In Warframe there are a few selected warframes that are very useful to have and be able to play.

These will will help open up the game for you and make you more attractive for others to recruit when they are doing farm runs!

This is because most of these warframes (frames for short) serve various helpful and useful purposes that can be utilized in efficient ways when doing various farming.

The ones I, myself, find most attractive and useful are as follows:

• Loki – Spy, Rescue missions (or high-level survivals)
• Frost – Defense, Mobile Defense, Excavations
• Volt – Rush missions – capture missions or boss farming runs
• Nova – useful addition to resource farming – speeds enemies up – more kills = more loot drops in the same time compared to if you don’t have nova
• Trinity – nice support frame to keep everyones energy and survivability up
• Nekros – give team additional 54% chance of extra loot (useful for resource farm)
• Hydroid – got augmentation mod that gives 100% chance of additional loot (good for resource farming)
• Chroma – 60% chance of getting 100% extra credit drops – good for credit farming

Below I will explain why these warframes are considered so useful in the order they were written in above list.

REMEMBER: Farming the parts for these warframes is one thing, but once you got all the parts you HAVE TO PURCHASE BLUEPRINT for the warframe in Market to put all the parts together!

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Loki, trickster, optimal for survivability and stealth (Beast of Spy and Rescue)

Loki is probably one of the strongest and most useful warframes in the game for many missions, this because he can become invisible while moving in regular or enhanced speeds for a long duration (duration can last up to about 30 seconds (which is long) with proper mods).

Comparison of Loki with Ivara (another alternative Stealth warframe)

Ivara is another warframe that can be stealthed indefinitely, but her speed while being stealth is severly reduced – almost like she’s sneaking, which won’t be very effective for speed-running through missions such as Rescue, Spy, etc. where stealth is paramount for efficiency and ease of mission-completion- as well as speed while doing so.

When is it good to use Loki?

Loki is the waframe I personally use most for survivability because of his Amazing stealth capabilities. He can also swap places with another player, place a decoy for enemies to attack and disarm all the enemies around him, forcing them to use simple melee weapons!

Where to farm Loki?

Loki’s components can be farmed from the “Hyena Pack” on Psamanthe, Neptune.

Words of wisdom

Loki is a very important warframe to have access to, and it will make many parts of this game so much easier and thereby also more fun (and efficient!).

Tips N Tricks for Loki

While Loki is stealthed, he can “stealth-kill” all enemies one by one if you would want to, “stealth-kills” increase the damage an enemy takes significantly!

How to build Loki in warframe?

I have put together an article for useful warframe build examples that includes a Stealth build for Loki and can be found first in my article here: Must-have warframe build examples.

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Frost, king of Defense, Mobile Defense and Excavation

Frost is another truly awesome warframe to have access to, this mainly because of the ability to create Snow globes or “bubbles” as they usually are refered to in-game.

How to strengthen Frost Snow Globes/How to make Snow Globes stronger?

These snow globes can be strengthened with Armor and strength mods (Intensify and Steel Fiber) which will result in an increased health for the snow globe (damage that can be absorbed).

What makes/Why are Frost’s Snow Globes so useful?

The beauty of Snow Globes- and what makes them so useful is a few things in combination. Part is the amount of damage these orbs can absorb, coupled with the fact that ability range mod can extend the diameter of the globe, as well as the fact that the globe-zone will slow down enemies that enter- or try to enter the globe. There is even a so called “augmentation mod” (that can be obtained from syndicates) that will give your globes a chance of freezing enemies upon entry into the globe(!), granting some very useful chance of additional CC (crowd control).

The globes are also useful since they block/absorb all projectile damage and prevent projectiles from reaching within the globes area!

When will Snow Globes be helpful and useful in missions?

Frost and his Snow Globes are very useful for mobile defense and defense missions in warframe- as well as excavation missions.

