Sunday 18 September 2022

Warframe: Nidus and Styanax

The infested and the hoplite.

Nidus

While the component blueprints of Nidus are just behind a grindy RNG mission, his main blueprint is only rewarded at the end of the Glast Gambit quest which involves numerous games of "the Index", easiest described as grid iron but with coins, guns, warframes, and lots of violence. It also demands hundreds of thousands of credits per game which you will default if and of your games ends in a loss. Prep well before attempting, or bring friends (but they too must risk their own credits). I left this mission alone till after New War.

Once you build this infested mass that parades around as a warframe you will notice he has no shields, but that's ok because he is freakishly tough regardless and all his powers grow the more mutation "stacks" he accumulates and at 15 stacks, he can ignore death (once). He can use ranged tendrils to pull enemies to one spot, stomp to increase stacks based on number of enemies he hits, link himself to an ally to strengthen them or to an enemy so that they take any damage he would instead and lastly he can summon a swarm of maggots to eat everything. Lovely. Let's not forget that contact with a Nidus also spreads those Helminth cyst things to other warframes - easily cured but worth pointing out.

Yep, he can be very strong BUT this is very reliant on him "warming up" those mutation stacks of his which work best in a defense type situation. It is also reliant on your allies letting you infect enemies to power up. This is what killed it for me, as most other frames are "drop in and kick ass". Here it feels like I need five minutes of stretching before doing anything, so ... nope to Nidus for me.

Styanax

As of this post the Styanax is the latest warframe introduced into the game and if you logged in on his release you'd have gotten him for free. If not, its ok - just do the Veilbreaker quests and challenges to earn the currency needed to buy his parts. With a good amount of shields and armor this warrior kicks ass right away. He can taunt the enemy while letting all friendlies regenerate energy and shields, he can throw his physical shield(s) to repel baddies and armor strip them which also heals him, throw a spear to impale an enemy on terrain - which then creates a black hole that pulls other baddies close before exploding, or my favourite - throw multiple barrages of javelins from the air to absolutely deck anything unlucky enough to get in your way.

You can move and aim while doing that last one, and its better airborne where you really feel like you are unleashing missile hell on those below. It looks really pretty from a spectators viewpoint too. Alas, "warrior" is a role pretty much most of the other frames already fill so while there's nothing really wrong with the Styanax, he's really more just a matter of preference - and I ultimately preferred frames that I've been using for a longer time.

2 comments:

  1. I adore Nidus, but yeah, that rampup period is a bit of an annoyance.

    I've logged in and claimed the newest frame, but haven't taken it into a mission yet. Soon (tm)...

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    Replies
    1. Curious to see what you think about the Styanax... :)

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