Alright, I've basically just started. Finished up the Vox missions, and have now been told, Fly free, young Tenno. Is that what I should be doing, or is there anything specific I should focus on to get a leg up?
There's a couple ways you can get going:
1. Play each mission in sequence and unlock each sector, whether solo or with a party.
2. Find the best XP mission to run til you max out your first frame and weapon.
3. Play with others and skip around to whatever they're doing.
#1 is my preference. It's how I started the game, way back when. It also, with the current state of the game, makes the most sense. You:
1. Do missions that are level appropriate for the most part.
2. Get access to all missions so you will see all alerts that are currently available. You don't see alerts for missions you haven't run.
3. Try each type of mission until you get the general sense of how the game works.
4. Get access to the Archwing missions (not required but there if you want to do it.)
5. You make a decent amount of resources as a cushion against future crafting needs.
6. You get a shot at the entire bevy of mods the game offers, by fighting all the different enemies in each sector.
7. You make decent money to support fusion and crafting.
8. Get the full benefit of WF's story, such as it is.
#1 has some drawbacks:
1. It takes awhile to get through every mission on every planet.
2. Leveling is vastly slower compared to other methods, even if you're running to finish missions quickly. Milking missions for XP just makes each mission take longer, as well.
3. Some missions are harder than others. That means some missions can be beaten solo, and some honestly cannot.
4. Going along with that, getting help on missions means there's got to be someone else trying to play that mission. And many, many missions in game are essentially ghost towns. It wasn't this way when I started playing, most missions had 1 or 2 people playing them at all times. Now, with the variety of activities in game, there simply aren't people doing many of the missions. So you can hit a roadblock to progressing further.
#2 is perhaps the more practical, if boring, way to play. It ensures that whatever you're doing, you've got capacity in your gear and WF for the mods that will allow you to have a fighting chance in almost any area of the game. This method requires just one thing:
1. Play Apollodorus Survival.
2. I haven't played in a few months, but for the game's life since Survival went in, this is hands down the best paying mission for XP, even when compared against higher level Survival missions against tougher enemies yielding more XP.
3. The reason is the spawn rate. Even at the lowest level of xp possible, the sheer # of enemies that get killed in a 45 minute game outstrips the XP that you can get anywhere else, short of doing game-breaking things.
4. Apollodorus is one of those missions, due to the XP, that always has people playing it. You will never want for teammates when running it.
5. In a 45 minute run of Apollodorus, supported by players with leveled Warframes, you will make 10k experience, easy. That's 1/3rd of your levels for your Warframe, Primary and Secondary, in one run. I think you need to run Apollodorus like that 20 times or so to max out everything out from level 1.
6. Having higher level weapons and a warframe allows you to cram more mods and more higher leveled mods in, which makes you more effective. "Getting leveling out of the way" is how I feel about WF and weapon levels. You gotta have that stuff maxed out before you can really see what's possible. So leveling up in Apollodorus in some ways smooths out the difficulty of the later missions, because as soon as you get cool stuff you can put it in.
Downsides:
1. It'll be tough for you. By 45 minutes, the guys you're figthing are like Level 25 or 30, there's rocket launchers, napalm, hordes of grineer choking doorways...it's a nightmare for a newbie. So my advice would be to stay alive as long as possible until they finish, but do not blow your revives because you will be dying a lot. Even if you die and don't revive, as long as you stay in the level until it ends successfully, you get all the same rewards.
2. It's drudgery. At least for me, because I've played that level hundreds of times now. For me it takes 30 minutes to just get interesting. For you, it will be tough throughout. FWIW, Survival is by far the most entertaining mission type, in my book, even if it ends up boring because you've ground at it so much. But it is by far the easiest way to level up, regardless of what level your WF or weapons are at.
3. The selection of mods and crafting materials will be limited. You'll get crap loads of it, no doubt, but the mods you'll really want probably aren't going to drop there, and while tons of low level crafting mats is nice, a good variety is more desirable. Apollodorus kind of puts you in limbo, where you're leveling up like mad, but you're not getting much else that's useful to you.
4. The money is not that great for the time you're putting in.
#3 Pal around doing other people's stuff. How a lot of players get pulled into game. You end up doing stuff like Void runs, Derelicts, Boss runs, and whatever the cool kids are doing these days. This is unfortunately the least effective way to play IMO. It does have advantages, like:
1. You get to see what the rest of the game looks like a lot earlier than playing solo.
2. You can get some lucky drops early on, which, if you pour all your resources into them, can give you an early starting weapon that is great, or land you a crucially important mod.
3. Sort of like #2, but you can get a lot of blueprints for other WFs quickly this way.
4. The money can be great, as you're getting solid infusions of 2000+ credits with every higher level mission.
5. You can get access to a variety of mods that you wouldn't see until much later with the other two methods.
6. The XP can be pretty good, depending on what you're doing. Not as good as Apollodorus, but better than playing each mission one a time yourself.
7. You'll be surrounded by competent, geared players and generally the only thing you'll need to worry about is not getting left behind.
Downsides:
1. Getting pwn'd. It'll happen when you've got sub level 10 weapons and Warframe with few mods and are trying to hang in a level 30 mission. If you don't like being left behind, murdered by strong opponents and always playing catch up, this method is not for you.
2. No personal progress, really. I can't remember exactly how it works now, but basically you doing a mission you didn't have access to before in a group either unlocks just that mission, or it doesn't even unlock. So you won't be getting access to the vastness of the map and all it offers if, for example, you just run void missions with friends instead of playing the rest of the game.
3. Even though there's no hard and fast limit to how much of the map you actually do, there is unavoidably some of it, and most likely all of it, to be done. WF is the kinda game where you have to plan to do the things that will get you what you want, whether it's mods, materials, blueprints or quests. So, always following someone else's lead can get you lots of things, but necessarily what you want or need at the time.
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Just remember this about WF: it's all about more Warframes, more weapons, more mods, more gear, more crafting materials. There's no real story to be lived, actual gates to be keyed for or plateaus to reach. The lack of strong objectives and goals can be kind of off putting for some people until they realize that the game is all about going "I wanna play Nekros. With an Ogris. Modded with X, Y and Z. What do I need to do?"
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Topic: Warframe - F2P Sci-fi L4D-like (Read 245218 times)