Tips N Tricks for Frost Snow Globes strengthening technique

To make the globes even stronger, you can spam (repeatedly use the ability) a number of times in the same place, and as a result the first orb will be replaced with a new one, which will have the same base globe health + the health of the previous orb that was replaced. You can imagine the amount of snow globe health that you can stack up using this method (although the max limit of health that can be obtained this way is 1’000’000!).

How to manage Frost’s Snow Globes/Is there a way to remove Frost’s Snow Globes?

If you’re unhappy with your placement of a snow globe, Frosts 1st ability, “Freeze”, when aimed at a snow globe, will destroy it.

Limitations of Frost’s Snow Globes

A maximum of 4 separate snow globes can be created at the same time. Very useful for Excavation missions where you may have multiple drills needing protection at the same time. And the spamming of snow globes in same location to strengthen a single globe does NOT seem to interfere with the ability to have 4 globes active at the same time AS LONG AS on different locations! :D

How to build Frost with focus on Snow Globes in Warframe?

My personal favorite Frost Snow Globe build can be found in Must-have warframe build examples article.

Where to farm Frost?

Frost can be obtained/farmed from Lieutenant Lech Kril on War, Mars.

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Volt, King of Rush-missions (The Flash of Warframe, a Speedster)

Volt is one of the available starter warframes to choose in the beginning of the game, he is also extremely useful since he has the ability to increase his own- as well as his teammates speed as well as attack-speed and apparently reload-speed according to warframe.wikia.com.

When is Volt most useful?

Volt is very useful for all kinds of “Rush-missions” such as Capture or boss farming runs where you have to run through as fast as possible for efficiency (such as the infested boss Phorid that drops Nyx that can be found on Invasion alerts, or Alad V for Neural Sensors and Valkyr farm).

How to optimize Volt’s usefulness for you- and your team?

Volt’s Speed buff can be enhanced and increased with Ability strength (Intensify for example) as well as Ability duration (continuity for example) as well as Ability range to set how far away your teammates can receieve this buff.

Volt’s purpose and role in a team/party

This warframe and his speed buff will save you and(!) your team tons of time and be cool at the same time :)

My personal Volt speed build can be found also in the Must-have warframe build examples article.

Where to- and how to get Volt?

Volt can be obtained if not as a starter warframe – from a Clan Dojo’s Tenno Lab.

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Nova, Master of Efficient Farming (Speeding up (- or slowing down) enemies)

Nova is a very useful and attractive warframe to bring to farming parties. This mainly because of her ability to unleash a wave of anti-matter particles that will either speed enemies up, or slow enemies down, depending on how you mod her. This is her “Molecular Prime” ability (the 4th / ultimate ability).

More useful functionality of Nova

On top of speeding/slowing enemies, Novas “Molecular Prime” ability also primes enemies with additional effects: making them take 200% increased damage from all sources as well as make them detonate on their death dealing blast damage to other enemies around them.

How to turn Nova into useful farming warframe?

To increase an enemies speed the ability will require negative Ability strength, whilst slowing enemies speed requires added Ability strength – this coupled with Ability Range as well as Ability duration makes for a great addition to a farming party to make the enemies come faster (which is usually what you want) and thereby increasing loot drops.

Find my own speed and slow builds in Must-have warframe build examples article.

Where to farm Nova?

Nova can be obtained/farmed from the Raptors on Naamah, Europa.

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Trinity, the Support of Warframe (Infinite Energy and added survivability for All)

Trinity is like the Main Support in Warframe, her abilities consist of turning enemies into Health-refill stations for teammates, Energy-refill stations, Redirecting damage taken to enemies around her, and last but not least- she can give an AoE buff to teammates that reduce their damage taken, as well as instantly renews their shields and health!

The famous in-game acronym EV, what it is and why its so popular and useful

Trinity is useful for a number of reasons, but the most popular one, is thanks to an “augmentation mod” that can be obtained for her from syndicates, the mod is called “Vampire Leech”. Basically what this mod does is converting excess energy into additional shields, say for example your warframe have 150 energy max and you got a Trinity using her second ability (Energy vampire – hence EV) replenishing your energy, then the excess overflow of energy will go to your shields instead. If a players shields already are full they will receive a so called “Overshield” which basically means an added additional amount of shields (that won’t replenish or be permanent) on-top of a players previous base shields. Maximum value of Overshields are 1200 points(!). Overshields will be shown in Purple color instead of Blue which is used to display regular shield amount.

