How to progress past Jupiter?

[TheColorUrple]

About 50 hours into the game, I've hit a wall with progression through the nodes since some Jupiter / Europa missions are giving me a really hard time.

I'm MR 6.

I haven't farmed or done any grinding really beyond unlocking new nodes and finishing a few quests. I have Excal, Volt, and Ember. I've levelled a dozen gear items or so, some of which are Mk-1.

I've only been using Auto Mods and I haven't fused them because they seem to quickly require more power than my frames can handle, and I don't know which ones to prioritize.

I have maybe 750 plat that I could spend.

What should my strategy be? Is there a frame I should buy, maybe certain good weapons? Or should I be farming specific lower level missions for xp or mods? Void relics? Affinity boosters? WTB? I don't know.

So far, I've only used frames and weapons that are currently being levelled so as not to waste xp on maxed out stuff. I would hate to have to use maxed gear for the next 30 hours unlocking planets, unless that's really the only way to do it.

Thanks for the help.... beginner Warframe is a bear.

[TheColorUrple]

Nguyên văn bởi Aegix Drakan:

MASSIVE wall of text incoming.

Nguyên văn bởi TheColorUrple:

About 50 hours into the game, I've hit a wall with progression through the nodes since some Jupiter / Europa missions are giving me a really hard time.

I'm MR 6.

Congratulations, you've reached the second of about 3-4 serious difficulty walls, and probably the most significant one. We've all been there. :)

Once you break through this point, you can consider yourself to be a serious intermediate warframe player, and will have some of the knowledge you need to break through to "veteran" status.

At this point, what you need is good modding, and Orokin Catalysts/Reactors to get the most out of your mods.

New frames mostly just provide you with new playstyles. All of them can be made endgame viable, although some are easier than others.

I haven't farmed or done any grinding really beyond unlocking new nodes and finishing a few quests. I have Excal, Volt, and Ember. I've levelled a dozen gear items or so, some of which are Mk-1.

Oof. Oh BIG oof.

Your frames are fine.

Excal is a great all rounder frame until very late, he's ok. Ember requires a bit of work to really get the most out of, but she's a VERY solid nuker frame. Volt...I mostly used to speedrun Capture missions, or to cheese the Junction bosses.

So...You're pretty alright frame-wise, although I'd REALLY reccommend you get Rhino (super tanky) and Oberon (a fantastic all-rounder with some healing).

But if you only have a handful of weapons on hand, some of which are Mk-1? That's your first problem.

Mk-1 weapons are just there to get you started, and to serve as "Mastery Fodder". ie, something you rank to 30 for the Mastery Rank Exp, and then sold.

In fact, you should be trying to rank up as many weapons as possible, to raise your mastery rank as high as you can. The higher your mastery, the more weapons you can use, with a lot of the really good ones gated behind certain mastery ranks.

You should look into weapons that can actually carry you later into the game.
Here's a few I can think of:

1) Hek: It's a pretty powerful early shotgun that can actually carry you suprisingly far into the game. (Heck, you can straight up cheese all the Junction battles by popping a Volt Shield between you and the enemy, then blasting it with the Hek)

2) Soma: The first TRULY good Assault Rifle. It's an excellent Crit Weapon that you can get reasonably early. You can literally get it's Crit rate up to a whopping 75% with a single mod. It eventually gets outclassed IMO, but it's a pretty solid choice for quite a while.

3) Kohm: A pretty solid Fully Auto Shotgun. This one WILL require a few rare mods to make it really shine (it needs a lot of Multishot and Status Chance), but it really shines when you get it to work.

4) Arca Plasmor: Ok, this one is out of your range right now, as it requires you to be Mastery Rank 10. But this shotgun can straight up carry you through just about the entire Star Chart if you build it right.

I've only been using Auto Mods and I haven't fused them because they seem to quickly require more power than my frames can handle, and I don't know which ones to prioritize.

Wait, AUTOMOD?!

That's your REAL problem right there. You've been using a crutch the entire time, and now you're at the point where the game is asking you to run, which a crutch can't handle

Here's my beginner's guide to modding:
1) Identify a weapon/frame's strengths, and amplify them.

Weapons:
Once you have a gun that's actually worth investing in (like the Soma), plug in an Orokin Calalyst to double its mod capacity (it's a purple eggplant looking thing. You can buy them with Nightwave credits, or from some Alerts like Gift of The Lotus after a Devstream on some fridays, or you can get them from the market if you're desperate).

Then, you start modding.

