The Handy Guide to Warframe‘s Railjack – Part Two

In part one of this guide I talked about how to acquire your very own Railjack in Warframe and how to beat the first and easiest mission with it. Now it’s time to use the spoils of said mission and turn your rookie vessel into a finely tuned instrument of destruction.

Step Four – Pimp my Railjack

At the end of your first successful Empyrian mission you’ll have been rewarded with a lot of stuff you didn’t have before (Railjack-specific mods, resources etc.), and also two new types of XP, labeled Intrinsics and Plexus. All of this will help you upgrade your ship in various ways.

Let’s have a look at the Railjack Configuration console, which is located right where the clan dojo’s or relay’s Dry Dock fast travel option will take you.

This is the default tab, called Components, which you’ll see first every time you use the console.

Shown on the left are the ships’s four main…well…components, responsible for shield and hull strenght, flight speed and battle mod performance (more on those later). They come in different flavors and ranks, and you’ll upgrade them over time.

The better, more specialized parts are acquired by looting wreckage during missions and repairing it afterwards, but for now I’d advise you to use the Research console located right next to this one and research and build the MK III versions of your pre-installed SIGMA parts. You’ll have to research them in order, first MK I, then MK II and so on. However, if you’re in a clan they may well have already been researched and you just need to build and install the MK III’s. These will carry you a good way into the Empyrian star chart.

Later on, when you’ve looted some wreckage parts, you’ll identify them, repair them if they’re good or scrap them for Endo if they aren’t. This is all managed by the three buttons in the upper middle of the screen. The word Capacity there means that you can initially have a maximum of eight repaired/built custom parts. You can buy additional slots for platinum, but unused parts can also be disassembled, returning the bulk of their resources to you.

On the right hand side of the screen you see the ship’s overall stats. If you swap out any parts changes are shown here in green or red, as usual in Warframe.

The second tab, Armaments, works pretty much the same, but for the Railjack’s weaponry.

The first installed turret is the one fired from the pilot’s seat, the second is relevant for the two swivel turrets manned by your co-pilots (you can’t use two different ones for those), the third is the ordnance launcher, also fired by the pilot.

There are many different types of turrets and ordnance. Personally, I like the Talyn as my main turret, the Vort for the swivel turrets and the Tycho Seeker ordnance, but your mileage may vary. I suggest to build and try them all out while repeating the Sover Strait mission a couple of times, see which you like best, and then research and build the MK III versions of those.

The Upgrades tab is practically the same thing as the mods-section of your warframes and weapons, but with some additions.

The first tab, Integrated, provides one slot for an aura mod and eight for standard mods. As you get them, install and upgrade these as usual; this is pretty self-explanatory. The Plexus-XP mentioned above are for leveling this up, increasing the mod-capacity. The maximum rank is 30, and Forma can be used to apply polarities. It really works just like ‘frames and weapons.

The second and third tabs, Battle and Tactical, are kind of the pendant to warframe abilities. Battle mods give your ship offensive or defensive skills that are activated during missions by pressing 1, 2 or 3, have short or no cooldowns and consume energy. Tactical mods are more situational in nature. They are used by clicking the corresponding button on the tactical map (see Intrinsics below). They don’t consume energy, but have very long cooldowns.

There’s three slots for each, and as far as I can tell these don’t consume any of your available capacity, so in theory you can fully rank them all up right away – if you have the Endo and credits, that is.

Intrinsics, while technically being part of your ship, are what I think of as your character’s personal skills to operate the thing.

There’s five skill trees that start at rank 0 and go up to 10. I won’t go into detail about all of them here, you can see what each rank of each tree does by right-clicking them.

The first few ranks cost next to nothing, and even after your very first successful mission you‘ll probably be able to raise multiple, if not all, classes to at least rank one. In any case, my suggestion would be to start with Tactical and Command rank 1.

Tactical 1 gives you access to the tactical map (L to open it on PC), and lets you use tactical mods. Command 1 allows you to hire your first crew member, which helps immensely if you’re a solo player.

If you’re using a main turret that’s not a hitscan weapon I’d go for Gunnery 1 next, as this unlocks a target lead indicator.

Once you have all five trees at rank 1 and accumulated some more Intrinsics XP I suggest to go straight for Tactical 4. Rank 3 lets you click the white icons on the tactical map to instantly teleport to that part of your Railjack, while rank 4 enables using the Omni tool whenever you’re not aboard your ship to teleport back there whithin seconds. These are both immense time savers and huge QoL-improvements.