What EV stands for, what meaning it have come to have, and how to create an EV trinity

What EV stands for you already got explained in the above section, it comes from Energy Vampire which is Trinity’s second ability (the ability to replenish energy of herself and teammates). And building a Trinity optimized for replenishing energy to teammates (and providing overshields for additional overall survivability to teammates) is called “EV”. EV mainly indicates a trinity that has modded the warframe to replenish as much energy in as little time as possible – strangely though, somehow EV have become synonymous with the use of “Vampire Leech” augmentation mod to transfer excess energy to the shields creating Overshields.

EV’s are helpful to both keep teammates alive, as well as to always keep players energy up optimizing farming runs.

Where to farm Trinity?

Trinity can be farmed/obtained from Captain Vor and Lieutenant Lech Kril on Exta, Ceres.

Seems this was outdated information, Thanks @Yassen, Trinity can now be farmed from Ambulas on Hades, Pluto.

A Good EV trinity build (the one I’m using and have been using for a very long time)

Has also been posted in Must-have warframe build examples article, go check it out see what you think and if you can – try it out ^^ (In the same section you will also find an example of a “Survivability trinity build” which basically is different in its focus on duration increase rather than decrease compared to EV build – might be of interest as well).

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Nekros, Master of granting Additional loot drops

Nekros is one of the most wanted and appreciated farming warframes, because his contribution to a farm team is a chance of additional drops which is always the main objetive of any resource farm.

What makes Nekros so useful when farming?/How does Nekros desecrate make him useful for farming?

Nekros 3rd ability, “Desecrate”, passively “consumes” corpses granting a 54% chance of additional loot. The radius of this ability is affected by Ability Range.

So if a team wants the maximum amount of loot drops, they will need to have a Nekros present to make that goal a reality :)

Where to farm Nekros (and how to get the parts for him)?

Nekros may be a bit trickier than some of the other warframes to obtain/farm because his parts drops from Orokin Derelict Assassination mission. Which requires a key to gain access to. If this restriction wasn’t enough, the Assasination target on this mission is quite strong and may require either a high-level player or strong weapon(s) to defeat.

To craft the key needed to gain access to Orokin Derelict Assasination, you will need so called “Lephantis nav coordinates” and these will be dropped on other Orokin Derelict mission nodes in place of where regular nav coordinates usually drops (like caches and containers).

But to gain access to other Orokin Derelict mission nodes – you have to buy blueprint for these keys in Market and then use regular nav coordinates(!) to craft keys to these mission nodes!

Happy hunting ;P

Nekros Desecrate build examples – energy and health based

So there are two types of Desecrate focused builds that is known for desecrate nekroses where the “Despoil” build is a bit more expensive mod-wise to get, but quite fun to play with since it almost makes the squishy-warframe nekros super-tanky and almost immortal it seems by granting +1k armor at times (despite the fact that it drains Health* instead of energy!). The other is a budget version, draining energy instead of health (no despoil mod), also making nekros less tanky and EV Trinity dependent more or less (or consumables :P which may be a bit costly after a while).

Both have been added to my Must-have warframe build example article :D So take a looksie :)

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Hydroid, sometimes known as “Pilfdroid”, Master of Double Loot drops

Hydroid is famous to use in farming because of another “augmentation mod” that can be obtained from syndicates called “Pilfering swarm”. This mod gives hydroids ultimate ability (his 4th ability) 100% chance of giving additional loot WHEN enemies are killed by HIS TENTACLES.

Which is pretty neat because combine this with Nekros and you suddenly have 154% chance of gaining extra loot which is quite awesome and efficient when farming :)

Where to farm Hydroid?