(Note, the following is
For starters, always slap on direct extra damage. For Rifles, it's Serration. For shotguns, it's Point Blank.

Then, identify whether the weapon is a Critical Hit weapon, or a Status Weapon.
-Crit Weapons typically have about 20% or higher critical hit rate. For these, slap on mods that boost critical hit chance and critical hit damage (if you happen to have the Hunter Munitions Mod from the Plains of Eidolon, that pairs well with this too)

- Status Weapons typically have about 20% or higher Status Chance. For these, crank up your status chance as much as possible, and use at least one elemental combo (two base elements together. Corrosive and Viral are strongest right now for general play)

+ Then, if you have any mods with Multishot on them, use them. Every % of multishot you add is an extra % chance to fire a bonus shot for free. If you go over 100%, you get even MORE bullets.

+ Finally, slap on Elemental mods for extra damage. If you can, use the element that your enemies are weak to (Heat, Corrosive and Radiation for Grineer. Heat, and Slash on the Infested. Shock, Gas, Magnetic on the Corpus). If not, use either Viral or Corrosive if you have space for 2 elements, or just heat if you have space for only 1.

If you can't fully mod a weapon, that's ok. Focus on the most important stuff in the order I suggested.

If you have a gun you really like and want to fully mod up, you can use Forma (gotten from Relics) to reset your weapon to Level 0, but turn one of the weapon's Mod Slots to a specific symbol, allowing you to get much more mileage out of modding it.


Warframe Modding:

Orokin Catalyst (Orange Potato/Eggplant looking thingy) to double your modding capacity.

Health first. Armor too if you can afford it (doesn't need to be maxed, just get SOME)

Then, identify your Warframe's source of OP-ness. For Excalibur and Ember, you want mods like Intensify (more power damage), Streamline (abilities cost less), Flow (more energy).

For frames like Mag or Oberon, you want some stuff like Reach (more range on abilities), and Continuity (Abilities last longer once cast).

Or should I be farming specific lower level missions for xp or mods?

Here's a tip: Build as many weapons as you can, then level them to 30. Always have a bunch of weapons fully built in the foundry, ready to go when you need to start levelling them.

From here, you have 2 options:

1) The Boring, but efficient way:
There's a Defense Mission on Ceres (It says Dark Sector) that's often populated with lower level players.

Take any new weapons and frames you have there, and run the mission for a while. It's currently the most efficient way you have to level your gear for now (eventually you'll unlock Lua, a very spoilery place, which has a defence node that's even more efficient, and finally you'll get Hydron, which is even more efficient).

Yes, it gets a little dull, I'm sorry. If you get any Affinity boosters from the daily login, or for a Double EXP weekend, use that time to rank up as many things as you can for Mastery Rank.

2) The spicy, but slow way.
Equip fresh new weapon, do not use it. Rely on your Max level Melee or your other max level ranged weapon entirely for the duration of these missions

Run a metric ton of Relic missions, try to assemble as many Prime Warframes and Weapons as you can manage (check you have the Mastery Rank for them first).

This will give you something to work towards as you slowly level up your gear. You'll hopefully assemble a few decent weapons (Prime stuff is slightly stronger than normal weapons/frames) along the way. It's considerably slower and less efficient than just farming popular high EXP defense nodes, but it's less boring.

Once you hit about mastery rank 10, though, the need to do so decreases a whole lot, as you have unlocked most of the really good weapons.

So far, I've only used frames and weapons that are currently being levelled so as not to waste xp on maxed out stuff. I would hate to have to use maxed gear for the next 30 hours unlocking planets, unless that's really the only way to do it.

Hate to break it to you, but yes. You're at that point now. You need all the Modding Capacity you can get.

Once you hit the end of Saturn, using Orokin Catalysts/Reactors and Max rank gear becomes 100% mandatory for your primary gear (aside from maybe a secondary weapon you're taking along just to level up)
--

For more advice, try looking up BBKDragoon on Youtube. He's got a FANTASTIC newbie friendly guide series.

LeyzarGamingViews is also fanstastic for learning how to crank out as much power as you can from your weapons. ONLY WATCH HIS WEAPONS VIDEOS FOR NOW, as some of his other videos cover very spoilery stuff. Only watch everything after you complete The Second Dream quest (which, incidentally, is where the story REAAALLLY starts getting amazing).

Beautiful! You are echoing a lot of what Something Something Watermelons was saying, and I'm amazed by the example you guys are setting for the community. It's pretty awesome.

