The Naru Syandana and Other Tennogen Items

So after Christmas, I caved and bought myself a Tennogen item. The Naru Syandana is a pair of wings based on the Naberu Halloween-exclusive cosmetic. It cost €5.99, was modeled and textured by members of the community and can be equipped on any Warframe. The wings lower themselves when walking, running and aiming and open up while bullet jumping or whenever you visit a public place like a relay or Cetus. The price seems a little bit high, but the people who made the item need to get paid, you know?

Tennogen items are voted on via the Steam Workshop and the best entries are put in, often after some tweaking by the developers to make sure everything works. They’re considered some of the best cosmetics in the game and are definitely high quality, luxury items. Apart from a handful of older cosmetics that just need updating (looking at you, Volt Amp skin).

The only problem some have with Tennogen is the price. While €5.99 seems not too awful for a high quality cosmetic you can wear on the back of anyone, skins cost €4.99-6.99 (depending on whether they come with a custom helmet or not or if they’re weapon skins) and can only be worn on, well, the corresponding Warframe or weapon. And you can only buy these items via Steam, costing real-world money. But these are deluxe items in an otherwise free game, AND the creators get paid for them as well. Still, the idea of spending real-world money can be off-putting.

Unless you’re on XBox or Playstation. Then you can buy select Tennogen items with Platinum. But the console versions are often behind the PC version by about a month, and Platinum in general is more expensive since there are very, very few discounts when it comes to buying Platinum, unlike the constant 20-75% discounts that PC players get.

Swings and roundabouts really. My point is, these items are expensive. But when you think about it, Tennogen is just a better version of the Team Fortress Steam Workshop. You get to buy what you want rather than having to buy keys and gamble for whatever community-made cosmetic you want, or buy it on the Steam Market. Great if you want the most common item. Bad if you want something not common. Don’t need to pay for paint either. What’s even better though is that it actually makes decent money for contributors – one contributor, the person behind the Graxx range of items, is apparently capable of living off his cosmetics.

And clearly these things are actually selling. After all, people are willing to pay for Prime Access, they’re willing to pay for Tennogen.

But back to those wings. The Naru Syandana. It’s nice. But it doesn’t suit everyone. I mean, the elegant wings were clearly never going to suit Rhino, but it doesn’t suit Volt that much either. The Naru is more aimed at feminine pr thin frames, frames, with their sleek looks and shiny bits. The wings are smooth and shiny, so anyone who’s particularly lumpy or not very aerodynamic is going to look weird with them on. It looks even better when you match the metallic parts together to match your Warframe.

That being said, it looks nice on Oberon and Oberon Prime. Not so much with the Feyarch skin, because that already has a nice butterfly effect going on that really doesn’t match the wing style of the Naru Syandana. Plus there is already the Sari Syandana, if you want more butterfly wings.

The real winner is Titania, so she can have two pairs of wings – her weird build-in mini-Archwing wings and a cosmetic pair on her back.

Also the Naru colours weird, so I have to colour everything individually rather than just copying my Warframe’s colours. But that’s fine.

Was it worth €5.99? Yeah probably. Plus, I bought the Naru Syandana using money from selling trading cards, so technically I didn’t pay for them…