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Warframe / Tropes I to M

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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

  • Iaijutsu Practitioner: All Nikana combos, regardless of stance, start by quickly unsheathing your blade and end with resheathing it.
  • Idle Animation: Each Warframe has various different idle animations depending on the type of weapon they're holding. There are two idle stances that can be selected in customization; the "Agile" animations are energetic and aggressive while the "Noble" animations are calm and graceful. With platinum, an animation set can be purchased for use on any Warframe. Operators can similarly choose between a set of idle animations for each Focus school they've unlocked.
  • I Do Not Like Green Eggs and Ham: The quest "The Limbo Theorem" has Ordis stumble across the quest's titular mathematical theorem, which is incomplete but proposes the existence of a plane of existence between physical space and the Void. Throughout the early parts of the quest, Ordis shows nothing but disdain for Limbo and his theorem, seeing it as nothing but pseudoscientific bullshit, but as you gather the missing proof fragments, Ordis starts to ponder the possibility that it might be true, then becomes utterly fascinated by it, claiming that it's like a story being told through math. By the time you've collected the final piece of the puzzle, Ordis is begging you to craft it as soon as possible so he can see how Limbo's story ends.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
    • The Bolto pistol fires bolts that, upon a kill, nail the victim against whatever was behind them. The third skill of the Excalibur frame, Radial Javelin, has a similar effect. As of Update 6, the Bolto now comes in dual (Akbolto) and rifle (Boltor) formats as well. Update 7 brings the Paris, a high-tech bow that can also pin enemies to surfaces, while later updates brought the Dread, Cernos and Paris Prime which do much the same.
    • One of the longsword animations for a counterattack after a successful parry has your warframe stab your target through the chest with an upward thrust powerful enough to leave them suspended on your sword for a moment.
    • Nezha's Divine Spears does this to all enemies in a radius around him, leaving them struggling and helpless if they manage to survive the initial impalement.
    • Garuda's Blood Altar allows her to impale an enemy on a stake, and create a healing field around the body that'll restore the HP of anyone close to it.
  • Improvised Weapon: Quite a few of the weapons in Warframe are this:
    • The Twin Gremlins are actually nailguns used bolting decks and armor plates to Grineer ships. Naturally, it also bolts Grineer to the decks and bulkheads with bone-shattering, armor-piercing force. Apparently, they're dual-wielded to make up for their lack of fire rate.
    • The Serro saws are used to tear apart derelicts and decommissioned ships for Corpus scrap. Rebels in their scrapyards also found it useful for tearing apart their Corpus slave drivers.
    • The Spectra pistol was a laser used for deep space construction.
    • The Quanta — and its Infested counterpart, the Mutalist Quanta — were originally mining tools used to cut through rock.
    • The wrist-mounted Gammacor laser was initially designed for mineral analysis before being applied to combat. Fittingly, the inquisitive Cephalon Suda offers an upgraded version to her most dedicated followers.
    • The Broken War is literally just a piece of Stalker's War great-sword wielded as a one-handed sword. Similarly, the Broken Scepter is the Elder Grineer Queen's Kuva Scepter without its Kuva flask, wielded as a staff weapon.
  • Incapable of Disobeying:
    • The Grineer are genetically hardwired to serve the Twin Queens' every whim. They're forced to submit themselves to execution whenever the Queens are displeased and engage in system-wide warfare whether they like it or not. Steel Meridian is populated by Grineer who have a genetic defect that allow them to disobey the Twin Queens.
    • The Orokin installed a Restraining Bolt in their Dax Super Soldiers to prevent them from turning against them. For as long as the Orokin retains their scepter, the Dax soldiers cannot disobey their commands. The Grineer Twin Queens are actually Orokin who transferred their minds into Grineer bodies to survive their kin's downfall, but retain their scepter and its compelling abilities, allowing them to control Teshin, a Dax soldier.
  • Incoming Ham:
  • Industrialized Mercury: Mercury is under control of the Grineer who mine the planet and nearby asteroids for their resources. It's also the site of Doctor Tengus' research on an ancient bioweapon known as the Infestation, which predictably got out of control and is now a constant threat to any life in the Solar System.
  • Infinity -1 Sword:
    • Despair, Stalker's kunai. Faster, sharper, longer-range and just overall deadlier than the basic kunai, these knives are very versatile and have the added advantage of being silent. Sadly their nature and stats don't quite hold up to very high levels of play, but they're still fantastic weapons... if the Random Number God blesses you.
    • Karak. This Grineer assault rifle has good, balanced stats all around, and can be modded for nearly any purpose. Built and upgraded, it can easily carry players to near-endgame content. Best of all, it's cheap, having a cheap blueprint and being crafted from very common materials, meaning it very nearly approaches Disc-One Nuke-levels of power. It does start to flounder against very powerful enemies, but it can reliably be used up to nearly that point. Its Kuva Variant is much the same - out of all the Kuva primary weapons, it does the same thing, but better.
    • Amprex and its sidearm companion, Atomos. Chain Lightning at its best; with a good build these guns can vaporize entire armies of lower-level enemies with almost no aiming needed. However, their ammo efficiency is lousy which, combined with their damage output falling flat against high-level enemies, makes them less useful at higher levels of play. As of the Beam rework, the Amprex gained a massive power boost, being able to crit and status at very high levels in addition to chaining to nearby enemies, making it more of a Game-Breaker.
    • Galatine, a BFS available relatively early. Though slow as molasses, its high base damage and good reach ensure reliable One Hit Polykills for quite a while.
    • Orthos is a Tenno polearm with decent damage and speed, and superb reach. Properly modded, it can shred Infested, and even do well against other factions. Its Prime version is even better, and can be best described as a "portable blender" (though obviously not available quite as easy.)
    • As of Update 18, "War" is the most damaging weapon in the game per instance of damage. It's also a huge pain to acquire: either shell out 595 platinumnote  for the Hunhow's Gift Bundle (which at least comes with tons of free cosmetics) or pray to the Random Number God that Stalker will be in a good enough of a mood to drop a blueprint for you. You're much more likely to find players using Broken-War, which is almost as strong as the Galatine above but much faster, and more importantly you get it for free with a pre-installed Orokin Catalyst and a weapon slot after a certain quest.
    • The regular Hek can be acquired at a fairly low MR, and can be built with a fairly forgiving amount of resources. Even with a low amount of investment, it can clear through a lot of content in the entire game, even some late-game content. What keeps it here is that when it reaches the aforementioned late game, it starts getting pushed out by stronger weaponry.
