I’m a relatively new player, been at it for three or four months now. I mostly play solo so I’m figuring things out on my own and sometimes it’s slow going; I resort to googling things quite often because I don’t quite understand what’s going on. I’ve gotten up to MR14. Been unable to beat the MR15 test so far as I’m pretty bad at interceptions.
I finally decided to buckle down and do the New War quest over the weekend and I really enjoyed it. I liked all the different perspectives and switches to game play style, plus the lore and plot line were amazing. I finally understand what’s going on in the game. But there were a few places I got stuck so I looked things up and saw how many posts there were by people complaining about the quest line and hating on it.
I found it to be pretty forgiving of an old(er) person whose reflexes, reaction time and visual processing are going to shit. The boss fights weren’t that bad, really. Since I solo and haven’t gotten anywhere near the kind of strength I see the Steel Path folks putting out when I’m grouped with them during Circuit, the purported tediousness folks were complaining about was just par for the course for how I usually do boss fights: run around like a chicken on fire and get off a shot or two occasionally until it’s over. The four hours the quest is supposed to take was more like nine hours for me but all in all it wasn’t too bad and I was able to finish it in time for Circuit.
Then I hopped into Kahl’s Garrison and the first mission I got was Sneaky Sabotage and that was a bit of a slog because I didn’t know WTF was going on and the deacons were everywhere. I did finish it, barely. I did the next one yesterday night and did much better. I like the different game mode and having to adapt to different rules of play. But again, I saw tons of people complaining about it during various web searches. I didn’t see anyone talking about how they enjoyed either of those scenarios.
Surely there are other people out there that like some or all of this content? Or am I just the weirdo who’s about to be downvoted to oblivion?
New War was fun, as a story mission. Veilbreaker missions though… they have a few problems:
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They’re repetitive. They were fun the first few times, but having to do the same 1 of 3 missions every week is borrrrrinnng. Yes WF has a lot of repetition, but there’s ways to mitigate that, mainly by changing up your frame/weapons to constantly have a different experience. VB doesn’t have that.
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There’s no customization. Warframe is a game all about customizing your appearance, your loadout, your builds… Kahl has… well, appearance. But there’s no way to change up your experience. It’s always the same gun every single time. Literally has 0 variety.
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It’s clunky. Warframe is about speed and fun engaging movement mechanics. Yes Grineer are not Warframes, but… that’s kinda the problem isnt it? Who wants to play as a boring clone who can barely jump after playing as a ninja supersoldier god that can spin, roll, fly, etc…
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Progress is ass. If you care about getting a shard every week, then you need 90 tokens. You can only get tokens from doing extra “challenges” and the max is 110, so you effectively have to get all but 1 challenge every. week. This is time-consuming and tedious, since most of the challenges are things like “find the stuffed animal.” Man fuck off, I’m here to commit warcrimes, not look for kids toys. They need to make it so kills give you tokens too (in small quantities) and the challenges are unneeded but helpful boosts. Token prices may need to be adjusted for this, but the important thing is that you can earn progress by actually playing the game, rather than being annoyed that the enemies are bothering you while you’re trying to help PETA find one more dog to set free.
These are all good points and I’m sure I’ll get bored of them eventually too if there’s only three of them. it’s new to me though so I still enjoy the experience.
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The New War was fine as a story mission, and they don’t require someone to play the mission again and again to get anything else out of it. If someone wants to play it again for the story, they can, but nobody is missing out on not playing the quest weekly.
Khal Missions on the other hand are very repetitive, especially with Kahl’s clunky movement and some buggy side objectives that don’t spawn correctly. I found I was often backtracking to the very start of a mission trying to find the the last passcode in a mission just to find out it never generated in the first place. If I wanted to finish this challenge, I would have to play through the entire mission a second time just the 6 tokens the side objective rewarded. There was an update which was supposed to overpopulate the map with surplus items to complete the side objectives in one run but that update seems bugged/reverted and we’re back to Kahl missions spawning just enough or fewer than what you need to complete these objectives. These are mostly issues for anyone that wanted to complete everything for the bonus rewards, and less of an issue for anyone that was only focused on the main objective.
