Warframe has a lot of different sidequests and optional objectives for you to do, so it stands to reason that some would be more annoying than others.
Warframe crafting
- Vauban's component blueprints used to be occasional Alert rewards. You were completely at the mercy of the RNG system, hoping an alert offering them turns up while you're playing; once you've got one or two, you get to add in the hope that the alert will be for one of the parts that you still need. Thankfully, his parts are now permanently available in the Nightwave shop, and while this used to be a pain to grind for as well, he's now a very easy Warframe to obtain.
- Vauban Prime, who has all of his parts marked as "uncommon" or "rare" in relics, meaning you either have to group up and radshare with a group to get a chance at them or pray to God that you don't run out of relics before you get the parts you need. That's not even going into the actual building requirements, of which you notably need 20 nitain, 7000 Oxium and 9000 Cryotic to fully build.
- Hydroid must be farmed from fighting Vay Hek, who's one of the most annoying bosses to fight. He's a "Get Back Here!" Boss that you chase across several arenas; he can proc magnetic status, which drains your Warframe's energy and shields; and his weak point for the entirety of phase one is mere pixels wide, can only be shot from the front, and only appears for a few seconds while he's doing the aforementioned Mag Proc attack. At least his second phase doesn't have invincibility periods.
- In the past, Ash's blueprints were only dropped by Grineer Manics, high level enemies who only have a small chance of spawning, with an equally slim chance of dropping any loot. He's still a pain to farm nowadays, with his parts being rarely dropped from certain Corpus Railjack missions.
- Chroma's blueprints are easily obtained, but require parts from four other Warframes to complete. Volt's part is the easiest, since you get those through Clan research and can therefore grab only the part you need, but the other three are a pain for various reasons. Ember's part drops from the tedious Sargas Ruk, while Frost's drops from the notoriously-awful Lech Kril. Meanwhile, Saryn's part drops from Kela De Thaym, who requires Judgement Points to fight. Where do you get Judgement Points, you ask? Why, grinding Rathuum, of course. These different parts must then be built so they can be used to make Chroma's real components, requiring two warframes worth of pieces to be crafted before Chroma's actual construction can begin.
- Equinox is also fairly frustrating to grind, since you need eight parts to build her instead of the usual three. While Tyl Regor's boss fight isn't nearly as bad as some of the others, it's still not all that fun running it that many times. As if that wasn't enough, both the Night and Day aspects take three days to complete, individually. In addition to the regular three it takes to craft Equinox once both halves are complete. Requiring nearly a week in real time to craft her, assuming both the Night and Day halves began construction at the same time. Otherwise it could be 9 days.
- Ivara's parts only drop from Spy missions. This wouldn't be too bad, but you have to succeed in all three vaults to get a chance for them to drop, and her Neuroptics only drop from Spy missions on Uranus onwards, which can be very difficult. It doesn't help that the best frame to farm Ivara is Ivara.
- Harrow's Chassis Blueprints are very, very common, to the point where they're common selling fodder. The rest of him is another matter entirely. His systems are only dropped from Defection missions (of which there are three in the whole game), and his Neuroptics drop from the spy mission on the Kuva Fortress, which is probably one of the hardest spy missions in the game. And, like Ivara, the Neuroptics only get a chance to drop if you succeed on all three vaults.
- Grendel, Lotus on a BIKE Grendel. Getting his blueprints requires you to get three keys from Arbitrations, which require you completing every node in the game. The keys lead to three missions— an Excavation mission, a Defense mission, and a Survival Mission— which guarantees you the part if you complete it. However, each of these missions has the "No Mods Mode" modifier— as in, the mods you apply to your Warframe and Weapons don't work at all. No damage mods, no range mods, no utility mods nothing. Not even Operator Mode works, and nor do Incarnons! The only mods that work are Warframe Augments.Did we mention that the missions have enemy levels 40-60?
- The items needed to craft Garuda's components can only be acquired after reaching a certain level with Solaris United, forcing players to reach Rank 4 before they can build her.
- Baruuk is a frustrating combination of requiring Rank 3 and 4 with both Vox Solaris and Solaris United respectively, forcing players to put in twice the work by farming Toroids while doing bounties to raise their Solaris United standing.
- Getting the parts for Nidus is no walk in the park. They only drop from the Infested Salvage mission, a tedious endless mission found on Eris which has pitiful rewards— a potential reward after four rounds is 80 Endo (you can likely pick up double that from dead enemies in the mission), along with some 'rare' mods that most players will probably have two or three copies of by that point in the star chart.
