Warframe / Tropes A to D

This page covers tropes in Warframe.

Tropes A To D | Tropes E to H | Tropes I to M | Tropes N to S | Tropes T to Z

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• Absent Aliens: Almost everything in this setting is descended from or created by humans. However, the scope of the story is limited to one solar system. There is another system inhabited by the Sentients, but they were originally created and sent there by the Orokin, meaning they are not aliens in the true sense, either. So far, the only truly alien entity is "the Man in the Wall", an Eldritch Abomination from another dimension.
• Absurdly High Level Cap:
  • Your overall Mastery Rank goes up depending on how many weapons and Warframes you've leveled up. Getting to a higher rank can take months of grinding. In fact, it wasn't even possible to reach the highest Mastery rank before 2019, six years after the game first came out, because there simply weren't enough items to level up. And nearly nothing in the game requires you to be above MR 15: past that, all you get is more trades per day, a higher daily Standing cap, more mod capacity on unranked items (which doesn't affect how much capacity you have after fully ranking it up), and the ability to give out Blessings on relays once you reach MR 30.
  • Enemy levels cap out at 9999. Even in Steel Path, where enemy levels are increased by 100, it takes literal hours of staying in the same endless mission for enemies to scale that high.
• Absurdly Low Level Cap: Most items have a maximum level of 30, which can be reached in less than an hour of gameplay if you know which missions to run, and this can still be cut in half with a booster. The intent is that once you reach that point, you either move on to a stronger item or use a Forma to reset your level and start over several times until you optimize your build, and there are a few items that can have their maximum level increased that way, but even that should only take about a day.
• Absurdly Short Level: Rescue and Capture missions, as well as bosses one significantly outlevels. If one focuses solely on the main objective, they can be finished in as little as two minutes or less - as compared to Endless missions, which offer you the opportunity to extract approximately every five minutes and can potentially go on for an hour or more with sufficient levels and skill, and Syndicate and plotline variants of Endless missions, which require you to complete two rounds for about 10 minutes of gameplay.
  This is enforced by the "Speedster" Nightwave Act, which requires you to complete a Capture mission in 90 seconds or less.
• Abusive Precursors: The Orokin Empire fits this to a T. Existing as pious oligarchs, their history is a long series of abominations and weapons of mass destruction created to appease their ambitions or to defeat the last one, to say nothing of their personal cruelty. The Cephalon Simaris archive unlocked by synthesizing Arid Eviscerators describes an Orokin Executor openly berating and demeaning the Grineer slaves she ordered to stand and defend her and her assistant from an oncoming wave of infested, only for this to get her killed as the slaves rebelled.
• Ace Custom:
  • Multiple variants. Prime weapons were created by the Orokin. Wraith and Vandal weapons are rewarded from events and have a preference for Grineer and Corpus weapons, respectively. Dex weapons are special Lotus-inspired models given out for the anniversary. Mara and Prisma weapons are sold by the Void Trader. Rakta, Sancti, Secura, Synoid, Telos, and Vaykor weapons each come from a different Syndicate (Red Veil, New Loka, Perrin Sequence, Cephalon Suda, Arbiters of Hexis, and Steel Meridian, respectively).
  • In a more general sense, any weapon you have access to can become this. With judicious use of Forma, Orokin Catalysts, and the mod system, players can take a weapon wielded by the average Mook and supercharge it into an endgame-ready tool of destruction.
  • Kuva Liches and Sisters of Parvos, the immortal chosen super soldiers fielded by Grineer and Corpus leadership respectively, have access to Kuva and Tenet Weapons. While a significant number of them are new, just as many are variants of already-existing weaponry which (with the exceptions of the Tenet Agendus and Spirex, both of which are actually variants of weapons that were up to that point only available to Corpus Railjack enemies) are set apart from their normal crafted counterparts via added functionality; the Kuva Hek, for example, can discharge its entire magazine in a single shot, and the Tenet Tetra can launch its magazine as a grenade. These weapons are further set apart by being the only pieces of equipment aside from the story-mandated Paracesis and Necramech that can be elevated to rank 40.
• Acid Attack: Combining Toxin and Electricity mods will provide the Corrosive element, which is especially effective against the ferrite armor used by the Grineer, stripping it away to make foes easier to damage.
• Acrofatic: Grineer Kuva Guardians have very large, seemingly obese bloated bodies topped by similarily rotund heads. Yet despite their size and build they are surprisingly fast, capable of quickly dashing and leaping across the battlefield to catch up with their targets. This, combined with their needle-thin prosthetic legs and shrill, high-pitched voices results in a very grotesque and uncanny image.
• Adorable Abomination: Warframes that get infected with Helminth's virus grow a cyst from their neck that matures in a (real-time) week. Afterwards, it can be drained to mutate a kubrow egg into a Helminth Charger, an infested creature with tendrils, mandibles, and other terrifying appendages... that will act like and love you like any other kubrow.
• Advanced Movement Technique: Rather than walking or sprinting, the best way to get around if vehicles aren't available is by chaining slides and bullet jumps. You press crouch while moving to slide, then jump while sliding to do a bullet jump, then a Double Jump for extra air time, crouch in mid-air so that you instantly slide again when landing, then bullet jump again.
• Aerith and Bob: It's subtle, but it does exist. The present of Warframe has strange, fantastic names such as Konzu, Onkko, Nef, Darvo, Kela, and Baro... in the same universe as Rell (an uncommon, but recognizably present-day name) and John Prodman.
• The Aesthetics of Technology: Most of the factions in the game have weapons or items the player can use, and they all have their own unique visual style.
  • The Grineer's weapons are pseudo-organic in design, featuring rounded, bulging magazines and odd aesthetic additions such as pointless spikes and weird bulges reminiscent of an insect's carapace. Where they have paint, it's often vomitous shades of yellow, orange, and green, but most of their tech is bare metal the color of wrought iron. Examples include the Gorgon LMG and the Grakata submachine gun. Their spaceships are bulging, hard, and utilitarian shapes, based on modern-day submarines. These are side effects of the production process. Much like the Grineer themselves, their technology is created on an industrial scale, have their rough edges filed off, and are immediately issued to the field.
    • The Grineer manning the Kuva Fortress forgo the greens and yellows of their non-Fortress counterparts in favor of blacks and reds mirroring those of the stronghold they protect. Weapons and cosmetics related to the Kuva Fortress also prominently feature braid motifs and winding red lines that bring veins to mind.
    • Despite the name, the Kuva weapons used by Kuva Liches do not follow the design language of the Fortress. Rather they are mainly a pale, desaturated shade of blue with red accents, and the highlight of the weapon is the glow on its business end which it derives from the element the Lich spawned with.
  • Corpus weaponry is boxy. It's almost universally light grey metal (or if you want to spice things up, dark grey), with splashes of cyan or green glowing bits. Examples include the Dera plasma rifle, the Supra squad support weapon, and the Flux Rifle. Their ships follow the same concept.
    • Modified Tenet weapons are no less boxy than their counterparts, but trade the fairly drab metal shades for a primarily blue color scheme with pale, almost white yellow patterns along their length and boast energy projections in certain areas. Completely new Tenet weapons follow a similar philosophy with regard to colors and energy projections, but all of them except the Tenet Exec can (and do, when holstered) transform into briefcases and bags of various sizes.
    • Anything Corpus that has to do with Parvos Granum tends to be significantly more angular in shape than "normal" or Board loyalist Corpus technology; aside from the Sisters of Parvos, the one generic unit Parvos is known to deploy (the Derivator Crewman found on the Zariman) wears a more triangular helmet similar to the one in the emblem the Sisterhood of Parvos demarcates itself with. Corpus ships also contain giant pyramidical shrines to him, and his representation on his Granum Crowns is a triangular profile of his head.
    • The Vallis Amalgam weapons, the Battacor and Ocucor, both incorporate Sentient and Sentient-derived parts but are very distinctly Corpus, with a blend of classic boxiness and Parvos-loyalist angles in the scaffolding that surrounds the heart of the gun. The matching Kreska icepick, though fully Corpus, retains the sharp design and black, turquoise and silver color scheme.
  • Ostron Zaws are extremely primitive in design, with their constituent parts appearing to be Crafted from Animals, featuring components of simple rock, wood, and metal salvage. Overall, the Zaws appear similar to Mayincatec weapons or those from other dawn-of-civilization societies.
    • Amp components built by the Quills, though nothing to write home about ungilded, are clearly carved from Eidolon pieces once gilded.
  • Solaris United kitguns — being derivatives of Corpus equipment — are also boxy at times, but with a thrown-together aesthetic that also calls to mind industrial equipment, such as robotic arms in factories.
    • The Amp parts Little Duck sells have designs just as organic as the ones Onkko provides, but hers are more in line with Corpus robotics with cleaner circles and a mainly black-and-blue color scheme.
  • Tenno:
    • Most Tenno weapons are archaic, simplified derivatives of Orokin-era weaponry. Wooden furniture and intricate engravings on unpainted metal surfaces feature prominently, giving a hand-made feel that contrasts strongly with the mass-manufactured weapons of the Grineer and Corpus. Examples include the Paris bow, Latron combat rifle, Furis SMG, Vasto revolver, and Tigris double-barrelled shotgun. Like the Warframes themselves, some of their older designs like the Glaive or Skana have semiorganic style elements reminiscent of the Infested. From what we've seen, their ships follow a similar trend as well.
    • Individual Warframes, however, can also have customized weapons made to fit them — Gara's weapons are orange, blue, and transparent white, and made of glass, Khora's Hystrix machine pistol and Dual Keres swords use soft beige colors with maroon, and look far more organic than many other Tenno weapons.
    • The Lex pistol, denoted as Tenno by having a Prime variant, seems to be the odd one out. It is too symmetric and boxy to be a Grineer weapon, too rounded and angular to be Corpus-made, and too simple and mechanical to be Tenno. This used to be true of the Braton and Burston rifles as well until they were redesigned.
  • Most Infested weapons look like severed Infested body parts or growths. One is even powered by biochemical reactions, and several of them are specifically denoted as Living Weapons. The Acrid is a notable exception. It looks more like an attempt by the Grineer to integrate Infested tissue into their weaponry. The Acrid is a Grineer-designed handgun with a canister of sickly green Infested material.
  • Orokin technology, as seen in Void Towers and Prime-quality Warframes and weapons, is smooth and flowing, ivory white and richly decorated with gold in various shades and sometimes minor black accents to spice things up, as well as the occasional unnecessary gold cosmetic features, most commonly rings. Orokin facilities are the stuff of utopian sci-fi, with lots of gold and ivory decorating streamlined white hallways, with pleasant Zen-style plants and waterfalls here and there. Older Orokin devices such as the Orvius and Exilus Adapter have a strange, organic aesthetic that bears a resemblance to Sentient technology.
    • The Entrati have a different spin on the Orokin aesthetic, primarily swapping the white of Orokin towers with shades of dark gray and subduing the golds. Their isolation vaults are crypt-like, with doorway designs and ornamentation heavily reminiscent of coffins and tombstones. Hexagons are also a key component of the Entrati aesthetic, with all of their machinery having significant portions of interlocking golden hexagons.
  • Cephalon-designed machines such as the Gammacor and Simulor tend to have an Apple-esque aesthetic, albeit more futuristic, with sleek, curvaceous items trimmed with the occasional line of LED-like lights, frequently featuring hovering components and/or holograms. They almost always have a secondary purpose as a research tool.
  • Sentient weaponry has an organic aesthetic, but unlike the infested, their shapes tend to be very alien looking, with a focus on arches and curves. This highlights the pervasive otherness the Sentients possess.
    • Murexes, the Sentients' battleships, are very skeletal on the outside and onstantly emit a sinister red glow. Inside, they're disconcertingly ashen and red, with alien scratches on every flat surface and the occasional ever-writhing pool of black liquid that spits out a Sentient every so often.
    • Eidolons, being significantly weakened Sentients have a very distinct worn-out/aged version of the Sentient color scheme best exemplified by Revenant. The Teralyst, Hydrolyst, and Gantulyst, being fragments of one gargantuan Sentient, are all a loose mishmash of Sentient parts and whatever they could find lying around that their Synovia could attach to. Eidolon Lotus is also very visibly damaged and looks like she's in the middle of coming apart at the seams. She, Revenant, and the Tridolons all the share the same, green-bluish energy color as well, possibly as an indication of their sickliness.
    • In stark contrast to the Vallis Sentient guns, Alad V's Komorex and Cyanex Amalgam guns are clearly more Sentient than Corpus, looking as though they were cut directly from the Ropalolyst with the only Corpus influence being the occasional metal part.
  • Narmer are all red and gold, with red holographic insignias appearing over its units' heads and weapons, and the Narmer tiles introduced in Veilbreaker have all been significantly vandalized with replicas of the Narmer insignia done up in black stone and gold outlines. Big, red Kuva mirrors are also a recurring feature.
  • The Angels of the Zariman update gives players insight into not one, not two, but three distinct aesthetics of the Warframe universe:
    • The Zariman itself, while externally very much a standard white-and-gold Orokin ship, has a much less ornate and more Constructivist bent, with the golden statues littered throughout the ship and the optimism they capture lending the Zariman as a whole a very Soviet feel.
    • The Void corruption plaguing the Zariman is very organic in appearance, with everything it creates looking like it was made by stacking and welding together rings in various ways, or cutting away parts of rings; the Incarnon form of the Phenmor, for example, has a very conspicuous ring at its top with a spinning energy wheel inside.
    • Thrax weapons such as the Hespar and Aeolak (as well as other things related to Duviri, like the Kaithe) have a distinct appearance reminiscent of brushed copper with patchy oxidization, and while nowhere near as organic as Void corruption their smooth designs do feature some kind of organicity.
    • Duviri Dax weapons share the same, roughly skeletal aesthetic as with anything Void-corrupted, the main difference being that Duviri Dax weapons tend to have glowing Tron Lines along the body, the edge of blades, or in the case of the Cinta bow wielded by the Dax Arcus, a glowing bowstring.
• After the End: It's suggested that there might have been more than one in Warframe's distant past. The most well-known is The Old War against the nigh-unstoppable Sentients, which devastated the Origin System. However, even by that time, it's suggested that something happened in Warframe's backstory. During the Orokin Era, Earth was nigh-uninhabitable, the people of Mars regressed to a primitive existence, and the Orokin were afraid of non-biological technology for some reason.
• Affably Evil: Surprisingly, Ruk fulfills this trope in the Gradivus Dilemna Event. Where Alad taunts the player over the fact that he has grand designs for their captive comrades^IEdissecting them and using their remains to build a prototype security proxy out of Tenno parts but is arguably the lesser of two evils since helping him will not result in an enslaved Mars, Ruk will compliment the player's skills and express vicious satisfaction that they now fight together to crush the Corpus. When fighting against him, he appeals to their sense of honor, urging them to turn against Alad to save their comrades, and reminding them that the Corpus will turn on the Tenno when they're no longer profitable (and that they will crush the Corpus using the Tenno's bodies.) If the player ran more Grineer missions than Corpus, he genuinely thanks the Tenno supporting him, tells them that they fought bravely and did not have to fight as hard as they did, and, if the player ran a hundred missions for the Grineer, tells them that the Tenno have what the Grineer can't make in a cloning tube: the heart of a warrior. Aww. Also, throughout the event, Alad V, being a tight-fisted Corrupt Corporate Executive, is not very happy about handing out battle pay. Ruk, on the other hand, eagerly gives out rewards, telling Tenno to keep it up, there's more where that came from.
• Aggressive Negotiations:
  • The encyclopedia entry for Operation Sling-Stone shows the Corpus and Grineer pulling guns on each other while negotiating. The whole special event series also shows how violent the contract dispute has gotten — all for a mere few billion credits.
  • History repeated itself during the Gradivus Dilemma event. The Corpus discovered a few Tenno in cryosleep near Mars and wanted to keep them for experiments. This, however, violated a contract with the Grineer, who demanded that the Corpus hand the Tenno over to them. Alad V, the Corpus member who found the Tenno, blew the Grineer off, confident that boosting anti-Grineer resistance on Mars would protect them against the Grineer. Needless to say, the Grineer invaded, using the violation as an excuse to crush and subjugate Mars. Unlike Sling-Stone, however, the Tenno themselves were less united in helping them out, mostly because the Grineer gave better rewards at the start (and completion rewards were were granted for sticking with one faction) and that the Corpus had several Tenno in cryosleep hostage (where many players never even realized civilians were still alive, much less at stake).