In short, Khal missions were too slow, repetitive and often encountered bugs making them less enjoyable while requiring a lot of investment time wise and little progress made in return.I think New War was fine, really good actually. Kahl missions on the other hand are just not worth the rewards for me.
It’s even more repetitive than regular gameplay since the maps aren’t randomly generated, plus you don’t get to be a superpowered space ninja, which usually contributes a lot to how great the gameplay feels.
Once you’ve acquired the “one-time rewards” like the cosmetics and Styanax blueprints, you can farm for a weekly Archon Shard. But while the Archon Shards from Archon Hunts can be Tauforged, this one can’t, which creates the feeling of the reward not being worth the slog I’m putting myself through.
@HKayn @UziBobuzi yeah I quit after I had everything not worth the based shard each week when I can get a chance at a a tau forged each week from archon’s
How rough are the archon hunts? Are they beefed up from New War or the same basic stats?
Way beefed up. It goes up to lvl 150 and you get no revives or gear items.
Additionally, Archons themselves are stacked with damage reduction mechanics, so you’ll need a very specific loadout if you want to kill in a reasonable amount of time.
Little correction on gear: keys should be active I believe and pizzas are placed on a cooldown but no specters or ciphers allowed.
Oh, yeah, I’m not ready for those yet. thanks.
You can manage in a public squad if someone carries DPS and you have a tanky frame that doesnt die (Revenant). It’s worth trying at least, since Archon Shards are so rare.
Unless you are able to deal significant damage to the Archon, it’s best not to hit it at all so that your teammates can finish it faster. They have an Adaptation mechanic where they take significantly reduced damage after someone hits them. So usually you want to one-shot them. See if someone brought Felarx or Kuva Hek, those are the main guns for it. Otherwise it’ll be four of you chipping away for 30 minutes lol. I always get frustrated when I do it in public squads because I know I could just kill it instantly if the Wukong just stopped with the Acceltra for 12 seconds.
I’m really shy about public squads because I don’t want to be the leech on the team so it’s good to know this information for when I get started doing these. Thank you.
Its fine to be carried. Bring a support frame at least. Most don’t mind carrying a newer player.
Thanks for that! I have quite a few frames, maybe Oberon or Trinity?
Glad to hear it! Also, if it helps, most people dont do this, so you’re not gonna get flamed for it.
The Archons are pretty easy to cheese if you don’t mind clearing content that way. Unfortunately it feels a requirement for these missions because of how Damage Attenuation works.
Guide to Archon Boreal mission(current rotation), Nira and Amar are slightly different but their mission is similar enough that you can probably infer what to do from things happening in this boss fight as well as from transmission Cues.
If you are running public though, there’s a good chance that someone is already running a build to 1-shot the archons already, in this case, you have the benefit of teammates being able to revive you instead of failing if you can’t revive yourself with Last Gasp. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN4mMwLOCNICopy and Paste from the description in the video
Quick Guide to Cheesing Archon Boreal
00:00 Loadout
- Alternative to the Kuva Hekk would be something like the Felarx with Devastating Attrition, make sure you do not mod for Crit if you use this weapon, and only use the base form not its Incarnon
- Use your closest equivalent mods if there is something you’re missing, I might have galvanized savvy on in the video, but that mod doesn’t contribute at all to damage done when you’re going for a one shot, replace it with anything you think is helpful/QOL. Hell’s Chamber is also slightly better than the galvanized equivalent at 0 stacks. Just make sure you have Radiation to deal with the boss.
- Beam weapons/Shotgun pistols shouldn’t have any trouble replacing the Catchmoon, punch through weapons should work fine too
- Redeemer/Vastilok are also pretty useful for breaking Aerolyst Canisters but the Stropha is the easiest to use.
- Use your favourite invisibility warframe, they all work the same for avoiding enemies.
- Kuva Hekk for its alt fire and moded for radiation, and Silent Battery if using Ivara to presever invisiblity.
