Squeezing More Affinity, XP and Focus Out Of Our Warframes
To say that there’s a lot of grinding to do in Warframe is pretty accurate. After all, if your goal is to increase your Mastery Rank, you need to level up items. If you are heading towards True Master or the Legendary ranks, you need to obtain and level up pretty much every single weapon, warframe and more in the game.
Thankfully, there are ways to speed up the grind a little. As I’ve mentioned before, these locations are great for leveling things up, but can get boring after a while. That being said, it’s also worth looking into optimizing your affinity and focus gains beyond just playing popular grind spots.
Upgrade Focus lenses
If you are going hard on leveling up Focus, then you definitely want to upgrade your lenses. Each lens converts a small amount of Affinity into Focus. Lua lenses provide the most focus (with about a 4% conversion rate), while standard lenses don’t do much at all.
It’s also worth sticking lenses on as much gear as possible. Preferably on Warframes and Weapons, as these do generally get the most use. You can also stick a lens on your Operator’s Amp, but, well, unless you dedicate a lot of time playing as your Operator, you won’t earn much focus from it.
Use less gear
Depending on what you are leveling up, it’s useful to prioritize which gear you want to level up first. When it comes to affinity, the way it is split between your gear is somewhat simple: kills generally give 25% affinity to your Warframe and 75% split between your gear (weapons, etc.). That 75% split goes to anything that you have equipped. But if you only have one weapon equipped, then that whole 75% goes straight into one weapon. That being said, it can be tricky just playing with one weapon, so, to make things easier, it’s worth taking 2 gear items, so that 75% is split into 37.5% for both weapons, rather than getting 25% each if you use three weapons.
On the flip side, if you want to level up a Warframe, then you want to get as many kills with your Warframe as possible, so it gains all the affinity, rather than sharing it.
If you are farming Focus though, you’ll want to use all the gear you can. If it has a lens in it, then use it.
Avoid playing solo
This one’s pleasantly simple. You get far less spawns when playing on your own instead of with a group. After all, the game does have some sort of balancing based on your squad size.
However, if you are affinity-farming via stealth kills, then you may want to instead set yourself to Friends Only or Invite Only. Solo is normally fine for the stealth-kill method, but you’ll get a handful more enemies if you aren’t set to Solo.
Hang out in Relays
This one’s a bit cheeky, but it does work. Tenno who are MR30 or higher have the ability to bless the relay they are in for 3 hours. There are six blessings to choose from, which means there is a chance to get an Affinity Blessing. This gives you an extra 25% affinity, which, while small, still helps more than you’d think.
The only downside to this is that, well, it’s completely random. However, it is worth popping to a relay whenever Baro Ki’Teer visits, because people certainly will use the True Master Fonts there.
Hopefully, with this small guide, you’ll be able to optimize your affinity gains, allowing you to level up faster. After all, every little helps!