- In Update 33, the Duviri Paradox, a new mode was added called 'The Circuit', where the primary rewards outside of the Steel Path are Warframe components. 33 of the first 39 Warframesnote are available through the Circuit, making the process for crafting several of these Warframes much less time-consuming.
Quests
- The Glast Gambit, the quest line you need to complete to unlock the Nidus Warframe, is considered by many to be by FAR the worst Warframe quest in the game, if not the worst mission in the game, if only for the sheer amount of time and credits that needs to be invested to complete it and the uncertain nature of each match.
- Jordas Precept, an otherwise rather mundane quest that unlocks the Atlas warframe, has an infuriating progression stopper in an item of Pherliac Pods. You need to craft them to progress further, and the components to do so can only be obtained by killing Infested Juggernauts, who can only be spawned once per mission (requiring you to kill a large number of enemies), with only a small chance of dropping the Pherliac Pods blueprint. Fortunately, if you happened to have some pods before you started the quest you can just use those, but if not - brace yourself for a very long grind. Thankfully, subsequent updates have made farming for the components somewhat easier due to "lesser" Juggernauts now spawning in Infested Disruption missions and randomly encountered in the Cambion Drift. While these are still fairly difficult, they're still nowhere near as painful as a normal Juggernaut.
- Sands Of Inaros is easier than other Warframe quests, but can still be a pain. For one, you have to "build" the quest with a blueprint that can be bought from Baro Ki'Teer, who only shows up once every two weeks, and the blueprint requires Nitain Extract. After you unlock the actual blueprint for Inaros, you do three Mass Monster Slaughter Sidequests of one of three random mobs per blueprint— the enemies for the Neuroptics and Chassis blueprints are relatively common, but for the systems, you have to find one of three rare mobs: either a Denial Bursa, A Grineer Manic, or a Juggernaut. The last one is especially frustrating— Juggernauts only show up once per mission, and you have to kill Infested very quickly to get them to show up. This has been slightly mitigated due to the Infested Disruption mission adding Demolisher Juggernauts, which count towards kills for the purpose of this quest.
- "The Waverider", which unlocks Yareli, was widely disliked for turning Warframe into a poor man's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, requiring you to rack up increasingly ludicrous trick point combos on your K-Drive to complete the requirements. Adding insult to injury, Yareli herself was considered one of the worst Warframes ever released. At TennoCon 2023, Rebecca highlighted Waverider in particular as a frustrating quest that's in dire need of a rework, and the "Abyss of Dagath" update that followed greatly reduced the number of tasks needed.
Misc. examples
- Riven unveiling quests are essentially an entire genre of these. Clear a high-level survival where you aren't allowed to kill anything? Finish at least three waves of a high-level Intercept where you are only allowed to use a sniper rifle and forbidden from having your feet leave the ground? Or maybe you'd enjoy a challenge where you have to get twenty stealth kills with a shotgun in a row without your feet ever touching the ground. Name a horrible, hair-pullingly infuriating combination of requirements, and odds are Rivens will have you covered.
- Exaggerated if you acquire a Riven with the challenge "Complete a level 30 or higher Exterminate mission without being detected (Including an additional random modifier)". At first, this seems like a relatively simple Stealth-Based Mission until you discover that "Detection" means If the enemy becomes even slightly suspicious. If any enemy anywhere at all hears a stray gunshot, sees a dead body, or catches the slightest glimpse that you are there, the challenge fails. And more often then not you will encounter large groups of enemies spread out just enough that killing them all simultaneously is impossible, forcing you to wait extensive periods of time for them to seclude themselves from the others and have enough time for their body to disappear before it's spotted. Sometimes the AI will glitch, locking them in place so you never get a solid opening to attack. The challenge can also include modifiers such as having an extinguished dragon key equipped, dramatically reducing the damage you deal. Players will generally throw rivens like this away simply because nobody will even take them for free. Ironically, you can literally complete the challenge by just doing absolutely nothing if you play with a group - the challenge only depends on whether or not you have been detected.
- With the Eximus rework making them immune to crowd control as long as they possess Overguard, there's a particular Riven challenge that's now all but impossible: "Complete a Level 30 or Higher Defense Mission Without The Defense Target Taking Damage". Before the rework, Limbo could just put a Catclysm bubble around the objective and cast Stasis before slaughtering them, but now, Exumus units are immune to both the Rift and Stasis.
