My Little Specter

My little Specter, made out of glitter.
Cost a ton of credits, they’re all dimwits.
So silly and derpy, their AI is wonky.
No real uses, unless they’re Ancient bitches.
My little Specter, why did I bother?

I’ve had the crafting recipes for all three kinds of Warframe specter, plus Ancient Healer specters, plus Moas and all sorts for ages. I’d never used any of them because I wasn’t really sure what they did. But really, I was more scared that, once I made a bunch of them, I’d lose the blueprints – after all, you lose the blueprints when you make everything else. For that very same reason, I never made any ciphers until recently, and even then I’ve never actually USED any ciphers. The Grineer ones are doable and the Corpus ones are okay when you get the hang of it, but they still ruin the flow of gameplay. I’ve only ever failed like three hacks anyway. Turns out, you do lose the blueprints, but you can get more by doing specific mission types.

I’ve also not really used any of my gear, apart from the Synthesis Scanner, which I like to use randomly for the small amounts of standing I get with Cephalon Simaris. Nice guy, lets me practice for Mastery Rank tests. Doesn’t respect personal space though.

Anyway, back to those specters.

The only reason I actually built a specter was to get to one of the junctions, Europa specifically. I’d completely forgotten about Europa and Jupiter, somehow I managed to complete the junction for Neptune before the junction for Europa. Since it was a requirement to get to the junction, I built the cheapest Specter available. I was asked to give my Warframe Specter a loadout. Confused, I just gave it the loadout I currently had, Volt Prime with an Ignis, a Furis and a Broken War. My magic gun making machine started building it, and 8 hours later, I took the five Specters out of my foundry, placed them in my Gear Wheel and promptly forgot about them.

It actually took me a while to actually use one. Turns out, I used it by accident. While leveling up Ember on my favourite low level defense mission, I meant to place my glyph on a wall, and accidentally placed down a Warframe Specter. Out of the blue, this default-coloured, level 8 Volt Prime appeared and immediately used Speed, running around like a dog on caffeine and cutting an infested thing in half, before running in front of me, waiting for further instructions since everything else was dead.

This happened so unexpectedly that I just stood there, stunned, before bursting out laughing at how stupid it all looked.

After I’d regained my composure, I decided to take Ghost Volt around with me, to see what he could so. He was there for the rest of the mission, so I guessed, why not?

Turns out, they’re not that bad. Ghost Volt used his Ignis to kill things, he used his Broken War to hit things, and he used Shock and Speed sporadically. I assumed he only really knew how to do those two abilities, but later on, I caught Ghost Volt hiding behind a shield I think he may have placed accidentally. I haven’t seen Ghost Volt use Discharge yet, but I am putting that down to him simply not having enough energy to do so. The missions I’ve deployed my Specters in, some of them have been low level missions and my current Spectres only appear at the level of current enemies in the mission. If nearby enemies are under level 10, Ghost Volt can’t use Discharge, same way I couldn’t when I was level 10.

The downside to Ghost Volt and all Warframe Specters is that they are dumb (although that is standard for game AI, to be fair) and that they don’t use any mods or anything. This means that, for example, my Volt Prime needs to spend 100 energy to use Discharge, but he often only has 250 energy at once and I’m pretty certain they don’t spawn with full energy. That also means that abilities like Electric Shield only last for 3 seconds, rather than the 13 seconds my shields last.

It’ll be interesting though to see what other combinations I can try. I’ve got Trinity, and maybe she’ll provide some heals occasionally. Frost seemed like a good idea initially, but considering how Volt places his haphazard shields, I think Frost’s snow globes would be more of a hindrance than a help. Ideally, my best bet would be something that is innately tanky, like Rhino, but doesn’t need any real mods or anything.

Still, nothing beats that first laugh I got from Ghost Volt. Bless you, little specter.