Medic’s First Raid – the Law of Retribution

So I did a raid, called the Law of Retribution. Which, lore-wise, comes after a bastard called Vay Hek broke some of our relays. Now we have to get revenge.

Of course, I didn’t get any screenshots, I was too busy trying not to die.

Really, the title should read ‘Retvik’s first raid’ but none of you know who Retvik is. Retvik is the name of me in Warframe, based on one of my main characters in the Phoviverse. Really, I hate the name, it doesn’t suit my imagined Warfame character. The Operator behind Volt (or at least how I imagine them to be) is actually much more like one of my lesser characters, Psiksi, but 1. I didn’t think of that at the time, 2. I don’t want to spent 200 platinum on a name change just yet and 3. I’ll spend eternity being called Siksi, because of how the English language works.

But enough of that stupid rant. Davjo and Vintage Keith dragged me into a raid, via the Warframe Raid School Bus, a discord server where people take newbies into what is essentially a three part, level 100 puzzle-solving mission. With up to 8 players.

Yes, 8 players. Double the standard amount.

I didn’t want to really play. Davjo had been bugging me for ages, asking me to join him. I always refused because I felt I didn’t have the right tools to actually be of any use, and doing raids has a cost – unlike standard missions, you have to craft a key to access raid missions, and that key is consumed whether you win or lose. The idea of me losing someone’s key bothered me greatly.

But apparently Volt isn’t that bad a pick. He’s no Energy Vampire Trinity, or Vauban with all his CC, but it turns out electric shields can be useful.

This time round, we had 7 players. Davjo was hosting, he’d made a key. I was finally convinced to join. I picked my weapons – my 3-forma’d Ignis, my Furis which I haven’t changed in bloody ages, and my trusty Broken War, half the sword I was stabbed with. I grabbed Volt Prime for the extra energy and readied up.

My team mates were all mostly Prime frames too. Trinity, Vauban, Nova, Loki. They were all very helpful, using their microphones to communicate the information I needed to know.

So the first part involves hacking a console to get a bomb. The bomb drains energy and needs to be charged up, before being dropped in front of a bunch of toxin thingies that we’re trying to blow up. Someone has to carry said bomb, and they can’t use their abilities or anything like that.

Of course, it’s not that simple. There are tons of level 90-100 enemies running around, trying to kill you. And to make matters worse, the areas you have to go are sealed off by doors that need to be opened by pressing buttons.

Once the bomb is charged, you need to do some hacking thingies and drop it in front of the toxin injector thingies and protect it from being blown up prematurely. I was told to place an Electric Shield on the floor to protect the bomb. I also electrified the shield with Shock as well, just in case.

You need to do this several times, going through a bunch of doors and enemies, before getting to part 2 of the raid.

Part 2 is the tedious part, and is split into two mini-parts. Part 1 of Part 2 consists of a complicated hacking system. One person needs to hack a console, in order to make a symbol appear on a screen. You then need to get someone to stand on a button connected to the matching symbol. The first person hacks the console again, and the cycle continues until all the required matching buttons have been pressed.

Small problem, you can’t actually get OFF said button until the whole sequence is finished. Otherwise you have to start again. Being the newbie of the raid, I was told to stand on the first button, momentarily getting very lost. Lately I’ve been having problems seeing other people’s waypoints. But basically, I spent about 5 minutes standing on a button, constantly creating Electric Shields so enemies would leave me alone. Not bad.

Once that’s out of the way, the hard part, part 2 of Part 2 starts.

We need to hijack a gigantic power core, as big as a tank. After hacking a console, the host of the raid (Davjo in this case) needs to power the device with his shields, while the rest of us fight off enemies. But unlike the normal hijack missions, we also need to jump around and turn off large electric things, which will damage and destroy the power core if it travels through them. Again, we have to run around, standing on buttons and hoping nothing comes along to knock us off. This seems not to hard at first (and even easier with so much crowd control around), but later on, you get bigger and tougher enemies, including the Gustrag Three, who are a bunch of weird people. I missed the chance to get some good loot though because I was busy trying not to get killed in one hit.

With the hard part out of the way, we now go off to the finale.

The final part involves fighting Vay Hek, who has buggered off to Mars because we’ve fucked up his stuff twice. Really, this mission is a repeat of part 1, where we have to get bombs and place them in the right places. The buttons make another comeback, being wires/power supplies to various things so we can get to the right places. In the mean time, enemies are trying to kill you, Vay Hek is shouting as always and you’ve got to keep an eye on these consoles which enemies will try and use to get their ship to shoot you. It’s pretty chaotic, and I spent most of my time speeding everyone up.

After much messing around, we all finally get to shoot the big bad guy. Rather than explode though, he shoots off into the sky while the rest of his mech falls apart.

At this point, the mission is now complete. Traditionally, raid-goers jump into the smoke stacks to kill themselves for laughs, but I’m a twat who can’t do parkour and managed to miss.

As to what I think of the Law of Retribution, I’m not sure. It was definitely fun. The puzzles weren’t even that difficult. But the thing is, the meta has been established and it’s very, very efficient if people know what they are doing. It’s not like I couldn’t keep up, I was actually alright for most of the time, despite having taken the wrong loadout – I’d taken my super fast running loadout rather than my standard, jack-of-all-trades loadout. For my efforts, I got an Arcane Strike, which is a thing you put on cosmetics. Except I… don’t really have cosmetics. Thanks, Warframe Raid School Bus! And Davjo and Keith as well.

Will I do another raid? Sure, with some guidance.

Will I do the nightmare version of the Law of Retribution? Eh… not quite yet. Let me get a Primed Flow or something first.