After that it’s really down to personal preference. Just keep in mind that some higher level missions have an Intrinsics-requirement, meaning that you need to have raised at least one tree up to that rank to do them. That shouldn’t be a problem though as the XP roll in pretty fast.

The Crew tab does exactly what you’d expect it to: it lets you manage your ship’s crew.

Once you’ve raised your Command Intrinsic to at least rank 1 you can hire crew members from Ticker in Fortuna on Venus. You have three slots from the get-go, more can be purchased for 20 platinum each. You can only ever use three at a time though – and need to have Command rank 5 for that – so there’s no pressing reason to have more.

Crew members have five attributes, Piloting, Gunnery, Repair, Combat and Endurance, with values ranging from 0 to 5. Which stats you’d like them to have depends on what role you want to assign to them. They can be Defender, Pilot, Gunner or Engineer.

A Defender roams your ship, looking to fend off any boarding parties. While this sounds good I don’t think it’s necessary. You’ll soon see why.

Pilot and Gunner are self-explanatory. I don’t need a Pilot as I do that myself (and I hear they aren’t too bright upstairs anyway), but Gunners are great for obvious reasons.

An Engineer looks for fires, leaks etc. and repairs them autonomically. I guess I don’t need to tell you how handy that is. What’s more, as an Engineer isn’t glued to a pilot’s or turret seat they roam around the ship, just like a Defender would, and they, too, shoot enemies when they find any.

That’s why I go with one Engineer and two Gunners, and in my experience this works perfectly. Gunners really only need the Gunnery stat, so once you have two with Gunnery at 3 or so (as you can put more points into it when you’ve sufficiently raised the Command Intrinsic) you’re set. The Engineer should have Repair at rank 4 or 5, obviously, and you can invest any surplus points into Endurance and/or Combat.

If you team up with other players your NPC crew members will be replaced from right to left, by the way, which is why I have my Engineer in the first crew slot.

Every crew member can also be equipped with one of your primary or secondary weapons, with some exceptions. I just give them those that do a lot of AoE damage, with the best one going to the Engineer of course.

You can use captured Kuva Liches or Sisters of Parvos, if you have any, as crew members too, but only at Command Intrinsic rank 8 or higher, and only as a Defender. I really like the idea from a flavor perspective, but that last restriction is a big bummer as, again, I don’t see the need to have a pure defender.

Lastly, you can also change crew members’ appearances, including colors, attachments, syndanas, sigils, the whole shebang. The game isn’t often called Fashionframe for nothing.

Speaking of fashion, the last tab is Customization. I really don’t think I have to explain what you can do with this. Just knock yourself out.

And that’s pretty much all you need to know about configuring and upgrading your Railjack and its crew.

There’s one last thing I feel I should mention. When you’re progressing through the Empyrian star chart you will encounter a new type of mission called Orphix. While in space this is a Railjack mission like any other, but once you’re on foot inside the target station you’ll notice that, as you get near your objective, you’ll be tossed out of your warframe and have to continue in Operator form.

While you technically can go on and fight like this, it’s not the intended way to do it and you’ll most likely run out of time. What you’re supposed to do here is to activate your Necramech.

Don’t have one yet? Look around you, just beyond the energy barrier that forces you into Operator mode there should be an inactive Necramech lying around somewhere. Go near it, press 5 and boom, you got yourself a temporary ‘mech. Unfortunately it isn’t very strong and can’t take much beating either – and you will be attacked by lots of sentients, these missions aren’t a cakewalk – but at least for the first such mission on Venus it should suffice.

The goal here is to destroy all Orphix Resonators (shown in red on your map, they all look like the one on the screenshot above), which will render the Orphix itself vulnerable. Shoot its eye until it’s at 50%, at which point it’ll close again and more resonators will spawn. Once those are gone too you can finish the Orphix off, and the Sentient Control meter will go down by a good chunk. If that meter ever reaches 100% the mission will fail. Rinse and repeat the process until you have destroyed enough Orphixes to extract.

And there you have it, this is Warframe’s Railjack system in a nutshell.

Just not so small a nutshell. Maybe it’s a coconut? Anyhow, fly safe!

