Crafting all the Frames

Frames of War, in order by difficulty (in my opinion).

Introductions & Basics

Frames of War, in order by difficulty (in my opinion).

Introduction

They are in order by my personal experience and the estimated time investment to get them (starting around Earth, going up to quests with level requirements) and the time of actual grinding.
I'm not a pro or a noob either, okay... maybe I am max rank now but that doesn't matter because I started making this guide around MR16-20... shut up :D

Some are based on RNG (patience laddie), some are require a bit of skill, and some are basicly thrown at you. Some may have "special" requirements to build like a somewhat rare resource, or an amount of standing to unlock, these are also listed.

This is a quicky for newbies and casual players because the game gives very little information on where to start or what frame to go for after the intro quest is done. For more information like specific drop chances, how to mod and other stuff you may check the WarframeWiki. It's up to date and works wonders.

Or... to those who are unsure how the whole building/crafting thingy works here is a little explanation:

Basics

Each frame has a main blueprint that is necessary to craft the frame. It can be used in the foundry to craft the warframe, but it requires three fully built parts. Those parts are namely: Neuroptics, Chassis and Systems. You have to craft these three first in order to build main frame.

The main bp can be acquired in different ways depending on the warframe. Some of them are rewarded after quests, some are simply bought from the market for credits, some are dropped by bosses or at the end of a round.

The three parts are mostly the latter two methods. This is what I'm about to show in this guide.

"Good fortune, Hunter!" - Cephalon Simaris

Acquired from a Boss

Warframe	Boss	Location
Ember	General Sargas Ruk	Tethys, Saturn
Excalibur	Lieutnant Lech Kril	War, Mars
Frost	Lieutnant Lech Kril & Captain Vor	Exta, Ceres
Hydroid	Counsillor Vay Hek	Oro, Earth
Loki	Hyena Pack	Psamate, Neptune
Mag	The Sergeant	Iliad, Phobos
Nova	The Raptors	Namaah, Europa
Nyx	Phorid	Any Invasion mission titled "Phorid"
Rhino	Jackal	Fossa, Venus
Trinity	Ambulas	Hades, Pluto
Valkyrie	Alad V	Themisto, Jupiter

Equinox

Acquired from the boss of Uranus, Tyl Regor.
But the frame has a night and a day form, so both of them have their 3 parts.
That means it's at least 8-9 runs.

- Day Chassis
- Day Systems
- Day Neuro
- Night Chassis
- Night Systems
- Night Neuro
- Day form
- Night form
- Main blueprint (requires a Forma to craft)

Vauban

Acquired from Alert Missions (Before the Saturn Six update)

Now available from Nora Night's offerings, the woman who gives daily and weekly challanges called "acts".

Gara

Requirements:

Main BP:
- Do the Quest which is easy and kind of self-explanatory

Parts:
- Do the Bounties

Revenant

Requirements

Main BP:
- Reach level 2 with the Quills
- Obtain the Mask of the Revenant from Nakak
- Go to the plains at night
- Touch the marked things

Parts:
- Do the Bounties

Oberon

Dropped by Eximus enemies
They're hard to encounter at first, they look like normal enemies but they have orange outline or some kind energy around them.

Oberon's parts are now dropped resource caches in different Railjack Proximas.
Systems in Earth Proxima.
Chassis in Saturn Proxima.
And the Neuroptics in Grineer-controlled Veil Proxima missions.

Clan research

- Create or join a Clan
- Farm
- Build a Tenno Lab
- Farm a lot
- Research the blueprints you need
- Farm a lot more

Frames:
- Banshee
- Nezha
- Volt
- Wukong
- Zephyr

Nekros

Dropped by the boss, Lephantis
Mission: Orokin Derelict Assassination, requires a key, which can be bought in the market. The key is consumed after one mission, so I'd suggest crafting a bunch of them.
The key system was removed, while the Derelict was renamed Deimos, making Nekros a fairly easy to farm warframe.

Saryn

Acquired from the boss of Sedna, Kela De Thaym.
The mission: Merrow, Sedna is only accessable by earning Judgement Points in the Arena missions.

