Ambulas Reborn – Grinding Giant Robot Emus
On Thursday 4th of May, Digital Extremes released Ambulash Reborn, a new Operation (i.e. mini event) for Warframe. Frohd Bek, one of those annoying Corpus guys who likes to make as much as possible, is funding and prototyping a new super beefed up MOA robot to replace the old Ambulas model manufactured on Venus. This new Ambulas is tied to an Animo system, which allows the giant mechanical emus with laser guns on their faces to adapt to their enemies. Frohd Bek promises plenty of Grofit – growth and profit – to anyone who backs his bad 80’s-advert-styled proposals.
Well, it should. But it’s not done yet. That’s why Frohd Bek is 1. looking for more people to fund his project and 2. is testing out Ambulas on unsuspecting Tenno, out in open-air Corpus regions.
But although most Corpus are either super rich scumbags or poor workers, Ergo Glast and the Perrin Sequence, last seen in the Glast Gambit and at all the relays, have come back, looking for a way to combat this soon-to-be army of gigantic robot chicken monsters. Turns out, the Ambulas has a super handy console on their backs, and defeated Ambulas can be hacked, not only to gain information, but to temporarily switch their allegiance until they suddenly realise they’re shooting Corpus and not Tenno, then abruptly deactivate and die in disgust. Hacking an Ambulas drops Animo Beacons, and if we collect enough of them, we can go and tour the Ambulas Manufacturing Plant!
For us, it’s all very simple. Warframes must do Corpus missions on open-air cold worlds. This basically means we’re restricted to Venus, Neptune and Pluto. Randomly, once per ‘rotation’ (i.e. once every 5 waves of Defense, every 5 minutes or so in Survival, once a mission in Capture/Exterminate) Frohd Bek will appear on our feeds to give a surprise demonstration of his new Ambulas model. An Ambulas will be dropped down via a drop ship, complete with a handful of Corpus handlers, and we have to defeat the bastard, hack him, get the Animo Beacons and go on our merry way, after which Ergo Glast will thank us.
These Animo Beacons aren’t just used to find where Ambulas are being manufactured. Ergo Glast is also doing a nice mini-sale, trading unwanted beacons for various mods, as well as a little statue for your ship and some cosmetic emblems.
If you DO go to the manufacturing plant, it costs you 40 Beacons. But if you defeat the 6 Ambulas that are there, you get a very nice gun, the Supra Vandal.
Like in the Pacifism Defect, there’s a clan side to things as well, with some sort of reward for the top 10% of clans. Clan scores are determined by the total number of beacons gathered in a single mission by each player in the clan. Currently my score is 75, which is exactly the amount of Beacons I need to buy myself a mod that will make explosions on secondary weapons bigger.
The only downside to all this is, apart from the obvious huge amounts of grinding that are required, is that Ambulas can spawn on low level missions. In one way, that’s a good thing, as a low level player can actively participate in an event, but it’s not so good when a brand new player, with their MK1 Braton, Kunai and Skana, has to fight an Ambulas in order to complete their mission, and ends up using all their ammo. A level 5 Ambulas is fine for someone with a fully leveled up weapon, but it’s sucky as heck, just trying to do 10 waves on Tessera and being unable to win.
Still, it’s a Corpus event, which means it’s automatically better than a Grineer one. Far less infinitely scaling armour on endless missions.
Plus, it’s way, way less boring than the Pacifism Defect.