On Archon Hunts and Shards

Back in the New War, we fought some boss enemies known as Archons. They were weird amalgams between Warframe and Sentient, with a massive crystal sticking out of their bodies. After each battle, we’d rip out that Archon Shard and give it to Natah to help her heal. There were three bosses, two fought as the Drifter and one fought by our Warframes. After the New War, it was believed that the Archons were dead.

Well, turns out they’re not dead. Someone by the name of Pazuul has shoved new shards into these Archons and brought them back to life. And once a week, us Tenno can hunt down the resurrected Archons and yank a fresh shard from their bodies.

Challenging missions

Archon Hunts are basically Sorties but with enemies with much higher levels, from 130 to 200, and obviously, you need to complete the New War to access these missions. There’s three missions total, two of which are semi-random and one of which is an assassination on one of the three Archons. In these missions, you fight Narmer enemies, as well as the occasional Sentient or five. These are genuinely tough missions. They’re on the same level as Steel Path missions and require better loadouts. You can’t just go in with nothing. Enemies hit hard too, so you’ll need some sort of protection.

Your reward for killing an Archon again? You get to rip the shiny Archon Shard out of the Archon’s corpse and keep it for yourself. There’s a 20% chance the Archon Shard is Tau-forged, making a shard slightly better. Oh, and there’s a sortie reward too, but no one cares about that.

Archon Shards – The new way to min-max a Warframe

Once you have your Archon Shard, you can ram it into one of your Warframes for a small buff. The buffs are split into three different coloured shards, each colour having five different options. Using the Helminth on your ship, you can insert up to five Archon Shards into your Warframe, giving it different buffs. There are quite a few buffs available, like +5 health regeneration, spawning in with 30% more energy, increased casting speed and, surprisingly, a 10% buff to Duration or Strength.

Honestly, the shards very much feel like power creep. Warframe is already pretty bad when it comes to power creep, but these shards do stick out quite a bit. Both metaphorically and physically. That being said, it takes time to earn Archon Shards, and you can only do one Archon Hunt a week. Still, the shards do offer some very interesting traits that you’d want on any Warframe, and these buffs are already on top of modding and Forma-ing your Warframes.

Then again, it’s an end game activity. Hard enemies, boss fights and enticing loot. It’s partly what people have asked for, boss fights and rare loot. And that’s what we got. The Archon Shards are there for only the strongest of Tenno, you have to work to get them. I just wish there were more Archons, rather than the three Archons we’ve already fought.

Oh and get rid of those annoying flying fuckers. Those canisters are a pain in the ass to destroy.