Warframe: Archwing

Time for a little break from my Dragon Age: Origins story. It will be back shortly!

"Ninjas in space" took it to another level with the release of the Archwing patch a couple of weeks back. Players are now able to take their Warframes into full space combat on select missions. To give you a better taste of it, watch this trailer.

Giant swords are more effective in space!

Yes, the Archwing is very cool - but how does it actually play? The short answer is like a space simulator. A very challenging and/or non-rewarding space simulator. In space, your warframe has none of its normal abilities. It is all dependent on the archwing type you have, and these (unlike other equipment in game) are currently unmodifiable as far as I know. The only two choices so far are the general type Odonata and the more bomber-class Elytron.

In my experience it's been a curb stomp one way or another, ranging from press "E" to win (melee is surprisingly effective) to you being alive for a mere few seconds if a swarm of enemies gets to you. That said I'm not a very good pilot, and as usual having team mates / wing men makes things a fair bit easier. One thing I'd definitely like to add is a "lock-on" alarm and missile radar to better know when to use those flares/chaff. Currently you need to eyeball that and use best guess and that's pretty tough to do when you have bogies in all directions.

All up the Archwing stuff is pretty cool, but still has a lot of room for improvement. The Archwing update also included a new type of warframe and have also put in six syndicate factions players can support / piss off. If there's anything Digital Extremes (the producers of the game) have proven, its that they LOVE updating and improving their game, and one of the main reasons I think Warframe is pretty successful. Definitely worth a try, though maybe wait a bit for the Archwing segment to improve. I have no doubt it will. ;P

Warframe: Trinity's "Secret" Combo

Despite being a "healer" Warframe with all four powers geared to restoring the Health and Shields of her allies, the Trinity has one nasty combo that makes her a very efficient boss hunting machine (against some bosses anyway). It all has to do with the math of her first and second of her abilities, which is conveniently the sequence you need to remember to use her secret "attack".

Step 1: Cast Well of Life on Target.
Effect: Target will GAIN a health multiplier (x10).
Effect: Anyone that hits it will regain health.

Step 2: Wait for Well of Life timer to reach near 1 second.

Step 3: Cast Energy Vampire on same Target (that should still have Well of Life)
Effect: Deals pulse damage based on enemy's remaining amount of health and shields.
Effect: Anyone that hits it will regain Energy.

Step 4: Well of Life expires.
Effect: Target will lose the health multiplier, returning to original values.
Effect: Energy Vampire will still do damage based on the original, boosted values.

Result: Target very owned.

Using this I soloed Ambulas, the Corpus MOA boss on Pluto to farm up some Excaliber parts even though my Trinity was still under leveled. Alas, the bosses that require soft spots to be shot will probably be immune to this and on the many normal mobs it's generally faster to kill them with your weapons.

On a side note, that's an interesting design decision Digital Extremes made there. If you didn't pick Excaliber as your "starting" frame the only way to get it later on is to fight your way from Mercury outwards, beating all the bosses to unlock more planets and satellites until you reach Pluto which is home to some pretty high level Corpus.

I can't think of any other game off hand where something you are offered right at the start can be so difficult to get later on. :P