Garuda

Main blueprint:
- You can get it from Vox Solaris quest

Parts:
- All three of them are bounty rewards from Eudico

Toroids:
- You can get each of the 3 types from different locations in the Orb Vallis
- To increase their drop chance you need to reach a high alert level. In other words: you have to let the enemies put down 4 reinforcement beacons (poles).
- The 3 types: Vega, Sola, Calda

Vega - Spaceport
Sola - Temple of Profit
Calda - Transit Depot and Enrichment Labs

Baruuk

All parts are offerings from Vox Solaris (NOT to confuse with Solaris United - they have nothing to do with each other).
You can earn standing for Vox Solaris by giving your Toroids to Little Duck (at the room where you start the Orb Hunt).
Main bp is at rank 2, everything else is at rank 3.
Resources required:
- 12 Vega Toroids
- 12 Calda Toroids
- 2 Sola Toroids
- 15 Gyromag Systems
- 10 Atmo Systems
- About 80k standing

Lavos

Since the Operation he was introduced in ended, now his main blueprint and parts can be bought from Father (in the Nekralisk, Deimos) for 5000 standing each.

His parts drop in the Operation Orphix Venom event - there's probably going to be another way in the future where his blueprints will come back so don't worry if you've missed it.

They can be bought from Father in the Necralisk for 1,5k Phasic Cells for the main bp, and 1k for each part.
OR
The part blueprints can drop as rewards for Rotation A of the Endurance (3rd and "hardest" mission of the event) or Rotation C from the other two types.

Xaku

Their main bp comes from the Heart of Deimos quest, while their parts are bounty rewards on Deimos.
The main problem with farming them is Scintillant, which is a rare resource that can be found in the Iso Vaults or from again bounty rewards. After all the updates it should be easier to acquire.

Hildryn

Main blueprint:
- Vox Solaris rank 2 (Agent) offering, (for more info about Vox Solaris check Baruuk)

Parts:
- Dropped by the Exploiter Orb (NOT to confuse with the Profit-taker Orb)
- Exploiter Orb can be taken down by entering the cave (North-east from the Harindi Crater)

Only Quest needed

Mirage - Hidden Messages
Limbo - Limbo Theorem
Inaros - Sand of Inaros - You need a blueprint before starting the quest, it can be bought from Baro Ki'teer (25k credit + 100 ducats)
Chroma - New Strange
Titania - Silver Grove

Excalibur Umbra

There are no chassis, systems and neuro. There's only one main blueprint that takes seconds to complete.
You need to complete his quest, the Sacrifice and that's basicly it. As I did with the Chains of Harrow, I'd recommend Limbo for this quest.

Caliban

Getting the parts is not that hard but to start farming him you need to complete the New War quest, and you can only start the New War if you already done the other main quests.

The main bp can be bought from the market for credits.

After the New War, at daytime in Cetus you get special bounties from Konzu labeled "Narmer", that's where the parts drop.
When it's night in Cetus, the bounties move to Fortuna and you get them from Konzu's Venus counterpart Eudico.
However, you can only get one part at a time as the bounties have slow rotation of three. One with the Chassis and an Archon melee weapon (which is another cool thing to get), one with the Neuro and another melee, and a third one with the Systems and yet another melee weapon.

Sevagoth

His main blueprint is a reward for completing the Call of the Tempestarii quest.

The parts can drops at the end of Void Storm missions in Neptune, Pluto and Veil Proxima.

Nidus

Main BP:
Glast Gambit quest

Parts:
Infested Salvage, Rotation C

Mesa

Main BP:
- Patient Zero quest

Parts:
- Mutalist Alad V Assassination, requires key

- The coordinates for the key can be acquired as Invasion mission rewards.

Wisp

(Not sure about the missions accessability yet - storywise it's after the Chimera Prologue, so I don't know if you are able to do it before that quest.)

All blueprints including the main one are received after defeating a new boss in Jupiter, the Ropalolyst (a big sentient chicken).
The three parts require a new resource called Hexenon. You need 1200 of them to craft all the parts. It can be farmed on Jupiter.