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Orokin seemed to be very strong believers in this concept and had prohibitions against creating true AI. It lead to them utilizing Organic Technology or Brain Uploading for when they needed to make something sentient. It's unknown whether they adopted this attitude before or after the Sentients returned from Tau Ceti, but either way it justified their distrust.
• Air-Vent Passageway: The Tenno often enter the mission by dropping from a vent, complete with knocking out the air vent grates noisily. A large number of missions include grates that can serve as alternate routes, although there's little reason to use them outside of Spy and, to a lesser extent, Rescue missions. If you want to complete these missions stealthily (and you will want to, since the rewards are better for stealth and getting detected slaps you with a blaring alarm and a strict time limit), expect to spend a lot of time creeping through vents.
• Alien Animals: Zig-Zagged. While the Orb Vallis on Venus is home to several strange mammals, The Business explicitly notes that they are artificial creations, made by Orokin "Gene Forges". The same is probably true of the animals found on the Plains of Eidolon.
• All-Natural Gem Polish: Averted. All (three at the moment) the open worlds include mining as an activity, and the gems are used as a crafting material. But first you have to acquire the foundry blueprints for their cut and polished versions. In the inventory the gems themselves are depicted generally as lumpy coloured blobs, as a rough crystal similar to a chunk of raw quartz, or as crystals still encrusted with the common stone they were dug up from.
• All Planets Are Earth-Like: Mars, Venus, Pluto, Europa, and Ceres all have the same gravity as Earth and human-breathable atmosphere. Tenno can even walk along the surface of Earth's Moon with no visible protection and have no issues. According to Cephalon Fragment entries, many of these can be attributed to ancient Orokin terraforming devices that have remained functioning since the collapse.
• Alliance Meter: The six main Syndicates (Arbiters of Hexis, Cephalon Suda, Steel Meridian, New Loka, Perrin Sequence, Red Veil). Working for one will earn you reputation for them plus half as much reputation for its ally, but you'll also lose reputation with its two enemies. Once you work your way into the upper ranks, you'll be able to redeem that reputation for powerful mods and special weapons, but Syndicates that you've angered won't hesitate to send Eximus squads after you.
• The All-Seeing A.I.: If playing solo or as a group that sticks mostly together once the alarms go off, the enemy will always know where the player is until the alarm is disabled. Infested and Void missions are particularly annoying because there is no alarm, yet the entire level can be alerted. Even when unalerted, enemies can detect when a nearby ally has been slain — even through walls — and will be put in a semi-alerted patrol state, which will prevent the player from getting stealth kill bonus XP when killing them. However if a player gets significantly separated from the group it is entirely possible to encounter troops that are rushing to another player's location who will completely ignore you, or to encounter enemies that are clearly sheltering in cover from something or someone in a radically different location from your own, with how their 'use' of cover leaves them completely exposed to your own attacks, while they stare intently in the wrong direction to see you.
• All There in the Manual: Played straight and subverted. While certain bits of lore, such as the Tenno being children that were affected by the Void on a malfunctioning Void ship, Ordis being a former human named Ordan Karris, the existence of the Sentients, and the utter inhumanity of the Orokin Empire can be accessed through obscure in-game sources (the descriptions for two Prime warframes, scanning things, and participating in Synthesis with Cephalon Simaris), they're also revealed later on in the game through quests. So it's not a completely straight example.
• Alternate History: Albrecht's notes call 1999 a 'plague year' for currently unclear reasons; Albrecht apparently brought a cure to this time, and in the process, turned at least two people into human-warframe hybrids using Helminth. Also, aside from a few snippets of English, a phonetic cipher is present on all monitors in the brief 1999 sequence in "Whispers in the Wall".
• Ambiguous Gender:
  • Any Tenno can use any Warframe despite the suits having clearly gendered physiques and being referred to with gendered pronouns in their profiles. This is because the Warframes are remote controlled by the Tenno and, as confirmed to be canon in The Sacrifice, they can switch between them at will, although it's unclear how often the Tenno canonically do this and if they generally use Warframes of the opposite gender.
  • Nezha, being inspired by a child-god, is a very slender-built male Warframe (looking much more like a marathon runner than a traditional action movie hero) among more broad-shouldered slabs of traditional adult masculine ideals.
• Ambiguous Time Period:
  • It's unclear how far in the future from our present day Warframe is set, but it's equally unclear how much time has passed between the end of the Orokin empire and the New War and Warframe's 'Present' day. At one point in the closed beta, the Lotus said that the Tenno had been asleep for 'centuries' but currently she says 'for generations'. Not helping matters are the fact that the Sentients are machines who have a form of Genetic Memory that means that experiences aren't lost over generations and the fact that there are living Orokin in the Origin system in the form of the Entrati family and Ballas. The most common estimate among the playerbase is that the Orokin empire fell about 2,000 years prior to the game starting, given how most people think that the Earth's moon is a myth.
  • The only time the game averts this is when it's talking about a particular point in the past: Albrecht Entrati sent himself back in time to 1999 in an attempt to escape the Indifference, and if the teasers for that expansion are any indication, brought back some Orokin technology along with him.
• Amputative Sentencing: As a child, Parvos Granum was born to a long line of grain farmers. Departing for the nearby Orokin city, he attempted to steal several Rubedo jewels as recompense for how the Orokin profited off of working families like his own, but he was caught and had his left hand chopped off by a plasma dagger. However, he managed to swallow one of the gems, crawled back home, and then threw it up, having a powerful investment he'd use to spread his philosophy of active acquisition. He'd later graft a golden prosthetic over his missing hand.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different:
  • During "The New War", you initially play as a Grineer soldier, a Corpus tech, Teshin, and then a mysterious drifter who is soon revealed to be an older version of the Operator who has no access to void powers (and by extension their Warframes).
  • Call of the Tempestarii initially knocks the player out once they reach Sevagoth. It then cuts to a controllable dream sequence of him fighting off hordes of Corpus soldiers.
• Androcles' Lion: On some weeks where the Break Narmer mission is Junk Run, one optional side-objective will be to free caged Drahks. Not only will finding all the Drahks earn you extra Stock, they will be so grateful that they will fight the enemy Sentients in the area alongside you, then turn peaceful.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: New customization options are common rewards from quests and Nightwave, including specalized capes that Warframes can wear called "Syandanas", new color pallets, helmets and armor pieces. This even extends to being able to customize The Lotus herself after the New War and after you max out standing with the Cavia, you become able to customize their colors as well.
• Animal Lover: The Business spends his retirement selling gear for catching creatures of Orb Vallis and relocating them to a place where the Corpus goons won't butcher them for profit.
• Animeland: Everything about the Tenno is taken from stereotypical anime depictions of Ninja and samurai: the way they sit, their swords, their motions, their name, their very designs... The anime influence is most shown in Styanax's trailer, which is a short anime.
• An Adventurer Is You: The frames fit these roles relatively well, although there's a fair amount of crossover:
  • The Tank^note With the role of absorbing damage and protecting other party members: Rhino^note The Meat Shield: Rhino can outright negate damage by giving himself a second set of "hit points" that absorbs damage for him, Frost^note The Magic Tank: Frost is known best for the ability to produce a shielded area that blocks projectiles and slows down enemies that try to enter it to engage in melee, Chroma^note The Damage and Mitigation Tank: Chroma's base armor is on the higher end among Warframes and his abilities can drastically upgrade his armor, effective health, and damage, Atlas^note A combination of the group, who summons stone walls and elementals to absorb damage for him, but also has high armor and crowd control to mitigate damage; overlaps with The Scrapper due to his ability to rack up combos and deal large damage, Inaros^note The Regenerator: Inaros sustains himself primarily with a myriad of attacks that drain his targets' life force. The only reason he doesn't instantly qualify as Meat Shield with the highest health in the game is because one of his abilities uses his health as an additional resource pool, to add to his armor., Zephyr^note Although she has little armor and mostly mobility and CC skills, Zephyr also has the ability to cause projectiles to change course away from her, making her an Avoidance Tank, Hildryn^note An AOE Mezzer Mitigation Tank with means to debuff and outlast her enemies to be able to secure an area..
  • The Healer^note With the role of restoring health of other party members: Trinity^note Besides being a Healer Classic, Trinity is also a Regenerator/Mitigation Tank because of her ability to heal or transfer a portion of received damage to enemies, as well as a Resource Master with a similar ability to use enemies to regenerate energy, Harrow^note A Preemptive Healer who places barriers on allies and incapacitates enemies, and a Resource Master who can restore allies' energy and health via damage.
  • The DPS^note With the role of damaging enemies: Excalibur^note With a number of straightforward attack skills, along with the ability to briefly stun enemies while causing them to take more damage from melee attacks, and his ultimate, Exalted Blade, which channels a high damage blade that fires beams out everytime you attack, Volt^note Who can buff his allies' attack speed and create barriers that will enhance the damage of attacks fired through it, on top of generally being The Nuker, Mirage^note Who is armed with lots of survivability and damage self buffs to herself can easily deal the most damage in the game through sheer using weapons. She also has a little bit of CC on her side with Prism, Ash^note Ash is mainly a Backstabber with his focus on exploiting melee attacks by either teleporting close or inducing bonus melee damage around him, as well as The Scrapper with a skill that lets him attack enemies with an unblockable series of melee animations , Valkyr^note Another Scrapper that brawls with enemies by making them helpless while vastly improving her melee speed. Her above average health and innate armor encourages her wade in to the fight and ignore damage, making her a classic Mitigation Tank, the twist being that her ultimate grants her complete invincibility, Mesa^note Mesa's most common use is as a stationary turret, enhanced by her damage buffs, to the point that adequately-upgraded Peacemakers (the attack that makes Mesa the aforementioned turret) are the ultimate anti Sentient weapon due to the sheer amount of firepower pouring from them can completely overwhelm the Sentients Adaptive Ability. Overlaps with Status Effect Guy and Mitigation Tank due to her applications against other ballistic enemies, Wukong^note A Scrapper, whose passive ability allows him to hold onto his melee combos and use them to enhance his ultimate. His other abilities keep him alive through the principles of The Regenerator and Evasion Tanking., Ivara^note An Archer whose abilities give her a bonus to headshot damage, with a bow that doesn't need to charge to deal its full damage. Her specialized arrows also make her a Status Effect Guy., Nidus^note Who passively receives increased ability damage each time his abilities inflict damage. Also a Regenerator with support-buffing capabilities., Revenant^note While overlapping with the Mezzer and both the Avoidance and Regenerator Tank, all of his skills also amplify the damage of his final two abilities. His ultimate changes its damage type in response to the enemy health type it hits, allowing him to bypass their defenses, making him a classical Nuker., Garuda^note A Blademaster with Healer capabilities who becomes more powerful when her health is in critical condition, and an Area of Effect that makes it easier to land kills., Baruuk^note A Scrapper type Melee DPS with means of becoming an Avoidance Tank or Mezzer depending on how you wear down his restraint., Grendel^note Whose abilities can devour enemies en masse to corrode their armor, steamroll over their allies, then spit the remainder back out for a potent poison debuff; overlaps with Status Effect Guy who can provide a variety of helpful buffs to the team, Yareli^note Who passively gains a critical damage bonus with pistols while moving, and can flay nearby enemies with watery blades; overlaps with Status Effect Guy with her crowd control tools and damage vulnerability effects, Kullervo^note A Blademaster and Scrapper hybrid whose abilities quickly rack up combos for him to unleash powerful heavy melee attacks, which can deal simultaneous damage to all enemies he curses.
  • The Status Effect Guy^note With the role of strengthening allies, weakening enemies and controlling the flow of battle: Mag^note With the power to group enemies over wide areas, sap enemy shields and armor, or cause enemies to attract projectiles. Also considered an Area of Effect type because of the large effective range of her attack skills, and a Preemptive Healer with her high focus on restoring allies' shields, Loki^note Who has no directly damaging skills, but has notable abilities like creating aggro attracting decoy targets and permanently disabling enemy guns in an area around him. Has a hint of DPS due to his Invisibility giving him a huge melee damage buff, Hydroid^note Hydroid has insane crowd control potential due to the nature of his abilities, being reworked to excel in inflicting corrosive on enemies., Banshee^note Who has the ability to negate detectable noise, stun enemies, and create new weak points on enemies, Nyx^note Whose chief function is to turn enemies into temporary allies, or cause groups to turn and attack each other, Vauban^note Who can tag the environment with traps, suspend enemies in the air, or pull them into vortexes, Limbo^note Who can temporarily remove himself, allies or enemies from battle, as well as stop time for select enemies or restore allies' energy, Titania^note Whose abilities include a multitude of party buffs, including from her passive, and inflicting crowd control by making enemies float, Octavia^note Whose abilities provide the party with buffs for fighting to the beat of her songs, and compel the enemy to follow the sound of music, Xaku^note Whose abilities increase Void damage output while disarming enemies, removing their defenses, suspending them or mind controlling them outright, and the ultimate ability to stop all timers to extend the effects; overlaps with Avoidance Tank with their passive ability to evade attacks, Lavos^note Whose abilities can be infused with multiple damage types to inflict the gamut of elemental status effects; overlaps with Resource Master who can upgrade orb and ammo pickups, and The Nuker whose ultimate multiplies in damage for each status afflicting enemies, Voruna^note Whose abilities grow more potent when attacking status-afflicted foes and can apply Bleeds as well as randomized physical and elemental status effects to facilitate this; overlaps with Resource Master due to her ability to generate additional health and energy pickups with each kill, and The Backstabber thanks to her unique invisibility power that rewards melee kills, Dagath^note Who specializes in spreading Viral damage to her enemies, as well as being capable of stripping armor and increasing her critical damage, and has bonuses from using her abilities one after another, Qorvex^note A very tanky frame whose abilities inflict radiation damage while also increasing his own damage and defenses for each for who become irradiated, and decimating foes with chain reactions.
  • The Resource Master^note With the role of providing allies with supplies: Nekros^note Noted for his looting ability, forcing dead enemies to drop extra resources they did not the first time; overlaps with The Minion Master through his ultimate ability, Protea^note Whose powers allow her to create a dispensary for allies' resources and ammo, rewind time to restore her own, and amplify the effects of each with her passive; overlaps with The Nuker and Preemptive Healer with her turrets and trick grenades.
  • The Petmaster^note With the role of summoning and commanding additional allies: Khora^note The Beastmaster whose custom companion Venari can be directed to attack or disarm foes, or even heal allies. Overlaps with The Nuker who can damage foes with her whip, and The Mezzer who can ensnare them to increase their damage taken or spread damage to nearby enemies., Caliban^note A Minion Master who can summon a horde of Sentient servants to distract and stun enemies while repairing his shields. Also a potent Nuker and Status Effect Guy with armor-stripping and damage-increasing abilities.
  • Jack of All Trades^note With a versatile role to handle any number of needs: Oberon^note Who is decently tanky, can heal, deal damage, buff allies, and inflict or remove status effects, but without as much ease or cost-efficiency as other classes dedicated to each role, Nezha^note Whose abilities amplify his mobility and survivability, dispel negative ailments from allies and restore health, deal direct damage either through area of effect or direct projectile, and can impale his enemies to prevent them from attacking, Equinox^note Whose status as a Dual Mode Unit means she has every means of survival-enhancement in Night form, can supplement allied damage output in Day form, and basically functions as two separate classes rolled into one chassis — but she has slow transitions between these two stages, next to no interplay between them, and must stay in one form to charge up its ultimate, Gara^note Who can produce both deadly blades and impassible barriers from glass, as well as encase enemies within glass in order to freeze them and increase their damage taken; however, she must micromanage timers and combo her abilities to maximize their effectiveness, all without any innate means to recover her health or energy, Wisp^note Whose abilities heal and boost allies’s speed, stun crowds of enemies and deal a powerful beam of damage., Sevagoth^note Whose status as a Dual Mode Unit allows him to heal allies as well as slow, debuff and nuke enemies in one form, while becoming a regenerating melee master in his Shadow form, Styanax^note Whose abilities can restore the party's shields and energy, increase his own critical hit chance, strip enemy defenses, restore his own health, group enemies up, and blast them down with potent Bleed effects, Citrine^note A support-oriented frame who can boost allies' status chance and critical damage, in addition to providing auras that regenerate allies' health and mitigate their damage taken; overlaps with Resource Master as she can generate additional health and energy pickups, which in turn can amplify her regeneration aura..