Your post is very comprehensive, and I'm looking forward to trying this stuff out. I may focus on getting my MR up a bit by finishing off the weapons I have already unlocked with that Ceres mission you mentioned. It'll give me a chance to play around with mods and status effects and abilities without the difficulty spike of Jupiter & Saturn, since I've largely ignored that stuff until now. I think I have 2 or 3 Orokin Catalysts, so I'll use those as well.

As for the story, I've heard whispers of this Second Dream quest, and I worry that it can't possibly live up to the lofty expectations everyone has set for it. The trouble is, I have zero (ZERO) clue what's going on in the story so far, and I'll have to find some sort of plot or lore summary that doesn't have any future spoilers to catch me up. Like, what is a Tenno exactly?

On a final note, there were a few instances, I think in Void Fissure defense missions, where I was hanging out with high level players, and it was crazy efficient. Mods were dropping everywhere (generally, I'll only get 1 or 2 in a normal mission) and everything was levelling super quickly. I know this is straight up piggybacking, but I'd love to know if there's any way to take advantage of these groups more consistently, provided that my presence isn't problematic for them in some way I don't know about.....cause I just jump around and collect mods, I'm useless.

[Ratt]

Nguyên văn bởi TheColorUrple:

I think I have 2 or 3 Orokin Catalysts, so I'll use those as well.

A word of warning: Orokin Catalysts and Reactors are absolutely not required to progress, even at the highest enemy levels short of endless missions. They do make it significantly easier, but even without public matchmaking giving you high-powered veteran players to carry you through missions, the proper weapons with the proper mods can comfortably kill enemies of all types at level 100 and below (i.e. the highest enemy levels go outside of endless mission scaling). DO NOT USE THEM until you have equipment worth putting them into. If a weapon or Warframe has a variant (Prime, Wraith, Vandal, Prisma, et cetera), then the base version is almost always strictly inferior and should never get a Reactor, Catalyst, or Forma. Even if a weapon doesn't have a superior variant, there is in most cases a better weapon with almost the same function, especially for melee weapons since they're explicitly divided into classes (e.g. swords).

Nguyên văn bởi TheColorUrple:

On a final note, there were a few instances, I think in Void Fissure defense missions, where I was hanging out with high level players, and it was crazy efficient. Mods were dropping everywhere (generally, I'll only get 1 or 2 in a normal mission) and everything was levelling super quickly. I know this is straight up piggybacking, but I'd love to know if there's any way to take advantage of these groups more consistently, provided that my presence isn't problematic for them in some way I don't know about.....cause I just jump around and collect mods, I'm useless.

I'll skip to this part here because I have a longer answer for your plot question.

Veterans tend to play missions where they can efficiently farm something they want. Because Void Fissures are placed at random points on the star chart and are the only way to get Prime item parts, veterans tend to use them wherever they appear, with preference for faster mission types (Capture, Exterminate, and some versions of Sabotage) over slower or otherwise problematic ones (Mobile Defense, Spy, other versions of Sabotage, Defense, Survival, and Interception) where the choice is available at the same fissure tier (Lith, Meso, Neo, or Axi). Most other efficient farming points have fixed locations, which either you can learn as you go if you don't want to be spoiled or I can tell you if you explicitly ask.

The only way your presence could be a bother to the veterans in those missions is if you're too slow to get to extraction. Even then, most have the patience to let you get there in a reasonable time, and those who don't would have found some reason to get angry anyway.

Nguyên văn bởi TheColorUrple:

As for the story, I've heard whispers of this Second Dream quest, and I worry that it can't possibly live up to the lofty expectations everyone has set for it. The trouble is, I have zero (ZERO) clue what's going on in the story so far, and I'll have to find some sort of plot or lore summary that doesn't have any future spoilers to catch me up. Like, what is a Tenno exactly?

Here's a summary of the important bits of the plot-critical quests before The Second Dream, followed by an even shorter summary of the basic facts of the Warframe universe that aren't spoilers to you.

EDIT: The last section turned out to be really long; I'm putting it in another post.

[Ratt]

As promised, here's a summary of the story as of Natah, followed by a very clipped tl;dr of who's who and what the hell's going on.

Vor's Prize: You, one of the Tenno, the users of the Warframes, have been reawakened after centuries of cryogenic stasis. Because it was hastily done, your memories are lost and your combat skills are severely impaired. A mysterious masked woman who calls herself "the Lotus", the one who lifted you from stasis, intends to use you as a weapon against the Grineer Empire, an oppressive regime backed by a nigh-endless clone army.

