Warframe Chroma guide

A guide that shows how to get the Chroma Warframe.

The YouTube videos should be available in 1080p.

I'm not sure what more to add to this guide. If there is something you want to suggest or ask, drop a comment.

Cephalon Simaris and some additional info

First of all, you NEED to be Mastery Level 5 or higher and you MUST have completed the quest line "Stolen Dreams". After that you may talk to Cephalon Simaris who is on the Tenno Relay.
If you haven't spoken to Cephalon Simaris ever before you might have to talk to him twice before you manage to get the quest from him, I had to talk to him twice.

A lot of people have a hard time finding him, even I did so at the bottom of this section there will be a video on how to find Cephalon Simaris on the Mercury Tenno Relay.

Since this warframe is elemental based (Ice, fire, poison, electricity) you will need a few extra things. An Ember helmet (fire), A Volt helmet (electricity), a Saryn systems (poison) and a Frost chassis (ice). If you plan on saving your platinum and taking the full crafting time I would suggest you grind for the extra stuff while crafting the chassis.

I would also suggest you grind for the 400 Oxium you need unless you want to buy them for platinum in the store. I don't know of any good places to grind for the Oxium though but Baal on Europa used to work and it is still an okay place, otherwise any Corpus mission. If you have a syndicate Corpus mission that would work.

You will also need 2 Argon Crystals for the Systems. if you don't want to rush the crafting you might not want to get the crystals to early as they will disappear from your inventory after a few days. The crystals can be found in the void, pretty much any mission.

Get the quest, do the scanning and get a Frost Chassis which you can find by killing Lieutenant Lech Kril who is on the planet Ceres and the mission Exta. Then you need to craft the Frost Chassis which will take 12 hours when that is done you have to craft the Chroma Chassis which takes another 12 hours. So while waiting just get the Ember helmet, Saryn Systems and Volt helmet and craft them at the same time.

Ember helmet: General Sargas Ruk, on Saturn, mission Tethys
Saryn Systems: Kela De Thaym, on Sedna, mission Merrow
Volt helmet: Dojo

Volt Helmet is a bit of a drag since you have to buy the blueprint from the Clan Dojo, if you don't have a Dojo, let me know and I can hook you up, free of charge of course.

If you however want to use your platinum, you still have to grind the parts but remember it costs 25 platinum a piece to rush the crafting and you need 4 pieces for the elemental effects which is 100 platinum and then 25 for each Chroma part, which is 175 platinum in total and then it is 50 platinum for the warframe itself unless you wait 3 days, so in total 225 platinum, which isn't expensive but there are cheaper warframes than that, buying Chroma instantly costs 375 platinum so you do save 150 if you decide to rush everything.

Cephalon Simaris

Sorry about the low framerate on the Relay but this is the only place in the game even my computer have a hard time getting a good framerate. There are just to many people on there.

Chroma Chassis

First off you get sent to Phobos to scan a few targets. In this one minute video below I show what you need to look for. You will have to do this three times. After that you go back to Cephalon Simaris and talk to him and he will give you the Chassis blueprint that you will have to craft.

The material you need are:

15000 Credits
2 Neurodes
50 Plastids
900 Nano spores
1 Frost Chassis

Phobos

Chroma Helmet

The helmet is probably the easiest thing to get, after finishing the chassis, Cephalon Simaris wants you to investigate a transmission on the planet Europa. It's a mobile defense mission, my squad had to defend 3 terminals, we had no problems at all except one of us went down twice (Wasn't me).

We didn't face any special enemies except 1 corpus tech during the 3rd terminal and a few enemies that prevents you from using powers if they get to close but their shield is easy to break and then they're easy to kill.

Once you finish the mission you get the Chroma Helmet blueprint and just have to craft it.
Crafting materials:

15000 Credits
200 Plastids
2 Neurodes
350 Polymer bundle
1 Ember Helmet

Chroma Systems

To get the Systems you have to go to the Derelict on Phobos and the mission Skyresh. Not really a hard mission, my squadmate managed to die but that was my fault as I had some internet issues and lagged and couldn't get out of a hole I put myself into.

What you have to do is just get to the mission waypoint, scan the Chroma that you see in there and get out. The enemies aren't very high level so my squadmate probably died when the Chroma came after him/her.