Ash

All three parts dropped by the Grineer Manic.
Manic is an enemy type that rarely appears. NOT to confuse with Drekar Manic which appears at Tyl Regor's assassination mission, that type does NOT drop the Ash blueprints.
The place I farmed that one is a defection mission (while also farming Harrow). Any. Grineer Distruption works even better (when farming Gauss). When he appears you'll hear a crazy laugh.

The new drop location for the parts is Rotation C in Railjack Survival and Defense missions.
For the Neuroptics you need to go to Neptune Proxima.
For the Chassis: Pluto Proxima.
For the Systems: Venus Proxima.

Protea

You receive Protea's main blueprint at the end of the Deadlock Protocol quest.
Her parts can drop from the Granum Void.

For her Neuroptics you need to complete normal Granum Void runs. As it is in the quest, you get a coin (Granum Crown) from level 0-15 enemies, and use it to enter the Granum void through the golden hand portal.

For her Chassis you do the same, but with an Exemplar Granum Crown which drops from level 16-30 enemies.

For the Systems you do the same thing again, but with a Zenith Granum Crown which drops from level 31+ enemies.

All three types of coins are dropped by a special enemy type called treasurer, who will spawn around 2-4 mins or a bit delayed if you were in the Granum Void.

In the Void itself, you have to kill errant specters before the time expires. You can get more time by:
- Picking up the little triangles
- Freeing Solaris people with a fully charged Xoris (to fully charge it, kill 3 errant specters with it)

Khora

Reward from Simaris' Sanctuary Onslaught.

2 zones - Rotation A
4 zones - Rotation A
6 zones - Rotation B
8 zones - Rotation C

Chassis - Rotation A
Neuro - Rotation B
Systems - Rotation C
Main BP - Rotation C

Gauss

His parts drop as rotation C reward in the disruption mission: Kelpie, Sedna.
For further explanation check the "What is a Rotation?" section of the guide.
Each part has a drop chance of 10%.

Grendel

He's a hard one because you have to do Arbitration missions, apart from that the farm is not that long.
(In case you don't know what Arbitration missions are:) They are alert missions that show up every hour. And the special thing about them is that you can get Vitus Essence from them (which can be used to buy stuff from a guy at the Arbiters of Hexis syndicate. The other thing that's different from everything else is that you have one life - only one. The only way to come is if your team collects 5 "keys" or something like that to unlock medtower at the place you died.

Where Vitus Essence drops:
-You can get 3 from completing the Arbitration mission itself.
-Some enemies have low chance drop 1.
-And 1 per completed rotation.

The aforementioned guy sells three locators. Each locator looks like a Grendel part:
-The one resembling Grendel's glorious body unlocks a Defense mission to the Chassis.
-The one resembling Grendel's head unlocks a Survival mission to the Neuroptics.
-The one resembling Grendel's spine or whatever unlocks an Excavation mission to the Systems.

All three missions are on Europe, the drop chance is 100%, but you CAN'T USE the following:
-Mods
-Operator
-Gear wheel

Atlas

Main BP:
- The Jordas Precept quest

Parts:
- Jordas Golem Assassination,
Which requires a key, archwing mission and hardcore pain.

Yareli

She earned this place on the list because of both her quest being complicated for casual players and her build time being so long.

So first up, her main blueprint comes from the Waverider quest which is basicly 25 K-Drive challenges.

Her parts can be researched in the Dojo, but NOT in the Tenno lab. You have to build a new lab called the Ventkid Bash Lab.

Building this lab already takes 1 day, the research takes 3 more, then building the parts takes 12 hours, while assembling the frame will take another 3 days. So it's 7.5 days in total.

Gyre

Gyre's blueprints including the main one can be acquired as bounty rewards on the Zariman.
To get there you need to beat "The New War" and "The Angels of the Zariman" quests first.
Each one of them drops from a different bounty which can be seen when you visit Quinn.

Ivara

Reward from Spy missions, Rotation C.
And on their own tiers only.

