Payment in Detonite Injectors and Fieldrons

I’ve been doing a lot of Invasions lately. Or rather, looking at invasions and wondering whether I can be bothered to do them or not. And then eventually doing them anyway because I need loot. Well, I say loot, I mean components. Well, I say components, I mean a handful of resources to build clan tech weapons.

Alright, so Invasions are simple. There’s two types: you either have Corpus attacking Grineer nodes or vice versa, or you have Grineer or Corpus fighting off Infested, often called an Infested Outbreak. If it’s an Infested Outbreak and the mission node under attack is that of a Boss Battle (e.g. Fossa on Venus), then you have to fight Phorid, which is a massive red Infested Charger. Each Invasion can affect multiple nodes, for example an Infested Outbreak can affect half the missions on Mercury with Infested while another Invasion might only affect a single node on Pluto.

Invasion missions are separate from normal missions, and you get the option to play a normal mission or an Invasion when you select one. Invasions may be different mission types compared to the normal mission, and they also offer vastly different and sometimes better rewards.

But unlike normal missions, you get to pick a side, if it’s Corpus VS Grineer. They will always offer different rewards, and you can see how many people support each side in the Navigation menu. Whatever side wins in the end doesn’t matter, you still get your reward.

The catch? You have to play Invasion missions three times to earn your rewards.

Now, normally I wouldn’t have a problem with this, especially when some of the rewards are pretty good, parts to various Wraith and Vandal weapons not available anywhere else. Occasionally you’ll get Forma and Orokin Reactor and Orokin Catalyst blueprints and the odd Exilus Adapter too. But most of the time, you get 3 Fieldrons and Detonite Injectors, or 1-3 Mutagen masses. These are mainly used in Clantech weapons, the blueprints of which are obtained via Dojos. Detonite Injectors are used for Grineer weapons, Fieldrons are used for Corpus weapons and Mutagen Masses are used for Infested weapons.

Unfortunately, you tend to need quite a few of these. The normal Supra for example requires 7 Fieldrons, which means you need to do 4 Invasions at a minimum.

Now, 12 missions to obtain a weapon (excluding build times) doesn’t seem too awful. But that all depends on the mission. 12 capture missions is a piece of cake. 12 exterminate missions are pretty easy too. 12 sabotage missions? Not bad. A mixture of capture, exterminate, spy, rescue and sabotage? Sure. But having to spend a guaranteed 15 minutes in survival missions, plus the loading in and out of these missions, or doing 15 waves of defense where enemies have a habit of lingering? That can become tedious. Also, unfortunately, defense maps tend to miss out on the somewhat cool maps with both Corpus and Grineer elements, often involving you jumping to a new area.

Luckily, Invasions rotate every 10 or so minutes, changing mission type. So unless you’re really unlucky, most of the time you can scrap by finishing an Invasion in 15 or so minutes.

There are also consequences for doing invasions. The most notable thing is when you support the Corpus or the Grineer five times in invasions. Assist the Corpus a lot and Vay Hek will get angry at you, marking you for death and occasionally sending the Gustrag Three after you. Help out the Grineer and Alad V will send a Zanuka Hunter after you, desperate to farm you for Warframe parts to build more Zanukas. Both the Zanuka Hunter and the Gustrag Three work like the Stalker, suddenly attacking you in the middle of a mission.

There are also events too – the more invasions won (or defended against) by the Grineer, the faster they complete work on a new Balor Fomorian. The more successful invasions and defenses by the Corpus, the quicker they get to rebuild their Razorback Armadas. What’s also neat with Invasions, at least ones with Grineer VS Corpus, if the invading team wins, they get to occupy that node for 24 hours. Most people don’t normally notice, because the invasions that win generally happen on not particularly busy nodes, but it’s always funny when Hydron gets taken over by the Corpus.

Really though, Invasions aren’t an issue. You need some resources to be limited and rare. Nah, the issue is with the actual weapons themselves. Why does almost every single Clantech weapon require not just rare resources, but complete Forma?

Especially the bastards that require 10 whole Mutagen Masses, which are way less common than the other Invasion resources. Looking at you, Dark Split Sword!

It’s bloody insane.

Oh well. The sacrifices we make to increase our mastery ranks…