The Handy Guide to Warframe‘s Railjack – Part One

The other day my Xbox-based buddy told me that he‘d just finished building his very own Railjack in Warframe. I still remember my initial confusion and frustration with that particular piece of content vividly because the game explains jack shit about how it all works, so I intended to spare him that headache and started to give a rundown of the basics.

However, I wasn‘t even halfway through with my explanation when he asked me to slow the hell down. „Jeez, this is another whole game inside the game, isn’t it?“ he asked, pretty much hitting the nail on the head. Warframe‘s nothing if not complex.

Of course all there is to know already exists out there on the interwebs in some form or another, but back when I was in my mate‘s position I had to piece together the info I was looking for from various different sources, and some blanks still remained that I had to fill in for myself. I would’ve much preferred one complete and chronological step-by-step guide for beginners. Since I couldn’t find such a piece I‘ve decided to write one myself, and this is the first part of it.

Step One – Starting the journey

In order to get the quest that has you recover old Railjack parts and build a new ship from them you need to

• • have finished the Second Dream quest,
  • buy the Railjack Cephalon blueprint from the market and build it in your foundry, and
  • have access to a drydock.

Collecting the Cephalon, who goes by the name of Cy, from your foundry will start the actual quest, called Rising Tide, and it will guide you through the process of reconstructing the old Railjack from here on out.

A drydock can be built in every Clan Dojo, so if you‘re a member of an active clan chances are it‘s already been done and you can use the fast travel option from anywhere in the dojo to get there.

Alternatively, the relays around Saturn, Europa, Eris and Pluto all sport a public drydock, providing access to its functionality for players who aren’t in a clan or don‘t want to build one in their own dojo for whatever reason. The fast travel option is available here too.

As you obviously don‘t have your Railjack yet the only thing you can do here at this point is install your freshly built Cephalon into the marked terminal, which will advance the quest.

Step Two – Building the Railjack

You will now be sent on a journey to recover said Railjack parts, six in total. The missions aren’t too difficult, but you should be prepared to fight sentient enemies. Having a good Amp (basically anything other than the Mote Amp) and/or a strong frame should suffice. I just blasted them to bits with Mesa, for example.

After each step you have to finish constructing the part in question, which costs some credits and resources – nothing too expensive after DE did a couple rounds of nerfs (or buffs? Depends on how you look at it) – and takes one hour to finish.

After having repaired and installed the sixth part your Railjack is basically complete and you can enter it, either directly from the drydock (go down the ramp that leads to the ship’s bottom end) or by using the middle platform on your Orbiter‘s lower deck (right outside the Operator room).

However, before you can actually take off a key part for the ship‘s drive still has to be acquired, so you‘re sent on one last fetch-mission. After that your Railjack is finally operational, and from now on you can select space missions (called Empyrian missions) directly by using a new button in the upper right corner of your usual navigation menu.

Step Three – Playing (and beating) the first missions

This is unfortunately where the game fails horribly at guiding players towards a smooth, successful and thus fun start to flying their shiny new Railjack.

First of all, do not try your luck with the Call of the Tempestarii mission that’s most likely marked on your map from the moment your vessel is ready to go just yet. That mission is not meant to be a tutorial or something along those lines. In fact it was added to the game quite a bit later than the Railjack system itself. It‘s a story mission that unlocks access to the warframe Sevagoth, and you‘ll probably not able to beat it with a vanilla Railjack.

Instead, I advise you to navigate to Earth Proxima and select the Free Flight mission first. As the name suggests you can fly around at your own leisure here, and nobody will attack you. Steering the ship and firing your guns doesn‘t really need a whole lot of practice, but you can and should use this opportunity to acquaint yourself with the Railjack‘s layout and functions, because unfortunately this isn‘t something that‘s explained to you at any point, and once you‘re in a real mission you‘ll definitely need this knowledge.