  • Infinity +1 Sword:
    • The Gram Prime puts (almost) every vaguely sword shaped weapon in the game to shame, fittingly dubbed the father of swords, with equally high critical and status chances, a high critical damage multiplier and similarly high base damage, only held back by its inconsequentially slow attack speed and a mastery rank requirement of 14.
    • The Kronen Prime is a blazing fast pair of Tonfas with high all-around stats, which in addition to its slash based damage allows it to button mash right through entire hordes of the toughest enemies by applying high damage bleed procs to everything it touches. Owing to its power, its mastery locked to rank 13, and requires two rare prime parts to craft.
    • Many of the Kuva and Tenet weapons fall into this category for how obscene their damage and crowd control potential can get, in addition to the fact that they can be acquired by Tenno of any mastery rank, to name a few:
      • The Kuva Zarr is vastly improved Zarr with over quadruple the amount of damage its predecessor, a much larger blast radius and far higher critical stats, allowing it to easily clear entire swathes of enemies by emptying the barrel in their general direction.
      • The Kuva Bramma is a bow that fires incredibly damaging explosive arrows that also explode into cluster bomblets and can also be remotely detonated mid-flight. It also has enough base critical chance to reach 100% crit chance with a single mod, allowing it to clear rooms with similar ease to the Kuva Zarr, its only drawback being its abysmally small maximum ammo pool of 5.
      • The Tenet Arca Plasmor has drastically higher stats in comparison to its standard variant, with its stated downsides of a slower fire-rate and reload times being so laughably inconsequential in that they're tenths of a second slower slower than the standard Plasmor. All of this is capped off with the Tenet Plasmor's projectiles ricocheting of walls instead of harmlessly dissipating, allowing one to bank shots that would have missed and hit more enemies.
      • The Tenet Envoy can only be described as a full-auto folding rocket launcher with a built in manual guidance system. Much like its Kuva contemporaries, it boasts a huge blast radius and incredibly high crit and status chances and has the added feature of passively reloading while holstered allowing one to offset its otherwise sluggish reload speed.
    • Riven mods are special mods intended for one weapon with randomly generated stats that can provide bonuses that can make otherwise "ok" weapons great and already great weapons even better. The catch is that all riven mods are initially "veiled" for a certain class of weapons, and what they can become is purely up to chance, not to mention the efforts one must go through to get desirable stats on a riven, especially if the RN-Gods aren't feeling generous.
    • Zaws are unique melee weapons introduced in the Plains Of Eidolon update that require a MASSIVE amount of investment in just about every single aspect of the titular open world area. A well-built one can be the best available weapon of that melee weapon type, and rival/outclass even Prime melees with their incredible stats.
    • The Fortuna update introduced Kitguns, the technological secondary counterparts to Zaws. Much like their predecessors, Kitguns can be specced to deal absurd amounts of damage that rival or exceed their Prime counterparts. Also like Zaws, they require a ton of investment to get the necessary parts.
    • Nataruk and Rumblejack. The signature weapons of The Drifter, both weapons are extremely useful, on account of Nataruk having extremely high critical damage (and near-guranteed critical hits if the shots are properly charged) while Rumblejack's stealth finisher inflicts a guranteed electricity proc before applying finisher damage. Properly modded, both weapons can take on Steel Path level enemies. The drawback? They're rewards for completing The New War, making them story-locked to a quest that currently requires the player to complete practically the entire game to unlock.
  • Instant 180-Degree Turn: Averted for walking around, though a Tenno's turning radius is so tiny you have to try to run afoul of itnote . Play straight for aiming your weapons.
  • Interface Screw: The Ancient Disruptor's main attack used to subject you to severe interface screw (color scrambling/inversion everywhere) and instantly drains all of your shields and energy. Somewhat reduced in 5.3/5.4 since it was a bit too disorientating/dangerous for those with epilepsy or similar conditions — now it mostly just scrambles the appearance of your HUD and disables part of it, rather than applying any trippy color shifting. Combas and Scrambuses can do this through proximity alone, minus the shield and energy drain.
  • Interface Spoiler: One of the parts needed to build a new Warframe is the Neuroptics, which used to be called the helmet. This points towards the Warframes' true nature as cybernetics ingrained into the Tenno a while before this is revealed, with Warframe blueprints being easily purchased for Credits in the market (and more likely that than directly buying the complete frame with Platinum.)
  • Invincible Minor Minion: Targets on the Capture missions are inexplicably completely immune to any and all warframe powers. Not even The Stalker or major region bosses can boast that! Less "minor" example would be Grineer Queens' Kuva Guardians, who are completely invincbile to both weapons and powers as long as they're holding their halberds.
  • Invisibility: One of the Loki frame's primary powers turns it invisible for several seconds. Attacking does not break this invisibility. Ash can Smoke Out and turn invisible for a few seconds, without attacks making him visible. Ivara's Prowl ability can also turn her invisible for several seconds, but unlike Loki, certain weapons can break her invisibility unless they're silenced.
  • Invisibility Flicker: If using Shade on the other hand, attacking enemies with your weapons does cause invisibility to break. Very annoying when you're trying to Back Stab and sneak. For some reason, your abilities don't break cloak.
  • Item Caddy:
    • Nekros' Desecrate, which has a chance to make enemy corpses roll for loot a second time.
    • Hydroid's Pilfering Swarm Augment makes enemies captured by Tentacle Swarm have an increased chance for additional loot upon death, with the percentage determined by the rank of the mod up to double the chance. Khora's Strangledome Augment, Pilfering Strangledome, does the same for any enemies caught by the chains of the cage but at a reduced chance, trading off for a greater amount of enemies captured at one time.
    • Chroma's Effigy and the Secura Lecta increases the amount of credits its victims drop.
    • Ivara's Prowl effectively pickpockets nearby enemies if she stays close for long enough.
    • Atlas' Ore Gaze scans petrified enemies and has a chance to make them drop additional loot.
    • Enemies killed by Mag's Pull and Oberon's Reckoning have a higher chance to drop energy and health respectively.
    • In addition to the above, Mag's Greedy Pull augment allows Pull to affect items.
  • Jet Pack:
    • The Archwing is a Warframe add-on system that allows the Tenno to navigate and fight in both deep space and deep-sea environments. It can also be used in open environments like the Plains of Eidolon to quickly fly around or fight from the air.
    • Grineer Hellions have a jetpack that lets them jump around the battlefield or hover and fire a missile barrage.
    • Corpus Rangers have jetpacks that let them fly around in space or the sky cities of Jupiter. There are several variations that use different weapons, like the Vapos Elite Ranger that uses the Exergis, a crystal shotgun, or the Vapos Tech Ranger that has a Supra, a heavy laser machine gun.
