Warframe’s Universal Medallion Sucks Ass and is Pointless

I’m a bit late when it comes to hopping on the Universal Medallion bandwagon. But I still feel it’s worth discussing as I consider leveling up the last two factions I’ve missed out on: Ventkids and Conclave. A Universal Medallion is an item you can exchange to a Syndicate to gain 1000 standing with them.

However, out of these two factions, Universal Medallions only work on Ventkids. You can’t use Universal Medallions on Conclave. At the same time though, there’s far more problems with Universal Medallions than one would like to admit.

Conclave: the elephant in the room

The most-cited issue with these medallions is that you can’t use them in the Conclave. I’m gonna be honest here, I’ve never, ever played the Conclave. The most I’ve ever played is a few friends-only matches of Lunaro, the weird ball-throwing PvP game mode. Between it being unpopular and mostly empty, and the fact that you gain so little standing from Conclave unless you win repeatedly, it’s hard to rank up. The only game mode regularly played is the all-for-one deathmatch game mode, so winning is extremely hard. Even if you ARE good at PvP, it still takes time to level up, for no real reward outside of cosmetics.

So, like a lot of people, when the Universal Medallion was announced, people were excited to have a secondary way to get Conclave standing. Even if it was a slow trickle over time. When the medallion was released though, the ability to use them for Conclave was not included.

Now, many people cite a tweet for being the cause of why we can’t use the medallions for Conclave. But personally? I think that guy was just a fall guy. There was clearly unease about the medallion from the start, and this one person (who was rank 3 in Conclave, not even close to max rank) was the perfect distraction to remove the medallion from Conclave. Instead of blaming DE, players could blame this random person instead, when, really, that guy was just unwittingly echoing an opinion from someone inside DE’s main circle.

Either way, it sucks that you can’t use medallions on Conclave. Especially since ranking up takes forever when you consider waiting times.

They only give 1000 standing.

A thousand standing sounds like a good amount, but it really depends on the Syndicate. For low level in Syndicates, that 1000 standing is great. For higher levels? Not so much. 1000 standing when you need 130,000 standing is a drop in the bucket.

Context also matters here, as some standing is easier to get than others. Your standard six main Syndicates are all relatively easy to farm for, since you can passively farm them with sigils. On the other hand, farming standing for Vox Solaris is a pain because you need tons of Toroids. But even the lowest level of Toroid gives the same amount of standing as a Universal Medallion, so you’re really looking at convenience more than anything else.

Personally, the best use for a Universal Medallion is Ventkids or Quills, since they both require a bit more effort to obtain. But that brings us onto our next problem.

Universal Medallions are hard to get.

The actual issue though? Universal Medallions are hard to obtain. Insanely hard. The only place they drop is in Disruption missions. But only the Disruption missions past Jupiter, and only in the C rotation, which requires having all 4 conduits successfully opened. On the third round and later of Disruption. Sure after that third wave, you are now permanently on B or C rotations, but it’s a long grind. Especially if you’re an idiot like me who struggles with the beeps and finding the Demolysts.

If you are willing to put up with Disruption though, you’re unlikely to actually get many medallions. The drop chance is a smidgen over 5% on rotation C. Most of the time, you will just get more relics.

This is the ONLY way to get them though, which is frankly pretty boring. Why can’t we have Universal Medallions as rewards elsewhere? Why are these not rewards on the Steel Path or something? Universal Medallions are rarer than normal Syndicate medallions!

You might as well just farm Syndicate standing the intended way.

If you want to level up with a syndicate, then you’re better off just doing it normally. In the time it takes to get a Universal Medallion or two, you could have done tons of other things. Conclave is pretty much the only exception to this, since matchmaking is so poor for it. Between Syndicates, Sigils, medallions, bounties, fishing, mining, races, tricks and Eidolon hunts, there’s enough alternate ways to get standing for pretty much everything.

The way Universal Medallions are, they’re clearly not meant to be used to actually level up a Syndicate. They’re designed as a small top up, if you’re just off the amount you need. But that’s not really what people need or want, and the rarity of the Universal Medallion stops you from even doing that. There’s no benefit to these medallions, except for last-ditch solutions when you really, really don’t want to farm any more.

And, honestly, if someone REALLY wants to do hundreds and thousands of hours of Disruption, just to rank up Conclave? Why not just let them? They’re not hurting anybody.