Warframe is a game I’ve tried to get into a bunch of times over the years but I’ve always bounced off it. Recently they’ve added a “Warframe 1999” event/chapter/I’m not sure what it is. I was so curious about it that I fired up Warframe yet again, this time on PC so I could start fresh.

For whatever reason it feels different this time. It might be that it runs so well on the PC; I can play it at a steady 144 fps (except maybe during transitions or cut-scenes) so it feels smooth as butter. Or maybe it is just that I DGAF any more so I am open to running missions with a random group and if I’m not as good or as fast as the others I don’t really sweat it like I used to.

Anyway for whatever reason I’m enjoying the game this time out, at least in the early stages. Since the last time I played they’ve added a lot more narrative and actual human characters to the game which gives me a bit more to ‘hook onto’. When I was just a disembodied spirit jumping from frame to frame it was hard for me to get invested. I’m also discovering facets that I’d either forgotten or was unaware of, like the fact that you can decorate your ship (see header image where my ship is decked out for the holiday).

I’ve now come to the point where I need to build a new Warframe (I could of course just buy some Platinum and buy a ‘frame but that seems like cheating) and wow, the grind is real. Here’s where I am so far:

One of the first Quests (yes, there are quests now) has you go to the Cetus open world zone on Earth to help track down some info. When you finish that, you get the blueprint for Gara, a Warframe. But you can’t just build Gara, first you have to build her components. And you need blueprints for those components. You get those from doing bounties on Cetus. Simple enough; I did a bounty and got one of the component blueprints.

I headed to the Foundry in my ship to build that component and discovered that one of the materials for it is, yup, something you need to build. A sub-sub-component. You have to buy the blueprint for it from a vendor on Cetus. Back to the planet where I find the vendor and, nope, I can’t buy it because my faction standing isn’t high enough. I earn faction by doing bounties, so I go and do more bounties until I have enough faction points to rank up.

Next I go to the reputation dude and, yep I have enough points but I need materials to rank up and I don’t have them.

So now I have to either run missions on Cetus or just roam around and try to find the materials I need so I can rank up my faction on Earth so I can buy the blueprint so I can make the sub-sub-components (which might require materials I have to grind for) so I can make the sub-component for Gara (which also might require materials I have to grind for), and this is just one of 4 sub-components.

Yeah, you need to enjoy the grind to enjoy Warframe, I guess. The good news is I’m finding the gameplay to be super fun so I don’t mind, but I do think I’m going to play Warframe as a ‘side-game’ because if I just hard-core focus on getting all this stuff it’s quickly going to become a chore. But I don’t HAVE to build Gara right away and there’s a ton of other things to do and a bunch of Quests to get through before I get to Warframe 1999 (still not exactly sure what that even is) so I’m pretty content for now.

Also me being my weird-ass self I’m dabbling in it on PC, Xbox and Playstation and created a Clan that all 3 of my characters are in, so “we” are gonna see if we can build out our dojo together which requires, you guessed it, grinding for materials!!