The Curiosity of the Day of the Dead Theme

A quick heads up, the Halloween colour palette is currently available for 1 credit (yes, credit!) on the Warframe market. Simply search Halloween in the store and buy the palette and it’s yours forever. It consists of some very rich reds, oranges and yellows, as well as some good natural greens. The bottom most yellow is actually the colour I use on all my Warframes, so for that reason alone, you should get it. The palette goes away on November 2nd, so get it now while you can, since it’s basically free.

As well as the free Halloween palette, there’s some other spooky items you can acquire in Warframe. The Dullahan helmet (equipped in the Auxiliary slot under Armour in Appearance) is a 1 credit cosmetic but that only lasts until November and becomes unequippable afterwards. The rest of the Halloween stuff is Platinum-only Day of the Dead skins.

The Day of the Dead skins are odd. They’re clearly not based on a traditional Northern American Halloween but on the Day of the Dead of Latin America. So everything is all sugar skulls and lovely swirly designs. There are four Syandanas with Day of the Dead motifs, two Landing Craft skins and a TON of weapon skins, with everything from the Skana to Twin Grakatas to the Opticor. There’s also a Day of the Dead Porta Armour Set, but the motif is barely noticeable. The Syandana packs are cheaper than buying the Syandanas separately, and the weapon packs are cheaper than buying individually, but you probably won’t want all the skins as some of them aren’t particularly visible or are for weapons you don’t want. The individual weapon skins are 20 platinum each though, so you’re not losing out that much if you don’t buy the bundles.

I’ll be honest, I’m not often a fan of un-immersive styles, but I really like the Day of the Dead theme, even more so because it allows you to make some pretty odd looks. On the one hand, you can control which little flares and swirls can be seen, by colouring them the same as the base colour on your item, and you can also colour the skulls separately too. That means you can just have the skulls or just have the swirls visible. On the other hand, you can make every colour accent the same and have solid one-colour weapons. But that just looks weird.

The default black and white look though is really nice. It’s not that pure black either, it’s the slightly off-black I normally use, that preserves some details rather than drowning things in darkness. Newer skins also have a few little extra colours on them as well.

The skins are a little dated though. They lack the polish that newer skins have, and on lower graphic settings, they lose their crisp swirls.

The only real problem with the Day of the Dead skins is that we don’t seem to get any new ones any more – there is only one new skin for 2018 and there were no new skins for 2017. And that’s a shame because I’d love an Arca Plasmor or an Ignis Day of the Dead skin. Heck, there are loads of items that could get skins.

Actually, let’s go one step further. Day of the Dead Warframe skins. Made in the same way Immortal skins are. Those would be so cool.

But sadly, we don’t seem to get many non-Tennogen, non-altered model skins any more…