- Catchmoon or any weapon with infinite body punch through for dealing with Aerolysts. Containers must be destroyed to make them vulnerable. Suppress to keep Ivara invisble. Not modded for Radiation because enemies shooting at each other tend to get a little annoying when you’re already trying to avoid everything.
- Heavy attack Stropha, an alternative to the Catchmoon.
- Madurai for Void Strike so that you can 1 shot an Archon before Damage Attenuation kicks in (DA resets if the Archon has not taken damage for a brief period of time, if you notice you are hitting low, stop attacking for a a bit 5-10s and you should be back to doing full damage.
- Companion does not matter.
- Ivara build mostly does not matter, Rolling Guard is convenient for surviving Heat/Electric DOT but is not mandatory. Energy, Efficiency and Duration are what you want to prioritize.
0:24 First Phase
- Get close to Boreal, swap to Operator and activate your operators first ability with 1 (Don’t know console equivalents)
- Switch back to Ivara and use the Kuva Hekk’s alt-fire to one shot this phase then travel to the marked objective
0:32 Deacons
- After making it to this point in the mission, two Deacons will be marked on the map. Kill the enemies tethered to them to make the Deacon Vulnerable, and bring back the dropped item to one of the Statues.
1:00 Repeat the previous steps for the second Deacon and then make your way to the boss after placing the second Veil into the other statue
1:19 Second Boss encounter
- This part of the recording might be a little disorientating, some weird bug where my Operator and Warframe are facing different directions when using Transference, but at least this part of the recording showcases abilities that the boss can use if you need to deal with them when you go through this mission.
- If you are fast enough you can 1 shot this boss in the same way as Phase 1 1:24 If Boreal makes a large Blue Orb, you must damage this with your Amp to make him vulnerable (Similar to how Void Angels work)
1:45 Aerolyst Invulnerability Ability
- Boreal Spawns Aerolysts which must be killed before he becomes vulnerable again
- Use either the Catchmoon or Strohpa to break the Canisters around the Aerolysts, and then you will be able to kill them. Use your Amp to reset their damage resistances if necessary.
2:55 Pyramid Invulnerability Ability
- Shoot the corners of the Pyramid that have a Orb on the corners. Amp isn’t required, any weapon works for this
3:25 Killing the Archon
- Same as phase 1, change to operator and press 1 for Void Strike and then use the Kuva Hekk’s alt-fire to damage the Archon
- If you don’t 1 shot the Archon, shoot it again and judge if you want to chip away at it’s Hp until it’s dead or wait for Damage Attenuation to reset.
- Collect the Archon Shard from the Archon once it’s dead and extract.
*For the first two missions in the archon bounty, I think the first mission is always something like Mobile Defense/Exterminate, while the second mission is two rounds of an endurance mission like Survival/Defense/Disruption. Run these in public, use a support Frame, or just something like Revenant if you want extra survivability. I tend to lean towards support though, buffing your team usually gets a mission done faster and easier.
Thanks so much for the detailed information! I’ll definitely watch that video after I get back from taking my bird to the vet today.
oh wow, this is how i remember that even exists. I moved back to the orbiter so that I wouldn’t have to see the yellow objective marker all the time and just forgot about kahl. Loved the new war, can’t say I like the bundled post-quest activities at all.
lol they fixed obj marker at least
and you can add decorations to the whole forest!! like the ENTIRE forest. fun base. parkour too
Don’t forget to decorate your skybox
It’s a fun change of pace for 1 to 3 times, but technically if you “need” archon shards you are forced to do it weekly, the same 3 boring slow missions, when you just want to blast things away with your warframe but you are stuck in a 20 min. Mission with npcs to guard and a timer running
tbf Duviri is worse, made me stop playin
By Duviri do you mean the story or Circuit or both? I’ve been liking the Circuit, it’s a great way to get warframes without having to do the regular grind for them. The story was tough, especially since you couldn’t leave until you’d completed it the first time. I don’t go in there much other than Circuit once a week, unless I need mats to build something.
Duviri is worse, made me stop playin
Same here, it’s probably awesome for new(ish) players. I don’t want all of that “rogue-like” stuff. It feels like a test-balloon for soulframe.