Hydroid is a bit of a pain to farm though, since his parts drop from Councilor Vay Hek on Oro, Earth, and this guy is a pain to beat – takes long time due to not being able to deal damage to the boss for longer periods of time. One super advice I can give to defeat him faster though – if you have access to it – is bring along Lenz Bow weapon because with the help of this, I managed to defeat him quite quickly – just be careful not to blow yourself up in the process xD (I did that a few times at first :P)

Bows seem to be especially efficient to defeat Councilor Vay Hek on Oro, Earth due to the possibility of high crits with massive amounts of damage which if properly aimed should take him down in no-time (hopefully – best of luck ;P).

Having Hydroid accessible with a Pilfering Swarm mod opens up Warframe for players

Having hydroid will not only allow you to join more farming parties, it will also open up the possibility to host your own farming parties because it seems not many have or are willing to play as hydroid/pilfdroid :)

Tips N Tricks for Hydroid’s Tentacle Swarm usage (after rework)

Hydroid was not since long reworked giving him the ability to “charge” his Tentacle Swarm ability for up to 2.5 seconds, granting up to 8/12/16/20 number of tentacles and increase spawn radius up to 300% in exchange for double energy cost. But this can be so worth it if you have a nice supply of energy from either an EV trinity or consumables (consumables may be enough if simpler farming).

Understanding Hydroid’s Tentacle Swarm and how to make it as useful as possible for farming

The tentacles deal initial magnetic damage on surfacing, and “finisher damage” per second whilst enemies caught in the tentacles – which should mean Ability duration, as well as Ability strength to boost tentacles active time as well as damage they deal could be nice :)

Although there seem to be two ways of modding Pilfdroid for various reasons – we have one where Duration and strength is nice (easy-to-kill low-tier and low-level enemies for example), where the finisher damage can work its magic on the enemies caught in the tentacle swarm, whilst lowest possible ability duration coupled with low energy cost (high ability efficiency) and high ability strength may be what you want for some higher-level enemies to boost that magnetic damage spam – range for this build varies though sometimes you keep it at 100%, sometimes you go more, sometimes less, depends on how you personally like to do it :)

All the possible Pilfdroid builds

Go check out Must-have warframe build example articles where I’ve recently posted the builds I, myself, am regularily and successfully using in Warframe :)

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Chroma, a Credit Farming Beast!

Chroma is a quest warframe that has a unique ability to adapt its damage to various elemental types by changing the warframes energy color (red is heat, blue is cold, purple is electric and green is toxin), as well as grant additional credit drops when killing enemies with his ultimate, “the Effigy”, a spawnable dragon-like Sentry.

Why is Chroma good for farming credits?

Enemies killed by the sentry have a 60% chance to yield 100% additional credits (awesome for credit farming on 20’000-credit-reward dark sector survival missions).

Example of how a Chroma Credit farming run could be done

Simply switch warframe energy color to red for heat damage for the sentry, and go to dark sector survival and farm some credits with a team of Nekros, Speed Nova and EV trinity to keep the Sentry going.

Alternatively you can go with 2 Chromas, EV trinity and Nekros so its easier to stay for longer.

The Melee Weapon Secura Lecta can also be brought to gain +100% additional credit drop chance – seem to be a popular option for those who go credit farming with Chromas lately apparently.

How to obtain the Chroma warframe?

To get Chroma you have to complete “The New Strange” quest, which is acquired from Cephalon Simaris on any Relay station. You must have completed the quest “Stolen Dreams” before you can get “The New Strange” quest from Cephalon Simaris. After the quest has been completed, the various component blueprints for Chroma will be rewarded from completing different Junctions.

Build example for Chroma

As with all other warframes listed in this article, the Must-have warframe build example article also have chroma builds posted and discussed a bit.

Seems the main thing would be to focus on Ability strength, ability duration as well as ability efficiency to maximize the damage output, as well as keep the energy-cost per second down to a minimum :) You can find more details and information in the article above.