Stern on the left, bow on the right hand side

This is a tactical view of your ship (green stuff added by me, obviously). You don’t have access to it ingame just yet, but this should help you find your way around for the time being. You can ignore the blue numbers, those depict NPC crew members. Here’s the legend:

1. 1. Bridge – The pilot’s seat is located here, all the way up front where you’d expect it. A bit behind it you have the navigation console, and the forward artillery seat right behind that.
   2. Turrets – In addition to the pilot’s guns you have two turrets that can either be manned by other players or, once you have them, by NPC crewmates.
   3. Airlocks – You can exit the Railjack here and fly around in space with your Archwing. This is needed to board crewships or to get to on-foot objectives. The rightmost airlock is just a floor panel between the turret stations and easy to miss. The two on the left are on the lower deck.
   4. Slingshot – Another way to exit the ship, but with a twist: the slingshot shoots you out like a living cannon ball. The range is about 4km, which helps you get to places faster. Also, if you aim at a crewship that’s in range you are propelled right through its hull and don’t need to use your Archwing at all. Very handy. It’s all the way in the back of the upper deck.
   5. Forge – Used to replenish ordnance and artillery charges, among other things, but this has to be unlocked first. Like the rear airlocks this is on the lower deck.
   6. This is you. Or rather, in this case it’s me.

Once you feel comfortable with all of this it‘s time for some action. The first and easiest combat mission is Sover Strait on Earth Proxima. Select it, and the Railjack will warp into the battle zone by itself. All you need to do here is shoot anything that moves and stay alive while doing so. Easy, right? Well, yes and no.

Blasting regular fighters out of the sky is straightforward enough, but crewships, of which you encounter at least a couple in every mission, are a different matter. When their hitpoints are depleted they shut down and float helpless in space, but they aren‘t destroyed. After a while their HP regenerate, and they start fighting you again.

To defeat them you need to do either of two things: shoot them once with the forward artillery when their HP are low or down, or board them and destroy their reactor from the inside. The artillery is much faster of course, but you have limited ammo for it and can’t resupply during missions yet.

Another thing you need to know is how to repair damage to your own vehicle. Whenever your ship‘s HP hit zero you can‘t maneuver or shoot anymore – just like crewships, basically – an alarm sounds and a countdown starts. You have that much time to find the damaged hull section and repair it; the mission fails if you don‘t. As it’s marked on the minimap it usually isn’t hard to find. But how do I repair it? I hear you ask. Here’s the thing: unbeknownst to you a tool called Omni is added to your first open gear wheel slot every time upon entering a Railjack mission. When there’s damage to repair equip the Omni, “shoot” the fire or leak with it until it‘s gone, and voilà.

If you‘re boarded just kill the bad guys, repair any damage if needed and continue with what you were doing.

If you keep these things in mind it should be no problem to successfully finish this mission. Once the objectives are marked as completed you can use the navigation console to either return to the drydock or start another mission (or the same one) right away.

The really good news is that you’ve now overcome the hard part and things are going to get a lot more fun from here on out. I mean, who wouldn’t want to pimp their very own space-ride?

The second and last part of this guide will show you how to do just that.

How to level up slowly in Genshin Impact

Whenever a new game with any kind of RPG mechanics hits the shelves it usually takes mere hours until a plethora of videos pops up on YouTube showing us how to LEVEL UP FAST!!, or something along those lines. Of course it’s been no different with Genshin Impact, as you can see above.

My general bewilderment about people’s urge to be “finished” with a game as quickly as possible notwithstanding, in this particular case it really, really puzzles me. As I talked about last time, while playing at my usual pace my adventure rank kept rising much faster than I would have liked, all the way up to 40, and although the required amount of XP increases with each rank it didn’t slow down all that much even then.

To prevent the ever increasing world level from ruining my enjoyment of the game I decided to do something about it, so I took a closer look at how much adventure rank XP each activity actually yields. It’s true that a lot of stuff awards some of it, but as it turns out the amounts vary by quite a bit.

Without further ado, here’s what you can do to LEVEL UP SLOWLY, as it were, in Genshin Impact.

Let’s start off with the big kahuna: daily commissions.

Once you’ve reached adventure rank 12 you can do up to four daily quests, depicted on your map by a purple symbol. They are usually quick and painless (also sometimes fun) to do, and they award a whopping 250 AR XP each, as well as another 500 once you’ve completed all four. That’s 1,5k XP per day right there, or up to 10,5k per week.

To put this in a bit of context, at AR 12 you only need 1,650 XP for the next rank! At AR 24 it’s 4,300 XP, and still only 7,175 XP at rank 34. As you can see refraining from doing these commissions will slow down your levelling speed considerably.

Unfortunately there is one big drawback to this however, as these quests are also a source of free primogems, the game’s funny money used to buy more resin and, most importantly, to wish (gamble) for characters and weapons. By not doing the commissions you’re missing out on 60 primogems total per day, so you need to decide what’s more important to you.

