Forgotten Items from Warframe’s Past

Warframe is a pretty old game. Back in March 2021, we celebrated 8 years of Warframe. Players were presented with stat sheets of their characters, as well as free weapons and skins. At the top of the list of presents we got, the biggest one was a skin for Rhino. The Dex skin for Rhino looks great, especially for a Warframe that has been here since the beginning.

However, not everything in Warframe is as it was. Things change all the time, and Warframe’s nerfs and changes can come from nowhere. Today, we’re going to chat about some of the long-forgotten part of Warframe’s past.

A random moa called Ambulas

Many of Warframe’s bosses have changed over the years. Some, like the Jackal, get a full rework. Other bosses aren’t as lucky. However, most of Warframe’s planetary bosses have changed dramatically. Not just in how they work, but how they look too.

One of the biggest uplifts is that of Ambulas. Originally, the boss wasn’t even called Ambulas, and it was controlled by a long-forgotten Corpus guy. Using a MOA. For years, Ambulas was just a black MOA that did basic MOA things. And, despite being on Pluto, Ambulas was easier to kill than the Sergent. Eventually though, that MOA disappeared, and was replaced with a completely reworked boss fight.

Not every boss is so lucky. Both the Sergent and Phoroid are still just larger versions of existing models. Maybe one day, they could also be revamped.

Wolf of Saturn Six’s assassination node

At the end of the first Nightwave, the Wolf of Saturn Six, we got a new assassination node. For the end of Nightwave Season 1, we were given the chance to fight the Wolf as many times as we liked. The mission was somewhat tricky with so many firebombs being thrown around, but us Tenno didn’t care, we just wanted to smash the Wolf the same way he had smashed us in the past. However, this assassination node was very much temporary, and once Season 1 ended, the Wolf and his assassination node completely disappeared.

Now, the ONLY way to fight the Wolf is to by beacons and try to summon him. But beacons are expensive and the Wolf has ludicrously bad drop chances. In fact, 50% of the time, he only drops a random mod. If it wasn’t for some INSANE luck, both myself and my Wukong buddy would have never managed to get the Saturn Six mask, the Wolf’s rarest part.

Self Damage

This is a much more recent removal. People used to hate explosive weapons because, well, they’d blow themselves up. If anything, self-damage caused by explosive weapons was the norm. Even with Cautious Shot, the self damage would easily kill us. We ended up with a massive pile of weapons that never got used, just sitting there and gathering dust. The only Warframe who benefited from self damage was Chroma.

Now though, self damage has been completely removed from our weapons, aside from a few broken items. Instead, if something blows up next to you, you instead do a fancy roll to get back on your feet. Honestly, the removal of self damage is a good thing, because now we have even more options. We also have mods (e,g, Cautious Shot, Primed Sure Footed) which ignore the forced rolls and knock-backs, making explosive weapons in line with normal weapons.

Void Keys

Before we had void relics, we had void keys. These keys were used to access missions in the Void, where prime parts dropped as rewards. While you could get a lot of primed parts from void keys, the drop chances were a massive pain. Drops were based on the standard AABC rotation system. This meant that, if you were hunting for a Loki Prime Systems (for example), you’d have to spend 20 minutes in a survival to even get a CHANCE to obtain the gear you want.

While some argue that Void Keys were better, I somewhat disagree. If you want tons of ducats, then Void Keys would be better, as relics are one-use items and a Void Key would only be consumed at the end of the mission. If you are farming for certain parts though? Good luck, because there’s no way you can make things easier. Void Relics at least allow you to focus on one single part, and you can always use Void Traces to improve your chances further.

Fusion Cores

Before we had Endo, we had Fusion Cores. But we also had a LOT of duplicate mods. Upgrading mods in the early days of Warframe actually involved huge numbers of the same mod, over and over. To upgrade a mod, you had to infuse it with the same mod over and over. Fusion Cores were similar, except they could be infused into any mod. This took ages and made it really, really hard to upgrade rare mods.

Thankfully though, upgrading mods was made far easier with Endo, a new resource. Endo can upgrade any mod, and if you get rid of mods you don’t need, you get Endo back. Endo also drops all over the place, and has multiple ways of farming it. Compared to how tedious using Fusion Cores was, today’s system is a lot easier than it used to be…