  • Area of Effect^note With the role of damaging as many enemies as possible in a wide radius: Ember^note Who can drop meteors that surround enemies in a circle of continuously damaging flames, or emit walls of convection that remove enemy armor, all while increasing in strength for each enemy she burns, Saryn^note Who can cause corrosive spores to spread from one enemy to another contagiously, or just straight up release a massive blast of viral damage, Nova^note Notable for her ability to "prime" enemies around her to explode upon death, potentially resulting in a chain reaction of explosions. The slowed and vulnerable state of "primed" enemies also makes her another Status Effect Guy, Gauss^note Whose abilities focus on amplifying the explosive collisions from his sprint attack, while creating hazards that deal periodic damage and peel enemy armor; overlaps with Mitigation Tank with his ability to completely negate and absorb kinetic attacks, Gyre^note Whose abilities spread critical damage effects over a wide area that can further chain to additional enemies, growing more potent for each target hit while extending the duration of her self-buffs through mass-killing.
• An Interior Designer Is You: The Clan Dojo and Orbiter. Many, many decorations can be added freely to and colors can be changed in both, and the layout of the Dojo can be designed by building rooms on the other side of existing doors (some of which have functions while others are purely aesthetic). Completing The New War gives you access to the Drifter's Camp as a third customizable space. Completing Angels of the Zariman adds a fourth customizable area — your Zariman apartment, the Dormizone.
• Antagonist Title: Zigzagged for the Angels of the Zariman update — while the titular angels are hostile monsters, Angel is also the fourth rank you obtain with the Holdfasts syndicate, meaning it is both this trope and a Protagonist Title.
• Antepiece:
  • During Veso's section of The New War, you'll find the second trace conduit you need to access inside a room with a broken window, a breacher MOA cabinent, and a broken window which an osprey can fly through. Try sending a breacher MOA in to interface with the conduit, and the electrified floor will cause the robot to explode. The solution to this puzzle is to send in your osprey to shield the MOA until it finishes hacking the terminal. All of this sets you up for the final part of Veso's section where you fight a Sentient-controlled Jackal, which must be finished off by a breacher MOA to deplete its health bars, as final phase of the fight has it electrify the floor its standing on, requiring a repeat of this strategy to finish it off.
  • The Angels of Zariman and Whispers in the Walls quests act as introductions to the unique mission types found in the Zariman and the Necracell respectively, having the Tenno go through these quests as part of a quest storyline before unlocking the respective syndicates and open worlds (The Holdfasts for the Zariman, the Cavia for the Necracell).
  • Void Flood and Mirror Defense can be accessed relatively early in the game through Duviri and Tyana Pass on Mars, respectively. They’re also easier than their counterparts that can be unlocked late game on the Zariman and Albrecht’s labs which add extra challenge to the game mode. The Void Flood node on the Zariman sticks you with a time limit and negative conditions for letting the timer run too far down in contrast to its Duviri counterpart letting you work at your own pace, while the Deimos Mirror Defense has a longer parkour section, a weaker automated defense in the form of Qorvex’s Chrynka Pillar instead of Citrine’s Prismatic Ward, and stronger enemies in the form of the Murmur.
• Anti-Armor:
  • Weapons with high focus on Puncture damage do more damage to heavily-armoured enemies like Grineer soldiers, but suffer against shields. Meanwhile, Impact damage is best for depleting shields and robots' health but is less effective against soft flesh. Conversely, Slash damage focused weapons tend to do very poorly against heavily-armoured foes, but often gain significant damage multipliers versus the squishy and mostly-unarmoured common/non-ancient Infested. Weapons tend to have clear specializations from their base damage types as a result, but good elemental mods can make most weapons usable regardless of their base physical stats.
  • While slash damage is in theory weak against armor and strong against health, in practice slash is the best damage type in the game against all defenses, including armor, because of its ability to totally bypass defenses with it's status effect - it can cause an enemy to bleed, dealing true damage over a short period of time that ignores armor, shields and other forms of damage reduction, but not shields. At high level play bleed procs become the most powerful status effect when combined with viral, which cuts enemy health in half making that true damage count for more.
  • Corrosive damage does +75% damage (so 175% total) to armor, and can temporarily reduce the target's maximum armour. Brutally effective against the Grineer as a result. Magnetic damage has a proc that makes shield take more damage for a short time, making it ideal for tackling the Corpus.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • When downed, a button can be held to instantly revive in case you need to hurry, or if you want to revive your companion (being revived by an ally prevents your companion from reviving), but this can only be done four times per mission without upgrades.
  • In a more minor case, two or three containers will always spawn just outside of the entrance to the Orb Vallis free-roam map. These containers are guaranteed to drop energy orbs, so players don't have to scrounge before doing missions in order to use their powers. In addition, unlike the entrance to Cetus which was off to one side of the Plains of Eidolon and therefore easy to locate, the entrance to the Fortuna colony in the Orb Vallis is more centrally located on the vast map. Thankfully, the entrance building also has a large smokestack which pours out thick black smoke at all times, which is visible from the air from almost any point on the map. This makes it much easier to locate for players trying to head back to Fortuna without getting lost.
  • It used to be that Warframe blueprints and parts that dropped from quests (such as Chroma or Inaros) were one of a kind, and once lost were gone forever, meaning the only way to obtain the frame afterwards was buying it with platinum. Eventually the game was patched so that such items can be purchased from Cephalon Simaris using Standing, so they are never lost forever.
  • The final battle of the "Heart of Deimos" quest forces the player to duel an enemy Necramech. Since the fight depends heavily on mobility (the enemy Necramech initially only has one small weakpoint on its back, which can be increased to three if you shoot off its arms), the player is prevented from using their fourth ability during this fight, as doing so renders their Necramech immobile and gives it Area of Effect weapons, which are virtually useless in this fight.
  • During the New War, the Drifter will have to fight two Archons with nothing but Nataruk, and as such is a Glass Cannon compared to the Warframes you are accustomed to playing as. Thankfully, if you go down once in a fight, Hunhow will send the Stalker in to revive you, and will also give you a hint to deal with their Heal Thyself abilities.
  • To accomodate the need for increased usage of Operator powers in the Angels of the Zariman update, both due to Eximus units now having Overguard^note which is highly susceptible to Void Damage but resilient toward everything else and the Zariman Ten Zero having enemies that can only be permanently killed via Void damage, enemies that require Operators to kill them now reward Focus points on death for your currently active School.
  • Completing Angels of the Zariman unlocks the Holdfasts syndicate. One vendor for that faction sells, among other things, customizable materials for skins. While skins for the Warframes cost platinum, you get parts that are compatible with these materials for the Drifter and the Operator as a reward for completing the quest.
  • In Duviri, your loadout is limited to a random selection, including weapons you may or may not have. There are a few systems in place to avoid frustration:
    • You can preview the available options before loading into the cave, allowing you to mod what's available and be prepared.
    • There exist default mod builds, even if you don't own the requisite mods, that keep said weapons from being basically non-functional, and if you own one of the choices the game prioritizes your build over the default.
    • If you have a stronger variant of a weapon that shows up, such as a Kuva Karak instead of a Karak, it will take the weaker one's place.
    • On the off chance that you absent-mindedly picked a pair of primary and secondary weapons that turn out to be unsuited for destroying the vulnerable rings of the Orowyrm at the end of a Duviri run (due to being too short-ranged, slow-travelling, or just plain weak), if it takes too long to destroy the rings during one of the Orowyrm's damage phases, an Imperator Arch-gun with an integrated Gravimag that allows you to use it on foot will appear in the middle of the arena, which does ridiculous damage and will let you deal with the Orowyrm (and everything else) in short order.
  • Since the start of the game, one of the most frustrating aspects was grinding for random component drops to craft new Warframes, which only got worse as the missions you had to run to get later ones grew much harder and more complicated. Eventually DE implemented an alternate way of acquiring the necessary component blueprints, with you earning materials from the missions that would allow you to simply buy a component you needed outright from a vendor (such as buying Voruna component blueprints from Archimedean Yonta with the Lua Thrax Plasm you'd earn in the Conjunction Survival missions if you couldn't get them to drop there), reducing the level of hair-pulling RNG and guaranteeing you'd be able to get the new 'frame eventually.
  • Because of the notably-inconsistent and disconnected story details regarding the Tenno, Warframes, and their conflict with the Sentients that have piled up over the years, completing Whispers in the Walls unlocks a condensed version of this timeline on the computer in the Sanctum Anatomica that contains only the details that are actually important to know going forward. This is especially necessary due to the main story post-New War shifting focus to the Man in the Wall, who is all but stated to be the reason the Tenno and Warframes can exist to begin with.
• Anti-Magic: The Corpus have some understanding of the Void and technology utilizing it, and use it for field units that can block Tenno powers.
  • First and foremost, there are Nullifier units that project an energy bubble around them. All of your powers do not work inside the bubble, and in addition the bubble itself is bulletproof (though it can be effectively overwhelmed and temporarily disabled with consistent fire, or permanently disabled by destroying the drone that hovers at the top of it).
  • And then there are Comba and Scrambus units. Unlike Nullifers, they are divided into several subtypes, and each subtype disables only a certain group of powers (direct damage powers, buffs/debuffs etc.), and they don't have a bulletproof shield. However their ability-blocking aura is much larger and is invisible — if the Nullifiers' bright bubble gives them away from a mile off, your only indication that you stepped into the Scrambus' area of effect is a minor Interface Screw and a short sound. The units themselves don't stand out that much, making the task of eliminating them quickly more difficult. Depending on which subtype of Comba/Scrambus you encounter, they can range from a minor inconvenience to a devastating disability that prevents you from using your main power.
• Anti Poop-Socking:
  • Crafting, which elapses in real-time, even when logged out. Warframes take more than 72 hours to craft and spending platinum is the only way to speed up the process.
  • Alerts and Nightmare missions, which arise randomly for short periods of time, can only be completed for their reward once. The best rewards, such as the otherwise hard to obtain Orokin Reactor tend to show up as alerts on a weekly basis.
  • Players can only earn a limited amount of Syndicate reputation and Focus per day (although Eidolon Shards can be turned into extra Focus regardless of the daily cap).
• Arm Cannon:
  • Mesa's Regulator pistols, which flip around to be out of the way when not in use.
  • The Gammacor is a wrist-mounted laser that was originally created for mineral analysis. Cephalon Suda upgraded the design, creating the powerful Synoid Gammacor.
  • Update 16.5 brings the Atomos, a Grineer-designed Heat-based particle beam which can chain the beam between targets similar to the Amprex.
  • Not to be outdone, the Corpus created the Sonicor, which unleashes intense bursts of sonic energy that can ragdoll foes like there's no tomorrow.
  • The Corpus have also rolled out the Staticor, a pair of gauntlets that fire off Hand Blasts of pure Radiation damage.
  • Update 27 brings the Shedu, a Sentient machine-gun arm that auto fires heat shots that explode into electricity. It features an ammo-less recharge capacitor, similar to the Fulmin. Notably, it is the first weapon to actually be classified as an Arm Cannon in game.
• Armor Is Useless:
  • Nope. All that heavy armour the Grineer wear is fairly effective against small arms fire (especially on Uranus or Sedna, where the higher levels mean Grineer turn into bullet sponges), and those huge helmets worn by Corpus Crewmen stop standard bullets pretty well. Not so much use against flaming swords or lightning-fists, though, or toxic bullets that give the enemy radiation poisoning on top of an infection, then freeze/electrocute/immolate them.
  • Warframe armor is also good for most of the game, as it increases damage resistance directly and has no weaknesses. At the absolutely highest-level content, which most will never see on a regular basis, players opt for abusing Shield Gating and invincibility mechanics instead due to the sheer damage dealt by each enemy being too high for armor to reasonably keep up with.
  • On the other hand, Rhino's Iron Skin grants him Overguard, which lets him take a lot more punishment than he normally could. This is because it is functionally a third set of hitpoints on top of his health and shields, soaking up damage before it reaches him, and it makes him completely immune to any status effects and most forms of Crowd Control (he can be moved around a little, but never made inactionable). More importantly, though, is the fact that it is the only form of player Overguard that is deliberately uncapped^note Other forms of player Overguard, such as Kullervo's Recompense and Frost's Icy Avalanche augment can only generate up to a given maximum amount of Overguard, though the cap can be increased with ability strength; a savvy Rhino can use every game mechanic at his disposal to give himself more ability strength and armor (both of which affect Iron Skin's final Overguard value), generating up to millions of extra health.
• Armor-Piercing Attack:
  • The Puncture damage type is particularly effective against Grineer armor and Corpus robotics (although does poorly against Shields).
  • Most players are aware that certain types of damage do a percentage of bonus damage to armor, but less are aware that said damage types also ignore the same percentage of the target's armor (for example, Radiation type damage will do +75% more damage when hitting a Grineer Elite Lancer with Alloy armor, AND that damage will ignore 75% of the damage reduction the Alloy armor would normally give to the Elite Lancer). This mechanic becomes important against late-game enemies, particularly Grineer, who often have absurd amounts of armor reducing 80% or more of incoming damage.
  • Punch-Through, added to weapons by certain mods, makes bullets go through cover or enemies, letting you hit multiple enemies, or ones hiding behind cover or riot shields.
  • Toxin damage fits in a non-traditional sense, as it completely bypasses shields and is extra-effective against armor. To a much lesser extent, bleed damage from Slash ignores armor, but the bleed damage is usually minor and Slash itself is ineffective against armored or shielded foes.
  • Played lethally straight with the Dread bow. Though Slash based, it can be build to deal an insane amount of damage on hitting an enemy's weakpoint. Did we mention that the damage from a Slash proc is based on the shot's damage, and is also multiplied by weak point bonuses? The end result is that if the arrow doesn't kill the target, the slash proc dealing thousands of points of protection-ignoring damage per second almost certainly will.
• Art Evolution:
  • The Corpus' MOA robots used to be sleek and organic-looking — an update changed them to be more obviously robotic and plated.
  • Grineer used to speak pure English. It was later changed to a unique Grineer language which sounds like a heavily corrupted version of English. Some phrases are recognizable, others are almost indecipherable. Grineer females also sounded less inhuman with the change. The Chinese version has them speak Mandarin instead of their unique language.
  • The Corpus received a more intelligible language than the inhuman grunting robot noises they used to make. They're still pretty indecipherable at times, though.
  • Captain Vor used to be a red colored Flame Blade, but got a serious makeover turning him into an old man with serious cybernetic augmentations and an Orokin key in his chest that he uses for special attacks.
  • Similar to Vor, Sargas Ruk was a generic-looking Grineer goon with generic boss ranting, but the Gradivus Dilemma turned him into a fire-shooting Cyber Cyclops who talks in Hulk Speak.
  • Alad V used to be voiced by a different actor (with a thick Canadian accent), and appeared as a generic Corpus goon. Gradivus changed him into a Sissy Villain with an odd eye visor. Compare this to this.
  • Vay Hek, who was a generic Grineer grunt with a bit of an ego, has now turned into a propaganda-spewing lunatic piloting some sort of mech. As of Update 13, his cybernetic body enhancements far surpass even Sargus Ruk's. Little trace of his human origin can be seen (except his face) in his new design.
  • Nef Anyo, who was another generic looking Corpus boss in Mars which was obsessed with collecting enemy frames, has turned into a con artist that scams people out of their money as Void Offerings. He also got a new sleek design and a digital beard.
  • Tyl Regor used to be a fairly generic Grineer marine whose only noteworthy traits were the navy blue color of his armor and his upside-down mask. His new design incorporates these features into a new hulking body reminiscent of a gorilla that comes equipped with interchangeable arms and a massive helmet that doubles as a shield. In the process, he also got a voice that can only be described as Shakespearean.
  • Both Infested Ancients and the J-3 Golem used to resemble Infested Runners. Ancients got a new, more alien form in Update 9, while J-3 became a hulking behemoth the size of a spaceship vaguely resembling a Mutalist Moa in 17.5.
  • Kela De Thaym, formerly a recolored Grineer Ballista, has become a Hanging Judge, presiding over Rathuum, the Grineer's trial by combat.
  • After years of using the model from the original darkSector concept trailer, the Burston finally received a new design in Specters of the Rail to reflect its Tenno origins.
  • The Raptor used to look like a larger Osprey; its rework that launched with The Silver Grove added heavy armor plating, giving the impression of an Osprey merged with a Bursa.
  • The original design for Ambulas may have sported a slick black paint job with gold trim, but otherwise it looked like a generic Moa; its rework beefed up its appearance, putting it somewhere between the bulky Bursas and the streamlined standard Moa models.
  • Even weapons get visual updates from time to time. The Ogris and Torid used to be boxes held together with straps before receiving models more in line with the Grineer and Infested aesthetics, respectively. The Ignis was originally a recolored Grakata with a fuel tank attached to the front. The Braton, Burston, Lato, and Kunai received new designs that felt less generic, making them more stylistically cohesive with the other starter weapons and the Tenno aesthetic as a whole.
