Warframe – Mobility Mash

It’s taken me a damn long time, but I think I have finally, finally figured out the basics of Warframe. Not so much the shooty guns part, I had that down right off the bat. But I now understand just how… insane this weird game is.

Warframe genuinely is weird. It’s a farming simulator with space ninjas. But they’re not really ninjas, they’re more biomechanical warriors with mystical powers and really powerful guns that shoot tons of stuff. And they fly around in their own individual space ships. Many of them do wear a ton of black though, so they do fulfill that ninjaesque quota.

But yeah, I’m not going to rehash what I’ve said before. That being said, there is SO MUCH STUFF to learn about Warframe, it’s really much, much deeper than one would think. But also quite shallow, as there’s a lot of dressing up as well. I’ve seen many a player in-game call it FashionFrame, and I can see why. You can colour so many things.

Trading is a whole other thing. No one actually uses the trading outpost, Maroo’s Bazaar, because there’s a 10% tax on trades using currencies – Ducats (weird name) and Platinum, the game’s premium currency which can also be acquired via trading. Everyone just invites people to their mostly empty clans and they do trading there. Turns out clans can set their own fees, but the majority of people set it to 0% because fuck Maroo and his stupid taxes.

Enough piddling on about the meta though. The actual game play is what I’ve figured out. Turns out, you’ll be absolutely fine if you keep on moving. Like, all the time. Never, ever stop.

Okay, that’s clearly not everything. You need to be able to take down enemies in large numbers and defend specific areas, but those two objectives are very, very reliant on what weapons you have and what character you’re playing as. You don’t take a loud, noisy Rhino into a Spy mission, and you don’t take a skinny little Volt somewhere where there’s tons of enemies who are immune to electricity. Which it turns out many enemies are in the higher levels – my lone Warframe turns into more of a crowd control machine, speeding team mates up, putting shields round extractors and using lightning to stagger enemies rather than hurt them. Doesn’t help that my guns are shit.

But there is a clear difference between my old way of playing and my new way. I used to run and sprint everywhere, now, if I’m not shooting things, I bullet-jump everywhere. As in, I crouch and jump at the same time – unlike in TF2 where you get a small height boost, in Warframe, you leap off and do a fancy spin. And I try shoot things while jumping too. But it’s not so much the fact that my weapons are stronger now than before (they’re really not – I’m leveling up an assault rifle and it just doesn’t feel as nice as my level 30 bow). In fact, on the higher levels I’m playing, I’m doing barely any damage at all.

No, all of this comes from the fact that you just… jump over enemies. Constantly. The enemies in Warframe, whether they’re Corpus, Grineer or Infested, are all pretty strong. There’s always your normal dime-a-dozen cheap enemies, but things like Extrimus enemies can easily pile up on you. Especially in never-ending game modes like Defence/Extraction. But their tracking isn’t that great, so you can just bullet-jump over everyone. On top of that, since you don’t need to kill everyone unless you’re playing Exterminate or Defense, most enemies can be jumped over and ignored and they won’t really follow you to your objectives.

Speed is key here. You can’t hit what you can’t see, and since invisibility isn’t always available, zooming past everyone means that even an idiot like me can keep up. Just make sure to bullet-jump as much as you can.