Admiral Vor, a Grineer officer, fits you with a device called the Ascaris, intending to mind-control you and use your power in support of Grineer conquest rather than against it, taking you as the titular prize of his. With the Lotus's guidance, you escape Vor, make off with your old space ship, repair it, meet a few allies, kill Vor, and disable the Ascaris.

Once Awake: The Lotus discovers that Doctor Tengus, a Grineer scientist, has "uncovered" (note: not "developed", "created", "invented"...) a new bio-weapon of some sort. You investigate, and this bio-weapon turns out to be the Infestation (or the Technocyte Virus), a genetically engineered zombie virus from the Old War (the events of which resulted in your cryo-stasis), thought to be extinct since then.

You try and fail to contain the outbreak and it spreads throughout the solar system, adding a fourth faction to the war (between the Grineer Empire, a multi-planetary mega-corporation called the Corpus, and the Lotus's band of Tenno and Tenno sympathizers).

The Archwing: Councilor Vay Hek of the Grineer openly declares war on the Corpus (after having informally already been at war) because his fleet of Fomorian-class battleships is nearing completion. The Lotus reveals to you that fortunately, she has recovered blueprints for an Archwing, an Old War-era winged jetpack used by the Tenno.

You recover the components for the Archwing and rebuild it in order to engage the Grineer in space, up to and including attacking the Fomorian battleships if necessary (i.e. when they're sent to destroy the Relays, the Tenno space stations).

Stolen Dreams: The Lotus tasks you with capturing Maroo, an independent Han Solo-esque figure who somehow managed to find something called an Arcane Codex, which all of the major players including the Lotus want but none of them seem willing to say exactly why.

You capture Maroo and the Lotus badgers her into helping you retrieve the full set of six Arcane Codices. You bring them all to an infested, derelict space ship of Orokin make (as in the Orokin Empire, which you served in the Old War). There, you insert the Codices into an equally mysterious device called the Arcane Machine, upon which it spits out a cryptic message about "the womb of the sky". It's all very disappointing, but the Lotus seems satisfied and orders you to leave.

The New Strange: This is the beginning of the second act of Warframe's story. This is where the plot really gets going, where the first big reveals are had, where the world finishes taking shape and the stakes are set. Natah is further rising action to this story, and The Second Dream is its climax.

Cephalon Simaris, a loosely Lotus-allied AI created for and obsessed with cataloguing all organic life forms in a database he calls the Sanctuary by lethally disintegrating them with a special scanning device, demands your assistance in retrieving some of his scanning drones, which he sent into a Grineer prison block for reasons he refuses to reveal. Cephalon Ordis, your ship AI, is weirdly enamoured with Simaris for unexplained reasons.

You find them, and after you do, the Lotus prompts you to steal the Grineer security logs to find out what Simaris is hiding. It turns out that he discovered something related to the Arcane Codices and the Arcane Machine. You confront Simaris with this information, and he eventually agrees to explain in exchange for a Synthesis, a living sacrifice to his scanning process, condemned to eternal torment as a data-ghost in his Sanctuary. You go get one - it's not like you haven't sent thousands to hell already, so whatever - and Simaris gives you a blueprint for a beacon of some sort.

You rebuild the beacon, and it hijacks Ordis to repeat the "womb in the sky" message. Simaris counters this interference somehow, then presses you to find the original source of that signal. The Lotus agrees, letting slip that it relates to someone searching for the Codices. This person turns out to be the Warframe called Chroma, being controlled by something other than a Tenno.

After some cagey back and forth between Simaris and the Lotus and a few more chases, the two of them goad you into performing Synthesis on Chroma. On being pressed to sacrifice your life for the Synthesis of Chroma, Ordis finally overcomes his fawning over Simaris and reveals to you that you can use Simaris's scanner to free Chroma from the control of the mysterious, Arcane Machine-related entity.

Natah: You, now an accomplished Tenno who has fought in the Lotus's name everywhere from Mercury to Saturn, raid the Grineer cloning labs on Uranus and discover some strange, robotic drones scanning the environment, looking for something. You scan one, and the Lotus demands to know what you saw, since apparently the drones blocked her from seeing for herself. She sends you to investigate, insistently assuming that they're Corpus devices. Once you gather enough data for her to be forced to admit otherwise, the Lotus suddenly says "I'm sorry, Tenno; stay safe" and cuts off communications.