  • The design rationale for Primes has gotten way more effort since early on. The originals were mostly recolors with small golden details added — now they generally receive total overhauls and sometimes completely new models. For example, Frost Prime is identical to Frost aside from being black and having a different head, while Hydroid Prime's brand-new design takes Hydroid's aquatic theme from walking blubber to a badass golden pirate.
• The Artifact:
  • When "The Duviri Paradox" was first released, players were presented with a choice to either start with that quest, or go through the "normal" route of doing "Awakening" and "Vor's Prize" first. To account for how it would be some players' introduction to Warframe, the quest includes a segment that guides you through basic movement options, just like in "Awakening". Shortly after its release, however, the option to start with Duviri was removed, meaning that players must now do "Vor's Prize" before being able to access that quest; despite this, the movement tutorial remains in the quest even though you'll already have done a similar tutorial shortly beforehand.
  • Speaking of "Vor's Prize", the player was originally given a few Mk. I weapons to choose from, which features weaker stats than the normal variant. An update would later replace these Mk. I weapons with their normal variants to streamline the early game, but the Mk. I weapons still exist in the market so as to not mess with Mastery Rank, even though players receive an objectively stronger weapon for free.
  • When Corrupted Vor spawns in a Void mission, he gives a monologue which mentions the Tenno using keys to trespass into the Void. This is a reference to how, in previous versions, players would need to use Void Keys to do missions in the Void. Nowadays, Void missions do not require any special resource to run, but Corrupted Vor's speech still mentions the keys.
• Artificial Brilliance:
  • AI upgrades have allowed enemies to make repeated attempts at triggering an alert if they keep getting killed, jump onto obstacles to get a better vantage point or reach a sniping Tenno, and even use ziplines and Parkour panels.
  • Moreover, enemies with bubble shields (like nullifers or arctic eximus units) will attract some of its allies to come into its protection and they'll slowly approach as a combined unit. If you break the bubble, they'll even scatter to nearby cover.
• Artificial Script: Both the Grineer and the Corpus languages as well as the Fortuna dialect use their own fictional alphabets, (though for the most part they are just substitution cyphers for English, with some letters missing). The Orokin alphabet, also used by the Tenno, is more complex, and even offers two ways of writing words — in a line or in a circular formation, resembling a flower.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • The AI can be very stupid about spotting you, especially if you're crouching. Stealth is actually reasonably possible if you're careful and cunning. Also expect to hear (and see) the occasional death from the AI standing in the fire hazards that sometimes occur during a mission.
  • The reworked hostage AI starting in Update 13.1.0 are highly prone to Suicidal Overconfidence, trying to stand their ground against enemy troops when even the players are desperately cutting and running. Or hiding from enemy trooper behind cover — with the enemy right next to them, shooting them.
  • Grineer and Corpus troops frequently run around in circles when confused. ITS BETA◊.
  • When static defense mission targets are replaced by NPC characters, defending them is significantly more difficult most of the time because of this trope, which is likely deliberate in this case, to prevent more defense-oriented Warframes like Gara and Vauban from just locking down a location and making it impossible for enemies to even get a shot at the objective. While you can revive the defense NPC if he's downed, said NPC will wander around the map aimlessly instead of moving to the most defensible position possible. Sometimes this will work out in your favor as the NPC can wander into locations that are extremely easy to defend. But be prepared to fight in whatever random spot on the map your VIP might end up wandering off to.
  • Got a Railjack crew member with a 5 in piloting? Better to just throw them onto turrets or repairs, because the Railjack crew is horrid at piloting toward Crewships and objectives, often maneuvering nowhere in particular even when a missile platform constantly firing homing missiles at them is giving them a rather blatant hint what they should be heading for.
• Artistic License – Physics:
  • Take a trip to Earth and you may notice that the Moon is nowhere to be seen. Alad V comments during one quest that it was apparently destroyed during the Old War. Earth appears to be unaffected by the loss of its only natural satellite, despite the fact that the Moon being taken out of the equation would cause a lot of problems in real life. The fact that the moon isn't ACTULLY gone, just hidden, may explain this.
  • More amusingly, Wisp's fourth ability has her open a portal to the sun in order to harness it as a deadly beam. Never mind the fact that doing so should instantly incinerate everything in the tri-state area through convection alone, including Wisp, yet it's also one of the weakest damage abilities in the game.
  • The finale of the New War falls into a similar problem to Wisp's Sol Gate, with the Tenno fighting and flying through the debris of a Sentient ship in open space... directly adjacent to the Sun.
• Artistic License – Chemistry: Several Prime melee weapons claim to be made of pure rubidium, a soft and violently-reactive metal.
• Artistic License – Space: Most of the planets in the game are this, usually justified by ancient Orokin terraforming technology. Nowhere in the game exhibits anything but Earth-like gravity, and any planet whose surface can be walked on seems to have a breathable atmosphere to some extent (this includes Mars, Deimos, Pluto, Europa, Venus, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Sedna, and Earth's moon). Notably:
  • Venus has frozen over due to Orokin cooling machines that have been reactivated by the Corpus.
  • Mars is home to primitive desert villages, implying that it's been permanently terraformed into an Earth-like planet (as opposed to the actively generated conditions on other planets).
  • Notably played straighter with Jupiter, which uses its own "Corpus Gas City" tileset - hovering over the surface of a 'high-gravity giant planet'. Put this into contrast with Uranus, which is represented as a literal ocean planet, complete with map segments where you can potentially start over the ocean's surface, then descend to see the underlying ocean floor. ^note the sea on a planet the size of Uranus would be unfathomably deep, so unless Grineer elevators are non-euclidian tubes and can withstand pressures high enough to potentially just solidify the homogeneous ocean planet, that has to be some amazing terraforming the Orokin pulled off.
• Ascended Meme:
  • The comics contest announced on 14 March 2014 makes reference to Cap'N Vor cereal and Greedy Milk.
  • Derf Anyo, a sub-boss confirmed by DE to be added alongside the reworked Nef Anyo in a future update, originated from a fan's joke concept that had become a forum meme.
  • In this video, a Corpus Crewman says "Salad V".
  • Orokin Reactors and Orokin Catalysts being referred to as 'potatoes' seems to have caught on as well. There's even an Orokin Potato t-shirt available on the store.
  • Update 17 brought the long-awaited Twin Grakatas, based off a series of fan comics about a Grineer soldier named Clem who wanted to become a Tenno.
  • And then later they introduced a (repeatable) quest that involves Clem himself. The same quest directly refers to Potent Orokin Technical Augmentation and Tactical Offensive devices, and completing the quest gets you a Clem Specter blueprint, letting you have the man himself accompany you on missions!
  • When triggering alarms on Grineer missions, Lotus quite redundantly states: "I'm detecting a large security force heading your way. It's the Grineer." In an event where the Tenno have to protect Darvo from waves of Corpus, Darvo parodies this:
    Darvo: I'm detecting a large security force heading your way. It's the Gri-no wait, it's the Corpus. Definitely the Corpus.
  • John Prodman began life as a humble Prod Crewman who was known to have survived an encounter with Phorid. Now he appears in the Index at the one hour mark.
• Asshole Victim: Every target the Tenno go after has it coming, but the Profit-Taker Orb Heist has a pronounced example. During the heist you have to kill three Corpus directors for their access keys, and each member of your Vox Solaris Mission Control has some choice words about why they deserved to die.
• Ass Shove: If you give a Rescue target the Fusilai — glass throwing knives, basically — a bug causes them to be "holstered" right inside the target's ass.
  • Performing a Parazon kill on certain enemies from the rear on certain enemies involves shoving the Parazon up the ass and even lifting the poor bastard before slamming them down.
• Attack Drone:
  • The Corpus employ several flavors of robots (referred to as 'Proxies' in-universe) to supplement their infantry, and make up a substantial part of their military forces. The Grineer also have Rollers and Latchers, small mechanical balls that ram into the player or latch onto them and explode, respectively.
  • Specters are the Tenno equivalent; the regular Specters are one-shot clones of a particular Tenno's weapons and loadout, while Syndicate-supplied Spectres are powerful Eximus versions of different enemies like Shield Ospreys or Rollers.
• Attack Its Weak Point:
  • Most bosses follow this trope, being completely invulnerable to damage until their weakpoint(s) are exposed, usually following an attack. As well, most enemies have one or more spots that take more damage than the rest of their body, or a spot that is more vulnerable to damage of a given type (though it may be highly resilient to other types). Grineer Marines are well-armoured except for their faces. The Corpus are protected by massive helmets but whose heads can be revealed by damaging their helmets enough. Most Infested are either devoid of weak points or have them in incredibly hard to hit spots. Lephantis, however, plays this completely straight with 3 weak points (one per head), and is seemingly invincible when the weakpoints are not exposed.
  • Banshee's Sonar ability actually creates temporary "weak points", generating glowing spots on enemies that take four times as much damage as they would normally, for as long as the ability is active. As a result, these weak points can stack with existing weak points, making it possible to inflict truly massive damage.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Several enemies fit this trope:
  • The oldest example is Lephantis, a twisted ancient infested monster that hides in the depth of Infested Derelicts, and is the size of a small house. J3 Golem is even larger, being a small ship overrun by infestation, but since you fight it in a space battle using Archwing rather than on foot, the effect is diminished.
  • Sentient Eidolons that stalk the plains around Cetus at night also fit. They are roughly the size of Lephantis, and they are actually mindless fragments of a single Sentient that was destroyed on the plains during the Old War. Judging from the size of Eidolons, as well as from rock formations scattered across the plains (which are actually nor rocks, but other fragments of the same Sentient), that thing had to be at the very least Kaiju-sized, and possibly literally mountain-sized.
  • In the lands outside Fortuna roam giant insectoid Corpus robots that completely dwarf the Eidolons.
• Attack Pattern Alpha: Back when the Grineer spoke English, they were extremely fond of "Combat Formation Bravo", which apparently meant "stand in front of the space ninjas and shoot at them".
• Awesome, but Impractical: For everything that's Boring, but Practical, there's something that's this.
  • The Supra used to be this: although it had great DPS on paper, it was an ammo devouring monster which would have a hard time hitting the broad side of a barn due to its slow projectiles and inaccuracy. Although those disadvantages are still there, Update 17 gave the weapon a bigger magazine, more ammo capacity, and even more damage. Combined with the Syndicate mod the weapon possesses, it seems it has moved from this category.
  • The Dera is a flashy Corpus take on the standard assault rifle, but it's considered inferior to most other weapons if its type because it's not hitscan.
  • Shotguns used to fall into this category. They required many more mods to be effective compared to rifles, the mods they need are harder to get, and they suffered from projectile spread and damage falloff that often limited their potential. With the addition of the Amprex and Atomos they weren't even the best crowd-clearing weapons. Thankfully, the devs reworked them, and they're once again a viable option.
  • Going up behind an unaware enemy and pressing melee triggers a flashy stealth kill animation; however, depending on your chosen weapon, this can easily leave you immobile long enough for all that enemy's allies to turn around and spot you, and it only hits one person. It's usually a lot easier just to use a silenced weapon or slide-attack into enemies from a distance so that the animation doesn't trigger. Not to mention that, should you be accompanied by an armed sentinel, there is a chance that it will detect the enemy you're assassinating in the split second between your stealth attack animation finishing and the enemy in question falling to the ground in a heap. Upon detection, your helpful sentinel will attempt to open fire on it. With its extremely loud weapon. If there was anyone else in the room with their backs turned a moment ago, there certainly isn't now.
  • Explosives. Stuff Blowing Up means enemies die in droves, but self-damage is a very real possibility; cue Yet Another Stupid Death on players who stick Toxin damage on their rocket or grenade launcher and then kick themselves when they insta-down themselves. This was specifically averted by the Tonkor, which came with built-in self-damage reduction. Its self-damage was capped at a measly 50 and was unaffected by mods, so players could go nuts with point-blank detonations (facilitating Rocket Jumping). In U20, it got nerfed, dropping from 35% crit chance to 25% and gaining full self-damage, discarding the original Rocket Jump gimmick that had become redundant with the introduction of Parkour 2.0 back in U17.
  • Formerly the Ignis, fulfilling Video Game Flamethrowers Suck. In the beginning, it was very good for wiping out everything, especially combined with blast — it knocked down enemies and kept them down, on top of constant status chances. Then it was nerfed. It actually wasn't terrible; it bypasses all terrain and has a wide cone of effect, making it great for hitting whole groups at once (even behind cover). Unfortunately, its damage output was mediocre at best, it had serious ammo problems, and its miscellaneous stats didn't gear themselves towards any particularly-useful builds like Critical Hit Class or Status Infliction Attack-focused. Like shotguns, the Ignis got a buff from the developers and is doing much better.
  • The Lex has unfortunately fallen here thanks to Power Creep; once THE go-to Sniper Pistol, there are now many weapons who can fill that same role much more efficiently, as the game placed emphasis on higher DPS and element weaknesses. Its Prime version used to fall short as well, but after a damage buff, it's roughly on par with the Vaykor Marelok, but suffers from the lack of the damage burst that comes with faction weapons. Still, the vanilla model is a solid option for new players, who wouldn't be able to get much performance out of many of its rivals anyways.
  • Following in the Lex's tradition, most single pistols with dual-wieldable versions have fallen here — examples being the Vasto, Magnus, and Bolto. Sure, a single pistol can be fun, but the dual-wielded versions of said pistols have doubled magazine capacity for little discernible drawbacks — and that's without even getting into the single pistols designed to keep pace with akimbo versions, such as the Pandero. As such, it's common to just level up the single version of the pistol, use it as a component for the dual-wielded version, and then start modding that one.
  • By their very nature, some Rivens are this. Awesome damage boosts... coupled with a 200% Zoom increase on a shotgun..
• Back Stab: Comes in different flavors, but all at the very least do a lot of damage to the enemy you do this to. The only difference being the animations from the different melee weapon types you use.
  • Sword victims are Impaled with Extreme Prejudice. Variations occur:
    • When using a Rapier one hand is placed over the victims mouth as the sword hand reaches around to stab them in the chest.
    • Nikana victims are treated to a Stealth Hi/Bye; the 'Hi' comes from the Tenno coming in from the corner of their eye, and the 'Bye' from having their head cut off from behind. If you're using the Blind Justice stance instead, you get a different one; the Tenno trips the enemy, letting them fall on the outstretched blade.
    • Two-handed Nikanas often require a flourish before impaling the victim.
  • Dual Sword victims die by Slashed Throat.
  • Fist Weapons, Sparring Weapons, and Staff = Neck Snap.
  • Whips are used as garrotes to choke the victim, ending with a Neck Snap.
  • Polearms involve a little bit of a flourish before smashing in the victim's head.
  • Victims of the hammer, machete^note though given it's still considered a sword, victims are still sometimes Impaled with Extreme Prejudice, heavy blade, and scythe are kicked from behind the knee, and are then executed; their heads caved-in or or cut off.
  • Daggers have a more traditional backstabbing animation, though single-daggers often result in a Slashed Throat.
  • Claws are first stabbed through the victim from behind, then the body is lifted into the air and brought down on the knee to break the spine.
  • Victims of the Ghoulsaw either get crushed under the weight of the weapon, or are lifted then chainsawed to death while they're stuck on the saw.
• Back-to-Back Badasses:
  • It's quite easy to invoke this with another Tenno, as in many of the trailers. In addition, Ruk seems to see Grineer-oriented Tenno this way during the Gradivus conflict:
    Sargas Ruk: Rraahudd, Tenno! Now we fight together! Now we crush the greedy milk from their skulls. The Corpus will pay for their crimes with their useless lives.
  • The Operator and Excalibur Umbra become this by the end of The Sacrifice.
• Bad Future: In The New War, the unveiling of the Drifter, the crashed orbiter, and that all of the system except for a few holdout individuals, implied that the Operator had recovered Lotus and came back from the Void some years after the conclusion of the New War. This is subverted not long afterwards however, as some other indicators imply that it was just days, maybe a few months after the New War ended. Complicating matters is that the perspective will switch back to the original Operator, who had apparently displaced in time back to the maiden flight of the Zariman, cognizant of their time as a Tenno. Needless to say, matters are more complicated than appearances first imply.
• Bad Luck Mitigation Mechanic:
  • Being able to trade most valuable items such as parts and mods between other players means a player who is unreasonably unlucky can simply barter their way into procuring whatever is evading them. This often gets to extreme degrees where many agree its simply easier to sell commodities to other players to buy items from the in game store with Platinum than slaving away at a grind that seemingly never ends or opening your own wallet.
