The Circuit – Complete Randomness
One of the better things about the Duviri paradox is that it’s not all Drifter combat. In fact, there is an entire Duviri game mode that’s for Warframes only. The catch? Everything is random.
Pretty much everything.
To start the Circuit, you end up in Teshin’s cave with a bunch of options. You get three randomly chosen Warframes, two randomly chosen primaries, secondaries and melee weapons and that’s it. You’re not allowed companions, but your random choices can be any item in the game, even if you don’t have it. If you have a Prime version of something, that takes priority over the normal version.
Once everyone is ready, you go through the magic portal to the Undercroft, which is a set of weird, random islands, hosting various missions. The missions can be one of the following: Defense, Void Flood, Excavation, Survival and Exterminate. As you beat each randomly picked mission, you get a decree and a chance to extract and go back to your ship. Decrees are exactly the same as the ones you get on Duviri proper, and do help spice up each round.
The worst mission by far is Defense. The maps are quite large and you have to kill every enemy to continue for five bleak waves. But the enemies can spawn quite far away, and that often involves running after the last few enemies before moving on to the next wave.
Intrinsics do make it a bit better
On the plus side, you can improve your chances of getting something good by leveling up Opportunity intrinsics. Most of the rank-ups involve getting extra options. For example, one intrinsic allows you to choose from five Warframers rather than just three. At rank 10 intrinsics, you actually have a chance to play as Stalker, but that requires a lot of work and, again, is pretty damn random. It’s a shame Stalker is wasted in the Circuit, I’d love to see him playable elsewhere.
However, even with maxed out Opportunity intrinsics, it’s all still random. The Steel Path shows this off the most, with the starting level being level 120-ish. But with random loadouts, it becomes a massive gamble to even see if you can finish the first round. After all, not every Warframe is good for the Steel Path, and most weapons don’t work at all unless they are properly modded. There’s no way you can get anything done if you get weapons like the Kunai and the Bo.
Sometimes I don’t even get to pick
While normally you do get the chance to pick which random gear you’ll get, I’ve been having a different problem. Because it takes me a while to load, I find myself stuck with completely random gear, having missed the opportunity to actually choose. Luckily, two times this happened, I managed to get Titania, but my weapon choices are also completely random. I didn’t want the Talons or the Burston, but I had no choice, but at least Titania comes with her own guns.
Still, it’s a pain in the ass, more so than just having bad choices. When I have managed to load in fast enough, my choices still haven’t been amazing. But that’s part of the game, I just have to make do with what I get.
Overall though I actually do enjoy the Circuit. It’s just that the defense missions really suck the joy out of the rest of the game mode. If there wasn’t a defense round, I’d happy play the Circuit more often, even if I don’t get a chance to pick my random Warframes.