The Wolf of Saturn Six – New Alert System

Remember Alerts? Those random missions you could do that would give you pitiful amounts of Endo, Credits and other resources? The sort of thing that could genuinely earn you more of the reward inside the mission than finishing the mission itself? Well Alerts are going away, replaced by Nightwave, a new hybrid thing between alerts and miniature quests with an episodic feel to them and unique rewards to obtain, as well as a credit shop to buy all the things you normally get in alerts.

The first of these episodes is the Wolf of Saturn Six, who is a rather nasty Grineer folk who has escaped from imprisonment from a secret prison on Saturn that no one knew about – the aforementioned Saturn Six. Why is he a wolf? Because he howls at the moon, apparently. Even though wolves don’t actually howl at the moon, they’re just communicating with other wolves. Wolf things aside, this story is brought to us by a completely new character, Nora Night. She knows of the Dreamers, the Tenno, and is a bit of a fancy storyteller, a rogue radio operator broadcasting her signals across the solar system. And unlike some people, Nora Night both has a hint of respect for us and has a nice collection of shinies to get us to do stuff for her.

As for the actual tasks themselves? They are quite… varied. There’s a lot less doing specific missions and a lot more just doing various tasks. The tasks are split between daily, weekly and elite weekly tasks, offering various amounts of Standing. The tasks also vary in difficulty – for example, a daily task might be to fill X Ayatan Sculptures with Ayatan Stars, or to use a Glyph in a mission. An Elite Weekly task, from what I’ve seen so far, has included capturing a Hydrolyst and doing a sortie with a friend or clan mate. Other tasks include doing a specific mission type, killing lots of enemies or doing other mundane tasks like Bounties, Invasions and Simaris scans.

The standing earned increases your level, and you need 10,000 standing to level up. As you level up, you get various rewards, such as glyphs, sigils, Kuva, Forma, WEAPON SLOTS and later on some unique cosmetics as well. Yes, by doing these tasks, there is a chance to earn actual weapon slots for completely free.

But on top of that, there is now a ‘cred shop’. Every couple of times you level up, you unlock “Wolf Creds” which can be spent in Nora’s little shop. This shop contains the stuff you normally find in alerts – Nitain, Mods, various Warframe helmets and the three parts required for Vauban. That last thing is amazing because I’ve known people who had to wait months to get all of Vauban’s parts, simply because of bad timings with alerts. There is even an Umbral Forma appearing as an upcoming reward, meaning we can finally put the Umbral Polarity on things aside from Excalibur Umbra and his swords.

Really, it’s a great system. You get rewarded for doing things you’ll probably be doing anyway. Most people will kill about 500 enemies in a day, most people will do a Sortie, most people need to do invasions, most people will do the odd Simaris mission and higher level players will capture an Eidolon or three when they can. Some things do require a little more effort, like killing Eximus units, but everything so far has been doable.

The only thing I worry about is playing catch-up. Because the Wolf of Saturn Six is the first of a series of stories that Nora Night has to tell us. What will happen to the weapons we don’t manage to grab, the exclusive mods. I think there is enough time to get most of the rewards, but Nightwave does require regular playtime and having a Warframe hiatus might be a pain. Still, from what I’ve seen and experienced, it’s all doable.

I look forward to what’s to come.

She’s called Nora Night, not Nora North. I’m thinking of Nolan North. Still, great voices all round.