  • The game's Nemesis system is incentivized by two things, their exclusive weapons and their ephemeras. When the player downs a prospective nemesis, a icon is shown over their head indicating the weapon they'll possess if they're finished off and become your nemesis. Fortunately, if the player ignores the candidate and clears the mission, the next candidate they down will have that weapon removed from the pool until the player either acquires a nemesis or runs out the entire pool of weapons, refreshing it. As for the ephemeras, there's only a 20% chance that a nemesis will spawn with one associated with the element they bear, but, converted nemesis' can be traded between players allowing one to effectively trade the weapons and/or ephemeras to other players.
  • Voruna's addition to the game coincided with a tradition of the main content required to earn its rewards also awarding the player with special tokens, that if against all odds the player doesn't somehow manage to earn the components they need, they can buy said components with said tokens, in addition to being able to trade for most of the associated non-Warframe items.
  • Archon Shards come in two varieties, basic shards and the rarer and stronger Tauforged shards. If one doesn't receive a Tauforged shard (at the bare minimum of a 20% chance), the chance of it increases incrementally by another 20% until the player gets one, at which point it resets to the base of 20%. Additionally, players will be able to combine three basic shards into a Tauforged shard.
• Balance of Power: The Grineer and Corpus are the two major powers of the system, and while both would like complete dominance over the Origin System, neither wants to expend the resources to take out the other, especially since the Grinner buy a lot of things from the Corpus. This leaves them in a perpetual Cold War, with both fighting occasional skirmishes. The Tenno, meanwhile, oppose both sides and support the various syndicates in the system, who are strong enough to be thorns in the sides of the major powers but not powerful enough to win protracted wars against either. The Infested, meanwhile, try to eat everyone and thus provoke everyone to ally against them. This balance completely breaks down when the Sentients return during The New War and declare war on everyone, because the Sentients actually have the forces to fight the entire system and win.
• Beautiful Void: The Void and Lua are this.
  • The Void houses ancient Orokin structures which are massive and glorious◊, wrought from marble, crystal and gold. However they stand as an empty, silent mausoleum of the Orokin race, still humming with a quasi-musical harmony in the air. At least they were empty until the Grineer and Corpus found a way to reach them and were transformed into mindless sentries by ancient Orokin defense systems.
  • The Orokin structures on Lua are even grander and more beautiful than those in the void, and their haunting beauty is in some ways enhanced by the way they are slowly crumbling◊ and falling into rubble.
• BFG:
  • One possible room on a Grineer Galleon has a house-sized cannon in the middle that constantly fires into space. A similar stationary artillery emplacement can be found on the Mars Settlement tileset, and Corpus Gas Extractors have huge turrets no doubt designed to repel any Grineer raiding parties.
  • The Supra is an enormous, boxy laser machine gun, and one of the most damaging autorifles.
  • The Opticor is the biggest non-Archwing gun the Tenno can use. It's a massive laser cannon that charges up and shoots a large, heavily-damaging beam.
  • The Arca Plasmor is also a massive (big as some Warframe torso) boxy shotgun that fires a massive, wide shot of radiation. Built properly, it can quickly destroy dropships.
  • The Trumna is a heavy machine gun with a giant, coffin-shaped grenade launcher strapped to the side.
  • Archwing guns (or Archguns for short) are in a league of their own. The smallest ranged weapon a Tenno can bring with them on an Archwing mission is three quarters as long as the Warframe is tall. Equip one with a Gravimag, and it can be used on foot, even on missions.
  • The Voidrig Necramech's exalted weapon Arquebex puts them all to shame. Despite being smaller than some of the Archguns like the Velocitus, it deals unparalleled amounts of damage over a wide area, easily putting out damage in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of damage per hit with a basic mod setup.
• BFS:
  • While it also includes axes as well, they normally fall under the Heavy Blade weapon type.
    • The Gram greatsword stands as tall as the average Warframe, and sports glowing plasma edges on either side of its broad blade. The Galatine is even bigger, a gigantic Tenno-made greatsword taller than most Warframes with a more flowing, organic design.
    • War, the Stalker's sword added in The Second Dream, which is extended further by an Energy Blade, making the whole length absolutely huge.
    • Paracesis, Ballas's personal weapon, is a massive sword with a recurve blade that does extra damage to Sentients once it grows past level 30.
    • The Zenistar, while not massive on its own, has a peculiar bug where, if equipped specifically with the Dominion Heavy Blade skin, the weapon will become so large that it becomes nearly twice as long as many frames are tall.
  • Like the guns designed for Archwing missions, the melee weapons are enormous, to the point where the description for the Veritux (the starting Archwing melee weapon, a sword twice as tall as the Tenno carrying it) acknowledges that it's too heavy to use outside of zero-g.
  • Pretty much sums up the two-handed Nikana line, the first of which being Revenant's signature blade Tatsu.
  • The Bonewidow Necramech's exalted weapon Ironbride is a very large sword reminiscent of a khopesh; it's so big that it would normally be considered an arch-melee.
• The Big Guy:
  • The role of Rhino, Atlas, and Frost, being the toughest but also the slowest Warframes. On the villains' side, each and every (male) Grineer soldier is a hulking brute. Some of the females are also hulking, but are thinner and taller than the males.
  • The overall largest Grineer are actually the gangly female Heavy Gunners as the male heavies (Bombards and Napalms) are significantly shorter.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Due to the fact that the Origin System is in a perpetual state of conflict between different warring factions, the game doesn't have one singular Big Bad, but rather multiple faction leaders trying to gain that position.
  • For the Grineer: The Twin Queens rule the Grineer Empire from the shadows of their Kuva Fortress, with Councilor Vay Hek acting as their Dragon-in-Chief.
  • For the Corpus: While Frohd Bek serves as the current chairman who directs the Corpus' machinations as a whole, Nef Anyo is a much more prominent antagonist. Alad V also used to be part of this, but he became more of a neutral character over the years.
  • The Infestation doesn't have any recurring members, but since it is a Hive Mind the larger whole essentially counts as one villain.
  • For the Sentients: Hunhow initially leads the Sentients to finish what he began centuries ago and wipe out the last vestiges of the Orokin Empire, the Tenno. However, when the invasion starts properly in The New War, his son Erra and the Orokin traitor Ballas leave him to rot and create the Narmer empire.
• Big Damn Heroes: During the first episode of Nightwave Series 2: The Emissary, getting downed has a chance for one of Arlo's Devoted to come in, revive you, and lend some extra firepower to help turn things around. From the second episode onwards though, the cult makes a Face–Heel Turn and become fanatical extremists, showing up as enemies instead.
• Bittersweet Ending: Being a Grand Finale quest, The New War ends on a bit sweet side: The Sentient threat has been repelled, Ballas is finally slain, and The Lotus (now as either herself, Natah, or Margulis) goes back to being the Tenno's Mission Control, but Teshin and Erra perished in the process, the Origin System is in a complete mess due to Ballas' Sentient invasion, and new conflicts would pop up in the foreseable future. There's also the matter of the Drifter and the Man in the Wall, the latter of which is implied to have a bigger stake in the outcome of the New War than it seems...
• Black-and-Grey Morality: The Grineer/Corpus/Infested are definitely the bad guys, but the Tenno don't seem to be entirely concerned with defeating them. While they do pursue justice, the Tenno appear to be true neutral, or lawful neutral at best because rather than wipe out one faction or the other (excepting Infested) they're much more concerned with keeping the balance between them the same (as well as protecting innocents from them), as evidenced during the invasion events where the player is forced to support one of the sides instead of just slaughtering both.
• Black Box:
  • Orokin artifacts. Even the Corpus — the corporations that manufacture technology based on the artifacts — do not know how most of them work, and non-Prime Tenno tech is stated to be inferior copies based on the actual thing^note  sometimes. some of the later weapons are stated to be engineered by present-day Tenno, and the Vandal weapons are all guns taken from other factions and modified to fit Tenno standards.
  • The Warframes themselves could be considered this. After the Tenno were reawakened with little-to-no memory of their history, still in the Second Dream, they did the Lotus' bidding for justice, building and using the Warframes, completely ignorant of the Warframes' origins as mutated humans or their own nature half-lucidly remote controlling the Warframes.
• Black Speech:
  • Corpus dialogue used to be composed of inhuman choking noises. This may be a function of their helmets as event cutscenes have an executive speaking in English with strong synthesizer effects and what little we hear of the helmetless Capture target's voice is very different.
  • Grineer now speak in some sort of harsh-sounding language with very few recognizable words. There are obvious elements of European and eastern-European languages in there, along with modern English corrupted by Nu Spelling, ("Target" becomes "Targat") possible Future Slang, and thick accents ("Okay" has become "Oghi?"). However, there's a great deal of what they're actually saying where your guess is as good as mine. For example, "Got kan tero sonafa gunta", which might be "goddamn Tenno son of a gun".
    • The female Grineer voice set used by their snipers and heavy gunners that were used when the Grineer spoke English were this, with near-indecipherable barks and screeches. They're comprehensible if you pay close attention, though.
  • The Corrupted encountered in Orokin Void Towers used to "speak" (or at least vocalize in some fashion) an unknown, hissing "language" that is very vaguely similar to the Stalker's vocalizations. Whether it's actually a means of communicating or just general strangled noises of surprise/anger/etc. is anyone's guess. As of Update 18, they speak the same language as their non-corrupted counterparts, albeit heavily synthesized and distorted with a large amount of reverb.
  • The Stalker used to communicate through what could only be described as wordless, breathy hissing. Since Update 18, he's had actual dialogue, though each word is still breathed/hissed.
  • The Man in The Wall's true speech is a deep, guttural language full of harsh consonants and menacing sounds that Albrecht Entrati called "Voidtongue". Whispers in the Walls starts with a Gregorian chant-like recitation of phrases in the Voidtongue, and further instances of The Man in The Wall speaking in the Voidtongue occur when the Tenno enters the central hub of Albrecht's old laboratory and when it causes a section of the laboratory's catacombs to turn into a region of the Void that can best be described as "the deepest, darkest reaches of Hell itself in the cosmology of Warframe". Loid notes that Albrecht feared that the Voidtongue was meaningless, but was even more scared that there was meaning to it. Below is a transcript of some of the Voidtongue, spoken just before The Man in The Wall changes the catacombs into its domain:
  The Man in The Wall: OOHK - TOHK - KAHROHK.^note The cadence of The Man in The Wall's Voidtongue chant here also mimics Rell's "Rap Tap Tap", including its usage of spatial audio by starting in the right ear, moving to the left ear, then speaking in both ears.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: Under the right wrist of your Tenno is a small blade known as a Parazon which you get during the assassination mission against the Jackal; it's normally used to hack terminals, but it's also used to lethally stab heavy enemies you'd brought down to at least 50% health.
• Bland-Name Product: Albrecht's labs on Deimos have "Pom 2" computers, based on the Apple ][ ("pomme" is French for "apple.")
• Bling-Bling-BANG!:
  • Prime weapons possess ornate detailing and gold/chrome finishes for that extra bit of flashiness.
  • Incarnons (both the original models and the Genesis adapters) have grown silver frills from Void contamination (which can be recolored by changing their energy color), serving as a way to show off their role as expensive lategame transformable weapons that all employ unique behaviors. The Genesis adapters also count as Simple, yet Opulent, as while they look comparatively humble bolted to weaker equipment like the Braton, attaching them requires a ton of minerals and herbs from Duviri.
  • Prisma equipment also qualifies, being flashy gear only sold by the Void Trader. Like Primes, they're upgraded versions of normal equipment, trading out the gold trim for blue crystal that appears to "flow" like water.
• Bling of War: 'Prime' equipment, and Orokin equipment in general, is very flashy — gold trim and so on. Frost Prime in particular is sporting a distinct hat.
• Blown Across the Room:
  • The fate of any Mook caught on the receiving end of the Hek — the huge, quad-barrel shotgun.
  • Also the fate of any mook in the crosshairs of the Bolto pistol, Twin Gremlins, the Paris/Dread/Cernos/Daikyu bows, the Attica and Zhuge automatic crossbows, or the Boltor rifle. It used to be so extreme as flinging slain enemies across massive rooms at light speeds to nail them to the wall, but now it's slightly less exaggerated.^note  Of course, they still throw enemies fast enough to kill the guys standing behind them from the impact alone, but that's besides the point.
  • Enemies caught in the radius of the Jat Kittag's slam attack will be thrown violently against the walls and ceiling. Mod the Jat Kittag for additional blast damage, and enemies will be thrown violently through the walls and ceiling — leaving naught but a floating XP reward as any indication that they were ever there at all.
  • Banshee's Sonic Boom can do this with extreme prejudice. Nekros can likewise do the same against a single enemy with Soul Punch, but his concussive force is far greater, capable of sending Grineer Heavies flying clear across the room, knocking over everything in their path.
  • Any explosive weapon, though Tonkor seems to stand out a bit, sometimes propelling enemies through the largest rooms you can encounter in the blink of an eye.
  • Prior to U27.2, any non-explosive weapon modded to include Blast damage. A Blast proc acted like a scaled-up Impact proc; while the latter merely staggered enemies, the former actually ragdolled enemies and sent them a distance — the distance being defined by how much Blast damage was applied.
  • Sonicor, while not so extreme as most of the previous examples, has the bonus of doing this to very large groups of enemies while they're still alive, ragdolling them and making them easy pickings for your allies or perhaps your more damaging weapons. Or you just keep juggling them with it until they die.
• Blue Means Cold: Frost wears blue and white armour and has the power to create avalanches and freeze people.
• Boarding Pod: Some Grineer ships in Invasion missions have boarding torpedo launchers which you use to cross from the Grineer ship to the enemy Corpus one. When defending a Corpus ship you might sometimes find a room with one of these boarding torpedoes smashed through the hull, with a Grineer marine or two piling out of it.
  • In Railjack missions, Grineer crewships and points of interest can launch up to four boarding pods at the Tenno’s Railjack. Fortunately, those can be destroyed with armaments.
• Body-Count Competition: The game can easily fall into this with well equipped players, who will try to get a few kills before their team mates can because the entire team is tearing apart the enemy hordes thrown at them. Not helped by the mission results keeping a score of who killed the most enemies.
  • This can actually harm the performance of some support Warframes who mostly rely on targeting enemies to make their abilities function. With no available targets, Trinity cannot create her Well of Life or give energy to the team with Energy Vampire, nor can Harrow heal with Penance or give energy with Thurible.
• Book Ends:
  • In a visual example, the very first Warframe cell (the in-game name for a player party) in the trailers was composed of Excalibur, Mag, Loki, and Rhino. The cell that appears in the finale of the The New War release date trailer has the exact same composition.
  • At the end of The Second Dream, the Lotus places the unconscious form of the Operator in their Transferance Chair, before conversing with them on the coming conflicts. At the end of The New War, the positions are reversed, with the Drifter (a grown up Operator from an Alternate Universe) placing the Lotus in the chair within her room in the Reservoir, before both Operator and Drifter converse with Natah about the new conflicts on the horizon.
• Boom, Headshot!: Played with:
  • Played Straight by most Grineer troopers, who wear heavy armour everywhere except their heads. On the other hand, the sturdy looking UFO-shaped helmets on medium Grineer are apparently no more durable than flesh and bone.
  • Zigzagged by the Infested. Some of them are quite bullet resistant, others are not. The ones with heads take more damage there than on the body, but it's not the weakest point. Their heads also aren't where you'd expect them to be.
  • Corpus Crewmen have no body armour whatsoever, but massive helmets that you can knock off to get a good, clean bullet to their faces.
  • In general, headshots don't grant bonus damage on their own, instead multiplying the damage dealt if the headshot happens to be a crit. It's played straight with Ivara, whose Prowl ability grants bonus damage on headshot.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • In terms of Warframes:
    • Loki's invisibility, teleportation, and disarming are not very exciting compared to the fiery doom wreaked by Ember or the flashy frost moves by Frost, but for a long time, he was seen as one of the strongest Warframes in the game. This is less the case nowadays, with shifts in the metagame causing him to fall off.
    • Rhino can very easily become this by keeping Iron Skin on at all times and using Rhino Stomp. It quickly devolves the game into pressing a single button to clear out the enemies in a given area, then moving on to repeat the process.
  • For weapons:
    • The Soma and its Prime were some of the most powerful weapons in the game for their time, even though they're fairly standard hitscan automatic rifles with nothing flashy at all. Even their Incarnon form effectively just "shoots more bullets" compared to its peers' often explosive results.