Personally, I’ve stopped doing them almost two weeks ago and I’m much happier with the game for it.

The next biggest source of AR XP are non-repeatable quests, meaning your archon, story and world quests.

Of course I’m absolutely not suggesting to ignore those, as they are one of the game’s strong suits and so much fun. However I do advise to take your time with them. There isn’t that much story content in the game yet anyway, so rushing through it will only make you run out of ‘stuff to do’ sooner (as per usual).

Also, world quests usually award 100-400 XP each, story and archon quests even more on average, so doing quest after quest after quest will contribute to raising your AR pretty quickly while not helping a lot with progressing your characters to match.

Then there are the various repeatable activities you need resin for: ley lines, abyssal domains and bosses. These all award AR XP too, but as your available resin is limited you can’t do them ad nauseam anyway.

Hence my only advice here is not to use primogems to buy more resin – which I wouldn’t do anyhow as I’d rather be able to make more wishes.

The other source of additional resin, fragile resin, one-use items awarded by some quests and for hitting certain adventure rank milestones, are best saved up until you reach at least AR 40, as you’ll get much more bang for your buck then. At that point the 100 XP per 20 resin spent aren’t going to speed up your levelling all that much anymore, so knock yourself out.

Various aspects of game world exploration also reward AR XP.

Treasure chests, for example, spit out some XP in addition to weapons, artifacts and upgrade materials, but the amounts are pretty negligible. A common chest gives a mere 10 to 20 XP (I believe it’s 20 when you open it for the first time, and 10 after respawn), exquisite chests yield 20, precious chests 30 and luxurious chests 40. At least the latter two types don’t respawn (I’m not sure whether there are exquisite chests that do), so overall this doesn’t contribute to your AR all that much.

Unlocking teleport points, turning in Anemoculi/Geoculi to level up your Statues of the Seven and stuff like that also gives you some AR XP, but these are things that you’ll always want to do at the first opportunity for obvious reasons. As none of this is repeatable it isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things anyway, so I don’t see any potential nor need for savings here.

Of course there are also activities that don’t award any AR XP at all.

Running around the map and killing stuff, for example mini-bosses like ruin guards or abyss mages, is fun and supplies you with many different materials you’ll need to ascend your characters and weapons.

While you’re doing that you can and should take the time to also pick up any flowers, fruits, ores…basically anything you come across that isn’t bolted down. These, too, are needed for ascension as well as cooking and forging. Keep in mind that some characters can help you hunt down specific stuff. Having Klee or Qiqi, should you be lucky enough to own them, in your active party makes region-specific gatherables appear on your mini-map in the Mondstadt and Liyue regions, respectively, and Ningguang does the same for all kinds of ore no matter where you are.

You can also always do Spiral Abyss, but since I’m not a big fan of that mode I can’t tell you much about it. I think that it doesn’t award any AR XP though, so there’s that.

One last tip, if you want to finish your weekly battle pass challenges but don’t have enough resin and/or don’t want to get the AR XP you can still do ley lines, domains, elite bosses and weekly bosses, just without claiming the rewards at the end, and you will get credit for the battle pass.

In summary, if you want to slow down adventure rank progress in Genshin Impact you should stop doing the daily commissions, take your time with questing, not use primogems to buy additional resin and only start using fragile resin at AR 40 and up. Other than that you can pretty much do whatever you fancy while levelling up at a much more casual pace.

I enjoy the game a lot more when I play like this, and maybe you will too.

The Handy Guide to Rare Mods in Warframe

When I wrote my beginner’s overview of how mods work in Warframe I knew that, up to that point, I’d barely scratched the surface.

At the very least I’d grasped the system of mod rarity – bronze for common, silver for uncommon and gold for rare – or so I thought. Turns out though that many mods don’t just drop anywhere. You can play the game for months and still not own even a single copy of a specific mod, even though it might be a supposedly ‘common’ one.

The reason for this is that almost every activity in the game has its own reward table, which means that in order to obtain specific stuff you have to do the right things or you won’t ever get it.

First you have to actually be aware of the various mods’ very existence and which ones to aim for though, which isn’t easy to figure out either when you’re still new to the game. Of course I could just point you to the game’s excellent wiki, but since I’ve already done the legwork I figured I might as well spare you the hassle.

