Warframe guide

Since I still had a resource drop booster from a sortie I decided to get back on the Steel Path and test a few theories about Steel Essense drop rates.

A few weeks ago I uploaded a video doing a 1 hour Steel path survival mission on Ceres.

I decided to go with the same testing conditions in order to compare the methods.

Survival mission - 1 hour - Nekros with dececrate and a slash based melee weapon (in order to cut enemies into more pieces for dececrate to proc more often).

I recorded each run but to be honest I am not sure if I should even bother to upload the vids.

First test was to see if a planet with higher difficulty would increase the drop chance. On top of that I decided to try using the 25% drop chance boost from a darksector mission.

After 1 hour I can clearly say that this is not a good idea at all. The drop rates were not any better than on a low level survival mission without dark sector bonus.

I can only assume that infested enemies simply do not spawn eximus variants as often as Grineer or Corpus do. Lower Eximus spawns = less chances to get steel essence drops.

On top of that I have to mention that playing a high level infested mission with a Nekros is a terrible idea. Nekros has terrible survivability by default and would only survive if auguments proc and if you can upkeep your 3rd and 4th ability at all the time. Normally that is possible but Infested spawn an enemy type which strips your energy and if that happens when you actually need to refresh your ability you are going to die pretty fast. Infested are easy to kill but if your survivability is based on having energy to cast your abilities then it simply is no good idea to do such a mission for a long run.

On top of that the slashing causing blood and splatter everywhere to the point where you can not even see anything anymore.

The yellow acid on the ground left by the infested also is not really beneficial for survival.

To sum up... avoid the dark sector missions on steel path. Its not worth it and it is no fun to play at all.

2nd test was based on the theory that the kuva fortress survival mission would spawn a significant amount of Eximus units with a high rank.

In the end all the Grineer which carry these kuva keys are eximus so I assumed that would have a positive effect on how many eximus can be killed and looted.

I did this test twice and aborted both after 40-45mins.

The grineer are easier to "control" than the infested from dark sector missions. But they seem to have additional armor which makes it harder to kill them. It seems to take longer... and generally I had the feeling that the spawn rate is lower. After 40-45mins i only had 3-4 steel essence which is a miserable result. Asuming I would have gotten a few more in the next 15mins it still would be a low drop rate.

3rd test was to verify my results from a few weeks ago at the survival mission at Ceres.

Again Grineer enemies, about the same level as on the kuva fortress but by my subjective feeling with less armor but a higher and more consistent spawn rate.

I did a 2 hour run but checked the results at 1 hour for comparison. The test result were a bit lower than what I got a few weeks ago but were still in the margin of error.

Low level survival mission with 1 hour or more seem to be the best way to earn Steel Essence. I am not sure if Corpus mission deliver same or better results since my booster ran out.

Generally best is to play as a team with Khora + Nekros + Nova/Mag... but since Heart of Demos currently is the "hot shit" nobody else really plays steel path. This combination of frames would increase the drop rates significantly.

Btw. after 2 hours the enemy level will have risen to ~400 (what a joy).

There is another way to farm steel essence but that involves doing disruption missions and I have the feeling that this could be tricky doing solo, so I did not even bother testing.

Another booster and more tests done.

40mins steel path survival on V Prime against Corpus on the new ship tileset. I ended the test after 40mins because it was awful.

Corpus are clearly worse than all other factions. The Steel Essence drop rate was low. I blame the fact that Corpus almost completely rely on ranged attacks and spread out very far. This way you can not really kill them fast.

I was assuming that the low health of Corpus enemies would lead to different results but you just can not kill them fast enough to increase the respawns and therefore the drop rates.

On top of everything these Corpus attack you from distance and they hit hard. They almost never miss and if 20 Corpus fire non-stop at you it is hard to survive. One tiny mistake and you are dead. You can not just run away from them and heal... the ranged attacks will kill you before you can leave the room and they will kill you before you can recast your abilities. That of course is combined with avoiding enemies using grenades which push you up in the air and enemies with nullifier fields which deactivate your abilities if you do not way attention.

Oh... they do not drop enough life support loot for you to keep the survival going. You need to use the life support terminals relative often to keep the mission running which makes you vulnerable and slows down the Steel Essence farm even more.

