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WARFRAME Wiki:Research

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Many of the content and information seen on the WARFRAME wiki comes from contributors and readers like you! This article attempts to detail how and where all the information that currently exist on the wiki was sourced from. In addition, it will detail some mechanics or types of in-game research players can and had performed to contribute their data onto the wiki. See WARFRAME Wiki:Projects for current research projects for the wiki and Category:Mechanics Research for detailed WARFRAME research blogs on the wiki as well as Category:User Research (Archived) for archived research.

As a disclaimer, we do not dispute edits that were contributed using datamined content as per the wiki's Data Mining Policy, but it is preferred to keep research within in-game limits as much as possible to avoid violating WARFRAME's EULA. Game breaking bugs and exploitable mechanics should be reported to the official forums as soon as they are discovered. The wiki is also not responsible for guaranteeing the accuracy of information on the site; it is up to the community and contributors to correct and update the wiki with the most up-to-date and relevant information as much as possible.

Last updated: Sat, 08 May 2021 22:09:24 +0000 (UTC) by User:Cephalon Scientia


Testing in the Simulacrum[edit source]

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 ReputationLargeBlack.png‍50,000. 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 Mastery Rank 29, you can spawn up to level 175 enemies).

Enemies to Spawn[edit source]

  • As of Update 29.2, 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.
  • Eidolon Lures have a unique mechanic where the maximum amount of damage dealt is capped by its health/armor and shields. Damage dealt to lures' shields always be capped at its maximum shield hit points while damage to its health is capped at its maximum health hit points minus one.
  • Ballistas can be used to measure how much damage is reduced from sources of Damage Reduction and test how these sources stack. The slow fire rate of their high-damage Vulkar.png Vulkars makes it easy to account for health/shield changes upon being hit.

Weapons to Use[edit source]

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:

Add Riven Mods with over negative 100% status chance to guarantee that pure damage is dealt without additional effects and damage over time numbers that may clutter the HUD.

Confirmation Tests[edit source]

Confirming Health and Shield Values[edit source]

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.

Enemy health and shield values can be calculated simply as:

Total enemy health/shields = Damage dealt ÷ Percent damage conversion

Confirming Enemy Damage Types Dealt[edit source]

Equip Mod TT 20px.png 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[edit source]

Equip a Synthesis Scanner with the Data-Parse Widget upgrade, purchased from Cephalon Simaris for ReputationLargeBlack.png‍25,000, to view ally and enemy health classes as well as damage type modifiers.

Confirming Head Locations[edit source]

SundialRifle.png Zenith's and PriestSpearGun.png Scourge's alternative fire reveals the location of enemies' heads.

Dealing and Recieving Damage[edit source]

Armor Stripping[edit source]

Methods of removing enemy armor for damage testing purposes include:

Scaling Damage Reduction[edit source]

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 (DmgVoidSmall64.png Void 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 ValkyrIcon272.png Valkyr's Warcry130xDark.png Warcry or GaussIcon272.png Gauss' Redline130xDark.png Redline or using weapons that have a spool-up time like the GrineerSparkGun.png Kohm or Gorgon.png Gorgon.

Testing Unknown Damage Stats[edit source]

For sources of damage that do not have their stats listed in the arsenal (like ExodiaEpidemic64x.png Exodia Epidemic or ExodiaContagion64x.png 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 InfStaff.png Pupacyst.
  • Arcane Enhancements that have some sort of damaging effect under certain conditions like PaxSeeker64x.png Pax Seeker.
  • Additional effects from weapons not shown in the arsenal like Tatsu.png Tatsu's seeking projectiles on slide attack or BasmuA.png Basmu's healing pulses.
  • Damage dealt by certain sources provided by mods like Mod TT 20px.png Rumbled.

Damage Formulas and Interactions[edit source]

Some sources of damage have unique damage calculations and/or have unique/inconsistent interactions with mods and buffs. Go to Damage#Final Calculations for a list of formulas on normal damage calculations.

Examples include:

Enemy Base Health/Shields/Armor[edit source]

Enemy base health, shields, and armor values and classes can be viewed in the Codex after completing their scans. Players can perform confirmation tests to see if the listed values and types match in-game behavior.

Equipping Mod TT 20px.png Shattering Impact and counting the number of hits before an enemy's health bar turns from yellow to red can yield a good approximation on base armor values.

Enemy Base Damage[edit source]

There are many methods of finding out base damage dealt by an enemy.

The most easiest way of calculating enemy base damage is to equip TennoSwordShield.png Silva & Aegis or SilvaAegisPrime.png Silva & Aegis Prime with a max ranked Mod TT 20px.png Avenging Truth. Blocking incoming damage will store 50% of that damage to be applied as bonus damage on the next heavy attack.