    • The Karak, which is essentially a dressed-up Grineer M-16, and performs like it. 30-round mag, solid damage and accuracy. It's a great choice for midgame players who've worn out their Bratons. This comes back with the Kuva Karak as, while it's not flashy or capable of area-of-effect damage like other Kuva weapons, it's still a Kuva weapon and is capable of just as much as its peers, if in exchange for being mostly the same as the original Karak with boosted stats.
    • The Ignis Wraith and the crit-heavy Amprex, both of which are beam-type weapons with heavy crowd-control potential, and have subsequently undergone nerfs because at one point players were almost exclusively falling back on those two guns for their farming rounds.
    • The undisputed best gun for Archwings for a long time was the Imperator, which is the "starter" Archgun. It's a hitscan automatic gun, albeit with some damage falloff at long ranges to compensate for the enormous maps.
    • While on the topic of Archguns, the Mausolon, despite being the default Necramech weapon, is also considered one of the best Archguns thanks to its rapid-fire explosive Hitscan attack.
  • Late-game endless content:
    • The combination of Mesa, Frost, Mag and Nekros was this for a brief period of time. Mesa would stand in one spot and kill everything with her ultimate ability while protected by Frost's bubble shield, with Mag using the Greedy Pull mod to let her pul the loot and energy drops to the group and Nekros spamming Desecrate to increase the loot and energy drops for Mag to pull. This would recharge Mesa and Frost, allowing them to keep going. Frost and Mag would only have to worry about shooting Nullifiers, which Mesa's ability cannot target. A good group could do this for an hour or more. Unfortunately, 16.11 changed Greedy Pull to only affect drops for Mag herself, killing the strategy.
    • Excalibur, Trinity, Frost, and Loki. Frost protects the team with a Snow Globe, Trinity replaces Mag and Nekros as the energy source, using maximum range mods and Energy Vampire, Excalibur spams Radial Javelin to take Mesa's place, and Loki just runs around while invisible capturing objectives.
    • Another tension-killing combination is Ivara, Trinity, Nekros, and Mag. As before, Trinity provides a source to the entire team, and Nekros creates more pickups for Mag to draw in with Greedy Pull (while Greedy Pull only attracts pickups to Mag, life support capsules benefit the whole team). Finally, as long as Trinity keeps the energy coming, Ivara can keep the whole team invisible with Cloak Arrows. The game becomes a shooting gallery as players are supplied with an endless supply of enemies that won't even shoot back.
  • Playing Frost in any mission where you need to protect a stationary objective. Spam 3 (Snow Globe) to create a Deployable Cover for the objective and constantly reinforce it while you let your allies get all the kills. Not exactly glamorous, but works pretty well.
  • It also applies to some weapon stances. For example, the Crimson Dervish stance for one-handed swords sacrifices speed and mobility for triple the normal damage on every hit in the combo. Some also consider the Cleaving Whirlwind heavy weapon stance to be this, as everything one of its combos does is spin around, hitting everything around you for quadruple damage over and over and over again. Its other combos are largely underwhelming, and were largely added as afterthoughts. You won't need them.
  • Octavia is this to some extent. She has an amazing kit, with a massive area of death ability, a large area enemy distraction ability (as in, make the enemy chase it and nothing else) that can pick up the previously mentioned area of death, an ability that gives herself and her team a handful of buffs including an invisibility with a duration on par with Loki's that is refreshable, and an area buff ability that can give an absurd amount of weapon damage to people that stand on it. She can coast through even high-level missions with ease by just pressing 1 and 4 and letting enemies shoot themselves to death. However, she's often seen as a "set and forget" frame that doesn't really use her abilities in a fun or interactive way, and people dislike having to spam crouch constantly to receive the invisibility buff.
  • The Zenurik Focus tree's Wellspring ability creates a bubble that restores energy to Warframes who pass through it. It's widely regarded as the best focus node in the game simply due to the fact that it gives you energy on any Warframe you pick, something only a select few Support Warframes/Mods can give to you.
• Born into Slavery: The Solaris are a people who live in the "Debt-Internment Colony" of Fortuna, forced to work off their finanical debts to the Corpus. Given the presence of children, it's clear they inherit their parents' debts.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Most bosses took this form originally, although the developers have slowly but surely been phasing these out in favor of unique designs.
• Bottomless Magazines: This can be invoked by the player with any equipment or abilities that grants the Ammo Efficiency effect, most notably Arcane Pistoleer, which at max rank gives the player a chance to gain infinite ammunition for all their weapons for 11 seconds on a headshot kill with a secondary weapon.
• Bow and Sword in Accord: Possible thanks to the Paris, Paris Prime, Cernos, Daikyu, and Dread bows, and the wide selection of swords. Also the Attica and Zhuge, if you're more a fan of crossbows. The Daikyu even has a special mod that allows Nikanas to steal life upon attacking, encouraging this trope.
• Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • Implied to be done by the Corpus. The flavor text for Neptune indicates they indoctrinate people into being drones.
  • Also the fate of any intruders that succumb to the Neural Sentry installed in the Orokin Void Towers. They are referred to as the "Corrupted", get an Orokin-themed makeover (weird golden facemask, white/gold-themed armour, energy weapons shoot golden bolts, etc.) and attack all non-Corrupted on sight.
• Brains and Brawn: Both on the enemy and player side.
  • On the enemy side of things, we have Sprag and Ven'kra, two of the Grineer's most vicious clones, who made their debut appearance during Operation Gate Crash. Sprag is a melee-focused enemy who wields a hammer and stays hot on the Tenno's heels, while Ven'kra is a ranged enemy who can call in foes as support and snipes at the Tenno with her Vulkar. Sprag is considerably less intelligent than Ven'kra is; she calls the Tenno "shiny bugs" and Ven'kra has to remind Sprag to be patient and to time her attacks properly.
  • On the player side of things, we have Rhino and Loki. Rhino is The Big Guy, easily capable of charging his way through almost any enemies, soaking up nearly any ranged offensive, and nigh unbeatable in melee, especially with a Fragor or other heavy weapons. Loki, on the other hand, is the Squishy Wizard — he can't take much damage, but with a distraction as loud and hard to miss as Rhino, he can easily run around destroying the most dangerous ranged foes with his crit multipliers while Rhino utterly crushes everything else. It helps that he can strip every enemy to melee, making them even more hilariously trivial to kill. This can apply in match-ups between Rhino and other frames, but Loki and Rhino do it the best by far.
• Breather Level: The final mission of the Natah quest. It's a variation of defense mission, and the targets each have an immense amount of health. While outright AFKing will still result in your loss, as enemies can theoretically whittle them down and (as with a standard defence mission) each wave doesn't end until every enemy is dead, it's very easy to ensure the targets survive and kill all the attacking Grineer, with the level of gear you'll have to have in order to reach this quest. This is both for the best and likely deliberate, as it's also a Marathon Level that would be a pain to repeat with 10 waves, and also allows you to focus on the shocking reveals presented in the dialogue.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: While nearly all of the important content in the game can be obtained for free, spending a bit of Platinum, the premium currency, will speed things up in a few ways. Thankfully, Platinum can also be traded between players, so it's possible to trade your way to whatever you want... which still means that other players are buying the Platinum for you.
  • You can either grind for Warframe parts and wait until the RNG is kind enough to grant upon thee Catalysts or Reactors to make your weapon twice as effective... or just pay for it.
  • Most resources can be purchased for Platinum in the Market. However, the Market prices are highly inflated, so it's usually considered not worth the cost.
  • By default, you're limited to three Warframe slots and eight weapons. Once you hit that limit, your choices are to either discard an item you probably worked hard to obtain and level up, or fork up some Platinum to get more slots. Nightwave can get you extra slots for free, but that's a slow method.
  • If you don't want to go through the effort of farming for a rare mod or a specific Prime part, you can usually find someone in chat who will sell it to you for a bit of Platinum. This also works the other way around; you can sell mods and Prime parts to others and obtain whatever you need without paying any real money yourself.
• Broken Pedestal: Part of the reason behind Frohd Bek hunting down Alad V — though, given the Corpus culture of greed, this is mostly because A) Alad V owes a lot of money to the board, and B) Frohd will get kicked off the board as CEO if he doesn't stop Alad's project.
  Frohd: What happened to you, Alad? I used to look up to your profits. I used to look up to your products.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp":
  • Kubrows, which are basically canines often with bat or rhino-like noises — that are hatched from eggs.
  • Kavats, which are their feline equivalents who look like a mix between a cat and a lizard.
  • A Tenno wedding is called a "nuptia".^note Although this is of questionably canonicity, as the term was derived from a player-organised event where two players got married in-game, with DE's blessing. It notably occurred before the release of "The Second Dream" clarified the true nature of the Tenno in a manner that would make such weddings unlikely in canon.
• Call-Back: A few to closed beta.
  • The Lotus would often announce 'it's the Grineer' on Grineer tilemaps, or if the Grineer invaded a Corpus or Infested tilemap. Oftentimes, the Grineer would fail to spawn. During open beta, Darvo exclaims (during a raid on the Corpus) "it's the Grin- er, definitely the Corpus".
  • Grineer used to speak English, and one of their oft-repeated lines was "stay close to the walls" when Tenno ambushed them. Later, Kela de Thaym's rework sneers at the Grineer masses for being "wall-hugging cowards" during the Rathuum event.
• Came Back Wrong:
  • The Codex entry for Excalibur Prime describes the Tenno as being a twisted few who returned alive from the Void who the Orokin "built a frame around" — they are the children who survived a Void Jump (spacetravel) accident aboard the Zariman Ten Zero passenger^note supposedly ship. This eventually went horribly wrong for the Orokin.
  • Turns out the above is false, after what was shown in The Sacrifice mission: the description is actually being literal about the Warframes, with the Tenno being something else entirely. Warframes were actually an experiment from a high-ranked orokin invdividual on how to refine the mutations from the Infestation on something more powerful and yet more controllable. This, of course, turned them into mindless savage warriors, ripe for spreading bloodshed in the Orokin's name. What was then known as the "Tenno" was in fact the union of a Warframe, then an actual Souless Shell with a shadow of what was their personality, with the driving force of a child from the Zariman Ten Zero who could directly replace their mind and soul. Suddenly the whole Zen Survivor ideology and lifestyle of the present-day Tenno makes a whole lot of sense.
• Canned Orders over Loudspeaker:
  • All ships have a PA system. They remind the workers to not misuse industrial equipment, to follow proper procedures when handling Orokin tech, to ensure doors are locked, and generally to stay safe. Occasionally, there'll be a call for various codes in various ships of the bay... presumably the four-man team of ninjas tearing that part of the ship apart.
  • In early beta, ships with active PA systems would announce the Tenno's presence over the loudspeaker. This feature disappeared for a while, but later on, PA announcements came in the Grineer and Corpus language, so it's hard to tell what they're saying anymore. The word 'Tenno' is clearly recognizable, however, and judging from the tone of these announcements they likely aren't invitations for tea and biscuits.
  • The Grineer missions on Mars and Earth feature hovering drones which broadcast propaganda speeches in Grineer language. Unlike the ship PAs these boost the nearby Grineer with additional attack power and attack speed. Destroying them removes this buff.
  • The Kuva Fortress has the Worm Queen constantly taunting you or her minions over a tinny loudspeaker, with the occasional random ramblings.
• Canon Welding: Early on in Warframe's life, darkSector was supposed to be canon, with Hayden Tenno as the first Tenno. As the game's story has evolved, this has become impossible for several reasons, but it is implied some concepts from darkSector may be canon in some form. There's also the Hayden Tenno-inspired Excalibur Proto Skin, the description of which implies its design existed before the Orokin.
• Cap: It takes some doing to ever see it, but damage is capped at 2³¹ (just over 2.14 billion).
• Captain Obvious:
  • Cephalon Cordylon dips into this sometimes. For example, when asked about the weaknesses of the Grineer he had this to say:
    Grineer clones require oxygen to survive. As such, removal of lungs can significantly reduce Grineer lifespan
    Average Grineer optics cannot sustain functionality when applied directly to a Tenno fist with excessive force
    Grineer perform poorly while being shot with high-velocity projectiles
  • The Lotus, natch, being the Voice with an Internet Connection she is. At certain times she will timely warn the Tenno of assassin manifestations or give them clues on how to tackle mission objectives, at others she may mention an alarm being set off on the map, as it is happening right in front of the player, who's probably being shot at by the enemies summoned by that very alert as well, or how a Corpus/Grineer/Infestation patrol is drawing near while playing on a tileset that has nothing but the units belonging to that faction.
• Capitalism Is Bad: While this had always been an element due to the Corpus being a MegaCorp to begin with, the reveal of the Fortuna expansion and its lore further hammers in the idea that excessive capitalism and corporate control of society leads to evil, depicting a nightmarish slave camp where people are worked to death simply for being in debt, and even have to sell pieces of their own body to be replaced with cybernetics in a desperate attempt to pay their debts more quickly.
• Cap Raiser: You can find Orokin Catalysts and Reactors, which can be installed on your weapons (catalyst) or warframes, companions, and vehicles (reactors) to double the capacity of mods that can be equipped on them.
• Cast From Hitpoints:
  • Valkyr's "Paralysis" drains only five energy, but drains a third of her current shields.
  • Nekros's augmented ability "Despoil" removes the energy cost of using "Desecrate" and instead drains health, allowing Nekros to spam Desecrate in a group of corpses and then mop up the spawned health orbs to regenerate his health.
  • Inaros's ultimate ability, "Scarab Swarm", drains his health in exchange for increasing his armor. Should the power be dispelled, he'll regain the health he sacrificed. He can also willingly convert a portion of the armor into a projectile that will drain health from the target, but he'll have to give up some more health to charge it back up again.
  • Harrow's "Penance" drains all of your shields in order to boost your reloading speed and fire rate while granting health recovery to you and nearby allies when you damage enemies, with an amplified effect on headshots.
• Central Theme: Family. The entire storyline up until The New War focuses on factions defined by their family relations — the Grineer are all clones, making them an empire of brothers and sisters. The Corpus' dogma encourages them to cast aside family in pursuit of profit. The Ostrons are a tight-nit society that functions as one large extended family, while Solaris United and the Ventkids are each a Family of Choice to their various members. The Entrati are a family bound by blood who will work together for a common goal even if they normally drive each other up the wall. The Tenno are one great big extended family with the Lotus as their mother. Even the Sentients get in on this, as Hunhow and Erra are father and son and clearly love one-another, and part of their rage against the Tenno is due to them taking their daughter/sister Natah AKA The Lotus away from them. Ultimately, the conflict in the Origin System boils down to different families trying to survive, with their ideas on how to survive and thrive clashing with one another.
• Cerebus Syndrome:
  • Not exactly, as the game was never really silly or lighthearted, but the game began as a straightforward, lore-light "you're a Space Ninja fighting Space Nazis, the Trade Federation, and Necromorphs." With all of the hints and lore building up to the return of the Sentients, a whole race of Eldritch Abominations that curbstomped the Orokin (yknow, those Precursors responsible for all the high-powered Prime weapons you've been using) and pushing them to Godzilla Threshold after Godzilla Threshold (the Tenno and Infested were created solely to combat them, and it wasn't enough), the game ends up bordering on Cosmic Horror Story. Oh, and it's heavily implied that the Orokin created the Sentients in the first place.
  • As of The Second Dream, did we mention that the Tenno are Child Soldiers who gained mysterious powers after a spaceship accident that only they survived? And that they were essentially placed into comas because they couldn't control these powers, and they've been remotely piloting the Warframes in their dreams ever since? And that's only scratching the surface.
• Chain Lightning:
  • Volt's signature "Shock" ability will chain between enemies after hitting a target.
  • Electric damage has a chance to chain to other targets as well.
  • The "Amprex" is a Corpus-styled Lightning Gun which chains electricity between targets, very high damage but spends ammunition quickly.
  • Atomos is a unique weapon styled after the Amprex, but operating off Chain Fire instead.
• Character Customization: You can customise your warframes with different paintjobs, attachments, alternate helmets and alternate skins.
• Chainsaw Good: In the earliest versions of the game, Grineer fielded 'sawblades', melee units wielding what was essentially a chain buzzsaw that dealt a fair bit of damage — more than the baton-wielding goons that replaced them. They received a spiritual successor in the Ripkas, chainsaw fists that the Tenno can use. Added even later, the Riktus Ghouls that stalk the plains played this straight once again, attacking with a massive saw weapon.
  • You finally get in on the action with the new Ghoulsaw Heavy Melee weapon, a huge buzzsaw that you get from the recurring Operation Plague Star event. Conveniently enough, Nakak supplies all the parts, the blueprint, and the unique stance mod for it during the event. Nowadays, you can find them all in your Dojo's Ventkids Bash Lab.