So without further ado, here’s my little guide to rare mods in Warframe, rare in this case meaning You need to know how to acquire them, not necessarily that the mods are of gold rarity (many of them are though). Keep in mind however that not every mod will be on this list, not even close; these are just the ones that any Warframe player should aim to get – in my personal opinion – because they make life much easier and/or enable builds or tactics that aren’t possible without them. Click the images to enlarge.

Corrupted Mods

All corrupted mods have in common that they enhance one stat, usually by quite a lot, while lowering another to compensate. Especially the frame-mods, of which there are five as seen above, are must-haves for any frame that benefits from huge amounts of a certain stat while not really needing or even not actually wanting one or more of the others (Nova comes to mind, whom I usually mod for maximum Ability Duration and as little Ability Range as possible).

You can only find these in Orokin Vaults, special treasure rooms that spawn inside all Deimos missions (formerly known as Orokin Derelict) except for Defense, Assassinate and the Cambion Drift. Keep your eyes open and search every nook and cranny as they are quite well hidden at times. You know you’ve found one when you see this fancy looking door:

In order to open it you need to have the correct Dragon Key equipped. The blueprints for these are researched in the Orokin Lab of your clan’s Dojo, the keys themselves are built in the foundry.

Each key considerably lowers one of your frame’s stats: your max shields, health, damage or movement speed, respectively, are cut by 75% (50% in the case of speed). Working together with other players and spreading the keys out obviously makes things easier, but I’ve found it perfectly viable to farm them by myself. I use Inaros for this and equip all keys except Hobbled (slow) at once. I always run the Capture mission (Horend) as it’s the easiest and quickest objective and doesn’t get in the way of searching for the vault.

Which one of the 23 corrupted mods you get is random, so good luck.

Nightmare Mods

Once you’ve beaten all missions on a given planet at least once, every eight hours one of them gets randomly flagged as a Nightmare mission. Enemies are tougher here and one or two environmental modifiers are in place to raise the difficulty further, like Health Vampire (you constantly lose health and restore it by killing foes) or Energy Drain (you’re permanently out of energy, basically).

The first time you beat one of these each cycle you get a random nightmare mod as an additional reward, which don’t give the biggest of bonuses, but increase two stats each instead of just one. More importantly, they enable you to use one more mod with a certain stat on it, so just like corrupted mods they can help to push that one desired stat up really high. You can see the ones I use the most above.

Combined Status/Damage Mods

This isn’t really one cohesive category of mods in terms of acquisition, but as they all serve the same purpose I’m lumping them together.

When used with the right weapon a high status chance can deal an absurd amount of additional damage. In order to achieve that without losing too much raw damage these mods, which increase both status chance as well as a certain damage type, are indispensable. They don’t have the highest of capacity costs to boot, which makes some of these builds achievable even without investing multiple Forma.

As the game doesn’t treat these as one single category the means to get them differ a bit, so here’s an overview:

These drop from Corrupted Vor, which is a mini-boss that has a chance to spawn in Orokin Void missions of level 40 and higher. I usually run the Survival mission (Mot) and stay until after the 10 minute mark. That way he spawned about three out of four times for me and I got all four mods relatively quickly.

Open all three caches in one of the following Spy missions for a chance at these: Cambria (Earth), Unda (Venus), Suisei (Mercury), Arval (Mars), Shklovsky (Phobos).

Open all three caches in one of the following Spy missions for a chance at these: Bode (Ceres), Amalthea (Jupiter), Valac (Europa), Dione (Saturn), Pavlov (Lua).

Open all three caches in one of the following Spy missions for a chance at these (as well as Hell’s Chamber, which is also a very good Shotgun mod to have): Rosalind (Uranus), Nereid (Neptune), Oceanum (Pluto), Kappa (Sedna).

Open all three resource caches in Naeglar (Eris) for a chance at these. Note that the caches are not the mission’s main objective, but an optional task just like the caches in sabotage missions.

The last two are only sold periodically by Baro Ki’Teer for 300 Ducats and 150k credits each when he visits every other weekend. As he only ever has a small range of his stock on offer it might take a couple of months until you get a crack at one of these though.

Primed Mods

These are alternate versions of various, (relatively) common bread-and-butter mods you’ll have most likely acquired through regular gameplay after a while, the difference being that the normal ones have a maximum rank of 5, whereas the primed mods can go all the way up to 10. Which means that they’re just stronger (not necessarily twice as strong though) for a higher capacity cost.