- Main BP and Neuro on Tier 3 (Hard)
- Chassis on Tier 2 (Medium)
- Systems on Tier 1 (Easy)

Tier 1:
- Cambria, Earth
- Unda, Venus
- Susei, Mercury
- Arval, Mars
- Shklovsky, Phobos
Or alternatively:
- Spy mission in Venus Proxima

Tier 2:
- Bode, Ceres
- Almathea, Jupiter
- Valmac, Europa
- Dione, Saturn
- Pavlov, Lua
Or alternatively:
- Spy in Neptune Proxima


Tier 3:
- Rosalind, Uranus
- Laomedeia, Neptun
- Oceanum, Pluto
- Kappa, Sedna
Or alternatively:
- Spy in Pluto Proxima for the Neuro and Veil Proxima for the Main BP

Octavia

Main BP:
- Octavia's Anthem quest

Parts:
Chassis:
- Secret Room in Lua, with a music puzzle
Neuro:
- Orokin Derelict Survival, Rotation C
Systems:
- Rotation A cache on Lua, Crossfire mission

Harrow

Main BP:
Chains of Harrow Quest
- Which could be done easily if you have Limbo

Parts:
Chassis:
- Void Fissure Missions, it is dropped by the enemies
it's like spam, you always have at least one in your inventory no matter what.
Systems:
- Defection Missions (Caracol, Saturn - Memphis, Phobos - Yursa, Neptune)
Rotation C, which means you have a chance for it's drop after every 8 squads.
Neuro:
- Pago, Kuva Fortress - spy mission,
Only Rotation C, which means all three vaults opened correctly, not just C.

Conclave and intro/tutorial

There are another ways to get Excalibur, Mag and Volt. (A friend told me that Loki used to be a starter character too.)

Intro/tutorial
-Well you have to choose one and the amount of stuff you know about the game at that point is literally zero. The description won't tell you properly what to choose.
-This way gives you only one.

Conclave
-This way gives you all three.
-In a fully crafted form, no chassis, neuro, systems.
-But takes a lot of time.
-You have to level up the Conclave Syndicate, which is basicly a PvP mode. (I'm not going to say that it's dead or anything but it's kind of a forgotten corner of Warframe, or a meme at this point.)
-In order to level up to Typhoon (the highest rank) you need 240k standing, 100 ducats, Forma, Orokin catalyst & reactor.
-All of the frames require 60k standing.

(And also you can get them from their bosses as I wrote it earlier, and that's the easiest way)
Check the "Acquired from a Boss" part of this guide.

What is a Rotation?

Rotation can be a number of rounds or different ways to complete a mission.

Spy missions reward you by the number of vaults you opened.
There are different rewards for each outcome. It is basicly a lottery. So let's say there are 3 buckets filled with stuff you can get. Bucket A, B and C. If you open only 1 vault you get a random reward from bucket A. Opening 2 vaults gives you something from B, and 3 opened vaults will give you C.
If you're looking for a frame part most of the time it is a Rotation C reward (e.g. Harrow, Ivara).

Survival, defense, defection missions and sanctuary onslaught reward you by the number of waves/rounds you completed.
There is a reward at every second round at onslaught, every 5th wave at defense, every 5th minute at survival, and every second squad in defection but the pattern can be different. A-A-B-C is the standard Rotation pattern for endless missions.

Disruption missions has a different system. First thing is that you have defend conduits from the enemy demo units. As the table says, you need to defend a number of conduits in order to get the wanted rotation. The second difference is that the rotation does NOT restart after round 4, all rounds after that are identical to round 4.

Rounds	1/4 conduits	2/4 conduits	3/4 conduits	4/4 conduits
1	A	A	A	B
2	A	A	B	B
3	A	B	B	C
4+	B	B	C	C

"Must have" or "must keep" frames IMO

Please note that this is only my opinion, there could be other options, differnet methods. If I missed something out, you can always comment down below :D

Also consider that you can get slots from events and nightwave, and also 25p at a time is farmable if you know what to trade.

Excalibur
My starter frame was Excalibur (I started a bit before the Plains of Eidolon update I think). He's good for slashing yourself out from risky situations.
And the reason I recommend him the most are Junction bosses. They can be easily stunned by his 2nd ability. If you're going for the same thing but in Steel Path, I'd recommend Revenant, he has a great stun ability for high level enemies.