  • The Juggernaut: Rhino. Like Frost he's very slow and can in fact show up to most fights too late to even help if he's paired with faster frames, but his abilities can make him more or less untouchable. It's fully possible for well equipped Rhinos to walk up to bosses and casually beat them to death without ever taking damage.
    • The Infested Juggernaut deserves its name in full, as it has an extremely thick armour that can't be reduced in any way, strong attacks, one of which can One-Hit Kill all but the sturdiest frames, and using crowd control skills on it is actually counterproductive.
    • Surprisingly enough Valkyr is now the only frame in the game with outright invincibility.
  • Karma Meter: The Sun/Moon meter introduced in The War Within, which can go in either direction depending on choices made in certain quests. Unlike most examples, this one is less "good or evil" and more "Romanticism Versus Enlightenment", with Sun being Romantic (ethical, constrained, and warm, but prone to questionable acts and putting one's own morality first regardless of context) and Moon being Enlightenment (intellectual, merciful, and respectful, but shamelessly power-hungry and amoral).
  • Katanas Are Just Better:
    • The basic sword a Tenno gets is a faintly organic-styled katana-esque blade (though it more resembles a Cossack Shashka) known as a Skana. It's rather effective — though not the best sword by a long shot. All longswords and shortswords are wielded with the characteristic downward slashing motions.
    • Update 13 added the Nikana, a hard hitting katana, and its upgrade the Dragon Nikana, which is one of the best options for melee in the game. The Nikanas were notably the first category of melee weapons to get a third Stance. Later updates added the Nikana Prime, further increasing damage and solidifying the Power Creep.
    • Later on, with the introduction of Excalibur Umbra, we also get his signature weapon the Skiajati, which turns the user invisible for a few upon a successful finisher.
    • The Ostrons get in on the action with the Sepfahn Zaw strike, when it's used with a one-handed grip.
    • While it came a little bit after the Warframe it was intended for, the Tatsu definitely counts, being a space nodachi, which in turn introduced the Two-handed Nikana weapon type.
    • As of the Duviri Paradox:
      • We finally get access to the Dual Nikanas weapon type, the first of which being Teshin's signature Nikana Daishō pair, the Sun and Moon.
      • It seems that the Dax under Dominus Thrax favor this weapon type, the Dax Gladius favoring the Syam, and the Dax Equitem wielding the Azothane Two-handed Nikana.
  • Kick Them While They Are Down: Knockdown is an ability both coveted and feared. Enemies will mercilessly wail on you while you're struggling to get back up, but you can return the favor with a melee attack that's specially animated for stabbing downed enemies... for 600% damage!
  • Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better:
    • While the Orokin were undeniably capable of creating far more advanced weaponry, they ultimately fell back on traditional firearms because they would be too low-tech for the Sentients to subvert. Naturally, this carried over to the Tenno as well.
    • The Grineer fall into this trope, but not out of choice; they just don't have the technology to reliably produce Energy Weapons (although a couple of their attempts have fallen into Tenno hands on occasion) on the massive scale of most of their other technology. Of course, it doesn't seem to hinder them much, since some of the nastiest weapons in the game, such as the Hek, Brakk shotgun pistol, Sobek autoshotgun (Easily the best autoshotgun in the game, damage-wise) and the Marelok, are of Grineer origin.
  • Jack of All Stats: The Karak assault rifle, aka the "Space AK", particularly when compared to the rest of the Grineer weapons.
  • Job Song: "We All Lift Together" is a song sung by the Solaris under the Corpus' thumb. It sings about the work they do to escape debt, working together until they either die or are free.
  • Knockback: Present in all its forms. Most notable causes would be the Bo staff, Furax gauntlets, and Fragor and Jat Kittag hammers however, because any enemy killed by them will be sent flying. Rhino Stomp has the added effect of slowing time, so your teammates can use them as target practice, or you can leisurely smash them into pieces.
  • Land Mine Goes "Click!": Both played straight and averted. Grineer Latchers emit loud beeps to warn you that they successfully latched on you and are now active, and Grineer Land Mines on Kuva Fortress start beeping when you get close to them before exploding. Averted by schrapnel mines on the same fortress, who lie quietly in the dirt and don't make a sound only to leap up and explode on your proximity without any warning if the security system has spotted you. Landmines on the Core Hijack stage of the Nightmare Law of Retribution also did not give you any warning.
  • Large and in Charge:
    • The bigger the enemy, the more dangerous they are. The bosses of each region are therefore the largest of the lot. Tyl Regor is taller than the Rhino and probably clocks in around eight or nine feet tall.
    • The Grineer Empire as a whole definitely qualifies. As can be seen during any engagement between them and the Corpus, such as the Gradivus Dilemma, they utterly dominate the battlefield due to their superior heavy armor and willingness to use more effective weaponry than Pew-Pew style Lasers, a willingness the Corpus aggressively refuse to share.
  • Laser Blade: The Gram and Plasma Sword use a pair of plasma blades mounted on either side of the weapon, allowing them to cleanly slice-and-dice enemies. The War and Broken War swords also seem to have an energy blade emanating from them.
  • Large Ham:
    • Councilor Vay Hek. As a propagandist for the Grineer, he is quite glad to take large bites out of the scenery and healthily chew on it. While not quite as hammy, his comrade Sargas Ruk is all too happy to boast in big grunts that he will crush those who oppose the Grineer.
    • "Did you really believe IT WOULD BE. THIS. EASY?!"
    • Worth noting that Hek's hamminess is weapons-grade. His hamming-it-up in his boss battle actually empowers his soldiers.
    • Actually, every single Grineer mook does this (TENO SCOOM!!!), so chewed scenery should be their second largest source of damages after the Tenno.
  • Laser Hallway:
    • More like laser threshold/door. Prevalent in Corpus ships. You have to either destroy a security camera, or wait for it to blink out. They damage your shields, but this damage can be mitigated by spin-attacking through the lasers or avoided altogether with some abilities (Ash's Teleport, Nova's Worm Hole, or being in the Rift Plane courtesy of Limbo's various abilities).
    • More conventional Laser Hallways are in with Update 8 and the Void Tower missions. One optional timed segment sees you sprinting past a number of moving and stationary lasers, and requires a fair amount of parkour and/or high-mobility powers (Slash Dash, etc.) to complete within the time limit.
    • Spy missions have you infiltrating a secured server room in the style of Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid... complete with cameras to shoot out with a silenced weapon, patrols to avoid or gank, and a proper Laser Hallway or two to dodge through, blitz, or look for that darned switch to turn the lasers off.
