Great Weapons for Warframe Newbies
You’re new. You want a new weapon. Your starter weapons are getting old and tired. You NEED something else. I get it. That’s why I’ve got a couple of good, strong weapons that a newbie Warframe player can easily get a hold of. And by newbie, I mean these are accessible to players at around Mastery Rank 2-4, who have access to all planets up to Ceres. After Ceres, and particularly at Saturn and Uranus, things tend to get difficult. Europa in particular is also a very tough moon.
There is a quick thing I will mention before I continue. Earlier this year, there was a massive primary and secondary weapon revamp, and a LOT of weapons had their mastery rank increased. This is supposed to lead players into leveling up and selling weapons in order to increase one’s mastery rank, but as you travel through the star chart, especially before the Second Dream, you don’t really have that luxury, to be able to easily sell weapons and move onwards. You NEED a good, strong weapon to carry you along, especially while you level up other weapons. So your best bet is to find a weapon that you love and invest in that. Stick a potato in it. Put forma into it. Take it everywhere. Love it the way you’d love a Kubrow. For me, that weapon was the Ignis. For my other account, little old Phovos, that weapon is the Vectis.
Before I start, though, you need to do something else. You need to rank up the following mods: Serration, Point Blank, Hornet Strike, Pressure Point. Get them to as high a rank as possible without spending all your credits. Hornet Strike and Pressure Point in particular because they’re easier to find and Pressure Point is way cheaper to upgrade completely.
Heatsword
Normally I’d say the Heatsword is bad. It’s not normally a good weapon. BUT there’s no other weapon you can get for free, with double mod capacity from the get go. By entering the code FREESWORD in the Redeem Code area of the Market on your ship, you can get a free Heat Sword, and you can stick way more mods on it than normal weapons, because it comes with an Orokin Reactor already installed.
Lex
I was always hesitant about the Lex. When I was a newbie, 50,000 credits seemed like a lot. When I was a half-decent player, I had better pistols and things like the Sonicor. But I was wrong, the Lex is a hell of a gun. Available for only 50,000 credits in the Market, no blueprint required, this thing will murder all the things. Up to about Uranus. Using just Hornet Strike, Barrel Diffusion (+120% multishot) and a status mod, the Lex gets the job done. The Lex is locked at Mastery Rank 3, but all it takes to reach MR3 is to level up your Warframe and your three starter weapons – by then you will be looking for new weapons anyway.
Strun
I should point out, the Strun and the MK1-Strun are two separate weapons. And the MK1-Strun is damn awful, doing similar damage to the MK1-Paris, a single-shot bow, with a much slower reload. But the normal Strun, available for only 15,000 credits, will get the job done for a while, at least until you can get the Hek.
Hek
While the Hek is now locked at Mastery Rank 4, it IS a weapon you can easily obtain by the time you’ve reached Mars, and even as is, with only a handful of mods on it, the Hek IS a powerful weapon. The Hek is recommended by a lot of players, and even the base Hek will take you all the way to Sedna and Eris if modded correctly.
Karak/Burston/Boltor
You know, it’s pretty hard trying to pick a good, strong primary weapon accessible at low levels that 1. isn’t a shotgun and 2. doesn’t require components from anywhere past Ceres. These weapons will all kinda get the job done somewhat, but they need work to be made into good weapons. A Split Chamber (+90% multishot) does help but early on you won’t have that. These guns will kill things though. The only low level level weapons like these to avoid are the Latron, which is used later to make the Tiberon (and will require you to hold onto the weapon or sell it and make it again) and the Hind, which is expensive to build.
Other Weapons Worth Considering:
Vectis
The Vectis Sniper Rifle is somewhat costly to make (with Nano Spores only being available from Saturn onwards) but is available at Mastery Rank 2. Because it’s a high-damage, single shot weapon with an insanely fast reload, you can use it in missions relatively well, its only real downside being that you might run out of ammo.
Furis
The Furis is a good pistol that you get the blueprint for free from doing the junction to Venus. It’s no Lex but it does the job. The Winds of Purity mod allows you to self-heal, so if you join New Loka, it’s worth getting that mod.
Sonicor
The Sonicor got me a damn long way through the star chart, and even further when I got a Riven Mod for it. The problem is that, despite its Mastery requirement of 2, the Sonicor is really expensive to build, needing Argon (requiring a trip to the Void via Phobos) and Oxium (from Oxium Ospreys).
The most important thing though is to find a weapon you like. There are, like, 300 or more weapons in Warframe, and a lot of low-level ones. So don’t be scared to try things out.