Limbo (Prime)
At first I thought he was bad and useless, and he is kinda bad but I should recommend him for Quests. He's anti-sentient to be honest, in his void form he takes no damage at all. So when you return your frame after taking damage as an operator, you won't be killed instantly.
- Chains of Harrow
- The Sacrifice
- Maybe some others in the future...
I should also recommend him for a few mastery tests.

Inaros (Prime)
My undying sand boi. He has a huge amount of health and he revives himself by turning everyone into sand. He has this pocket sand ability which is great for stunning enemies.
I think he was a good choice for completing Octavia's Anthem for example.
His Prime version goes beyond that, I got about 11-12k without buffs, combine that with Arcane Grace and you're immortal.

Excalibur Umbra
Has everything that the normal one has. If you use operator he covers you. Comes with great mods.

Chroma, Titania, Mirage, also Limbo and Inaros (again)
Maybe, you'll eventually replace some of them with their prime variants, BUT keep in mind, that Simaris still has some high prices to buy back the quest frames (in case you want to feed Helminth). It was halfed before the Heart of Deimos update but it's still 125k standing per character.

Vauban (Prime)
Turns most of the mastery tests over 20 into a fun ride. With great ability range comes great ball of screaming enemies.

Mesa (Prime)
With good pistol mods on her regulators she moves down anything. Literally ANYTHING. The two revolvers can be turned into a 20mm A10 cannon if you use the perfect build. Mastery Test 30 go brrrrrr..... it would've been impossible without her 4.

Basicly anyone who was pain to farm
This is quite self-explanatory but you need to keep in mind that you can craft Mag, Nyx or Ember any day while re-farming someone like Ivara, Octavia or Harrow is basicly a 10th ring for Dante's Inferno.

Can I get my quest stuff back?

So you sold a quest-related frame? Not that big of a problem anymore! Because you can buy it from Simaris piece by piece, sadly each part costs 50k standing, while main blueprints are 100k. Be careful what you sell!

Summary

- Revenant, Gara, Vauban and the boss ones are pretty easy.

- The BP research requires some farming but you can get them instantly if you have a good clan.

- Oberon isn't hard also, it's just not that easy to meet eximus enemies at the very start.

- The quest ones are only delayed because you have to unlock a lot of things first.

- Khora and Ash are kind of luck based drops.

- Nidus needs this strange gamemode to get his parts and also requires the quest, but that one's easy.

- Atlas' quest is easy, but the parts... real pain. Good archgun build needed.

- Yareli's quest is about doing K-drive tricks, so yeah... really annoying.

- Ivara... a lot of hacking and luck.

- Harrow's quest is easy if you have Limbo. The parts are a pain to farm.

- Octavia's quest is kinda hard, the ending at least. And the parts are also hard to get.

Now, let's craft some frames!

If you enjoyed the guide please drop a like and feel free to comment!

:D

[[VJSZ]THOMAS]

Updated. Thank you! Let me know if you there's anything else I'm missing

[おっぱい]

Update Oberon's and Ivara's drop locations, Oberon is completely wrong(he used to be from eximus, not anymore) and Ivara can be obtained through Railjack spy mission at a higher chance of course.

[[VJSZ]THOMAS]

Updated with Gyre and the Ash locations

Thanks for mentioning, I totally forgot about them!

[おっぱい]

Is it up to date with Gyre? Also isnt Ash like survival only in Railjack missions?

[Zodaxa]

this is gold that it's been updated this far

[[VJSZ]THOMAS]

Updated with Caliban and a few edits on things that I felt unnecessary/obsolete with the new ways they added to get them.

[wowo]

imo, one of the best how to farm and the difficulty.
still of course i think in my humble opinion, if you have the time to farm all of the frame. every frame is a must have, cause the 20p for the slots means nothing to the grind that you put. its like you had the money to buy collections that you like, but don't have it for the shelves.
and, when the time comes its just a efficient way that you have all the frames if you need to do some squad play, or just cheese things.

[1stborn]

Your friend was correct, loki used to be the 3rd starter frame before tenno labs were available in a dojo. trust me i seent it. thanks for the guide.

[[VJSZ]THOMAS]

Updated with Hildryn and Vauban's new location

[Zodaxa]

awsome to see garuda added, only note I have to this is thanks, also exactly where ivara spy missions would be helpfull >~<