  • Late-Arrival Spoiler: If you watch recent trailers without having played The Second Dream, it may somewhat lessen the surprise that the Tenno are void-warped human teenagers piloting the Warframes through a remote mental link. Update 19 also displayed this information front and center in player profiles and the splash screen when you first load up the game, so you can't even avoid the spoilers by dodging the trailers.
  • Laughing Mad: Grineer Manics have very memorable laughter that they use to announce their arrival (or departure, after they kill you). Tyl Regor lets out progressively more sinister and unhinged chuckles as you progress through his boss fight. Kela De Thaym as well, but hers are more of a hysterical variety.
  • LEGO Genetics: The Grineer Empire's hordes, all turned into overly muscled brutes. Their female soldiers take the route of cybernetic enhancements, like the Corpus.
  • Leitmotif:
    • As of Update 15.6, all three main enemy factions as well as the Orokin Void and Derelict missions have their own dynamic battle music, each factions and syndicates as well as certain locations have their proper sound.
    • A mixture of an Orchestra and Industrial sounds is used to represent the Grineer. Perfect for a kit-bashed race of decaying clones. This is also used for Steel Meridian.
    • Purely electronic Industrial Music with a peculiar cold and hollow sound represents the Corpus. This is also used for The Perrin Sequence.
    • Dissonant Orchestral music is used for the Infested, accentuating their "otherness".
    • The Tenno are represented by subtle, balanced tones and low, indistinct hymns, and by rapid naga drums and other traditional Japanese instruments in combat. Their Leitmotif is also frequently interwoven into the other faction's soundtracks to represent the Tenno fighting against said faction.
    • As of update 18, The Second Dream, the Operator's theme makes use of a more traditional leitmotif along with a specific use of the Erhu. It's first played on the Erhu, chanted afterwards, then on full strings; after which the Erhu joins again. This particular version plays in the Operator's room. An extended version of the theme adds an action section with the usual Tenno drums. A variant of this theme also plays at the end of The War Within.
    • Orokin Void missions uses Zen motifs and chanting for a soothing, meditative experience and a more energetic variant with added percussion and orchestra during combat.
    • Orokin Derelict missions uses a mixture of Infested and Orokin Void music, complete with distorted chanting.
    • Similar to the Infested, the Sentients music highlights their otherness, but instead of an orchestra, fast paced bells and screeching metal sounds are used.
    • The Grineer Fortress uses orchestra and military drums, along with Orokin chanting alluding to the Twin Queens.
  • Le Parkour: Many such feats are simple for a Warframe. Wall-running and jumping, climbing, rolling, Vanquish-like sliding, and huge goddamn flips. They are required to access some of the treasure vaults found in the Void, and hidden locker rooms in Grineer asteroids.
  • Life Energy: The propulsion systems of Railjacks apparently include "orgone accumulators"; orgone is essentially "magic sex energy" which raises a few questions on exactly what the fuel was.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Almost every Warframe is something of a lightning bruiser, apart from one or two that are either too slow (Frost, Rhino) or too squishy (Loki, Nova) to really qualify properly.
    • Special points to Ash, who is marketed as the offensive stealth class, with powerful offensive abilities as well as invisibility. Not as well known is that he has the 2nd highest health in the game, good shields, and good armor rating, making him second in tankiness only to the dedicated tanks and Saryn. He is also the second fastest frame behind fragile speedster Loki, and has a spammable teleport. Put it all together and you have the very model of a lightning bruiser.
    • Rhino, one of the aforementioned tanks, also gets extra points. By default he's tied with the other tanks Frost, Saryn, and Wukong for 2nd slowest and is one of the tankier frames in the game. What puts him over the top is his Iron Skin ability, which gives him a hefty layer of hit points while his shields recharge, lets him shrug off all crowd control, and can be chained continuously, provided he has the energy. While he is usually slow, he can spam a charge ability to quickly move around the map, bowling over any enemies in his path at the same time. His prime version is no slower than an average frame, and with his speed boosting Vanguard Helmet Rhino Prime is tied for fastest frame in the game.
    • For a literal lightning bruiser, look no further than Volt. Like Ash and Saryn having the 2nd most health (behind Inaros), Volt has the 2nd strongest shields (alongside Mag, Rhino, and Frost, only Frost Prime has stronger shields). He has average health and run/sprint speed, but can put on a burst of Super-Speed using one ability, and his others are all about Shock and Awe.
    • Valkyr has a faster than average sprint speed, more than 3x as much armor as the average frame, can swing around like Spider Man, and is one of the very few frames with true invincibility.
    • With a fast sprint speed and flight capability, Zephyr is every bit as mobile as you'd expect a wind frame to be. Curiously enough, she also has the joint highest health and shields in the game (other Warframes tie her for one or the other, but not both).
  • Lightning Gun:
    • First up is the "Synapse", an infested-style rifle that fires damaging beam of electricity.
    • Second is the "Amprex", a Corpus-style electric rifle that fires electricity in a manner similar to the Synapse, the main difference being that it chains between targets, allowing Tenno to fry entire groups of enemies at once.
  • Lightning Lash: The Lecta and Secura Lecta are half whip, half taser weapons.
  • Literal Wild Card: The Requiem mod "Oull" can be used as a correct substitute for one of the three Requiem mods that must be installed on your parazon in correct order to strip away your personal nemesis' (Kuva Lich or Sister of Parvos) immortality.
  • Living Weapon: Several weapons from Bio Research Labs are Infested in origin, giving them a very organic look and feel. Embolist in particular is explicitly marked as one.
  • Lore Codex: The player's orbiter includes a console for the codex, which allows the player to look up information such as data scanned from enemies, the Story Breadcrumbs found in memory fragments, stats for any weapon or warframe you can equip, and drop locations for mods, arcanes and relics.
  • Lost Technology: The Warframes and other Orokin constructs are significantly more advanced than even Corpus technology (which is derived from it anyway). In-game, Prime weapons and Warframes are stronger versions of those whose blueprints the Tenno can readily access and are largely made of recovered components instead of raw materials.
  • Losing Your Head: An unfortunate Excalibur-clad Tenno loses his head at the start of a teaser trailer for Alad V and the Jupiter tileset.
  • Lower-Deck Episode: In the beginning of The New War, the player taking control over Grinner and Corpus mooks, and even Teshin at one point. Showing the sheer scale of the Sentient conflict.
  • Luck-Based Mission: Finding mods and the resources you need to build the equipment you want are both hard enough, but extra-special note goes to the Warframes Vauban and Mesa.
