What if I Had Picked Excalibur or Mag as my Starter Frame?

We all know me as that annoyingly yellow Volt. Half the pictures of Warframe include a very specific Volt Prime with yellow as its main colour and blue metallic bits. I was actually lucky and was mostly given Volt Prime early on, back when he was a cheap frame. But even now, I still use both Volt Prime and normal Volt. Somehow, just somehow, Volt does everything I want to do in a single Warframe.

But what if I had picked a different starter frame? Would I still be here today?

Let’s look at both alternatives, one at a time.

What if I had picked Excalibur?

Honestly? I probably would have played the game more and been less reliant on being carried.

Excalibur is the stronger frame earlier on in the game, but also the tankiest. With zero useful mods, Excalibur is still somewhat capable. At the very least, he can clear a room using his Exalted Blade. While Volt is a great all-rounder, he’s a lot, lot squishier than Excalibur. Excalibur also comes with invulnerability frames on his Slash Dash, meaning you at least have a chance to get out of trouble.

Not only that, but back when I started, Volt was significantly weaker than he is now. So me picking Excalibur probably would have led to me playing just as long as I have now, but probably more slowly and without really getting the hang of things until much later on.

What if I had picked Mag?

I don’t think I would have stuck around at all if I’d picked Mag. While Mag IS a strong frame, her early game is absolutely atrocious. Worse, back when I started playing, Mag didn’t have any of the nice buffs that she has now, like Crush giving Overshields and things like that. Playing Mag early on is legitimately a struggle because she doesn’t really have much to defend herself with. There’s no invulnerability like Excalibur and no Electric Shields or short stuns like Volt has.

Reaching a level of self-sustainability later on would have severely hampered my enjoyment of Warframe. I probably would have given up earlier on, not even reaching the Second Dream.

How about the other low level frames?

Of course, if I had picked Mag or Excalibur, I might have also been more likely to play other, low level Warframes. My second Warframe funnily enough was Frost, so I wonder if I would have done the same with Mag and Excalibur? Most likely though, I would have grown tired of them sooner and moved on to Rhino, easily available on Venus. With a sturdier frame in my hands, I would probably just follow the same path that most lower level players took.

Making your way around the solar system with Iron Skin and a damage buff makes life so much easier.

What about… Loki?

Now, when I created my Retvik account, I was too late to pick Loki as a starter. But on my original, abandoned Warframe account… I could have picked Loki. This was later Loki, so my choices would have been Excalibur, Loki or Mag. If I’d picked Loki, I probably would have dropped Warframe like a hot brick. Loki has Volt and Mag’s problems but far worse. His ONLY offensive ability is Radial Disarm, but Loki dies incredibly easily so I may not have even made it to level 10 with him.

Here’s the twist though. I ended up picking Excalibur back then. And I ended up dropping Warframe for a long time. Until I picked Warframe up again back in 2016 and picked Volt.

So really, I answered my own question.

If I had picked Excalibur or Mag, I probably wouldn’t be writing this article today.

While that is a somewhat sad thought, it does open up a lot more questions. Like, what would I be playing if I wasn’t playing Warframe? I guess we’ll never know…