With a few exceptions these can only be bought from Baro Ki’Teer, which again means that you might have to be patient until you can get a specific one, and especially when starting out the Ducat cost can add up quite a bit too.

They aren’t mandatory, but obviously very nice to have. For starters I’d save up my Ducats for Primed Continuity as more Ability Duration is really great for most frames. If you like using shotguns or melee weapons buying Primed Point Blank or Primed Pressure Point, respectively, would also be a good idea.

Miscellaneous Mods

These last couple of mods don’t really fit into any category, I’m just including them because I feel they’re very good to have for the stats they offer.

Augur Message and Augur Secrets provide an additional way to increase Ability Duration and Ability Strenght, respectively, which is always great. They also belong to the same mod-set, meaning that using both enhances their secondary effect. You can get them by doing various Bounty missions on the Plains of Eidolon. The reward tables rotate every few hours, so check which mission, if any, rewards these before accepting.

Slash procs are great, and using Hunter Munitions on a weapon that doesn’t do a lot of slash damage but has a high chance to crit ensures that you still get these procs often. You can acquire it by doing Ghoul Bounties on the Plains of Eidolon, which are tied to a recurring event that’s active every few weeks.

And there you have it. Again, this is but a small fracture of all available mods, but if you’re just transitioning from being a beginner to a more advanced Warframe player these are the ones I suggest you try to get.

The Handy Guide to Instruments in ArcheAge Unchained

So how does one acquire a variety of instruments to play those (hopefully) sublime songs with?

That’s a science in its own right, let me tell you. I don’t know whether this is a problem with Korean games in general due to the language barrier, or because ArcheAge is just too niche, but this is definitely one of the MMORPGs with by far the least amount of reliable information available in English, while being one of the more complex titles at the same time.

What’s worse, if you do find some info on a topic you’re interested in you can never be sure whether it’s still relevant or long outdated, nor if something that’s currently available in the legacy game is also present in Unchained. It’s quite frustrating at times, really.

So I thought, since I was going to talk about instruments today anyway, I’ll just try and put together a guide about what instruments there are and how to get them. Only to the best of my knowledge, of course, at the time of this writing (May 2020).

Ready, steady, go!

The Basics

ArcheAge has many portable instruments that you can play anywhere and anytime, and also stationary ones which you need to place in your house before you can use them. Some of the latter only serve as props and cannot play sheet music though, so beware.

Read each item’s description carefully. When an instrument is able to play sheet music it always has a line of white/grey text that either says

“Sounds like xxx when playing sheet music.”

or

“Plays music when used with sheet music.”

If it doesn’t specifically mention sheet music at all chances are it can’t play any. Except for the three pianos (because of course there are exceptions), which don’t mention it but can play sheet music.

To actually perform a song just right click on a music sheet when you have an instrument equipped – or, if it’s a stationary one, it has equipped you, if you will. A Play- and a Stop-button will appear. Press Play, and you’ll start to perform the song.

Now, on to the different instruments and how to actually get them.

Portable Instruments

In addition to main-hand, off-hand and bow each character can equip either a lute or a flute that can be used as a skill to restore health or mana, respectively. They play music when doing so, but it’s always the same tune and rather boring. All lutes and flutes can also play sheet music though, and these make up the bulk of ArcheAge’s selection of instruments.

There are many different sounds available, and different ways to acquire them. Always take note of the first phrase mentioned above (if it’s there), as it will give you an idea of what the instrument in question might sound like. A Hiram flute, for example, says “Sounds like a clarinet when playing sheet music.”

Without further ado, here’s an overview of all instruments I know of. The format is:

Where to get it (needed currency, if applicable) [tradeable or non-tradeable]

• • Name of the instrument (what it sounds like)

Starter gear [tradeable]

• • Civilian Lute (Guitar)
  • Civilian Flute (Flute)

Arena Shop (1k Kyrios Badges each) [non-tradeable]

• • Anthem of Battlerage (Powerful Guitar)
  • Aria of Archery (Impressive Guitar)
  • Ballad of Auramancy (Clear Guitar)
  • Croon of Shadowplay (Cheerful Guitar)
  • March of Defense (Soothing Guitar)
  • Dance of Songcraft (Whistles)
  • Dirge of Occultism (Trombone)
  • Echoes of Malediction (Trombone)
  • Fantasio of Sorcery (Clarinet)
  • Nocturne of Witchcraft (Bagpipes)
  • Ode of Vitalism (Ocarina)
  • Protective Fantasia Shield (Clarinet)