    • Mesa combines the worst parts (formerly) Hydroid. Like pre-update 15.13 Hydroid, her parts drop from a boss (Mutalist Alad V) that requires a special key to access. The key requires special Nav Coordinates that are only available as battle pay from high-level Infested Invasions. It's essentially random whether an Invasion offering the Nav Coordinates will appear, and since Invasion missions end when enough players have run them, they don't stay up for very long.
  • Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me/Shield Bash: Grineer Shield Lancers carry a bulletproof shield (see Shield-Bearing Mook below) which they like to smash into your face; a nice high-Knockback attack.
  • Ludicrous Gibs:
    • On top of already-existing gore effects (such as total gibbing from Rhino Charge), Update 7.9 brought new 'damage deformers' for enemies, which basically meant a significant increase in the amount of gore. Expect to see many Clean Cuts if you're using a powerful bladed weapon, and most firearms can easily blow off limbs, pulverize heads, or take chunks out of torsos.
    • With Damage 2.0, the variety of deaths players can inflict reaches Fallout levels of variety:
  • Machine Worship:
    • Sargas Ruk has been using profits from hunting pre-War artifacts (by annexing everyone else's dig sites) to outfit himself with the latest and greatest cybernetic body modifications. There's also the Corpus, who have a bit of this going on. One of Sargas' taunts says it all;
      Sargas Ruk: Flesh is the flaw!
    • However, the Corpus take the cake for this trope. They literally worship machines — namely, Orokin machines.
  • Macross Missile Massacre: The Odonata Archwing allows Tenno to perform this in space.
  • Made of Plasticine: Most mooks can be sliced and diced by edged weapons or have chunks blown out of them with firearms. The Flux Rifle especially tends to cause a lot of gibbing and mangling of bodies.
  • Magikarp Power:
    • The Railjack starts off incredibly weak, constantly suffering from hull breaches and negligible damage to enemy craft, to the point where a great number of players have complained that the best method to deal with the mission type is to simply ditch the Railjack in deep space so it stays unharmed while the players use their archwings to complete objectives. Get enough upgrades on it, however, and the Railjack can sit smug in the middle of enemy formations and gun them down with hardly a scratch.
    • Some early-game or power-crept gear like the Braton, Ceramic Dagger, Torid, and Strun, for example, have access to Incarnon Genesis Adapters, earned through the Steel Path Duviri Circuit. These adapters push these weapons to even higher heights than ever before, boosting base stats and providing powerful alternate modes, like the Torid gaining a beam that puts the Amprex to shame, the Strun blasting a powerful projectile, the Ceramic Dagger launching projectiles, and the Braton gaining explosive capabilities and a ton of ammunition.
  • Mana Burn: While the Magnetic debuff is by far the rarest proc used by enemies in the game, there are a few who stand out and their attacks can be particularly nasty if you aren't using the Hildryn frame (whose energy pool is tied directly to her shields and thus is relatively immune to the debuff, only taking shield damage rather than having her energy drained out):
    • Ancient Disruptors. Get hit with their Magnetic debuff, all your energy is gone — whether you had only 1, or 300, and will negate any energy you pick up while it scrambles your HUD. Note that your energy does not regenerate on its own. for about 5 seconds. They used to be truly awful, guaranteeing Magnetic debuffs with EACH AND EVERY HIT; this was nerfed to burning about 10 energy per hit with a 10% chance of Magnetic debuff.
    • Hyena Thorium will automatically inflict Magnetic debuff to anyone within 10 meters, continuously — and as it's a boss fight, kiss goodbye to any replenishing energy spheres.
    • The reworked Vay Hek now also has a laser that he will use to deplete your energy in the first phase of his bossfight.
    • For a brief period of time, Shock Eximus auras would inflict a Magnetic debuff to any Tenno within range. This was very quickly changed to an Electric proc instead.
  • Mana Shield: Equipping the mod Quick Thinking will redirect lethal damage into your energy reserves instead, with the side effects that you'll get staggered and left at 2 HP. If you're not careful, you'll get stuck in a Cycle of Hurting, so it's best used as an emergency safety net rather than a method for tanking hits.
  • Marathon Level:
    • Any Endless mission type (Survival, Defense, Interception, Excavation, Disruption) can become this by refusing the regular opportunities to extract. This is often done to farm various rewards, such as Experience Points, randomly dropping crafting materials, item mods, or Void Relics.
    • For game-enforced examples, Syndicate and some plotline missions require you to survive two rounds of these Endless mission types, which is usually around 10-15 minutes of gameplay (as compared to planetary nodes featuring these mission types, which count as completed after successfully completing one round of about 5 minutes and extracting, and faster mission types like Rescue and Capture, which can be knocked off in 1-3 minutes if one ignores everything but the primary objective).
    • The New War is the biggest example of this within the game, as most high-end players will still need four hours to complete it. And due to its nature, it's treated as a single mission.
  • Mascot Mook: The humble Grineer Lancer is heavily associated with Warframe's advertising. There are a few reasons for this. Said mook is one of the oldest enemy types in the game, has undergone nearly no changes over the course of the game's history, they wear distinctive Cool Masks, and the average player will slaughter them by the hundreds before they're done.
  • Master of All: Rhino Prime, especially with the Arcane Vanguard helmet. Extremely durable, possesses a powerful mobility power and with the Vanguard helmet can keep up with the fastest Warframe in the game, can buff allies and temporarily neutralize enemies in a wide radius. Outside of Defense and Excavation missions, he is one of the most powerful and adaptable warframes. Prior to its nerf, the Synoid Gammacor secondary weapon was a handheld Death Ray with nigh-infinite ammo that could scythe through entire platoons of troops before having to reload, all while restoring your energy every so often, causing all other secondaries and even most primaries not called the "Boltor Prime" to become redundant, though the post-nerf version drains ammo at a truly alarming speed.
  • Master of None: The mod system is designed to encourage you to use a few mods at max rank rather than a bunch of low-rank mods. Mods cost between 2 and 10 points to install at rank zero, but their effects double with each additional point. Thus you'll get much better mileage with three max-ranked mods that let your weapon do one specific thing really well rather than six or seven mods unranked mods that give a lot of really negligible bonuses. Or you can invest Catalysts and Formas into your weapon to eventually make it a Master of All.
