determine the minimum distance before falloff and the max damage reduction
These same methods can also be used to confirm numbers shown in the arsenal.
- Example of things to test:
- Melee stances also have unlisted damage multipliers on their attacks, making them deal more (rarely less) damage than their listed damage in the arsenal.
- The area of effect component of melee slam attacks do not always share the same damage distribution as its normal attacks like in the case of Pupacyst.
- Arcane Enhancements that have some sort of damaging effect under certain conditions like Pax Seeker.
- Additional effects from weapons not shown in the arsenal like Tatsu's seeking projectiles on slide attack or Basmu's healing pulses.
- Damage dealt by certain sources provided by mods like Rumbled.
Damage Formulas and Interactions
Some sources of damage have unique damage calculations and/or have unique/inconsistent interactions with mods and buffs.
- Examples include:
- Any Exalted Weapon (like Peacemaker/ Regulators)
AI
Testing Enemy Behavior
- Main article: Enemy Behavior
Enemies usually exhibit different behavior depending on the distance between them and the player. At closer ranges, they may attempt to run away and after a certain distance resume attacking the player. Here are some examples of behavioral triggers:
- Upon getting hit
- At low health
- At X distance away from players
- Upon being aimed at (like when Shield Ospreys and Leapers attempt to dodge)
- Presense of an Artic Eximus
Testing Specter/Allied AI Behavior
Specters may interact with weapons or abilities differently. Additional specter-like allies may be spawned from:
- Atlas' Rumblers
- Equinox's Duality
- Excalibur Umbra when you are Operator form
- Inaros' sand shadows from Desiccation's Curse or "Devour" wasn't found in Module:Ability/data
- Nekros' "Shadows Of The Dead" wasn't found in Module:Ability/data
- Nyx's Mind Control
- Revenant's Enthrall
- Wukong's Celestial Twin
Testing Companion AI
Companions are nortorius for having bad pathing issues and behavior. They do exhibit contextual behavior like in the case when you are aiming at an enemy behind your ground companion, causing them to crouch.
Drop Tables
Drops in WARFRAME are either determined server or client-side. Mission rewards are determined by the server while in-game drops like mods and resources are determined by the client.
Looting Abilities
Most normal enemies can be affected by the following looting abilities, triggering another roll at their Drop Tables:
- Rolling drop tables on Living Enemies
- Rolling drop tables on Petrified Enemies
- Extra drop table rolls upon Enemy Kill
- Hydroid's Pilfering Swarm
- Khora's Pilfering Strangledome
- Wukong's passive (Monkey Luck buff)
- Rerolling drop tables on Enemy Corpses
Looting abilities can stack with others under different categories, but cannot stack with others of the same category. For example, Desecrate and Retrieve cannot both act on the same enemy corpse to yield triple the drops.
Bosses are not affected by these in any way. Some enemies are immune to these abilities. For example, Necramechs cannot be under the effects of Petrify but they can still be Desecrated.
Integers vs. Floating-Point Values
Sometimes the in-game UI rounds floating-point values to the nearest integer or omits the decimal portion of floats. Mods usually round up values.
- Examples of rounding issues
- DE Maths. 19.9 is actually closer to 19 than it is to 20. by u/Sighnos
- Brain Storm
- Reach and Primed Reach
- Examples of floating-point values
- Stat changes due to mod order - Rounding bug? by u/MCJennings
- different rounding when swapping mod positions by u/aurror
- What the heck is this? Why does my health go up based on where the mod is placed? I’m sorry if this is supposed to be common knowledge but can someone explain this to me? by u/har1ey503
Measuring Distance
Everything in WARFRAME uses meters as its base unit for length. Codex Scanner or Synthesis Scanner are the best ways to measure distance between the player's head and the location pointed by the reticle accurate to the tenths place. Waypoints are slightly inaccurate because they measure distance between the player's avatar and the torso of the targeted NPC's avatar, rounded to the nearest whole number, but does not require line-of-sight unlike scanners.