- Ranking up with either the Quills or Vox Solaris. Either one's standing can only be increased by trading in resources, Eidolon Shards for the Quills, and Toroids for Vox Solaris, both of which can take quite some time to acquire. Requiring players to hunt Eidolons on the plains, lengthy affairs which will not reward any shards if they are failed. Or search caves and kill enemies at high alert levels on Orb Vallis and hope to get lucky.
- On that note, actually building the amps needed to make farming for Quills rep much more bearable is an exercise in tedium, requiring tens and upwards of 100 Cetus Wisps for each Quills amp, which notoriously only spawn in 5-10 at a time throughout the whole Plains map every time you enter, requiring a specialized build to make the farm feasible. You'll have to put up with 2 loading screens each time you want to refresh the wisp spawns and depending on your computer, could make it absolutely painful. Thankfully, Cetus Wisps count as resources for the purpose of Resource Boosters and Smeeta's Charm, so you can wait until you earn a booster and grind until you get what you need. You also earn the option to buy Cetus Wisps directly from Onkko, but only in the final rank of the Quills by which you probably won't need it anymore OR from Nakak during the rare Plague Star event, but she'll have so many limited items available, you might not be able to buy the Wisps until you've gotten everything else you want.
- Special mention must go to ranking up with Vox Solaris. In addition to the Toroids needed, you also require three different Systems items. Where do you get these items? The Profit-Taker bounties, which are only unlocked upon maxing out Solaris United, gating progression behind another syndicate. That’s only one hard gate progressing with this syndicate has. The aforementioned bounties have the systems in a loot table at the end of each bounty. While the Gyromag Systems are common and will eventually drop, the Atmo Systems needed for Rank 3 are uncommon. How uncommon? 10% drop rate in every bounty. And the loot tables are *very* diluted. After one completes The New War, however, Narmer Isoplasts can now be traded into Vox Solaris, and are worth 2000 standing each, significantly mitigating the grind.
- Fortuna launched with bonus objectives in its bounties that you could complete for additional rewards. These were added onto Cetus bounties in 2019, and they suck. The enemy spawn rate on the Plains of Eidolon has always been wonky, making it difficult to complete some bonus objectives like luring an assassination target out in under a minute.
- On launch, Bounties on the Zariman Ten-Zero were loathed by players due to a Game-Breaking Bug that made it impossible to extract from the mission, meaning that you would miss out on not only bounty rewards, you would also lose the Voidplumes needed to rank up with the Holdfast syndicate, plus any rewards you got from doing the endless missions on the Zariman. While this was eventually fixed, it took months past launch to do so, and the Zariman still has a reputation of being a buggy mess of a tileset as a result.
- One of the Nightwave challenges involves going three consecutive rounds on The Index without letting the enemy team score. While the AI on the Index is thankfully fairly braindead, if they score just one point, you're SOL and have to start all over again. It's gotten to the point where people are asking DE to remove this challenge from the Nightwave rotation.
- Building a Necramech - which is mandatory to do The New War quest - is a real pain in the neck:
- First you have to be - at the absolute minimum, Rank 4 with the Entrati family to get the required blueprints for the materials required to craft each component, and optionally Rank 5 if you want an easier time getting one specific fishing-related material that only drops from Requiem Obelisks or an extremely rare fish. This part can already take several days of grinding depending on your Mastery Rank.
- Then you have to get Broken necramech components, four in total, that only drop from enemy Necramechs found exclusively in Isolation Vaults bounties - of which one (tier 1), two (tier 2) or three (tier 3) will spawn. They are not guaranteed drops, forcing players to repeat those bounties over and over and over again for the chance to drop one. Thankfully this was mildly alleviated in a later update that allows players to directly buy broken components from the Necraloid syndicate with Standing - but you still have to do Isolation Vaults to get the rank-up materials to actually reach that rank with the Necraloids in the first place.
- Then you have to get all the materials for the components, which of course include Cambrion Drift ores and rare gems - but even the common ores have the rather infuriating addendum that they also require Orb Vallis or Plains of Eidolon ores to get their refined version, which can catch an unprepared player off guard and force them to grind out a totally different zone entirely.
- Then, once you're done, you can finally build each component - which takes 12 hours to craft each - and then the Necramech itself, which requires 72 hours like Warframes to fully craft.
