Mastery Rank 28
Hitting Mastery Rank 28 actually came to me as a bit of a surprise. It turned out I was much, much closer to MR28 than I had assumed, due to the fact that there had been a small trickle of content ever since I hit MR27. In fact, I managed to reach MR28 while still not touching K-Drives or the many melee weapons I am missing. But where all this mastery came from though is a bit of a mystery…
Okay, I lied. This sudden mastery is not a mystery at all. It just slowly built up. Unlike the run-ups to mastery ranks 24-26, this was less of a grind of finding new weapons, crafting them and leveling them up or anything like that. Most of it was a gradual collection of new weapons.
I did however spend 275 Platinum on the Pennant, not realizing that the blueprint was trade-able. Oops. Oh well. Being an MR28 player, I do have the resources to regain that lost Platinum pretty easily, but it does go to show just how easily these things can trick newer players. After all, most blueprints, including ones that drop from enemies, can’t be traded. This includes much sought after items like the Hate, Despair and War, all of which can’t be traded and can and have eluded people for years. The Pennant and Quellor I assumed were no different, what with them being blueprints dropped by specific enemies, the same way the Gorgon and Boar are, but I assumed wrong.
Other items have been a lot easier. While I really struggled trying to get Atlas Prime parts, when I actually put my mind and my Void Traces to it, I somehow managed to get both Tekko Prime and Dethcube Prime in a few tries… although I did wait for a while until I had more relics. Normally, when a new Primed Warframe comes out with all its gear, I’ll save standing from Syndicates so I can buy a bunch of relic packs, but I very rarely get much from them.
There was also a bit of a squeeze from some places. Mainly from Kuva weapons. Because you can squeeze an extra 1,000 standing per Forma used on them to get them to level 40. I have only done this with one weapon so far (the Kuva Seer I got from my very first Lich, Ladd Impa) but I did throw a couple of Forma on weapons that I like, mainly the Kuva Karak, which is actually pretty good. While normally that 1,000 standing per Forma isn’t worth it, it does mean I could get to MR28 without having to do K-Drives.
As for the MR28 test itself? Well, you remember how you throw canisters of gunk at Exploiter Orb? Yes? Do you also remember how enemies were invulnerable when fighting the enemies in Zealot Prelate assassination missions? Well it’s basically a mixture of those two events. You have a bunch of canisters spawning in random places and you need to coat enemies with them in order to kill them. You have to kill 60 enemies, but you only get 7 canisters and they only last for 20 seconds each. Thankfully I took Khora and managed to group enemies together no problem, but I did manage to waste two canisters because I forgot how to throw them – the first canister didn’t give me the “use middle mouse to throw” prompt. But I managed to kill like 30 enemies with one canister and just squeaked it with the last canister.
Now I’m MR28, the rank of Master. The next ranks, MR29 and MR30, are Middle Master and Grand Master, and it’ll be interesting to see both how long it takes to get there and what the mastery tests are. But the more curious thing is whether we’ll get more than MR30, or whether it will just stop there…