Mastery Rank

This is what defines how much of the game’s content you have experienced. You can kind of consider this as your overall level/prestige in the game much like how you would consider a character’s level in a game like World of Warcraft for example.

You can gain mastery points which will increase your overall Mastery Rank through:

• Completing junctions as these grant 1000 mastery points each.
• Leveling weapons/frames to rank 30 at least once.
• Completing all missions in the game at least once

Why would you want to increase your Mastery Rank you may ask? Well, a higher mastery rank comes with these benefits.

• More access to weapons and frames. Many of these require you to be a certain mastery rank in order to use it.
• More trades that you can do per day. Very useful if you want to earn platinum which you can then use to buy more weapon/frame slots.
• More starting base mod capacity for weapons/frames. This means you can add more mods to your weapon when it is unranked.
• More access to Riven Mods. Riven mods require a certain Mastery Rank in order to use, ranging from 8 to 16.
• More void trace capacity. This is useful for refining void relics so that they can yield rarer items upon cracking them in void fissure missions.

A higher daily amount of standing that you can earn per day with syndicates. There will be a mastery rank test that you will qualify for once you reached enough Mastery points.

• I highly recommend practicing the mastery rank tests first by going into Larunda Relay on Mercury and fast traveling to Cephalon Simaris’ room where you will find all of the mastery rank tests to the right.
• You can only attempt the mastery rank test once per 24 hours, hence why I recommend practicing beforehand to make sure you can pass the test.
• Don’t be discouraged if you can’t pass the test as any mastery points that you earn in the meantime will still transfer over to the next Mastery Rank.
• For quick, easy Mastery points early on, try and level all of the MK1 weapons as they can be purchased for Credits and come fully built. This eliminates the wait time and resources needed like with other weapons.
• Mastery Rank 15 is a good stopping point if you want to unlock every frame/weapon in the game, 16 if you are invested in Rivens.

Modding

The mods that you put on your warframes and weapons are what makes or breaks its effectiveness.

For the early parts of the game, it is better not to max rank mods as they require a hefty amount of Endo and Credits. In addition, they also take up more mod capacity which will make it difficult to fit on most of your frames/weapons.

Any mods that have 10 ranks to it are the ones which cost the most Endo/Credits to max out. If you desire to get the most effectiveness out of them early on, then ranking them to rank 6 would be a good stopping point. If you have the mod capacity via Orokin catalyst/reactors, then rank 9 is also a good stopping point.

• Ranking a mod from rank 9 to rank 10 costs roughly the same amount of Endo/Credits as ranking it from 1 to 9. This is why I recommend leaving mods at rank 9 until you have enough resources and mod capacity to sustain it.

You will have flawed versions of the basic mods like Vitality early on when you start out. These will help you out early on as they don’t cost many resources to use. However, they become obsolete once you get normal or primed versions of them.

Mods also have polarities on them, which will reduce the capacity cost if they are put in a slot that matches. These polarities can be added on via Forma.

Primed versions of mods can be acquired by buying them off of Baro Ki’Teer who is a void trader that appears at a random relay every 2 weeks. These cost Ducats, which are acquired from selling primed parts from void relics.

• Primed mods generally have a higher max amount of ranks and cost more resources to max out.

There are corrupted mods that you can get from opening up Orokin Vaults in the Orokin Derelict. These mods will greatly increase one attribute while decreasing another. These are good examples of mods which you may want to keep multiple copies of as their negative bonus’ increase with rank.

Riven mods are weapon specific. You can attain these by completing Sorties which are high-level missions accessible after completing “The War Within” quest.

Damage

There are different damage types that weapons and certain warframe abilities can deal to enemies. These have bonuses and negatives depending on the type of armor and health type that the enemies have. A more comprehensive explanation can be found here.

There are 3 physical damage types that most weapons will come with: Slash, Impact, and Puncture. Generally, Slash is the most preferred as it has a chance to deal a damage over time effect that ignores armor/shields of enemies.

• If fighting against Grineer, consider using Corrosive damage, which combines the elemental mods of Electricity and Toxin. It can strip away their armor so that they are easier to kill. Viral may also be used, combining Cold and Toxin to reduce enemy health by half.
• Corpus enemies utilize shields to protect themselves. You may consider Magnetic damage, which combines Electricity and Cold. It has the chance to reduce max shields of enemies. Alternatively, you may use just Toxin damage as it will ignore their shields completely.
• Infested enemies tend to be the weakest. Slash, Heat, and Corrosive tend to perform the best versus them.
• Corrupted enemies tend to have the most variety of what enemies you will face, drawing from the 3 enemy factions above. The most threatening enemies of this faction tend to be Grineer and Infested based. As such, a combination of Corrosive, Slash, Heat, Cold, and Radiation will help against these enemies. Corpus-based enemies of this faction can be dispatched easily as well.