On Glass Fish and Cat Statues

Ever since getting that John Prodman poster, I’ve been considering doing the little things I never got around to. Sure, I’m Mastery Rank 30, but I’ve never played a game of Conclave. Nor have I maxed out a Focus tree or made a really overpowered Kitgun. And I never got around to finishing the Somachord collection. Or collecting Kurias and Thousand-Year Fish.

Those last three are less about actual Warframe things and more about finding and scanning tiny little objects. And, despite being rather similar, they’re all a pain in the ass to find.

There’s actually a myriad of small, collectible lore items in Warframe.

The original collectors’ items are Kurias, small black and gold statues that look like cats to me. And, in fact, they actually WERE originally cat-shaped, before being updated around the time the Natah quest came out. These days, they are reminiscent of the Grineer Worm Queen, and the stories the Kurias tell are of the Twin Queens themselves.

These things though are tricky to find. They are tucked away on specific tile sets and have to be scanned manually. Some Kurias are much easier to find than others, and, with tile set updates over the years, are harder still. The problem with Kurias however is that they appear on specific tiles, and some of these are INSANELY rare. For example, there’s a Grineer Shipyard extraction tile set that only seems to appear in every 1 in 50 runs. The nice one with the sludge waterfall. There’s a Kuria on that rare tileset, that’s also easily within the trigger area for extraction.

Cephalon Fragments are similar, but they are located completely randomly in any mission. Not only are they automatically scanned by Helios, but Loot Radar mods will mark Cephalon fragments on your minimap. That wasn’t always the case though, which made getting past Mars… annoyingly tricky. You used to need to scan all 5 Mars Cephalon fragments to get to Phobos. Now, you only need 3, and they stick out more as well.

Somachord fragments and Frame Fighter Fragments are the same as Cephalon Fragments, just for the ship’s music player and for Frame Fighter.

Thousand-Year Fish are like Kurias but a bit better.

When the Plains of Eidolon were released, 20 little glass fish were scattered over the Plains for us to track down. Most of these are somewhat hidden among Sentient Eidolon corpses. If you find all 20, then Onkko gives you one to place in your ship. Each one is tied to a small piece of lore about Cetus and the Plains, which can be found in the Codex.

Luckily, these can be easily scanned by Helios without you seeing them. And they glow blue, generally in contrast with their environments. Well, most of the time. When I went through to scan most of these, a lot of them appeared black almost, due to my graphics settings.

Now though, we have tons of fragments!

Lore fragments though have increased since then. The Plains have two sets of secret lore snippets, the fish and ones relating to the Ghouls. The Ghouls’ fragments are dropped by the enemies themselves though, so they’re not too hard to find.

However, the same can’t be said for other areas. There are tons of tiny fragments scattered across Fortuna as well, not to mention Somachords. However, Fortuna is a MUCH bigger map and the fragments are much, much smaller. There are memory fragments for all of Solaris United’s main cast. However, the objects themselves are the same size and shape as Debt Bonds and don’t stand out at all. On a map that’s 3km across, even with jetpacks and ninja powers, these things are very hard to find.

And in Jupiter’s remaster, tiny little statues, almost like action figures, are scattered around. The equivalent of Kurias but just for Jupiter. These explain how Alad V is working for the Sentients. Like Kurias, they only spawn in specific tiles, but they can be scanned by Helios.

The idea is cool, but not a good way to serve important lore.

The little glass fish are fine. They just give tiny bits of background to Cetus. The same could be said with the Kurias themselves, as they are simply a poem. But some lore is more important than others. After all, Alad V creating the Amalgams is a HUGE turning point in the Sentient war. It marks how the Sentients are further adapting. But this lore is hidden away in tiny chunks in places no one will look. So everyone assumes it’s just Alad V being a cunt again.

For smaller lore and cosmetic tidbits though, like the Frame Fighter Fragments, hide and seek clues is probably alright.

In the meantime, I need to start tracking down Kurias. And I have no idea which ones I have and haven’t scanned yet…