I loved the New War. It was a brilliant quest imo. Kahl’s Garrison on the other hand is a boring weekly dread just for some time-gated shards.
I may get bored of it later but since it’s new to me, I’m still enjoying it.
But the New War quest was just so good. I think it’s one of the best quests I’ve played in any game, from a lore standpoint at least.
The only thing I despised was the fact that they locked all of that shit behind having a necramech, and it was either expensive or a pain in the ASS to get. Seriously the necramech grind was the most boring and drawn out portion of the entire game for me thus far, and im mr 20 at this point.
Other than that the actual quest was great, and I also find Kahl’s missions to be fun so, I’m over it lol.
I confess I just outright bought a necromech and I don’t regret it because it makes solo-ing bounties and open world a hell of a lot easier.
I used the second 75% plat discount in a necramech, was pretty worth the money I don’t think I skipped another grind with plat I got almost all frames and weapons normaly. Killing the rougue necramechs was too pain in the ass honestly. I gotten Baruuk and Khora from the circuit now that I remember IDK if it counts as skipping but was a nice chance.
The issue here was that they were much more onerous at time of release. I didn’t fight Archon Boreal w Drifter+Nataruk but a friend of mine was soft-locked in that fight for a session. It wasn’t possible for them to do what was necessary fast enough to end the fight. They were prepared to give up on playing Warframe if it hadn’t pulled them back to mission select launching again so they could avoid Boreal.
Kahls missions use to be worse too. I recall for the first month or so it’d easily take two hours of wondering about in the maps at a painfully slow pace relative to pretty much all other content in-game to find all the collectables or decide to abandon 15 stock for that week because 1/6 of whichever McGuffin was hidden too well. Now it feels like it gives you fewer collect McGuffins, the McGuffins are more frequently spawned not-far off the path of the main objective, and the most frustrating spawn locations have been removed entirely (however I haven’t read all the patch-notes related to Kahl’s missions since release so this is just my impression of any changes).
There’s also the fact that for those of us who did TNW at or near launch it felt much emptier because there was almost nothing meaningfully changed pre to post NW. There was the new skin for the Open Worlds and Narmer Bounties (& one of my favorite Warframes) but that really didn’t feel like a big impactful system-changing even like it was hyped up to be. Then Kahl missions were added and Narmer felt less conspicuously absent from the System but it seemed like they were being mopped up. Then the Archon Hunts were added and it started to feel like they were still a problem and only weren’t still a major-player like the main three factions due to active suppression by us.
So with the frustrating state of affairs 'round the launch of TNW and the content being rougher 'round the edges some of the community wasn’t pleased with the updates. I think now that it’s all together and those rough edges have been sanded down there’s significantly less cause to dislike any of it except maybe a lingering frustration with how it used to be.
That actually explains a lot, thanks! I do think that the posts I saw were a couple/three years old as nothing newer came up on search.
I think the New War quest was a dissapointment story wise. The whole eternalism thing made me lost all interest in the story of the game as nothing seemed to matter in my eyes anymore. I didn’t even touch khal missions after the first one I did. It really didn’t connect with me at all. I am glad you find it fun, though!
I liked The New War! The quest was awesome, fighting the Archons as Drifter was fun. The lack of general changes to the Origin system was a bit of a let-down but we did get Archon Shards and the Drifter from it. Kahl though, was a different beast. Doing his missions was fun for maybe a month, then it became tedious as hell. I haven’t touched them in months, the extra Archon Shard be damned, it’s just not worth it. Also, remember that people having a negative experience are far more likely to post about it than those who just enjoyed the quest and went about their day, so looking at opinions online can give you a skewed perspective.
How many of the Kahl missions are there? If it’s only a handful I can see why it would get tedious.
I haven’t even unlocked my Helminth yet because I’m not really into the Index so it’s not like the shards are that important to me. Though I did buy two of the Archon warframe mods last night and they seem pretty powerful. I’ve spent my morning putting forma on my main frame to increase drain space just to fit them in.
