The Pointlessness of Peculiar Mods

The Beasts of the Sanctuary update brought with it a new type of mod, the Peculiar Mod. The idea was that Peculiar Mods were high cost mods that did literally nothing for your power but applied cosmetic effects. There is currently only two Peculiar Mods available, Peculiar Bloom, which spawns flowers on enemies when they are hit by critical hits, and the brand new Peculiar Growth which inflates limbs on hit, just like the already-existing secondary the Nukor. They are a rare reward in Rotation C of Elite Sanctuary Onslaught, meaning you need to complete Zone 8.

The premise was simple. Peculiar Mods would be expensive, rare, silly and useless. They would be expensive to level up and expensive to equip in your weapons and Warframes. This was to be for all those Fashionframers out there, where style was more important than damage. There would never be a custom slot for these, you’d have to sacrifice a normal mod, and they would be expensive as heck. Intentional downgrades.

At first, I wasn’t convinced. I thought the idea was stupid and I didn’t think anyone would want to swap out damage mods for a very expensive mod that does nothing useful what so ever, and maybe it would be better either by being an effect to an existing mod or Peculiar Mods having their own unique slot. I was told I was an idiot and these mods would be great and loads of people would be using them all the time because they love to make themselves weaker, and that we can easily sacrifice one mod from our loadouts to fit silly effects in.

Well, turns out Peculiar Mods were none of that. Aside from being rare, of course, but the current mod, Peculiar Bloom, isn’t even THAT rare. Heck it only goes for about 50 platinum in trades, but a max-rank Serration (you know, the basic damage mod) costs about 100 platinum to trade and 50 platinum is generally what most good-but-not-useful Primed mods cost. Getting to Wave 8 in Elite Sanctuary Onslaught isn’t too hard either, I’ve managed it tons of times in public matches, so the mod’s price will eventually come down. The brand new Peculiar Growth is so rare I didn’t even know what it’s called at first since it literally came out six hours after writing this article. But that too will come down eventually.

But being expensive in other ways? Not really. Peculiar Bloom has a cost of 7 capacity when maxed. Which is the same as the dual status and status chance mods. It has a base cost of 2, and leveling the mod up only increases the size of the flowers, which doesn’t mean that much since you only get 5 flowers per enemy anyway, after people were using the Amprex and its high crit and fire rate to spawn hundreds of flowers and cause significant lag issues. Yes, the useless, fashion-only mod got nerfed.

Peculiar Mods also have their own slot. The Exilus Slot. The built in slot on Warframes designed for utility-only mods like Lightning Dash and Toxic Flight (which increase the range of bullet jumps and add elemental damage), or the Drift mods that give utility and very small useful boosts like Power Drift (15% power strength and a chance to resist knockdowns). Most of these mods aren’t the most useful but it’s not like we’re sacrificing anything, and most people will use Exilus Adapters in their favourite Warframes anyway.

The worst thing though? I’ve never seen Peculiar Bloom in action. Sure, I’ve had a clan mate show me that they have the mod, but I’ve never actually seen people use it in missions. I never even got to see an Amprex-using evil Tenno dragging down my framerates. I’ve not seen a single damn flower. Most enemies get killed and chopped to pieces before you even SEE flowers spawn. I’ve seen the Nukor before, and considering that’s what the new Peculiar Mod does, I’m not sure how prevalent it will be, especially when bodies already often explode or get gibbed in the first place. Heck, I might see people using it and just assume they’re using the Nukor.

Even in Sorties though, where enemies tend to last a bit longer, there’s no time to stop and smell the roses because you’ve already bullet-jumped away and everything is either dead or capable of killing you in one or two hits of you stand still for long enough.

Like, what’s even the point if no one sees your useless mod’s effects?

Or maybe people aren’t using Peculiar Bloom and Peculiar Growth (eventually) because it’s taking up a slot that could be used for something better or more fun.

Maybe I was… right?

Probably not. But if this is how the current Peculiar Mods fare, goodness knows how well other Peculiar Mods will go.