The crafting materials for the Chroma Systems is rather annoying. 400 Oxium and 2 Argon Crystals isn't fun to grind. Like I said in an earlier section the Oxium can be grinded while crafting the other pieces but I wouldn't suggest getting the crystals until you have started crafting the Helmet since Argon crystals disappear from your inventory.

Crafting materials:

15000 Credits
400 Oxium
2 Argon Crystals
1 Neurodes
1 Saryn Systems


Volt Helmet Crafting Materials:

15000 credits for the blueprint.

15000 to start the craft
150 alloy plate
1 Neural Sensor
150 Polymer Bundle
500 Rubedo

Chroma Blueprint

So far it's been rather easy to get all the pieces. Getting the last piece, the Chroma blueprint isn't quite as easy. It's a Corpus Defense mission on Europa where the enemies are above level 20, me and the random person I wound up with did have some issues, luckely he managed to pull aggro and we could regen the Arcane Machine.

I would suggest bringing a Frost, I brought my Saryn thinking the distance between enemies wouldn't be to bad, but if you're only two people it could get a bit nasty.

So on this defense mission you have to hold out for 10 waves, the first 9 of them are regular defense mission where you just kill all the enemies. On the final wave a Chroma will show up that you will have to scan 5 times with the scanner you got from Cephalon Simaris.

Since I noticed the random person I played with was doing the scans and the Corpus were firing on the Arcane Machine I decided to try to kill the enemies instead but if you've made it this far you know how to use the scanner.

After this you just go back to the crafting station and start crafting your Chroma.

Crafting Materials:

25000 Credits
1 Chroma Helmet
1 Chroma Chassis
1 Chroma Systems
1 Volt Helmet


I shortened the video as it took us over 20 minutes to get the job done since we were only two and we had to let the Arcane Machine regen a few times.

Chroma Skills

So now your Chroma is completed and what do you do now?

Well for starters, this Warframe is elemental based and as such you can switch freely between the elements. How you do this is that you switch the energy color in the Warframe appearence settings. I haven't checked all the colors but generally blue is electric, green is poison, white is frost/ice, red is fire.

As with all Warframes the higher rank the Warframe is the higher rank on the abilities.

Your first skill is basically a Dragon's Breath and is called Spectral Scream, you breathe the element of your choice like a Dragon breathes fire in Fantasy worlds. Depending on your element you do different damage types, I felt that frost mostly slowed the enemies and stunned them.
Fire does a decent amount of damage, asuming you can get close enough. This skill is also nice as it makes the Chroma immune to knockdowns.
NOTE: This skill drains energy when you use it so keep a watch on your energy level when using this skill.











Your second skill is Elemental Ward. This is an Area-of-Effect underneath your Chroma that depending on your choice of element you get various bonuses.



Poison has a Stamina reduction cost, as in all moves that you do costs less stamina, and a boost to maximum stamina, Poison also has a high Status Chance bonus (25-50%).
Electricity gives you extra damage and shield boost but it doesn't have as high status chance (10-25%) bonus as Poison.
Ice gives you an armor bonus, damage multiplier and same status chance as electricity (10-25%).
Fire gives you extra health but has a really low status chance (2-10%), it also burns enemies within the Area-of-Effect from what I understand.
NOTE: If you play with another Chroma and you use the same element, you will NOT recieve a double buff, you can however use two different elements if you play with another Chroma and recieve the bonus from both elements.

Your third skill is vex armor. This skill doesn't make any difference depending on your element. It just gives you an armor increase if you take shield damage and damage increase if you take health damage. You hardly notice when it's activated but when you take damage you see a counter up in the corner next to your health and shield which shows how much armor or damage bonus you get.












Your fourth skill is Effigy and it is actually quite awesome, if used correctly. The Chroma Warframe sheds it's own pelt and creates a 2nd Chroma which is flying in mid air and doing the Spectral Scream ability with a longer range. This also drains a lot of your Energy so keep an eye on your Energy level.

Chroma Skills Maximization

So you're probably like me and like to maximize a certain skill to suit your own playstyle which is why I made this section of the guide. I'm not a person that suggests what mods to use, I just list the positives and negatives and you have to decide yourself and try various things to see what suits you. Also bear in mind that if you maximize one skill you will most likely make another skill quite useless.

There is also a common legend tied to Chroma's 4th skill, enemies killed by Effigy has a higher chance to drop credits, it's a reference to the legends that Dragons like to hoard gold.