The last conducted test was a Void Survival mission against Corrupted enemies.

I did a one hour test when there was a bug with the armor of the enemies in that mission. Their armor was 3 times higher than usual when I ran the test. That was patched roughly 10mins after the test concluded.

The drop rates actually were pretty good eventhough the enemies were tougher due to the bug. Steel Essence and Riven slivers dropped at a good rate.

The tileset offers a good overview and I actually never ran into problems staying alive.

So far this would be my map of choice.

A waste product btw were 30 Argon crystals.

Why bother at all?

There are 18 locations on the star map which reward 2 Steel Essence for completion. A total of 36.

The normal drop rates when playing through the missions are miserable. On average I got 1-2 Steel Essence per planet. Lets be generous here. A normal play through gets you around 70 Steel Essence.

To buy the stuff Teshin offers you need 173 Steel Essence in total. You have no other choice than to dive into long duration runs in order to get these rewards.

Is it worth to keep playing Steel Path once you completed it once?

In my eyes, yes, absolutely.

Not because of the Steel Essence (which you wont need anymore after buying the stuff from Teshin) but because of the Riven slivers which drop from Eximus enemies. Once per week you can trade 10 slivers for one Riven. That makes Steel path the most reliable way to get a random Riven mod.

I know you can get slivers from Requiem mods of the Kuva Lich system but that is absolutely boring gameplay for a small chance to get a sliver.

You can also get 3 slivers as random rewards from Veil Proxima Railjack missions but random rewards might happen... or might not happen at all.

Steel path is a slow but reliable source of Riven slivers.

I just yesterday decided to give Heart of Deimos a try.

After one day I have mixed feelings about it.

The new open world map is nice but pretty small. There is much stuff underground which certainly makes everything a lot bigger but to be honest there did not seem to be much of value down there. Only reason to go down there are the Isolation Vaults which certainly is the key feature of this new open world.

The new token system to earn standing certainly is nice but eventually need very specific items to rank up you most certainly will hit a wall at some point forcing you to grind stuff anyways. The token system only works as an easier way to get standing until you are supposed to rank up.

I also think that you can ignore all the token other than the one from "Mother" unless you specifically need other token for rank ups. You can turn normal token into Grandmother token which of course would provide 50% more Standing but the time required to get Son, Daughter, Father tokens etc. is just not worth the effort. Completing 1-3 bounties per day (depending on your current level and daily limit) is enough to get all the Mother token you will need to reach the daily limit and that is really the fastest way to progress. You end up with well over 300 token (100 standing each) if you do 3 bounties.

For comparison a similar bounty on Cetus or Fortuna would ~4000 standing per run. That is less than half of what you get for a run on Deimos.

Mother tokens are eventually more than twice as effective as the standing gain on Cetus and Fortuna.

The grandmother tokens would in my eyes even slow down the progress due to the slow nature of animal preservation and mining tasks.

The only way I would see grandmother token an option is if you can trade mother token exclusively (such an offer might exist but is random). I would not even consider trading a combination of mother and father tokens since father tokens require resources which are also required for crafting the new items.

I would even go so far to say "ignore the normal bouties and focus on Isolation vaults". That for sure is harder content and you only earn about 50% of the mother token but lets face it... it is the only way to rank up the 2nd standing on Deimos (Loid) which you will have to do anyways if you want access to the Nekamech. My advice: focus on Mother bounties OR even better focus on Isolation Vaults (all 3 tiers).

You get father token automaticaly by just looting the stuff in the environment.

Son and Daughter tokens are best to get using an Ivara (preferably with the preparation mod from the Arbitration reward). You wont get disturbed this way. Animal preservation also works good using the archwing. I personally use a combination of Ivara + Archwing. Archwing to find the animals, Ivara with the sleep arrow to catch them.

I dont think that Deimos offers so much content.

I mean... its Entrati standing + the standing for the Mech.

Isolation vaults... and the helminth system which probably is the most grindy part of it (and probably something you dont even need). Lets face it... I finished Steel path playing almost every mission solo (apparently not many people play on this difficulty) with almost exclusively utilizing a 2-forma melee weapon. More I did not need.