Gilda Shop [tradeable] / Credits Shop [non-tradeable] (80 Gilda Stars / 1k Credits each)

• • Cherry Blossom Shamisen (Shamisen)
  • Evensong Lute (‘a guitar that produces a heavy sound’)
  • Ironsong Lute (‘a guitar that produces sharp, metallic sounds’)
  • Meadowlark Banjo (Banjo)
  • Autumn Wind Horn (Horn)
  • Catspaw Recorder (Recorder – whatever the hell that is)
  • Reedwhisper Piccolo (Piccolo)
  • Stormwail Sax (Saxophone)

Crafted [tradeable]

• • Epherium Cloud Lute (Soothing Guitar)
  • Epherium Gale Lute (Soothing Guitar)
  • Epherium Life Lute (Powerful Guitar)
  • Epherium Meadow Lute (Soothing Guitar)
  • Epherium Mist Lute (Powerful Guitar)
  • Epherium Tidal Lute (Impressive Guitar)
  • Epherium Wave Lute (Impressive Guitar)
  • Epherium Desert Flute (Bassoon)
  • Epherium Earth Flute (Bassoon)
  • Epherium Flame Flute (Clarinet)
  • Epherium Lake Flute (Clarinet)
  • Epherium Quake Flute (Clarinet)
  • Epherium Sunset Flute (Oboe)
  • Epherium Wave Flute (Oboe)
  • Marianople Violin (Violin)
  • Wyrdwind Viola (Viola)

How to craft an Epherium instrument: Buy a Cloaked Illustrious Lute/Flute for 50 gold from a weapons merchant. Uncloak it. Craft a Magnificent Lute/Flute Scroll at a handicraft kiln (no skill requirement). Use that scroll to awaken the instrument to Magnificent (it doesn’t matter which of the four variants you choose at this point). Then craft an Epherium Lute/Flute Scroll at a regal handicraft desk (20k Handicrafts skill required) and repeat the process. Important: when awakening the instrument to Epherium choose which variant (and thus sound) you would like to have. Done.

The violin and viola are crafted at an artistry workbench. No further preparation is needed, but the materials are pretty expensive and a very high Artistry skill is required (150k).

Hiram [non-tradeable]

• • Hiram Guardian Lute (Soothing Guitar)
  • Hiram Guardian Flute (Clarinet)

Vocation Shop (50k Vocation Badges) [tradeable]

• • Wyrdwind Viola (Viola)

Events (currency usually only available during the corresponding event) [tradeable]

• • Fortune Pipe (Pipe) [Lantern Festival]

Stationary Instruments

• • Sovereign’s Piano (‘piano music’)
  • Brown Upright Piano (‘piano music’)
  • Princess’s Piano (‘piano music’)
  • Liberty Drums (doesn’t specify, I assume it’s drums)
  • Triestes Cello (doesn’t specify, but it sounds vaguely like a cello)
  • Noryettes Contrabass (doesn’t specify, but it sounds more like a…well…cello)
  • Brahms’s Harmonious Melody (doesn’t specify, but it sounds like a string ensemble)

These are all crafted at an artistry workbench and tradeable. The pianos aren’t expensive and have no skill requirement, whereas cello and contrabass belong to a set of four (the other two being the aforementioned violin and viola) and are equally costly and difficult to craft.

The Brahms’s is the mother of all instruments. It sounds really great but requires 180k Artistry skill and a full set of the four string instruments to craft, which are consumed in the process. Ouch! A long-term goal, no doubt.

Thankfully some of these stationary instruments are strewn across the game world, waiting to be tried out. The currently running Daru event, for example, has an area with a piano, the cello, contrabass and the Brahms’s (which is where I’m playing them on all screenshots, as I obviously don’t have my own yet).

If you’d like to know how most portable instruments actually sound before deciding which ones to get, there’s a really great video showcasing them (a big Thank You to the person who made it):

And this is all I know about instruments in ArcheAge Unchained at this point. Getting them all is obviously a huge undertaking, but I’ll keep chipping away at it as it’s a lot of fun and really rewarding. As long as I play the game the guide will be updated whenever I learn something new or stuff changes. Good luck and have fun!

Blapril 2020 post count: 14