Plains of Eidolon – First Look
The Plains of Eidolon update is here, and it’s pretty fucking big. It’s also rather laggy and buggy and messy, since over 100 thousand players are playing Warframe (via Steam) as I type this. Goodness knows how many more are playing via the standalone version. In this article, I’m going to give you a first look into the Plains of Eidolon. There’s… a handful of problems.
Just so you know, SPOILERS ahead.
Firstly, nodes have been moved around. Cetus, the town relay and hub, and the Plains of Eidolon are essentially the 4th place on the Star Chart and you HAVE to visit the plains if you wish to unlock Mars. Luckily all you have to do is visit Cetus, enter the Plains, then turn around and leave before you can continue unlocking the rest of Earth. You can go further, but the Plains aren’t the friendliest of places to newbies.
For anyone who has completed the Second Dream, before you do ANYTHING, go and choose a Focus school. Because of the changes to Focus and its refunds, your schools have become ‘unequipped’ and need to be unlocked again. You can soft-lock Warframe if you are doing War Within quest and haven’t got a school equipped, since you won’t be able to access your Operator and you need them to complete the War Within.
The first thing you notice when arriving in Cetus is just how many people there are. There are around 90 instances of the Cetus ‘relay’. It’s a very lively place. There’s several merchants plus a lot of NPCs who wander around and look pretty. Definitely a place to get lost in. I admit I totally got lost there a few times.
To get to the Plains, you have to pass through a pair of massive Orokin doors. You can also speak to the last NPC on your way there to grab a mission on your way out. This is the biggest weak point of it all, because going through that first door will make a lot of computers lag as the game loads the Plains for the first time. It can take several minutes for that first initial load, but eventually your Warframe will draw your weapons. This seems to apply in groups and in solo, but solo is a bit faster.
Once you’re on the Plains of Eidolon, you’ll notice how pretty it is. And as you walk around, you’ll notice you’ll get shot at a lot if you go near any of the settlements. There are a lot of Grineer, with a unique look to them and new weapons. If you don’t pick a Bounty, then you’ll get random mini-missions as you wander around. A Bounty generally consists of 3-5 mini-missions done in succession. They’re generally quite simple (defend this, kill that) but you have a timer of 5 minutes, which can be awkward.
The Eidolons themselves are rather hard-hitting and can only be defeated if you’ve got an Operator. Luckily you can kinda hide away from the monsters, but the small sentient drones can only be defeated by Operators too and do quite a bit of damage.
The main problem (aside from all the bugs) is that everything’s slightly too pricey right now. The Archwing gear item requires a ton of Plains ingredients and your first 1000 ‘standing’ will have to go to the fisherman and mining merchants so you can unlock the new tools. It’s not very newbie friendly at all. You will probably be as confused as I am. The timers on bounties, the vast number of enemies and the lack of a decent Enemy Radar will make the Plains very hard to survive in.
Oh, and watch out for the blue sparkles at night. They do magnetism procs and drain some of your energy. But luckily that proc was nerfed, so it no longer saps all your energy.
But overall it’s a lot of fun. The missions are tense and the mining and farming are pretty laid back. You can do whatever you want and no one cares.
I recommend you give it a day or so. There’s so much to do and a TON of grinding needed to unlock all of it, that not jumping in straight away will probably be a blessing. Things will quieten down, and everything is very overloaded. In the mean time, why not level up your stuff, work on a nice loadout, or do Sorties in relative peace, or perhaps make use of a new Twitch Prime offer?
Or just go fishing.