• Charged Attack:
  • Melee weapon attacks can be charged, resulting in a more-powerful swing. Notably, nearly every hit of every stance offers a unique charge attack. This feature was originally part of Melee 1.0 (in a much more basic format) but was removed in Melee 2.0 and reinstated in Update 18.
  • The Miter blade launcher, as well as the Paris, Cernos and Dread bows deal more damage if fully drawn. The Ballistica crossbow can alternate between its regular 4-shot rapid attack and a charged bolt.
  • The Lanka railgun also has a charge mechanic, and can shoot prior to max charge for less damage.
  • The Drakgoon Grineer shotgun has an interesting take on this: charging the weapon reduces the spread of the pellets, making it more accurate over time.
  • The Angstrum rocket pistol is a powerful and deadly sidearm, capable of firing single shots or dispensing its entire magazine in a single, geometrically-spread volley. Whilst the base capacity is fairly small, a single Angstrum volley can produce a truly terrifying number of rockets (and explosions) in the right hands, with a little careful modification.
  • The Opticor laser cannon must charge up at least half way before firing. Charging to full produces a much more powerful shot.
  • Among other notable differences, the Daikyu sets itself apart from the other bows in that it must be fully charged to fire an arrow. Likewise, the Ogris rocket launcher must fully charge before firing, otherwise the gun will jam.
  • Hydroid can charge his first and ultimate ability, increasing how many blasts/tentacles are released and, in the case of his ultimate, the tentacle spawn area.
  • All three Necramech-themed Arch-Guns work on this, each one requiring you to kill five enemies with the primary fire before you're allowed to use their secondary fire.
• Chewing the Scenery: Vay Hek must cost the Grineer a sizable portion of their annual budget in scenery repair.
• Children's Covert Coterie: The Ventkids are a semi-clandestine group of orphaned thieves, pickpockets, and mechanics who reside in the ventilation shafts that wrap around Fortuna. Having lost their biological families to debtors or abandonment, they stick together as a "logical fam" willing to steal parts and blueprints from Nef Anyo's facilities on behalf of Solaris United. Together they have enough clout to act as a Syndicate and offer K-Drive parts to the Tenno to customize their own Cool Board for travel and combat.
• Chunky Updraft: The graphical representation of Rhino's ultimate power, Rhino Stomp, is to fill the air with helplessly levitating enemies and scraps of deck plating. Similarly, Frost's AOE attacks involve frozen chunks of ice flying about in the air. Banshee's Sound Quake causes similar floating deck-scraps as well, as does Mag's Crush.
• Clean Cut: A common result of any kill from Slash damage, main sources being bladed melee weapons such as the Dual Ether, or beam weapons like the Flux Rifle. Vertical, horizontal, diagonal... there are several possibilities!
• Clone Degeneration: The Grineer rely on hordes of clones to kill: the problem is that they tend to degenerate. Their solution? Cybernetics, and more clones. Captain Vor hopes to use the Tenno to reverse the decay, while Tyl Regor pursues research into his "tubemen" instead.
• Clones Are People, Too: Played With. The Grineer are, as a general rule, bloodthirsty brutes with Klingon syndrome, mixed with a bad case of Deadly Decadent Court. The average Tenno will easily mow down thousands of them over the course of their career. That being said, individual Grineer, even those who are still loyal to the Queens, have displayed heroism and Villainous Valor on a regular basis. Sargas Ruk holds to a firm-but-twisted code of honor; Clem, Steel Meridian and the Kavor Defectors are all outright Defectors From Decadence; even Tyl Regor, one of the most directly-antagonistic Grineer, is motivated mainly by a desire to fix the Clone Degeneration the Grineer are plagued by. Most prominently, during The New War, standard-issue Grineer Lancer Kahl-175 attempts a Heroic Sacrifice - not for the Queens, but "for (his) brothers."
  • Kahl's actions further emphasize this trope during and after the Veilbreaker quest, acting as one of the most heroic non-Tenno characters seen thus far. To wit, he breaks free from his Narmer veil through Heroic Willpower like the Drifter did, managed to get in contact with Daughter, and used what little time he had to save everyone he could find that was trapped on the Murex with him, including a Corpus. He even reiterates how he no longer fights for the Queens, but for his brothers instead, after one of the Grineer he saves initially yells their usual rallying cry for the Queens.
• Les Collaborateurs: Humorous example; one of the titular talking "flags" of Cephalon Capture is Abnar, a huge cheerleader of... the team opposing the one he's currently on. He heaps praises on whoever's holding him at the time, groans when sent back to base, and generally is not a fan of not moving, preferably towards the other team's base.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience, bordering on Palette Swap:
  • MOAs (Green for normal, Orange for Shockwave, Blue for Railgun, White for Fusion, purple for Anti-MOA, and black-and-gold for Ambulas.)
  • Ospreys are either teal (shield), green (leech), yellow (minelayer), orange-ish (scavenger), orange (Oxium Osprey) or white (fusion MOA drone).
  • Grineer troops are also somewhat color-coded — common soldiers are faded light green, shotgunners are orange, melee troopers and Shield Lancers are black, Napalms are red, Heavy Gunners used to be vivid green and white before their new model, and so on.
  • Most Corpus Crewmen wear standard beige/sand-colored suits, with Prod Crewmen wearing green suits, Snipers have yellow suits, Elites wear blue suits, Techs wear red suits, and the Sergeant has a black suit.
  • The Stalker is pitch-black, with dashes of red.
  • Orokin Corrupted are white-grey, with splashes of gold. Prime equipment follows the same theme.
  • Eximus units (formerly known as Leaders) have modified color schemes befitting their elements- Arctic Eximus units have white-blue, Shock Eximus units are blue-yellow, Fire Eximus units are orange-red, and so on.
  • Capture mission targets are also color-coded based on their special ability. Red/Orange Corpus targets can deploy Shield Ospreys to defend themselves, Black Corpus targets can use a smoke bomb like Ash, and so on.
• Combat Medic:
  • Trinity has absolutely no offensive abilities (although she can redirect damage she takes to nearby enemies with her Link ability) but she's still a friggin' heavily-armed space-ninja.
  • Oberon, having both damaging abilities such as Smite, to healing oriented abilities such as Renewal. His ultimate attack also deals high damage, and enemies killed by it have a high chance to drop health orbs.
• The Computer Shall Taunt You: During the assassination missions, the bosses will taunt the player as they progress through each room.
  • Stalker's message if he kills his target isn't a taunt, exactly, but it can definitely feel like one, especially if the squad was close to killing him.
• Confusing Multiple Negatives: From the Ask A Cephalon column, on the topic of why building items costs credits, after explaining that Ordis probably spends these credits on things such as life support and fuel cells:
  Cephalon Cordylon: I can assure you with absolute certainty that Ordis doesn't not contribute a portion of those funds into a probability pool weighed against your odds of survival.
• Conlang:
  • A language of corrupted English (among others) was made for the Grineer. It has a harsh, guttural sound, like a mashup of English, Russian, German, and one or two other languages.
  • It is known that there is an Orokin/Tenno alphabet, with letters or sentence written on walls of the Orokin Towers, some menus or even on the Tenno themselves. The very refined and elegant appearance of said writing can easily be mistaken for just random line patterns, but they are, in fact, translatable. However, no Tenno actually 'speak'. Once the Tenno do start to speak following The Second Dream, they do so in English.
  • The language used by Corpus Crewmen is English, passed through a cipher that preserves the vowels and replaces most of the consonants with harder sounds, making it sound much more alien than it actually is.
  • Whispers in the Walls (specifically the 1999 prelude) reveals written English may have always been one of these in the game's world, with "our" version of the alphabet replaced with a phonetic Eastern Asian-inspired, layered character set.
• Content Warning: Before starting the New War, the game posts a warning that both warns that you won't be able to back out of the quest when you commit and the quest features emotional abuse and strong violence directed at teenagers.
• Continuity Nod: the Law of Retribution raid was removed from the game in March 2018. Fast forward to April 2023 and the introduction of Incarnon Geneses, and one of the Lex Incaron's possible evolutions is called Lex Tallionis^ExplanationOne of the laws found in the Twelve Tables is the law of tallio, roughly "an eye for an eye" — that is to say, the Law of Retribution.
• Continuous Decompression: Inverted: rooms decompress almost instantly, because they're not very big. The split second of decompression will make you stagger for a moment, and from there you can walk around as normal thanks to the artificial gravity. Oddly, whilst there are shutters to seal breached windows, they do not close automatically. Partially justified in that it could be a tactic used to repel boarders, as solving a security cipher is required, but it invariably ends up the Tenno breaking the glass and activating said shutters.
• Cool Mask: Eye-obscuring masks are a prominent visual motif. In fact, only the Grineer and Corpus troops have so much as visors on their helmets. In NPCs, Darvo is a notable exception. The masks seem to be One Way Visors, but most don't even have visible sensors.
• Cool Starship: The Tenno have two flavors.
  • First is the Orbiter, which acts as a Player Headquarters. Here you can build new equipment, upgrade existing gear, maange your companions, and go on new missions.
  • The second is the Railjack, a multi-person interceptor that is used for space battles.
• Crippling Overspecialization:
  • After Damage 2.0, damage is divided into three main types — Impact, Puncture and Slash, each of which is good against certain enemy types. A number of weapons are very strong in one type but utterly dismal in the others, such as the Slash-focused Galatine. Before the Damage 2.0 review, it was very problematic, but most weapons can now be used against any faction admitting they have the proper element modded into it.
  • Some Warframes only shine because of one of their abilities, and are scarcely used otherwise.
  • Corrupted Mods can dramatically increase weapon and ability stats but at the cost of reducing another.
• Critical Hit Class:
  • Banshee's "Sonar" ability generates weakpoints on enemies that deal 500% damage when hit, allowing her to cleave through enemies with extreme prejudice when given an accurate gun. The "Resonance" augment mod makes it even better, as each kill from a weakpoint generates another Sonar burst which can stack forever, to the point where enemies can become entirely covered in weakpoints.
  • The Soma (and now the Soma Prime) has poor base damage — but its chance for a critical hit is much higher than all of the other full auto weapons, it has the highest base critical damage modifier, it comes with a slot made for the mod that increases critical hit chances, and its magazine size and fire rate ensures nearly every shot is a critical. With some finesse and mod setup, the Soma Prime can go from dealing a mere 12 points of damage to over 1000 points of damage on a single shot. ^note Depending mods used, Soma & Soma Prime can do either 6.6x or 8.4x damage. The damage scales further with the Serration mod (+165% rifle damage) and elemental damage mods. Headshots add another 2x multiplier, or 4x if the headshot was a critical (to clarify that's the critical multiplier, 2x for the headshot, and another 2x for a critical headshot). Add another 2x multiplier for ''red crits'' if your critical hit percentage is above 100%, and things can really get ridiculous.. There are now also other weapons which rely primarily on critical builds in the fashion of the Soma, such as the Vectis sniper rifle and the Grakata SMG.
  • The cake goes to the Amprex and Synapse, which have atrocious base damage... and 45% base critical chance, meaning that it's trivially easy to make every shot a critical shot.
  • The Paris Prime, Dread and Lenz bows are some of the hardest hitting weapons in the game. With the Paris Prime having a 45% critical chance and the two having a 50% critical chance, they are both incredibly easy to build into crit-based weapons. Combine that with inherently high base damage and a well modded example of either of these is able to tear holes in formations of even high level enemies.
  • There are a handful of mods designed to work well with these kinds of weapons. For melee weapons, we have Berserker, which grants an attack speed buff on a crit, Blood Rush, which increases crit chance based on the current combo multiplier, and Maiming Strike, which increases crit chance on slide attacks. Argon Scope, Laser Sight, and Hydraulic Crosshairs increase crit chance while aiming after headshots for rifles (and anything else that uses rifle mods), shotguns, and pistols, respectively. Bladed Rounds, Shrapnel Shot, and Sharpened Bullets increase crit damage while aiming after a kill for the same sets of weapons.
• Crowd Song: Fortuna was introduced in trailers this way, with the Solaris singing a chain gang song about how they'll work and die there while secretly resisting the Corpus.
• Cut and Paste Environments: Mission maps are constructed from pre-defined rooms that are randomly pieced together. It would make sense that aesthetics would be carried over to every spaceship, but seeing identical rock formations over and over again on different planets might raise eyebrows. Digital Extremes is trying to remedy this over time.
• Cuteness Proximity: Ordis is initially very repulsed by the presence of a hatchling Kubrow on your ship, but as it incubates his remarks degenerate into cooing over the furball and the noises it begins to make.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: During the opening cinematic, an Excalibur destroys a Bolkor gunship using a single arrow from a Paris bow. A sufficiently modded Paris can actually do enough damage to destroy said aircraft in one hit, though you'd probably want a different weapon to avoid the issue of arrow drop.
  • Volt is shown moving so fast that time appears to have come to a complete stop from his perspective and even accidentally runs into a bullet and knocks it off course. In gameplay an unmodded Volt's Speed simply affords him a slightly faster than average sprint.
• Cutting the Knot: In disruption, rather than attempting to try and remove keys from Conduits, enemy demolysts/demolishers will simply opt to blow themselves up, which will destroy the conduit outright.
• Cyber Cyclops: General Sargas Ruk's helmet has only a single glowing eye, as do the Grineer Seeker and Trooper helmets, and Mag Prime, to a certain degree.
• Cycle of Hurting:
  • Swarms of Infested Ancients and Grineer Shield Lancers are infamous for this, as they have attacks which can knock players over and leave them helpless. Ancients can smack any Warframe hard enough to knock them over, and Ancients tend to come in huge swarms in Survival missions. Shield Lancers generally only come in pairs, but are more annoying to deal with unless the player has a weapon with punch-through mods. Amusingly, the players can do the same to the enemy — the Jat Kittag and several other heavy weapons have "momentum" which prevents the player from being knocked over, and most heavy weapons stun the enemy.
  • With the updates to the damage system, turning this back on the enemy is easier than ever. Take a high-splash weapon with a high status chance (The Ignis flamethrower and Kulstar torpedo launcher are good candidates), and mod them with Corrosive and Blast damage. Enemies repeatedly get floored while their armor gets stripped away.
  • While the Quick Thinking mod can be handy for getting out of a tight spot, it can also get you stuck in this. When equipped, it lets you avoid lethal damage by draining energy instead (ideal for casters), but when the effect triggers, you also get a nasty stagger effect. This often leaves you open to whatever enemy was dealing lethal damage to you — which means the mod will trigger again and stagger you.
• Dark Reprise: We All Lift Together is the Solaris' worksong that, despite a determinator attitude showing the people of Fortuna all singing, working and lifting together, is rather clearly depressing when you look into the lyrics. For Narmer, the Solaris' worksong under Narmer, doesn't even try to act upbeat, being very slow and somber with much darker lyrics as an ominous synchronized crowd sings spiritlessly.
• Deadly Disc: The Miter sawblade-launcher first seen in the hands of Grineer Eviscerators, and available to the Tenno as of Update 9.5. Exactly what it sounds like— it launches a spinning sawblade. A very bouncy one. Enterprising Tenno can use it to craft the Panthera, which can also be used as a buzzsaw with its secondary fire mode, but the general consensus is that the Miter is the superior weapon; unfortunately, neither one is particularly good in the hands of the Tenno.
• Deadly Euphemism: The Index is essentially a Blood Sport dressed up as a financial exchange. Combatants are "brokers", the arena is the "trading floor", a firefight is a "transaction"...
• Death of a Thousand Cuts:
  • The Kohm and Kohmak plasma shotguns are perhaps the best examples of this. Each pellet they fire is pitifully weak, but they can be modded to become literal lead storm machines. They also primarily deal Slash damage, which tends to produce the side effect of Ludicrous Gibs.
  • The bog-standard Corpus MOA also works on this principle. Individually, their shots don't so much damage, and they don't even fire that fast. But as long as they have a clear shot at you, MOAs will never stop firing (as opposed to human opponents, who will pause to take cover, reload, etc.) meaning the damage adds up deceptively fast.
• Death Ray: Several varieties.
  • The Orokin Tower maps field the deadliest variety that can cut any Warframe down to size in seconds of direct exposure. In the Defense missions, the Tenno can use these to their advantage, triggering the laser beams to cut down the Corrupted. Or their allies, if they're not careful.
  • The Flux Rifle seems to be a handheld version of the above that is only marginally less deadly. Corpus Elite Crewmen wield these.
  • The Spectra is a pocket Flux Rifle with appropriately downscaled firepower. Roughly as powerful as the Flux Rifle was before they increased its damage output.