  • Meat Moss: Ships infected with the Technocyte Plague have these disgusting slug/algae-like things covering the floors and walls. You can also see slightly more plant or web-like growths when on Infested-based Missions that use the Corpus Outpost and Grineer Asteroid Base sets. One interesting thing is that, according to the in-game lore, the inorganic materials morphed by Technocyte actually retain their original properties and characteristics. So, those ugly organic-looking bulbs and web-like tendrils growing on the walls of a space ship? Those are not some mutated organic culture growing on the walls, those are the walls themselves, warped by technocyte. Hard and metallic to the touch.
  • Mecha-Mooks: The Corpus deploy MOAs and Osprey robots to back up their squishy crewmen, with both kinds coming in multiple flavours. Their foot soldiers may be partially robotized as well; it's hard to tell with their bulky environmental suits.
  • Mechanical Monster: The Corpus' Jackal warbot, quadruped beast armed with heavy shields, dual machine guns, vertically launched missiles, sticky grenades, and a Shockwave Stomp attack. They later refined it into the Hyena and Zanuka — whilst these lack some of the raw firepower of the Jackal (which is more suited to engaging the Grineer) they are much faster and more agile, better suited to fighting with the Tenno.
  • Mechanically Unusual Class:
    • Octavia, the musical warframe, makes arguably the most drastic mechanics' changes — using this Warframe adds an entire, fully-functional music sequencer to the game, allowing you to create a custom melody which you and your team can use to power up her abilities by jumping, crouching, and attacking along with the beat, essentially weaponizing Mickey Mousing.
    • Vauban, the engineer Warframe, relies on grenade-based and deployable abilities rather than his own Void-granted abilities. The difference is highlighted by Vauban's appearance — while the other Warframes are generally sleek and form-fitting, Vauban wears a hulking huge helmet with a neck guard, and is "wearing" what appears to be a trench coat and a high-tech jumpsuit.
    • Chroma, the dragon Warframe, was inspired by the chromatic dragons from Dungeons & Dragons: he can change the element his powers use by switching his energy color, which also adjusts the secondary effects of his second power, Elemental Ward. Reds and oranges give him Heat damage, which gives Elemental Ward a health buff effect. Blues and purples correspond to Electric damage, causing Elemental Ward to boost shields and store up damage to unleash later. Greens turn his element into Toxin damage, which lets Elemental Ward reduce stamina consumption (prior to Update 17) or boost reload speed (as of Update 17). Grayscales and pastel colors give Cold damage, turning Elemental Ward into an armor buff that can reflect enemy projectiles.
    • Equinox, the yin-yang Warframe, follows in Chroma's footsteps with a variable power set, but with a very different implementation. Metamorphosis switches Equinox between her offense-oriented Day form and her support-focused Night form, which also switches her remaining three powers between complementary effects. For example, the Day form's Rage power speeds enemies up and makes them take more damage, while the Night form's corresponding Rest power puts enemies to sleep and renders them vulnerable to melee finishers. Once again, energy color has an effect on gameplay, although much more minor than with Chroma: darker energy colors will cause the player to start out missions in Night form, while lighter ones will cause the player to start in Day form instead.
    • Inaros, the mummy Warframe, boasts the highest base health in the game: 550 at rank 0 (for reference, the Warframes with the next highest health only reach 450 at max level). Of course, he needs all that health, because his final ability is Cast from Hit Points, and he has no shields at all to protect him, in a game where Regenerating Shield, Static Health is in play. Fortunately, his powers all revolve around draining life, and getting melee finishers restores a large chunk of his health. He also has a unique downed state where he retreats into a coffin, firing a laser beam that drains health from nearby enemies; draining 2 enemies gets him back up and running (think Second Winds from Borderlands).
    • Nidus, the Infested Warframe, much like Inaros before him, completely lacks shields, but while his health and armor are above-average, they're still within "normal" ranges. Instead, he's the only Warframe with innate health regeneration, and his powers focus on improving the regeneration rate and offloading damage to nearby enemies. He also gets a unique resource to manage during combat, Mutation stacks. By damaging enemies with his powers, he builds up stacks, which provide a number of bonuses. First, they passively increase his armor and trigger certain cosmetic changes as he builds them up. Second, they're used instead of energy to cast his third and fourth powers. Third, should he take lethal damage, he'll consume 15 stacks (assuming he has enough) to restore 50% of his health and become invulnerable for 5 seconds. Not bad, considering what you have to go through to get him. Furthermore, in addition to the usual increases to health, shields, and energy upon leveling up, Nidus also gets bonuses to his armor, health regeneration, and power strength, the first time the developers have experimented with these stat boosts.
  • Meditation Powerup: The special ability of Nyx, the psychic Warframe. On activation, Nyx hovers in the air in the Lotus position, and absorbs all attacks, then returns them in the form of a highly damaging explosion. The more damage she takes, the more she unleashes — a brutally effective power against enemies that like to engage close up.
  • Meet Your Early-Installment Weirdness: In update 14, Liset landing craft were updated with a sleeker, more high-tech design. In the Vor's Prize quest you can see an old-model Liset get shot down by Vor, forcing you to steal a new-model Liset from a nearby landing pad.
  • MegaCorp: The Corpus, a corporation that controls every major trade route and flow of goods in the solar system. They won't let anything or anyone get in their way — Tenno or Grineer be damned — in the name of securing every last piece of precious Orokin-era technology. They're, according to in-universe information, deliberately patterning themselves on old merchant guilds from long ago in Earth's history, most of which were ludicrously powerful. All of their (brainwashed) employees talk in a disturbing, inhuman choke-screech and are partially robotized, which takes 'soulless corporation' to a new extreme.
  • Mêlée à Trois:
    • As of 5.3, one faction can begin spawning in any other faction's missions. For instance, a mission that starts out against the Grineer may take a turn for the grim when Infested suddenly begin to spread throughout the ship, prompting the Grineer to begin fighting the Infested as well as you. Or you might mow down a ship's Grineer Marine contingent and start running into Corpus Crewmen, MOAs, and Ospreys.
    • The Grineer, Corpus, and Infested will also attack the mysterious Stalker, who is more than happy to return fire. You can take advantage of this to wear the Stalker down before facing them yourself.
    • With the release of the Phobos starchart, Grineer Settlements are also occupied by manta-like Desert Skates that will attack both the occupying Grineer and invading Tenno.
    • The Gradivus Dilemma takes this to the logical extreme with a full-out war between the Tenno, the Corpus, and the Grineer over the large cache of sleeping Tenno.
    • With the introduction of the allied Red Veil faction in Update 13.2's "Specters of Liberty", Rescue missions will always consist of at least three factions. However, Corpus maps (even those invaded by Grineer) also have consoles that will spawn MOAs to fight for the Tenno, while the extra holding cells of a Rescue map also have a chance to hold an Infested enemy in captivity. Therefore, in one map, it is entirely possible to see up to 5 different factions fighting a three-way battle — and that's before Stalker shows up...