Other Hidden Stats/Behavior
- Stacking behavior of buffs from mods, abilities, or external sources; they may either stack additively or multiplicatively with similar effects. Rarely do buffs stack with itself exponentially like in the case of pre-Update 26.0 (2019-10-31) Condition Overload.
- Finisher multipliers by different melee weapon classes.
- Weapon passives like extra headshot damage with Kuva Chakkhurr.
- Special attacks like Vitrica's glass explosion or Quassus' heavy attack projectiles.
- Forced procs on certain attacks by weapons like melee radial slams or from Stance combos.
- Mods with complicated effects not detailed in the mod description like Sly Devolution or Charm.
- Cooldown timers for certain abilities/effects.
- Enemy Level Scaling. Players can figure out health/shield/armor/damage values of certain enemies at different levels to test out the base level they spawn in.
- Player interaction with the environment like Prime Warframes getting energy from laser traps in the Orokin Void or Nidus opening up the Helminth Infirmary.
- These are rarely seen in the game and most of them are added to the wiki.
Examples Of User Research
- Main article: Category:Mechanics Research
Ranging from spreadsheets of data and Simulacrum videos to simple questions that provoke further research.
Damage
- Some of the Math behind the Condrix's Damage Reduction by u/TheLavalampe
- I subsumed Xata's Whisper onto all Warframes with exalted weapons, here are the results. by u/quicksilver97
- [DE]Glen is wrong about Banes. An enemy getting corrupted in a Void Fissure will stop receiving bonus damage from their original faction Bane, and starts receiving extra damage from Corrupted Banes. by u/boobenprime
- The extremely weird mechanics of operator amp damage against Eidolon shields, uncovered and explained (long post, TL:DR at bottom) by u/GoldPhos
- What is Eidolon Teralyst's actual armor? by u/Hardcloud
- Antitoxin's True Value -- It's Two Third Of The Original Value! by Twilight053
Mechanics
- 17.5 Duration mods and drain by User:Fegazeus
- Enemy spawns by User:FocusedTub
- A Kind Word On: weapon switching speed in warframe by BBagent 6
- Warframe - Evasion isn't the same thing as Dodge (Xaku) by Somsnosa Mimosa
- How Enemy Accuracy Works! - Warframe by x3lp
- Since the attack speed stat in the arsenal tells you almost nothing, I calculated the true attack speed for every melee combo in the game by u/GoldPhos
- I did a lot of testing on the Vitrica, here's what I found out by u/GoldPhos
- Credit relay blessing double dips to 1.40625x or 1.5625x more credits instead of 1.25x more credits. by Iterniam
- Prisma Dual Decurion Bullet Velocity Test Data by User:Genreless
AI
Drop Tables
- [Kuva Lich Data] Weapon Drop Rates, Elemental Bonus Chance, Birth Places, Names by u/Anal_L1beration
- You should stay at least till Round 4 - Stage 2 in the Endless Cambion drift bounty, if you want the rare rewards. by u/Zrynoth
- Deimos Endless bounty - Bugged loot table? by u/Parvaty
- 200 Larvling Statistics since 27.1.2 (Updated from 150) by Foo_Prime
- 250 Larvling Statistics since 27.1.2 by Foo_Prime
Technical
- Hallowed Flame fps exploit by ---RV---Maniac
- "Enhanced" Graphics Engine reduces Eclipse damage by 83% by u/Iterniam
- Weapon damage in Awakening quest is tied to frame rate by u/SN_E
- Mesa DPS tied with frames per second by George North
- I think I just made a pretty major discovery: Recharge Delay / Ammo Regen of battery weapons are tied to FPS. by u/----Val----
- Certain operator amps have energy consumption tied to frame rate by u/direct13
- The Worldstate API Values for Sentient Outpost by u/Channel_Dedede
Miscellaneous
- Grineer Language by User:DarkLordJadus
- Unreachable Syndicate Medallions on Corpus Ship Remaster tileset [Investigating] by -Zr-Scroll