FashionFrame

I know I’ve mentioned Warframe a few times lately, but I have suddenly found myself quite addicted to it. Warframe is a genuinely beautiful game, and because of cosmetics, you see a lot of fancy people walking around. Go to any Relay (casual chat and trade area) when the Void Trader is around (an NPC who sells pricey but cool mods, cosmetics and weapons) and you’ll be astounded by the amount of fanciness you’ll see. People like to jokingly call the game FashionFrame, just because the game can be so fancy.

Thing is, there’s a LOT of customisable stuff. You can change the colour of your Warframe, and customize each one individually. You can change the colour of your guns, again each one individually. You can colour your guns to match your Warframes. Then there are Warframe skins, which alter the whole look of your Warframe. On top of that, you can get addons, like shoulder plates and helmets, to customize your Warframes further. You can have emblems on your body, either from the syndicate you like the most, or from your clan. Davjo for example, has a moon emblem on his Warframes, because he’s addicted to moons, nature and Snivies. There are also weapon skins for some of the Prime weapons, on top of the ability to colour them as you will. The last update added Glyphs, which are basically sprays. And then there’s the Syandana, which is basically a fancy word for a stupidly fancy cape. But they’re so fancy, they pretty much distort the shape of the rest of your Warframe. They’re amazing. Again, you can customize the colours on almost all these things. Even the ‘energy’ on most objects – the glowing parts of a Warframe, cosmetic or weapon, are colourable.

Oh, and I forgot to mention (in this article anyway), you can paint your ship. To match your Warframe. It’s glorious.

There are a few downsides though. The most common one is that most of these cosmetics are pretty expensive to make. If you really want cosmetics, sometimes it’s easier to trade for them, generally for Platinum, the premium currency that is also tradable. You can also purchase the blueprints for some cosmetics via the aforementioned Void Trader, for a hefty amount of Credits and Ducats, the two other in-game currencies. Credits are the standard shit you get from missions, Ducats are only available by selling Prime parts to Ducat Kiosks – generally for 15 Ducats per item. Of course, Prime Parts generally come from Relics, so you need a lot of Relics, which are uncovered via missions (generally the endless farming ones) to get a lot of Ducats. Then you need the components to make them. Sometimes, you’ll be able to buy whole cosmetics, and Darvo, the Corpus guy you save at the beginning of the game, also occasionally offers discounts on various items.

The other main downside is the lack of colours you start off with. There are multiple palettes, from entire Greyscale ones to shades of purple to your standard Horrible Pink and Lime Scout Bastard palette, all of which are only purchasable from the Warframe store, using Platinum. Of course the changable colours means that most people have edgy Black and Red/Blue Warframes, fancy bright white/silver ones with accents, or they’re hot pink. Not everyone is, I had a lovely time playing with a solid dark red Mag the other day, but most of the time, they’re the same old same old. With enough frilly bits that you can’t tell what Warframe they are using.

Sadly though, you start off with about 12 colours, with no black or white, and no strong colours. That didn’t stop me though, and I immediately made a bright red and yellow Warframe. I looked great. Still, I decided to invest in one single cosmetic item – a single colour palette for 75 Platinum. After about two days of farming with Davjo, we managed to get a Tigris Prime blueprint each and, with my newly acquired 80 platinum (I also got a bunch of mods I sorely needed), I went and bought the Classic Saturated palette, which comes with every colour I’d ever need.

I now don’t need any other cosmetics, I am very happy.

The best thing though? I can do this.

Isn’t it beautiful?