  • The Fusion MOA uses something akin to a Flux Rifle except bigger and nastier, capable of stripping shields and Iron Skin in seconds. Worse, it can also make the victim a Man on Fire, inflicting an additional incendiary damage-over-time effect.
  • The greatest example is the beam weapon carried by Vay Hek's Balor Fomorian warships. A smaller point-defense version is capable of one-shotting unwary Tenno and their Archwings, and the real deal was made for utterly destroying Relays.
  • The Opticor is a giant laser cannon Tenno can lug around on foot. It takes several seconds to charge, but the beam will absolutely pulverize anything it hits, and it can deal splash damage if it misses.
• Deface of the Moon: Since Lua, the Earth's Moon, was the central seat of the Orokin Empire, the Sentients shattered it during the Old War, with fragments of it being visible in the night sky above the Plains of Eidolon. Most of it seems to be missing, however, because the Lotus managed to spirit the entire damn thing away to the Void. When it finally emerges during The Second Dream, its clear the moon's seen better days, still shattered by the Sentients and apparently being held together with massive support structures. Setting foot on it shows that it is still crumbling in places.
• Defeat Means Friendship:
  • Killing a death squad sent after you by a Syndicate can provide you with a blueprint to make a few Specter copies of that unit.
  • Also played straight in a roundabout way with Alad V, who starts out as a fierce opponent of the Tenno and later becomes an unlikely ally.
  • After finally defeating a Kuva Lich with the right order of Requiem Mods, the player can choose to convert it so the Lich can occasionally spawn in a mission for backup.
• Deflector Shields: Possessed by the Tenno and several tougher enemies, along with most Corpus. The Corpus Shield Osprey projects a fairly strong defensive shield around other Corpus units (drastically improving their survivability). Most of the various Bosses have exceptionally powerful shields as well, either sheer durability, rapid recharge (the most common), or Jackal's Cognizant Limbs-based shield. Unlike health, shields don't benefit from the damage reduction that armor grants, but they do have a different set of weaknesses and resistances.
• Degraded Boss: Grineer Flameblades were once near carbon copies of Captain Vor (the first boss you'll encounter) without the boss level HP and damage, being pretty much identical in terms of battle strategy.
• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: Weapon modifications sit somewhere between this and Abnormal Ammo. Before Update 11 it was entirely possible to have an assault rifle that fires armour-piercing, incendiary, freezing or electrical bullets. Or a pistol that fires two rounds with each pull of the trigger. You can also combine them freely. Yes, even incendiary, freezing bullets.
  Since Update 11, the elemental builds have been reworked. Where previously you could fire incendiary freezing bullets that electrocuted, mounting Fire and Ice damage mods will now create a combined element (in this case, Blast). It's explained here.
• Design-It-Yourself Equipment:
  • Zaws, melee weapons that can be crafted in Cetus, are assembled from multiple mix-and-match components that determine the resulting weapon's type, stats and look.
  • Kitguns are the Secondary weapon equivalent, available in Fortuna, and with the right type of grip can be used as Primary weapons.
  • Legs allows you to design your own companions in the form of Moas, which can have their personalities, weapons, and stats customized.
  • The Entrati take the cake here - they have three examples of this, two of which are already implemented - companions (in the form of Predasytes and Vulpaphyla), Necramechs, and Arch-Guns (which will be added in at a later date).
• Destroy the Security Camera: Corpus security cameras, if they see the player, will often trigger laser barriers, leading the player to need to shoot it out to disable said barrier. It's advised during Spy Missions to do this trope, because if the player gets caught by one it'll trigger the destruction of the data, necessitating a fast recovery of said data before deletion completes (In a sortie, data deletion is mission failure).
• Destructible Projectiles: The Grineer Bombard's missiles can be shot down mid-flight, though this may prove a little challenging if they're not flying straight at you. Likewise, the Ogris' projectiles can be shot down by enemy fire; think twice before launching one at a Heavy Gunner or you may find yourself in need of a revive.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Getting skins for weapons with different variants (such as Prime, Wraith and Vandal type weapons) or even with weapons that are "technically" similar, such as pistols and their akimbo versions will get you the skin for them as well.
  • Some weapons are a one time affair, so if you sell them you can miss out on mastery. However if you accidentally sell such equipment, you can ask Digital Extremes for the weapon back, or purchase it from Cephalon Simaris for standing.
  • If you get a gifted weapon or frame from a mission, promo code, or another player, it'll come with a slot itself so it doesn't take up the slots you do have.
  • Once you obtain a Prime part or Forma blueprint from opening a relic, you will keep them, even if you somehow lose out on any other loot obtained in the mission (in cases like losing internet connection or if host migration goes wrong during a mission). After you get to the Orbiter, you get sent your earned Prime parts in an inbox message from Ordis, with the justification that they were dropped during extraction and promptly retrieved.
  • During the "Heart of Deimos" quest, Father rewires the Tenno's systems to his Voidrig, Snake. This alludes to the fact that the Operator remotely controls the Warframe, but since the quest can be done before the Operators' existence is revealed, it can also count as Foreshadowing. If you haven't beaten "The Second Dream" yet, Loid will point out that it's too soon for the Tenno to use a Necramech, with Father admitting that they'll just have to make an exception this once, referencing how the Tenno doesn't really know how they control their Warframe by this point.
• Devious Daggers:
  • All Warframes are equipped with a Parazon, which is basically a cross between a rope-dagger and a USB connector (like RoboCop's terminal strip). While it can be used to simply stab enemies in a Finishing Move, it's more importantly how the Tenno interface with enemy computers. This lets them disable security systems, steal enemy data during Spy missions, cause catastrophic malfunctions during Sabotage that destroy entire outposts, and so on, turning a simple blade into a weapon of underhanded virtual warfare.
  • Melee daggers can be equipped with the Covert Lethality mod, increasing the effectiveness of Finishers, including stealth attacks.
• Did You Actually Believe...?: Vay Hek invokes this trope, in between taking enormous bites out of the scenery.
• Didn't Need Those Anyway!:
  • Infested can suffer more than just Critical Existence Failure; it's not uncommon to see their head and part of the upper torso blown away by a nonfatal headshot, with no ill effect (beyond taking a lot of damage) as far as the AI is concerned. Shooting them in the legs is moderately more effective, as it forces them to crawl around instead. In theory you can shoot their arms off, but it's not easy and doesn't do much to stop them from attacking you.
  • Loki's Radial Disarm is useless against bipedal Infested for this reason. Sure it blows their limbs off but they'll continue to pursue and attack with phantom limbs that deal the same damage.
• Diegetic Interface: Almost every prompt in the game is projected as a hologram in the world. Even the pause menu is projected from your Warframe's hand (although this bit has been stated to be going away with a currently in-progress UI redesign).
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Out of the starter frames you can pick, Mag is much more complicated to use than Excalibur or Volt, thanks to her offensive crowd control abilities with weird properties.
  • Harrow is much more complicated to use than the rest of the frames, since his support abilities are dependent on sacrificing shields for buffs and landing headshots to make those buffs powerful. A bad Harrow player will just be an inefficient Trinity with no shields, while a good Harrow will let his allies tear up enemies with ease.
  • Limbo is the epitome of this, as his unique abilities require keen understanding of multiple game mechanics and ways to properly utilise them, but provide amazing results if you figure him out, giving good Limbo players unique options for battlefield control. Bad Limbo is a dead weight at best and an active liability and hindrance to his team at worst, but even a basic understanding of his mechanics allows players to trivialise roughly half of the game's challenges. Good Limbo breaks the game in half.
  • The Lex pistol doesn't look like much on first use. Tiny magazine, high recoil, low rate of fire, long reload time, and, unmodded, can't one-shot the weakest Grineer goons in the starting system. So why is it widely advocated? It's really powerful and has great accuracy even at great distance with the right mods. The key is to treat it like a Poor Man's Substitute sniper and pick your shots methodically, not a spray-and-pray close-quarters automatic. It also makes a good backup/complement to highly inaccurate or short-ranged weapons such as the Ignis and the various shotguns.
  • Slide attacks can be difficult to land consistently, but they deal damage more efficiently than hacking randomly.
  • Learning to use a bow requires learning to charge the shot rather than try to lay out shots as fast as possible, as well as taking into account the ballistic arc and flight time, but the damage from a fully-charged headshot can be very impressive.
  • The Ogris requires a massive investment of time and resources to obtain, not to mention membership in an advanced clan, and even after you finally get it you still need to learn how to manage the charge time, but it is EXTREMELY worth it... and then you properly mod it; when that glorious day comes, your Ogris will fire what are basically miniature nukes and destroy entire waves of enemies in one fell swoop.
  • The Penta grenade launcher takes a little getting used to, given its projectiles do not fly very far and bounce around. Like the Ogris, however, it is extremely deadly when properly modified and in the right hands (potentially including against the user). It requires some care to use effectively against Corpus.
  • The Supra has a long reload time (even with reload speed mods) and has a very slow projectile travel time. However, it does three times the damage of the Gorgon, and has a Cephalon Suda Syndicate mod that allows it to burst Magnetic AOE attacks that regenerate player energy.
  • The Tigris shotgun boasts incredible damage for anyone who can master its unique firing mode, duplex-auto, which fires off shots both when the trigger is first depressed and when it's released. A two-shot default clip size and somewhat longer reload time compound the issue, but various actions can let the user "store" the second shot for later should the trigger be released during the window of opportunity.
  • The Tonkor grenade launcher, like its cousin the Penta, also requires some skill to utilize effectively. However, there are some key differences in performance. While you don't have to worry about significant self-damage, you no longer have manual control over the grenades' detonation. Additionally, the explosions from the grenades will send the user flying, which may not always be desirable. Learn how to wield it, and you have powerful explosions that achieve critical damage more often than not.
  • Getting even a single prime weapon or warframe takes a serious amount of time and effort. Requiring you to go through a series of missions to acquire and refine void relics to get the necessary parts. Once completed however you'll find that Prime items are a lot stronger than their normal counterparts. With better damage for weapons and higher stats and more innate mod polarities for Warframes.
• Dirty Coward:
  • Alad V, who is often running away from something or someone, or hiding behind his Zanuka robot. He even cries like a baby when you defeat him.
  • Kela de Thaym likes to talk a big brave game about dying in combat in Rathuum, but when her team loses, she decides to call it a mistrial and tries to kill the prisoners she was trying to convict... after the Tenno defeated her judges fair and square. She spends half her fight hidden behind a big barrier and trying to remotely kill the Warframes. The closer she gets to defeat, the more dumbfounded and desperate she is, before ending on a particularly pathetic note as she tries to find a way out, complete with her audience booing her.
• Discount Card:
  • One of potential daily tributes is a coupon that gives between 20% and 75% discount on the next platinum purchase.
  • Played straight and inverted with Railjack Crew Members provided by Ticker on Fortuna; depending on your Alliance Meter with Syndicates, certain crew members will either have a discount or increased prices on their costs.
• Dismembering the Body: Enemies killed by slash damage will often be ripped to pieces. This is actively encouraged by the existence of Nekros, who can generate additional loot by disintegrating the individual pieces of his victim's corpses.
• Disney Acid Sequence: Midway through "Call of the Tempestarii", after the Tenno boards the titular ship and begins downloading the coordinates for its final mission, Vala shows up and captures the Tempestarii, knocking out your Tenno in the process. What follows is a surreal scene where the player controls Sevagoth's shadow to fight off a horde of Coprus crewmen and Granum specters, while "Sleeping in the Cold Below" plays. When it ends, the player's warframe awakens, while the deck around them is covered in dead crewmen, implying that the dreamlike vision was actually Sevagoth's shadow defending you.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The thermia fractures in the Orb Vallis have a lot in common with real-life fracking. Eudico constantly reminds Tenno that this is a dangerous and perfectly obvious result of Nef Anyo's greed, and he won't compromise his profits by fixing the problem himself.
• Doomsday Clock: The game has one under the Invasion's Tab of the star map, measuring the completion level of the Grineer Formorian Fleet and the Corpus Razorback Armada, which is directly tied to the number of successful invasions that faction had. Once the countdown is finished, these forces are used to attack a relay, which unlocks a temporary mission to destroy said forces.
• Doppelgänger Attack:
  • Mirage's Hall of Mirrors ability surrounds her with a ring of holographic clones to distract and attack enemies.
  • Equinox normally transitions between two forms, Night and Day, but the Duality mod causes the form she's switching out of to split off into an AI Specter for a few seconds.
  • The now-removed Solar Rail disputes between clans or alliances allowed attacking clans to deploy Tenno Specter clones of clan/alliance members to attack and claim territory. These doppelgangers carried the loadouts and builds of the actual player, ranging from laughably easy to defeat beginner players to extremely difficult Trinitys using Link.
• Double Unlock:
  • To craft some weapons or Warframes, you need a certain Mastery Level, which requires you to level up other weapons or Warframes first. And for some of those, you first need to craft components before you can craft the item proper.
  • Some katanas take this to absurd levels, at least for those unwilling or unable to purchase or obtain (through trading) the platinum required. First, you need to build a dojo and lab so you can research the Nikana, which has to be researched after the Akstiletto, and requires at least 100 oxium and a rare 'argon crystal' from the Void. Then you need to actually need to build it — after obtaining 3 more crystals and 75 more oxium. Once that's done, you can use it to build the Dragon Nikana — but wait! That needs Mastery Rank 8 to use! Nevermind another 75 oxium and another argon crystal.
• Double Jump: Update 17 formally added one in as part of the movement system, but enterprising players had been able to take advantage of quirks with the physics engine to fling themselves to great heights with their melee weapons to much the same effect. While the latter was removed with U17, skilled players can use the former to quickly navigate maps without ever touching the ground.
• Drama Bomb:
  • The Second Dream, finally revealing the origins of the Tenno, what they are, and of the Lotus' intentions — as the feared Sentients, the villains of the backstory, finally show up. Kaboom.
  • Apostasy: Prologue brings the fate of Margulis and Ballas to the forefront and, once again, reveals even more of the Lotus as she disappears to parts unknown.
• Drone Deployer: Corpus Techs, beefier Crewmen who can toss Shield Ospreys out to protect them. Grineer Seekers can launch Latchers, smaller versions of the extraordinarily annoying rolling balls of blades that stagger Tenno — these ones "just" latch on and explode, though they also used to have an extremely irritating variant called Nervos that paralyzed you in co-op. Corpus Leech Ospreys can launch, er, leech drones; these attach to a Tenno and drain their shields until they melee or dodge to shake them off. The worst would have to be Fusion MOAs, who deploy an actual Drone when they approach low health, effectively doubling their damage output. In Archwing missions, any Tenno utilizing the Itzal can become this.
• Drop Pod: Grineer use these on Plains of Eidolon to deliver reinforcements and supplies to their troops in the field, when not using drop ships.
• Drop Ship:
  • Both Corpus and Grineer utilise these to deliver reinforcements to the field (and provide air support while they're at it).
  • Corpus started using Condor drop ships during the Ambulas Reborn event. Their ships can appear on any Corpus map with open area, delivering troops and providing fire support from turret weapons. On Pluto, in addition to regular troops they often bring Ambulas 2.0 as well. On Orb Vallis several models can be seen - an unarmed shuttle and an armed dropship, and unlike the Storm variation seen elsewhere you can actually shoot them down instead of just taking out the turrets.
  • Grineer drop ships are seen on Plains of Eidolon to bring in reinforcements or to drop off foot patrols. Compared to the Corpus' Condor variations they are more frequently seen in the field, but the type you are most likely to meet depends on the environment. On easy bounties or close to Cetus, you can meet unarmed shuttles that carry a few troopers and can be dropped down in packs with a moderately decent weapon. Further away, you meet larger and heavier types that have health and armour rates fitting for a military aircraft and can seriously ruin a day even for veteran players with their weapons — doubly so because, unlike Condors who just fly off, heavy Grineer ships tend to linger on the field long after dropping their troops, going as far as following players around and barraging them with weapons.
• Duality Motif: Equinox has duality as her main gimmick, with a Day and Night form, switched between with her first ability, with Day taking roughly the form of an armored warrior featuring offensive skills, and Night form wearing a dress and featuring defensive and supportive skills.
• Dual Wielding: Longsword and dagger, dual daggers, dual axes, meat cleavers, take your pick. Dual-wielded melee weapons tend to be very fast hitting, and most of them have a huge attack range.
• Dumb Muscle: Grineer clones, victims of Clone Degeneration, but with fairly hard-hitting gunners and effective armor, especially on higher levels. They're so stupid, Kela de Thaym has to tell them several times that losing is bad.