There are only 3 weekly missions, you can see how that can get old quickly.
The Archon mods are pretty meh overall, Continuity and Flow are OK if you don’t have the Prime versions of those yet. Stretch is used on Volt and Gyre sometimes for a minor energy gain. Archon Vitality is good on Ember and can be used on Protea. Intensify could have been good if you could refresh the buff’s duration while it’s active, right now it’s usually too unreliable to use compared to it’s Umbral version.
Tip for the future when you get the Helminth, don’t sell any non-prime versions of Warframes you have even if you get their Prime, Helminth will love to snack on them and he can’t handle Primes, too much gold to digest!Great advice, though I’m a collector and hate to part with anything. i’m still holding onto a heat sword even though I hate using it. Continuity and Flow are the two I bought so I’m glad I chose wisely.
New War was great. I guess people didn’t like the sudden pivot to a survival horror power curve?
As for KahlQuest, they’re a fun novelty, for a bit, but after running them weekly for a few months, I had to stop. The tilesets aren’t designed for Kahl’s movement. If you’re doing side objectives it can take 20 minutes or more. A lot of those minutes are fun because they’re full of things to do, but I found the minutes that are just Kahl’s laboured jogging to be torture. Sneaky Sabotage is also miserable the first time because the game insinuates to you that there’s a lot more risk involved than there actually is.
Exactly! I was so worried about the deacons because of how strong they were in New War that it took me halfway through the mission to realize I could run and hide from them as Kahl.
There’s also a grace period where you can just throw the veilbreaker shock thingy to stun them if they spot you!
I liked the quests, but the narmer ciphers are pretty much impossible for me to solve as I have a cognitive disability where I can’t tell which node I’m clicking on from left to right. I made a post about it on the forums back then which was promptly ignored by DE, so … without cipher possibility, I literally can’t play the Kahl missions. I know I’m definitely not alone in this out there, so if anyone here has run into the same issue of “Wait, I clicked on the correct one! Oh wait, it was to the left instead of right?” you might have the same issue I’m having. And mind you, being locked out of gameplay because of a disability was really a tough pill to swallow.
I don’t have an issue with the ciphers, but I can see how they’d be a problem for someone and I’m really sorry that there isn’t an alternative way for you to solve them. My issues when gaming have to do with my hands getting arthritic but I was able to get a custom controller that helps with that. I don’t think it would be useful for your issue. That really sucks. Gaming has a long way to go to be fully accessible to everyone.
Personally I couldn’t stand new war. So many cutscenes that randomly require input, which I can’t stand in any game. The stealth missions were terrible and the AI made no sense to me with their range to locate you. It also didn’t help that I was rushing the mission to get to steel path and just wanted to be done.
I liked the new war but the post update content kinda fell flat to me. Kahl missions are fun the first few times and then its incredibly samey, archon shards are a cool addition but once you learn to oneshot the archons its just another sergant but gated by two very long tedious (not hard just tedious) prequisite missions.
New War was great. Kahl missions, I hate.
Kahl got a lot better. You used to have to finish entire challenges in one run (no saving progress between runs) and you had to finish the mission to get credit (no aborting to cash in). And now there are more resources (genestamps, veils, etc) than a challenge requires, so you can miss one and still finish in one run. They also used to have really annoying ones like “Scour every corner of the map without missing one item” on the same week as “Finish in 15 minutes” which really pissed me off. Given everything else I said, this basically guaranteed having to do it twice in one week.
But it’s still a bullshit system. Archon shards in general are bullshit. Hard time-gated resource with a fairly significant impact on gameplay. You need 90 of the max 105 stock per week to buy one. It’s really one of the main things I try not to miss. So I still do Kahl every week and Archon every week. Kahl stock, like Archon shards, are another super-scarce time-gated resource. Their existence just pisses me off. But I build every frame and they do make a significant enough impact that I at least want to get 5 for every frame, ideally 5 correct ones lol.
And it doesn’t help that Kahl can’t bullet jump… just not that fun to do on repeat!
I’m going to have to go google archon shards now so I see why they’re so important.