When you get back to the ship, you are contacted by Teshin, a Tenno-allied warrior who manages the Conclave, the series of controlled trials pitting Tenno against Tenno (i.e. the PvP system) in order to prepare them for "the evils beyond the Outer Terminus". Teshin has you help him invade Grineer computer systems and capture a Grineer officer to find information about the drones. When this leads you to investigate some sort of "tomb", as Teshin puts it, the Lotus suddenly re-establishes communications to warn you both against it.

She reveals, Teshin knows, and you soon find out once you reach the tomb that the drones you found are Sentients, fragments of the only truly sentient artificial intelligence to survive the Old War. They were, in fact, the Orokin Empire's enemy in the Old War, and they are the "evils beyond the Outer Terminus" of which Teshin spoke.

(Cephalons are an exception. To learn why, scan the Cephalon Fragments throughout the solar system to reconstruct Ordis's memory, then examine them closely in order to reveal a secret message. Because this requires access to every planet in the game, it is not included in the section below.)

Tyl Regor, the Grineer scientist in charge of the cloning labs, found and excavated this tomb under the rock on which the labs were built. You arrive at the scene just in time for this excavation to finish and some burned creature to awaken, calling out for Natah. It's the voice from the Arcane Machine, so it's implied that the Arcane Machine woke it up and Chroma was trying to prevent that. You extract, and the Lotus reveals that Natah is her real name but urges you back to the tomb site to bury the tomb again. She has a bomb planted there, intending to release magma over Tyl Regor's drilling site and seal the gap, and needs you to protect it while it arms.

Just like in Once Awake, the bomb plan fails. The burned creature, the Sentient, reveals that Natah is his daughter, meaning that the Lotus is a Sentient too. Natah was sent to kill the Tenno and tip the balance of the Old War in the Sentients' favour. Instead, Natah "hid them away in the second dream", putting them into stasis and squirrelling them away so neither side of the war could have their power.

Other information available after Natah but before The Second Dream from non-quest sources: In the absence of the Tenno, the Orokin Empire lost the Old War and was fatally wounded, soon to spiral to its end in the internal conflict between the Orokin rulership (now all dead or missing) and the underclasses (who eventually became the Grineer and the Corpus).

However, because the Orokin had originally designed the Sentients to lose their ability to reproduce when exposed to Void energy (which necessarily happens during faster-than-light travel), all of the Sentient invaders except for Natah and her father were successfully exterminated by the survivors. Natah went missing, and her father was gravely wounded and presumed dead.

The solar system was left a graveyard of the former empire, with bits of its barely understood relics and tech scattered about everywhere for people set back hundreds of years in technological progress to find and fight over.

This continued until the events of Vor's Prize, when the Grineer discovered the greatest of that lost technology, the Warframes, and in a panic, the two greatest surviving forces in the Old War, Natah and the Tenno, joined forces to stop them from reclaiming the Orokin Empire's place.

Very short summary as of Natah:

GOOD GUYS

• Tenno: You and the other players. Taking orders from the Lotus to stop tyranny and evil in the solar system. No idea about their past at first. Prone to listening to whoever speaks last and killing whoever that person says to kill.
  
• The Lotus: Mission control, voice in the sky, wears a purple bag over her head. Former bad guy named Natah, but she's trying to put that behind her.
  
• Teshin: Samurai with a big bronze bowl for a helmet. Only honourable warrior left in the solar system. Runs PvP to prepare for the eventual return of the Sentients.
  
• Darvo and Maroo: Freelancers who work with the Tenno. He's former Corpus royalty, she made her own name with her own skills, but for helping the Tenno, they're both personae non gratae outside the Tenno relays.
  
• Cephalons (Ordis, Suda, Simaris, and more not yet known to you): AIs from the Orokin Empire. All singularly obsessed with whatever they're designed to do: Ordis is your caretaker, Suda is an observer, and Simaris is a zoologist. They're all a bit insane, but they're useful as long as they can be convinced that helping you contributes to their respective primary tasks.
  
• Ostrons and Solaris: Civilians living under the boot of the Grineer and the Corpus respectively. You work for them in violently lifting that boot somewhat, and they reward you with favours. The Ostrons are a lot better off than the Solaris.

BAD GUYS

• Grineer: Clone troops. They want to conquer the solar system by force of arms, and thanks to their cloning facilities and huge industrial base, they've got arms of both kinds for days. No one faction can stand against them in an open fight, but they have enemies on all sides and can't trounce them all at once. Very low-tech because they just keep throwing slave labour at problems, replacing it if it dies or rebels or whatever.
  