    • Update 15.13.8 added in Crossfire missions, a special class of Exterminate missions that have the Tenno hunting both the Corpus and the Grineer at the same time. This time around, there's no Enemy Mine; the Corpus and Grineer are working just as hard at killing each other as they are at killing the players.
    • With the introduction of Feral Kavats in Update 18.5, it's possible for Orokin Derelicts to get ironically crowded. Derelicts are filled with Infested, but Grineer or Corpus (sadly not both at once) will often show up to loot the place. And if a Tenno opens an Orokin Vault with a Dragon Key the Vault will summon Corrupted. Lastly, packs of Feral Kavats usually spawn in to try and feed on whatever they can kill. That's a five-way battle!
  • Merchandising the Monster: The Cetus' curious merchandise includes toy guns and masks based on the Grineer, those genocidal soldiers who camp out on the neighbouring Plains of Eidolon and who would've stamped out the townspeople long ago if not for the Unum tower's protective powers. There are also replicas of Tenno swords and helmets so kids can play cops and robbers, or rather Tenno and Grineer.
  • Metal Slime: Oxium Ospreys are an uncommon Corpus enemy and one of the few sources of the Oxium resource. They love to charge at unsuspecting Tenno and blow up without dropping anything. They do make a unique noise beforehand, allowing Tenno to dodge and get their hits in, but newer players can become frustrated at missing a chance at more Oxium.
  • Mickey Mousing: The intro for Fortuna has the characters working in time with the music.
  • Mighty Glacier:
    • Rhino. He has the second (after Valkyr as of update 11) heaviest base armor of any warframe (reducing all damage to his health by 38%), very high shield and comes complete with charging and ground stomping attacks, but it's also painfully slow, sprinting just over half as fast as any other warframe. A team with a Rhino player in it can count on him chugging along far behind everyone else, often arriving long after everything has been killed off by the faster teammates. However, sometimes everyone else is dead and a good Rhino can easily solo a mission.
    • Similarly (and somewhat literally), Frost, who has the same speed disability, but has the same amount of armor, and utilizes AOE storms and beams of ice to damage enemies. He's more geared toward status effects, however, with his basic power being a damaging flash-freeze that works to slow down enemies (until they're damaged).
  • Mile-Long Ship: The Corpus ships are massive; those with the "hammerhead" style nose are at least several miles in length. Planetary missions on Europa take place in the ruins of a crash-landed Corpus ship, part of which takes up a huge swathe of the skyline. Grineer ships generally are less obviously huge as their windows are not visible, but their Balor Fomorians appear to be at least half a mile tall.
    • Taken even further with Sentient Murex ships from the Void Proxima and Operation: Scarlet Spear - these ships have distances measured in kilometers in BOTH directions.
  • Min-Maxing: Corrupted mods were added to the game specifically for this purpose — strengthen one attribute in exchange for weakening another.
  • Mirror Match:
    • The Stalker, a mysterious high level enemy which may hunt you down in retaliation for taking down a boss. Like the player, he uses a primary, a secondary, and a melee — a Sinister Scythe, throwing knives, and a strange bow with arrows that can decapitate a target. If you're lucky, he may drop the blueprints for you... up until you complete The Second Dream, whereupon he swaps to using a sword with Sword Beams.
    • With the implementation of clan battles over Dark Sectors, you may find yourself fighting a Tenno Spectre of a player who has the exact same or a similar build as you.
    • Clan battles with spectres are gone. Now, there is Conclave: true, right and proper Player Versus Player. All warframes and weapons have a second set of stats, specifically balanced for Conclave, and a much more limited selection of mods. It's entirely possible to play Conclave and run into another player using the same warframe as you, with the same weapons, and even the same mods.
  • Mix-and-Match Weapon:
    • The Redeemer and the Sarpa are Gunblades; specifically, the Redeemer is a shotgun-sword while the Sarpa is a burst rifle-sword. The appropriate Stances, High Noon and Bullet Dance involve firing the built-in guns in-between swipes.
    • Later on, we get spear guns, which are large rifles that can also be thrown as a javelin for differing effects: the Javlok explodes, dealing area-of-effect damage at the point of impact with the remaining ammo increasing the amount of damage done; the Ferrox attracts enemies towards it; and Harrow's signature weapon, Scourge creates a 'bullet attractor' that pulls bullets towards the heads of enemies that stand near it.
  • Money Multiplier:
    • The Credit Booster doubles the amount of credits on pickup. It can be purchased or obtained from Daily Tributes or rare storage containers.
    • The Resource Boosters doubles the amount of resources earned on pickup. It can be purchased or obtained from Daily Tributes.
  • Monowheel Mayhem: Corpus Coildrives seen in Orb Vallis are an IFV version of the trope. They are frequently seen cruising down Vallis roads, carrying squads of Corpus Crewmen.
  • Monstrous Scenery: The Cambion Drift is loomed over by two giant worms — Fass and Vome — who pay no attention to the landscape and cannot be interacted with, but whose constant battle represents the Drift's time cycle.
  • Monumental Theft: On the Plains of Eidolon and the System map, Earth's moon is notably absent. Turns out that the Lotus stole it at the end of the Old War by sending it into the Void. Alad V remarks that she would have made an excellent villain. She was using it as a hiding place to store the actual Tenno as they remotely operated the warframes to keep them safe.
  • Mook Horror Show:
  • More Dakka:
    • This is basically the Grineer's hat when it comes to combat. Their assault rifle (the Grakata) trades stopping power for a high rate of fire and good capacity, their sidearms — the Kraken and Viper — are a double-shot handcannon and a rapid-fire machine pistol respectively, and they make the Gorgon and Hek (see below).
      • The Wild Frenzy augment mod for the Grakata dials up its rapid-fire capabilities to insane levels. The alternate fire button will fire off the gun's entire magazine in one burst, at 400% the base fire rate. If you manage to kill at least two enemies with that barrage all of the spent ammo is refunded, potentially allowing you infinite dakka.
    • One of the primary weapons is the Gorgon, an enormous machine gun that trades the usually graceful Tenno ways of killing for more bullets.
    • There's also the Furis, if you want more dakka in your sidearm slot — and you can get two (the Afuris), for double the pleasure. Or you can slot Fire Rate and Ammo Capacity mods into your guns.
    • And now you can get a dual version of the Viper pistol which has an even faster rate of fire than the Furis, but trades away accuracy. The Twin Vipers have the highest possible DPS of all the handguns currently in the game. Then there's the Twin Vipers Wraith, which have even more dakka.
