Whenever I would talk to people about Warframe and invite them to try it, 8 times out of 10 I would get a negative response on they heard or felt it was “too grindy”. Now, if we were having the same conversation 5 years ago, I would be one of those 8 times out of 10, but a lot has changed since then, which brings me to this write-up.



The supposed “grind” in Warframe is divided into two areas: Resource gathering, and Mastery Rank.



Resource gathering has been significantly improved on with The Silver Grove: U3 Ayatan update, which introduced resource nodes throughout mission tilesets. While crates had random drops, resource nodes in comparison would drop a specific resource. Remember those rare resources you could only get from boss fights during the game’s early release? Yeah, they now have their own resource nodes in regular missions, rarer resource types also having different colours as well.



The update also allowed players to craft resource drones which would collect resources from cleared systems. While there are some new rare resources which can only be obtained in certain missions/Alerts, the vast majority can be acquired in regular missions.



Which leaves us with the second area: Mastery Rank.

Mastery Rank – The Early Days

When it was first released on Steam in 2013, Warframe branded itself as a “a cooperative free-to-play third person online action game”. Unlike traditional games, the game’s way of acquiring “Levels” was in the form of Mastery Points, to determine one’s Mastery Rank. Mastery Points were acquired by ranking up Warframes, companions and weapons to Rank 30 by scoring affinity with them equipped on missions. Completing the main objective the first time for each mission node would also award a small amount of MR points (especially helpful for new players who had limited weapons and warframes to rank up).



Certain weapons required a certain MR to be bought. Aside from that, it was purely a measure of how much of the game players have experienced, bragging rights so to speak. As such, ranking up weapons were less of a focus compared to getting a better weapon. Warframe started off with few weapons to choose from, each stemming from the standard types of weapons you’d find in a shooter/action game, like some examples below:



1) Braton – General purpose assault rifle.

2) Strun – Semi-auto shotgun.

3) Lato – Basic pistol.

4) Lex – Heavy Pistol.

5) Boar – Automatic shotgun.

6) Gorgon – Light machine gun.

7) Skana – Standard sword.

8) Scindo – Heavy Axe.

9) Snipetron – Sniper Rifle.

Of course, certain sidearms and melee weapons had dual-wield counterparts like Dual Skana and Aklato, but after I got the Gorgon at Rank 3, the other weapons in the game weren’t a huge priority. Anything else after that point was simply for variety and trying something new, which is how it should have been, if you ask me.



Because of this, players had less incentive to advance further, and Digital Extremes had to do something, and do something they did.

Damage 2.0, i.e Rock-Paper-Scissors Damage

Update 11’s Damage 2.0 System introduced three physical damage types, and the previous four elemental damage types(Heat, Cold, Toxin, Electricity) could now be combined to form 6 secondary elemental damage types. This also led to enemies having different resistances to said damage types.



With that, the rock-paper scissors race was on, with scores of new weapons being introduced into the game. Some even had unique secondary fire mechanics and meters that could be charged up in various ways. Wraith, Vandal, Prisma, Syndicate & Prime variants of existing weapons were also affected, their mechanical differences reduced to having slightly higher or lower stats (with some exceptions like Prime weapons having significantly higher stats due to their rarity).



On the upside, players now had a plethora of new content to explore. On the downside, some weapons were simply better than others. Maybe this weapon had slightly more Slash damage while the other would have more Puncture damage. It would come down to minute details like that. Of course, one could simply ignore most of the weapons and just go with the top 10% of the good weapons. This was supplemented by the much-coveted Riven Mods having better stats for less-used weapons, encouraging players to try out new weapons should they get a matching Riven mod.

At the time of writing this, the highest MR needed to unlock weapons was 15 (unlocking 1 weapon, the Aklex Prime), and Riven Mod MRs range between MR8 and MR16. Hence, there was little need to rank up all the way to the current MR of 26 (or MR24 minus exclusive items).



Unless of course, incentives were added to raking up Mastery points.

Mastery Rank Incentives

And thus, “Mastery Fodder” was born, with players frantically trying to gobble through weapons and warframes as fast as possible to get these benefits. Even worse, certain weapons would require other weapons as crafting components, hence the most efficient way to acquire Mastery Points for them was to rank up a weapon, craft the new weapon, then rank up the new weapon.



With Prime weapons being periodically vaulted i.e retired from reward tables(granted, they do get unvaulted at times), and the Void Trader’s stock constantly changing, the most damaging consequence of this system is players asking this dreaded question:

“So, you’re telling me, if I don’t have ALL the weapons, warframes, and companions, I will never reach the highest possible Mastery Rank?“

If grinding Master Fodder did not burn players out already, that question certainly would. I have seen people stop playing the game because the grind got to them. As such, I am here to tell you this:

This concept of “Mastery Fodder” is NOT important, and I’m even going to prove it to you.

Take a look again at the list of the MR incentives in the above pic. You’ll notice some similar key words in the list. “Limit”, “Capacity”, “Maximum”. Having a higher MR simply allows you to get slightly more out of the game with each Rank, that’s about it.

Something More Important



While I would say that the “RNG compounding RNG” system in Warframe is rather jarring, the game still has one of the most non-intrusive micro-transactions in any free-to-play game I’ve seen. They’ve put out great content regularly, and the best feature thus far (in my opinion) is the Trading system, allowing players to acquire most of the content in-game (except bundles, cosmetics, removed items, and a few others). The focus on PvE instead of PvP makes the community significantly less toxic compared to more competitive online games out there, which makes trading not only smoother, but fun at times.



I myself have put down money to support the game, and it’s even easier with the occasional 50% and 75% Platinum discounts available from login rewards. I didn’t feel like there was a massive paywall with the only way of getting through was with my wallet.



That being said, again, Mastery Fodder is not important. What’s far more important is how YOU, the player, enjoys the game. Some of the limits in the game are a blessing in disguise, to enjoy the game in moderation. If you only have a few hours a day, I’d suggest find one thing you like, and sticking to it, be it Syndicate missions, Void runs, Eidolon-hunting, etc. Every once in a while, switch it up a little for a change of pace.



I would recommend new players and veterans alike to play Warframe with this perspective in mind. I’ve been there, both being almost burned out by the grind, and had friends quit the game because the grind got to them. If you try out a new weapon and you don’t like it, simply bring it along on lower level missions alongside a much more powerful weapon, and it will rank up by itself eventually.



Worry less about Mastery Fodder, focus on enjoying the game. You’ll get there eventually. And even if you don’t end up reaching the highest rank attainable, in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter.

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