• Corpus: Capitalism, ho! They want to conquer the solar system by force of arms, and thanks to their recruitment propaganda and huge industrial base, they've got arms of both kinds for days. No one faction can stand against them in an open fight, but they have enemies on all sides and can't trounce them all at once. Very high-tech yet they just keep throwing indentured labour at problems, replacing it if it dies or rebels or whatever.
  
• Infested: The Bugs Zerg 'Nids Flood totally original mandatory hive mind race. They want to conquer the solar system by force of arms, and thanks to their flesh-reshaping virus and huge population base, they've got arms of various misshapen kinds for days. No one faction can stand against them in an open fight, but they have enemies on all sides and can't trounce them all at once. Very no-tech so they just keep throwing enthralled labour at problems, replacing it if it dies or gets cured or whatever.
  
• Corrupted: Any of the above who either (1) get lost in one of the Orokin towers in the Void and hijacked by its Neural Sentry, a device that mind-controls them into defending the tower, or (2) wander near a Void Fissure and get infected with Void energy to much the same effect. Covered in gold bits, no free will, exist only as the Neural Sentry's tools.
  
• Orokin: The precursors, the ancient empire. They loved gold and magical-looking high-tech devices and left both everywhere. They're all dead now.
  
• Sentients: The only true sentient AIs created by the Orokin. Originally intended as terraforming tools for the Tau Ceti system, they took too long to get there, pondered the meaning of life, and decided to turn around and kill all the humans back home instead of slaving away under some distant sun on their behalf.

CURRENT EVENTS: Everyone in the BAD GUYS list is fighting everyone else in the BAD GUYS list, and you and the rest of the GOOD GUYS are not so much trying to beat any of them as trying to make all of them forever not win. You're maintaining the status quo, the interplanetary stalemate, because any one side winning would be even more horrible than the endless war.

[TheColorUrple]

Nguyên văn bởi Ratt:

As promised, here's a summary of the story as of Natah, followed by a very clipped tl;dr of who's who and what the hell's going on.

Vor's Prize: You, one of the Tenno, the users of the Warframes, have been reawakened after centuries of cryogenic stasis. Because it was hastily done, your memories are lost and your combat skills are severely impaired. A mysterious masked woman who calls herself "the Lotus", the one who lifted you from stasis, intends to use you as a weapon against the Grineer Empire, an oppressive regime backed by a nigh-endless clone army.

Admiral Vor, a Grineer officer, fits you with a device called the Ascaris, intending to mind-control you and use your power in support of Grineer conquest rather than against it, taking you as the titular prize of his. With the Lotus's guidance, you escape Vor, make off with your old space ship, repair it, meet a few allies, kill Vor, and disable the Ascaris.

Once Awake: The Lotus discovers that Doctor Tengus, a Grineer scientist, has "uncovered" (note: not "developed", "created", "invented"...) a new bio-weapon of some sort. You investigate, and this bio-weapon turns out to be the Infestation (or the Technocyte Virus), a genetically engineered zombie virus from the Old War (the events of which resulted in your cryo-stasis), thought to be extinct since then.

You try and fail to contain the outbreak and it spreads throughout the solar system, adding a fourth faction to the war (between the Grineer Empire, a multi-planetary mega-corporation called the Corpus, and the Lotus's band of Tenno and Tenno sympathizers).

The Archwing: Councilor Vay Hek of the Grineer openly declares war on the Corpus (after having informally already been at war) because his fleet of Fomorian-class battleships is nearing completion. The Lotus reveals to you that fortunately, she has recovered blueprints for an Archwing, an Old War-era winged jetpack used by the Tenno.

You recover the components for the Archwing and rebuild it in order to engage the Grineer in space, up to and including attacking the Fomorian battleships if necessary (i.e. when they're sent to destroy the Relays, the Tenno space stations).

Stolen Dreams: The Lotus tasks you with capturing Maroo, an independent Han Solo-esque figure who somehow managed to find something called an Arcane Codex, which all of the major players including the Lotus want but none of them seem willing to say exactly why.

You capture Maroo and the Lotus badgers her into helping you retrieve the full set of six Arcane Codices. You bring them all to an infested, derelict space ship of Orokin make (as in the Orokin Empire, which you served in the Old War). There, you insert the Codices into an equally mysterious device called the Arcane Machine, upon which it spits out a cryptic message about "the womb of the sky". It's all very disappointing, but the Lotus seems satisfied and orders you to leave.

The New Strange: This is the beginning of the second act of Warframe's story. This is where the plot really gets going, where the first big reveals are had, where the world finishes taking shape and the stakes are set. Natah is further rising action to this story, and The Second Dream is its climax.

