Things You Should Never Buy When it Comes to Warframe
Warframe’s a free to play game. You can get to Mastery Rank 25 and unlock every game-changing item in the game for free, aside from Founders’ items. You can trade for the in-game premium currency Platinum, which is extremely rare for a free to play title. There are also a lot of items only available for free currencies in the game. It’s really pretty amazing. BUT there are still a handful of expensive pitfalls that you really should avoid.
Mod Packs
These things are fucking awful. You’re guaranteed one ‘rare mod’ in each pack, but rare just means gold, and there are a LOT of gold mods that are useless. And a lot of rare mods are obtained more easily elsewhere. Heck, ask in any of the local region chats and someone will probably GIVE you basic mods like Intensify and Streamline. Avoid these mod packs like the plague. Even the ones Baro Ki’Teer brings are NOT worth it.
Resources
Do not ever buy resources or resource blueprints, for plat or for credits. The blueprints are too expensive and the resources themselves are too fucking expensive, even if you are DESPERATE for them. Spend some time doing survival missions on the planet of question with a Nekros and you’ll be fine. Same goes fo relic packs bought with Platinum, just get Syndicate standing or do defense and spy missions for easy relics. Even if you need endo, it’s not worth it. You’re better off dissolving duplicate mods than buying them. If you are really desperate, then trade for Ayatan statues (you can get unfilled ones for 2-5 platinum) or go to Maroo’s Bazaar and dissolve spare Ayatan Stars.
Weapons
Most weapons are way overpriced when it comes to Platinum. You can’t even buy most weapons, and Warframes can be pretty pricey too. Sure, if you’ve got cash to burn, feel free to get the Stalker items since they are hard as fuck to come by, but the majority of items in the store are easier to simply craft, especially when you consider that weapon slots are only 12 platinum for 2.
There’s an exception though. If you don’t own Excalibur and he goes on sale, it might be worth getting him, but since Excalibur is located on Mars now, it’s not too hard to farm him.
Plat to Credit Bundles
Just no. DO NOT EVER TRADE PLAT FOR CREDITS. Spend 5 minutes on Romula or Seimeni or Akkad or the Index if you need credits. Seriously these are the biggest rip offs ever.
Warframe DLCs on Steam
Buying the Platinum on its own is probably better. Like the mod packs mentioned above, the mods included in the Steam packs are not worth it and you can obtain the mods in-game. When the Steam DLCs go on sale for 50%, maybe, but only when it comes to the DLC with the nice Excalibur skin in it. The mods are not worth it.
Prime Access or Prime Vault Access, if you already have most of the items in a Prime Access set
When you add it all up, maybe Prime Access is worth it. You get a hefty amount of platinum and some resource boosters too. But if you own most of the items in a set, is it really worth it? No, probably not. Luckily now you can buy the accessories separately but that wasn’t always the case. It’s more a choice whether you’d rather spend $50-70 on a game or on cosmetics.
Some Bundles or Individual Items
If you want to buy bundles or deluxe items, it’s always worth checking the total price for these. It’s always better to buy Warframe armour bundles than individual parts, but at the same time, sometimes you only save a little platinum by buying a bundle, especially if you will only ever use part of a set. For example, one of the Christmas bundles in 2017 were cheaper when bought individually since the Syandana in the bundle was given out for free. But even if you’re not going to use the leg pieces on the Porta armour set, buying the chest and arm pieces individually is more expensive. I go on more about this here.
Platinum
This sounds dumb, but buying Platinum without a discount is quite a costly experience. Discounts aren’t that uncommon, and you are more likely to get a discount if you don’t log in for a few days. Of course 75% is the best discount, but even 20% takes the sting off. Or be a cunt like me and trade for 99% of your premium currency. When you do buy platinum, it’s better to buy kore than less though, the $1-5 platinum packs are not as worthwhile as the more expensive ones.
At the end of the day, you’re free to spend your money as you wish, but seriously though, buying resources, credits, relic and mod packs for platinum is a bad idea and you should avoid these.