The Three Best Companions
There are quite a lot of companions in Warframe. As you start out, you are gifted with the Taxon, a small sentinel that helps you out and keeps your shields happy. As you play more though, you realize that there are not just floating robots. One quest gives you a Kubrow, a dog companion, and over time, you can also get cats, robotic dogs, mechanical emus, three types of infested Kubrow and Kavat, an Infested Charger, and other floating robots too. However, since there are so many, it’s easy to get confused. So here are the three best companions in Warframe.
Smeeta Kavat
The Smeeta Kavat does a little bit of everything. Not only can it confuse enemies by turning invisible and sending out a decoy, it also can give you some very interesting buffs. Most people use a Smeeta Kavat because of its main mod, Charm, which gives you all sorts of buffs. It can double resources as you pick them up, it can increase your critical chance to 200%, it can randomly give you one rare resource or it can instantly refill your weapon, or give you back your energy. The only problem is that the Smeeta Kavat gives you buffs completely at random, with a cooldown of 27 seconds before it can activate again. But the buffs, even the “less good” buffs, are pretty handy to have, even if they are random.
The only problem with Smeeta Kavats is that they can die pretty easily. Their Mischief precept does help a little, but you do need to invest some health mods into them.
Panzer Vulpaphylla
The Panzer Vulpaphylla is an infested Kavat-like being with a deadly twist. It can shoot out viral quils that do a good bit of viral damage and also can form spores for even more damage. The Panzer is like having a miniature Saryn on your team. The damage it puts out is better than most animal companions, and also seems to do more damage than robot companions can do too. What’s even better is that these guys don’t die. When a Panzer takes fatal damage, it fires a final blast of viral quills, then turning into a larvae form, after which it recovers and respawns after 30 seconds. So you don’t even need to worry about it dying.
On top of that, like all Vulpaphylla, you can also give them certain traits, like making them more resistant against Infested. However, this isn’t really needed, and any Panzer will do.
Helios
Everything in Warframe can be scanned. You can scan resources to see where they most commonly appear, you can scan plants on Earth to pick them up and you can scan enemies to find out more about their weaknesses. But doing this all manually is incredibly tedious. But don’t worry, Helios will do all that for you! Not only will it scan all of the above, but it’ll also scan things like somachord fragments. However, it doesn’t scan Kuria – you have to find those yourself.
The downside is that, once you’ve fully scanned everything, Helios will stop scanning things. However, it can still pack a punch with its attack precept, Deconstructor. But if you use the mod Detect Vulnerability, then Helios can mark weak spots on enemies, which you can shoot for extra damage. So even once you’ve scanned everything, Helios is still helpful.
Bonus Companion – Carrier
I’ve been using Carrier for years, ever since it was the only companion to have Vacuum. Yep, in early Warframe, Vacuum was restricted to the Carrier, and that’s all it did. But everyone constantly used it because vacuuming up resources is way better than having to run over everything. These days though, all companions can use Vacuum. That doesn’t mean that Carrier is useless though. I still use Carrier for Ammo Case, which can transmute different ammo drops into the ones you are looking for. It helps keep your weapons functioning and stops you running out of ammo, which is always a good thing.
There are other companions that are pretty good, but this lot are by far the best, especially for general usage.