Cephalon Simaris, a loosely Lotus-allied AI created for and obsessed with cataloguing all organic life forms in a database he calls the Sanctuary by lethally disintegrating them with a special scanning device, demands your assistance in retrieving some of his scanning drones, which he sent into a Grineer prison block for reasons he refuses to reveal. Cephalon Ordis, your ship AI, is weirdly enamoured with Simaris for unexplained reasons.

You find them, and after you do, the Lotus prompts you to steal the Grineer security logs to find out what Simaris is hiding. It turns out that he discovered something related to the Arcane Codices and the Arcane Machine. You confront Simaris with this information, and he eventually agrees to explain in exchange for a Synthesis, a living sacrifice to his scanning process, condemned to eternal torment as a data-ghost in his Sanctuary. You go get one - it's not like you haven't sent thousands to hell already, so whatever - and Simaris gives you a blueprint for a beacon of some sort.

You rebuild the beacon, and it hijacks Ordis to repeat the "womb in the sky" message. Simaris counters this interference somehow, then presses you to find the original source of that signal. The Lotus agrees, letting slip that it relates to someone searching for the Codices. This person turns out to be the Warframe called Chroma, being controlled by something other than a Tenno.

After some cagey back and forth between Simaris and the Lotus and a few more chases, the two of them goad you into performing Synthesis on Chroma. On being pressed to sacrifice your life for the Synthesis of Chroma, Ordis finally overcomes his fawning over Simaris and reveals to you that you can use Simaris's scanner to free Chroma from the control of the mysterious, Arcane Machine-related entity.

Natah: You, now an accomplished Tenno who has fought in the Lotus's name everywhere from Mercury to Saturn, raid the Grineer cloning labs on Uranus and discover some strange, robotic drones scanning the environment, looking for something. You scan one, and the Lotus demands to know what you saw, since apparently the drones blocked her from seeing for herself. She sends you to investigate, insistently assuming that they're Corpus devices. Once you gather enough data for her to be forced to admit otherwise, the Lotus suddenly says "I'm sorry, Tenno; stay safe" and cuts off communications.

When you get back to the ship, you are contacted by Teshin, a Tenno-allied warrior who manages the Conclave, the series of controlled trials pitting Tenno against Tenno (i.e. the PvP system) in order to prepare them for "the evils beyond the Outer Terminus". Teshin has you help him invade Grineer computer systems and capture a Grineer officer to find information about the drones. When this leads you to investigate some sort of "tomb", as Teshin puts it, the Lotus suddenly re-establishes communications to warn you both against it.

She reveals, Teshin knows, and you soon find out once you reach the tomb that the drones you found are Sentients, fragments of the only truly sentient artificial intelligence to survive the Old War. They were, in fact, the Orokin Empire's enemy in the Old War, and they are the "evils beyond the Outer Terminus" of which Teshin spoke.

(Cephalons are an exception. To learn why, scan the Cephalon Fragments throughout the solar system to reconstruct Ordis's memory, then examine them closely in order to reveal a secret message. Because this requires access to every planet in the game, it is not included in the section below.)

Tyl Regor, the Grineer scientist in charge of the cloning labs, found and excavated this tomb under the rock on which the labs were built. You arrive at the scene just in time for this excavation to finish and some burned creature to awaken, calling out for Natah. It's the voice from the Arcane Machine, so it's implied that the Arcane Machine woke it up and Chroma was trying to prevent that. You extract, and the Lotus reveals that Natah is her real name but urges you back to the tomb site to bury the tomb again. She has a bomb planted there, intending to release magma over Tyl Regor's drilling site and seal the gap, and needs you to protect it while it arms.

Just like in Once Awake, the bomb plan fails. The burned creature, the Sentient, reveals that Natah is his daughter, meaning that the Lotus is a Sentient too. Natah was sent to kill the Tenno and tip the balance of the Old War in the Sentients' favour. Instead, Natah "hid them away in the second dream", putting them into stasis and squirrelling them away so neither side of the war could have their power.

Other information available after Natah but before The Second Dream from non-quest sources: In the absence of the Tenno, the Orokin Empire lost the Old War and was fatally wounded, soon to spiral to its end in the internal conflict between the Orokin rulership (now all dead or missing) and the underclasses (who eventually became the Grineer and the Corpus).

However, because the Orokin had originally designed the Sentients to lose their ability to reproduce when exposed to Void energy (which necessarily happens during faster-than-light travel), all of the Sentient invaders except for Natah and her father were successfully exterminated by the survivors. Natah went missing, and her father was gravely wounded and presumed dead.