    • In an odd variant, the Hek is a quad-barreled shotgun that unleashes a vast amount of pellets with every trigger-pull.
    • The Corpus have the Tech, who wields the Supra Energy Repeater. Essentially an 'energy bolt' version of the Gorgon, the Supra can be developed by clans in the Energy Research Lab. A close look at the model shows that it apparently has three barrels.
    • The limited edition upgrade to the Supra, the Supra Vandal, holds the record for most sustained dakka, tying for the highest magazine size in the game and having a generous ammo reserve besides. Also, being the only non-hitscan weapon amongst the automatic primary weapons, users get the treat of seeing an absolutely monstrous stream of plasma thud into enemies.
    • The Tenno have their own machine gun, the Soma, that has a hundred-bullet magazine, an extreme firing rate, and a high critical chance, at the cost of doing only 10 damage without crits. And then there's the Soma Prime, which is basically the Soma with a magazine holding two hundred bullets, and eight hundred spare rounds, and a modest 12 points of damage without crits.
    • With the advent of Railjack, the Quellor, a machine gun that was used by Dax Railjack crewers, with a 300 round mag and 900 spare rounds. And if that wasn't enough, its secondary fire is an ice-based Wave-Motion Gun.
    • The Boar and Sobek are automatic shotguns.
    • The Cestra and Dual Cestras are pocket laser LMGs in pistol size. The dual version features one of the highest fire rate with a huge magazine.
    • Far surpassing the above mentioned Furis and Viper pistols, since U17 we have the Twin Grakatas. These beasts have a fire rate of 20 on paper, but shoot two bullets per "shot", effectively firing off 40 bullets per second, and have an absurdly high magazine size and ammo pool. If modded purely for dakka and not for effectiveness, they can produce around 400 bullets in under a second.
    • The Kohm shotgun, much like the Boar and Sobek, is fully-automatic. What sets it apart is its unique mechanic: each shot fires successively more pellets. It's been adjusted several times because it would wreck low-end GPUs. It also comes in single and double pistol form, with the Kohmak and Twin Kohmak.
  • Morph Weapon: Warframe features a few of these:
    • The Fulmin is an electricity firing rifle that fires short ranged electric pulses with its compensator on, and a steady stream of electricity with it off.
    • The Ambassador is another electric rifle of Corpus origin that is primarily configured as an assault rifle, but can be reconfigured into an explosive charge cannon.
    • The Dark-Split Sword is an odd example, rather than being able to morph on the fly, its weapon type is determined by the stance you equip to it, either being wielded as a great sword or as a pair of swords.
    • The Corufell is a heavy scythe with a heat wave cannon built into its head that can be folded into an impromptu rifle to fire the cannon before unfolding back into its scythe form.
    • The Incarnon weapons are weapons that have been voidtouched, allowing them to transform into a whole new weapon in its entirety, most prominently the original 3 Incarnon firearms are as follows, a break-action revolver that can transform into a submachine gun that fires explosive energy bolts, a semi-automatic rifle that turns into a vaguely minigun shaped mass that spits death, and an automatic shotgun that separates into two energy blast shooting pistols.
  • Moving the Goalposts: Capture missions can infrequently become impromptu Exterminate missions upon capture of the target. Spy missions can also become Exterminate missions if the squad steals all the data, but trips every single alarm; justified in that you now need to kill every single possible witness who could let their higher-ups know their intelligence has been compromised.
  • Mr. Fanservice/Ms. Fanservice: Played with. Nearly every male Warframe is well-muscled and toned, and nearly every female Warframe is very curvy; in both cases, their physiques are emphasized by their form-fitting armor. Ballas makes it clear that this was completely intentional during Banshee Prime's trailer. It doubles as a reflection of the Orokin obsession with visual perfection to conceal rampant cruelty. Whatever's under that armor is probably not nearly as pretty.
  • Ms. Exposition: The Lotus. She'll explain why she activated you, and she also provides information on your target during Assassination missions.
  • Multiple-Tailed Beast: Kavats usually have several tails, which range from long tendrils to fish-like tails.
  • Musical Spoiler: At the time Octavia's Anthem launched, the game's launcher ended up ruining the main twist of the quest (where Hunhow is involved in its climax) for anyone who had completed The Second Dream by playing a snippet of "Rapid Adaptation," the original Sentient theme once the game was ready to start.
  • Mundane Utility: The Cryotic you're collecting during the Cryotic Front event is being used to refrigerate a particular species of Martian jellyfish which is a delicacy but also spoils easily. Yep, you just killed a few thousand Grineer and Corpus to stave off substandard refrigeration.
  • My Rules Are Not Your Rules: The Rathuum and The Index matches are shamelessly rigged in the host faction's (Grineer and Corpus respectively) favour:
    • In Rathuum the Executioners will always outnumber Tenno at least by one, and while Tenno are forbidden from using consumable gear and bringing companions with them, Executioners are free to deploy assistant drones and pets to help them fight. One can only pity poor sods who were sentenced to participate in Rathuum under such conditions without having Tenno skills and Void-fueled powers to fall back on.
    • As for the Index, the teams always start even, but Brokers can get extra members if the match progresses long enough. Tenno are still restricted from using companions and gear while Nef Anyo's Brokers do not have any such restriction, and in addition Tenno need to win three consecutive rounds to obtain victory in a match, while Brokers need to score only one round to win the whole match. During the Glast Gambit quest Nef goes even further, by rigging the match so that Tenno become unable to score any points at all.
  • Mysterious Stranger: The Stalker, who seems to be a "rogue" Tenno that comes after you to "avenge" the various bosses you've killed. It's really not clear which side they're on at this point, as the Grineer and Corpus will readily open fire upon the Stalker as well. The Infested, being Infested, will attack him too. No reason not to take advantage of that. Scanning him sufficient times will reveal that he is a surviving Orokin, a lowly guard who went mad after the Tenno slaughtered his peers. Exactly how he survived or got to be such a badass is still not explained
  • Mythology Gag: To darkSector, Warframe's predecessor:
    • The very name "Tenno" is a reference to the game's protagonist, Hayden Tenno, while the Infestation is also known as the Technocyte Plague.
    • The Glaive weapons, which are Deadly Discs that can be wielded alongside a pistol, reference how Hayden Tenno uses such a Glaive.
    • There's a stealthy boss called the Stalker, as well as "Jackal" Spider Tanks.
    • Hostages use the Tekna pistol. Later on, "Protokol" skins based on darkSector weapons would be made available.

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