There has been just one mission type which was super difficult (Interception) which was surprising. I thought stuff like Defection or mobile defense, or Hijack would be the difficult part... but no... Interception was the hardest mission type. On normal difficulty it never was a problem.

The boss fighters in most cases also were not a big deal. Except for the very first boss Vay Hek and the Ambulas at Pluto. These two missions were an awful nightmare to do solo on steel path.

But I also dont think that the new helminth system would have made it any better.

Last note for now on Deimos: Isolation Vaults have a bunch of secret doors and portals you can open using your operator amp.

Yeah it does not feel complete but to be honest kitguns and amps wont really change much.

Stuff feels incomplete and stuff feels like not really fitting. e.g. there are K-drive races but they do in no way contribute in any way to the concept. I mean... even the score from these races contributes to the vent kits on fortuna. That does not make any sense.

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Not to mention Tier 5 bounty having 1000 Endo in common rewards.

Yeah, and to be honest I don't like it. Deimos is cannibalizing other content. Endo already was to be earned via Arbitrations or Arena games. These locations now will suffer from the fact that Deimos offers such stuff at high rates for low difficulty content.

Same with the Accolytes mods (Weeping wounds, Argon Scope, etc.). With these mods dropping on Deimos the Accolytes event can be considered dead now.

As long you still need arcanes this is correct. After that point the situation looks different.

I think they should have added new mods for primary and secondary weapons instead to bring them in line with the insane damage scaling of melee weapons instead of cannibalizing existing content.

Yeah only available during plague star. I also miss these zaws in my inventory. They however can appear as special offer at the vendor sometimes.

Costs plats and is a random combination but probably better than nothing.

I personally have not seen such an offer but well, i dont check that vendor everyday.

The Soma mod probably is a public test. It scales similar to melee weapons in terms of crits. I just dont think that this method will work for other weapons aswell. Try to scale a bow with 5 shots this way. Another downside seems to be that the scaling resets after reloading.

I have the unpopular opinion that melee weapons are totally overpowered since the melee 3.0 update. The only good thing about this change was that you can even turn a crap weapon into something good if you are a bit creative.

Crit builds, Status builds, Hybrid builds, Heavy builds, Slide attack builds - all variations are more or less viable.

well, there is a difference between working and working good on steel path

even my best primaries felt underwhelming eventhough they would have gotten the job done

even secondaries are in a better spot

could be

It is a bit unfortunate that there is no clear description of the icons.

thats not going to be easy when he is moving

a quick test of the two plague zaws

I dont have a forma on them yet but the results against lvl175 heavy corrupted gunners already is pretty good.

Both weapons are endgame viable.

The Keewar only would need 1-2 Forma for a good status build.

The Kripath would certainly need 3-5 Forma for a good crit build.

Worth to mention. The Kripath does not seem to perform as good as the Keewar in this test but this is mainly result of only having a normal reach mod compared to the primed reach on the Keewar. Also the default stance seems to be suboptimal. All of that can be compensated with enough Forma.

3 good amps:

The first one in my eyes is the best for general play (if you do not want to specifically exploit mechanics in eidolon hunts)

Primary fire deals short range AOE damage which makes it also a good use against normal NPCs.

IF you intend to kill the chicken eidolon on jupiter you need to wait until it gets in range or use an amp with higher range.

It however consumes high amounts of energy.

The 2nd one also is an AOE version... but less powerful and less energy hungry.

The 3rd one is a pretty much a sniper one... if you can hit weak spots it will deal very high damage.

I personally only use the first one... Klamora + Propa, + Certus because of the high crit chance and the AOE of the primary fire mode.

The 2nd fire mode sucks in most situations but can be used when you are surrounded or when you dont know where the vomvalysts are (fire it... go into void mode to avoid self damage).

AMP Arcane = Virtuous Strike due to the crit chance increase which really benefits the Klamora.

Ranking and gilding AMPS made easy -> go to Hydron on Sedna... play 20 waves of defense with public mode while killing stuff with your amp.

Your AMP will reach lvl 30 in no time.

I have not played nightwave yet (Im a bit short on time atm)... but I assume it is a similar mechanic like the emissary one where you have to make the boss vulnerable first.

Dont even have a Mausolon .... and I have 12 unveiled Rivens.... someday I will have to take care of that.