Base Enemy Damage = Stored damage / 0.5

Enemy base damage can be calculated by measuring how much damage is dealt to the player's shields or health by an enemy at their base level. Base armor values for Warframes vary, shields will give more consistent damage values across all Warframes since they provide a set 25% damage reduction (technically Damage Type Modifier) on incoming damage:

Base Enemy Damage = (Maximum Shields - Current Shield Value After Being Shot) / 0.75

Since shields recharge relatively quickly, it will be helpful to have a video capture tool to review shield numbers before and after being shot.

Alternatively, sources of Damage Reflection, like RevenantIcon272.png Revenant's MesmerSkin130xDark.png Mesmer Skin, can be used to calculate enemy base damage. Since we know enemies' base armor values from the Codex, we can calculate the damage reduction provided by their armor:

Base Enemy Damage = Damage Dealt By Reflection / (1 - [ Base Armor / (Base Armor + 300) ] )

If the enemy has no armor or the damage is dealt to shields only then damage dealt by reflection equals base enemy damage.

AI[edit source]

Testing Enemy Behavior[edit source]

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 based on the weapon they are holding. For example, enemies with sniper rifles will start shooting from a farther distance. 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[edit source]

Specters may interact with weapons or abilities differently. Tenno Specters have specifically tuned AI that determines when they cast their abilities. Similar to enemies, they also have different distances before engaging targets depending on the weapon they are holding.

Additional specter-like allies may be spawned from:

Testing Companion AI[edit source]

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 and Chances[edit source]

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.[citation needed] One could look at the logs generated by the game's engine to determine what communication occurs between the server and client during sessions. Almost all drop chance data is sourced from the official drop table repository which is supposedly generated by internal data: https://www.warframe.com/droptables

Calculating Number of Expected Runs[edit source]

User:FINNER has a great write-up on how the wiki displays the number of expected runs as well as the number of runs needed to achieve a 99%, 99.9%, and 99.99% probability (not chance) to get at least one drop of a particular item.

Looting Abilities[edit source]

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
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, Desecrate130xDark.png Desecrate and Mod TT 20px.png 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 Petrify130xDark.png Petrify but they can still be Desecrate130xDark.png Desecrated.

Integers vs. Floating-Point Values[edit source]

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
Examples of floating-point values

Measuring Distance[edit source]

Everything in WARFRAME uses meters as its base unit for length. The 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.

In Archwing missions, distance numbers are 4x the normal mission values and on Landscapes. In Empyrean missions, they are 5x.

Other Hidden Stats/Behavior[edit source]

  • 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 Mod TT 20px.png Condition Overload.
  • Finisher multipliers by different melee weapon classes.
  • Weapon passives like extra headshot damage with KuvaChakkhurr.png Kuva Chakkhurr.
  • Special attacks like Vitrica.png Vitrica's glass explosion or Quassus.png 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 Mod TT 20px.png Sly Devolution or Mod TT 20px.png 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 NidusIcon272.png Nidus opening up the Helminth Infirmary.
    • These are rarely seen in the game and most of them are added to the wiki.

Character Dialogue and Quest Transcripts[edit source]

Most of the dialogue under /Quotes and /Transcript subpages were transcribed by ear or copy typed based on in-game subtitles. Though there are also resources online that can help with extracting text from in-game screenshots of subtitles or text if you want to automate the process.

Typically, for characters in Player Hubs, they have a set amount of dialogue that they cycle through every time the player activates their event trigger. For example, for a shop vendor like The Business (quotes), they have a set of dialogue that they can speak depending on the context (i.e. what menu they player is in or the actions that they take within those menus):

Note that all vendor type characters have similar dialogue trigger patterns.

Dialogue Unique to WARFRAME Languages[edit source]

Many Grineer and Corpus enemies speak in the Grineer Language and Corpus Language respectively. These can be translated to English using ciphers present on the languages' pages.

Trivia and Namesakes[edit source]

Many WARFRAME content and names are inspired by the real-world through mythologies, history, pop culture, literature, sciences, and much more. Often times these references are detailed in the Trivia sections of many pages. Even though many of these documented references are based on speculation, we do not consider coinsidences and obsecure references as valid trivia. If we cannot find a source with a simple web search, then it is should not be in a Trivia section unless you have first-hand experience of the culture that inspired a reference. Avoid making references to other video games or media that share the same design/inspiration as content in WARFRAME unless it is explicitly clear that it is a reference.

See Real-World References for some of these references.

Other Official Sources of Information[edit source]

For more information about the game, players can explore:

These are publicly available for anyone to view or access.

Examples Of User Research[edit source]

Main article: Category:Mechanics Research

Ranging from spreadsheets of data and Simulacrum videos to simple questions that provoke further research.

Damage[edit source]

Mechanics[edit source]

AI[edit source]

Drop Tables[edit source]

Technical[edit source]

Miscellaneous[edit source]

Further Learning[edit source]

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