The solar system was left a graveyard of the former empire, with bits of its barely understood relics and tech scattered about everywhere for people set back hundreds of years in technological progress to find and fight over.

This continued until the events of Vor's Prize, when the Grineer discovered the greatest of that lost technology, the Warframes, and in a panic, the two greatest surviving forces in the Old War, Natah and the Tenno, joined forces to stop them from reclaiming the Orokin Empire's place.

Very short summary as of Natah:

GOOD GUYS

• Tenno: You and the other players. Taking orders from the Lotus to stop tyranny and evil in the solar system. No idea about their past at first. Prone to listening to whoever speaks last and killing whoever that person says to kill.
  
• The Lotus: Mission control, voice in the sky, wears a purple bag over her head. Former bad guy named Natah, but she's trying to put that behind her.
  
• Teshin: Samurai with a big bronze bowl for a helmet. Only honourable warrior left in the solar system. Runs PvP to prepare for the eventual return of the Sentients.
  
• Darvo and Maroo: Freelancers who work with the Tenno. He's former Corpus royalty, she made her own name with her own skills, but for helping the Tenno, they're both personae non gratae outside the Tenno relays.
  
• Cephalons (Ordis, Suda, Simaris, and more not yet known to you): AIs from the Orokin Empire. All singularly obsessed with whatever they're designed to do: Ordis is your caretaker, Suda is an observer, and Simaris is a zoologist. They're all a bit insane, but they're useful as long as they can be convinced that helping you contributes to their respective primary tasks.
  
• Ostrons and Solaris: Civilians living under the boot of the Grineer and the Corpus respectively. You work for them in violently lifting that boot somewhat, and they reward you with favours. The Ostrons are a lot better off than the Solaris.

BAD GUYS

• Grineer: Clone troops. They want to conquer the solar system by force of arms, and thanks to their cloning facilities and huge industrial base, they've got arms of both kinds for days. No one faction can stand against them in an open fight, but they have enemies on all sides and can't trounce them all at once. Very low-tech because they just keep throwing slave labour at problems, replacing it if it dies or rebels or whatever.
  
• Corpus: Capitalism, ho! They want to conquer the solar system by force of arms, and thanks to their recruitment propaganda and huge industrial base, they've got arms of both kinds for days. No one faction can stand against them in an open fight, but they have enemies on all sides and can't trounce them all at once. Very high-tech yet they just keep throwing indentured labour at problems, replacing it if it dies or rebels or whatever.
  
• Infested: The Bugs Zerg 'Nids Flood totally original mandatory hive mind race. They want to conquer the solar system by force of arms, and thanks to their flesh-reshaping virus and huge population base, they've got arms of various misshapen kinds for days. No one faction can stand against them in an open fight, but they have enemies on all sides and can't trounce them all at once. Very no-tech so they just keep throwing enthralled labour at problems, replacing it if it dies or gets cured or whatever.
  
• Corrupted: Any of the above who either (1) get lost in one of the Orokin towers in the Void and hijacked by its Neural Sentry, a device that mind-controls them into defending the tower, or (2) wander near a Void Fissure and get infected with Void energy to much the same effect. Covered in gold bits, no free will, exist only as the Neural Sentry's tools.
  
• Orokin: The precursors, the ancient empire. They loved gold and magical-looking high-tech devices and left both everywhere. They're all dead now.
  
• Sentients: The only true sentient AIs created by the Orokin. Originally intended as terraforming tools for the Tau Ceti system, they took too long to get there, pondered the meaning of life, and decided to turn around and kill all the humans back home instead of slaving away under some distant sun on their behalf.

CURRENT EVENTS: Everyone in the BAD GUYS list is fighting everyone else in the BAD GUYS list, and you and the rest of the GOOD GUYS are not so much trying to beat any of them as trying to make all of them forever not win. You're maintaining the status quo, the interplanetary stalemate, because any one side winning would be even more horrible than the endless war.

Wow, this is so cool!!! I read the whole thing, minus the redacted bits I haven't gotten to yet.

You should consider publishing a beginner's story guide on Steam! Flesh it out a bit, add some photos, and boom, new players like me will have an easy resource to consult without fear of spoilers.

Having a grasp of the storyline definitely makes me more interested in seeing this through. Thanks :)

[Tabloid tuesday]

I one time had a gara specter totally cheese a junction node in less than a minute, I think it was jupiter.