Spectral Scream:

There is no use putting duration mods for this skill as it is a channeling skill.

I love to maximize efficiency on my skills so they are cheaper but I usually play Saryn or Mesa. On Spectral Scream that's not a bad idea because it doesn't have a negative effect on this ability but it makes the skill cost 2.5 Energy to activate and only costs 1.25 energy per second to maintain as opposed to 5 originally however this will lower your duration of Elemental Ward and Vex Armor.

Range is useful on this skill but if you start using corrupted mods you will lose a lot of damage so be wary of that.

Power strength is always good but with corrupted mods the skill becomes quite expensive to maintain, it can cost upwards of 15.5 energy to activate and 7.75 energy per second to channel.

Even if you max out the power of this skill you could hold it up for over 50 seconds with just a maximum Flow mod and maximum energy, however while channeling this skill your movement speed is slowed even though you can't be interrupted, I can imagine this being quite good vs infested on defense missions when you don't have to chase them.



Elemental Ward

This skill is range based, so the bigger range you have the further away your allies can be and still get the buffs.

With the right duration mods you can make this ability last for 70 seconds but it will reduce the range quite a bit, down to 4 meters, which isn't much, could be useful on a defense mission if you play with a frost who is also duration maximized and you want to stick inside his frost globe.

If you plan on maximizing the efficiency on Spectral Scream you will at the same time make this skill cost only 12.5 Energy to activate but the duration will go down to 10 seconds.

Maximizing range on Elemental Ward with corrupted mods will give it a range of 28 meters compared to 12 meters without any range mods, but you will lower the strength of all the buffs no matter what element you use.



Vex Armor

If you plan on using this skill as a primary skill then duration maximization is nice, it doesn't have a negative effect and increases the duration to 70 seconds. Since this skill slowly builds in strength everytime you get hit, having this skill last for 70 seconds can give you a nice bonus.

If you max out efficiency the skill will cost 18 energy but the duration will be reduced to 10 seconds.

Range doesn't do anything for this skill except if you decide to use corrupted mods then it will reduce the power of the skill.

If you maximize power strength of Vex Armor it will only last for 18 seconds and it will cost 116 energy to activate but the boosts will be higher.



Effigy

As with Spectral Scream there is no use putting any duration mods to boost this skill.

Again Efficiency is nice for this skill as it makes the skill cost 12.5 energy to activate and 2.5 energy per second to maintain compared to 50 to activate and 10 energy per second.

There is no use to using range mods if you want to maximize this skill since this skill has a set range like the Mesa ultimate skill, and it will only lower the damage and the health of the Effigy.

Increasing the power strength of this ability can cause the skill to cost 77 energy to activate and then an additional cost of 28 energy per second but the Effigy will have over 22 000 health and do 1136 damage. If you decide to max out the power, you could still have Effigy up for about 13 seconds with maximum Flow mod and max energy.

Chroma Stats

If I have counted correctly, a max ranked Chroma with a max rank Flow mod (+150% energy), Chroma will have an energy total of 450. Which gives you a bit of a buffer if you want to use less efficiency and more power in some of your mods.

That Energy is based on the base energy of 150 and when the Chroma is rank 30 you have 225, the Flow bonus is multiplied to the base so 150% of 150 = 225. So 225 + 150 x 150% = 450 energy.

Chroma has a base armor of 350, only Valkyr has a higher armor amount than Chroma so you shouldn't need extra armor mods until late end game.

Chroma has a base health and shield of 100 and at rank 30 health and shield is at 300, it's rather average but with extra shield and health mods you will be fine in latter stages of the game.

Chroma Polarities:

1 x Naramon - Dash/Bar polarity
1 x Madurai - V Polarity
Aura polarity: Madurai - V

V polarities are good for extra damage and strength in powers. Common ones are Continuty for extra power duration, intensify for extra power strength, typical auras are rifle amp, dead eye for extra sniper damage, steel charge for extra melee damage.

Dash/Bar polarities are used for miscellaneous mods. Typical mods are Stretch for power range, Streamline for power efficiency, Flow for more maximum energy, Rush for faster sprint speed, Maglev for extra slide.

[BP | [SaH]SoaG]

Ah yeah, I keep mixing the mod categories up.

[Nightwing]

i'll have to check this out.

[DuckSellingCharlatan]

I think you got corrupted mods and nightmare mods mixed up, but other than that goodwork.