Warframe continues to amaze me on a daily basis. There’s so much to do and see, it boggles the mind.
Up there you see me on my hoverboard, cruising the mountaintops of Orb Vallis. I’m still getting the hang of riding it, but it’s a lot of fun and also blazingly fast compared to traveling on foot. This is ‘only’ the vanilla version of it too; in time I’ll build my own one, custom stats and all.
Disclaimer: from here on out there will be spoilers if you haven’t finished The Second Dream and subsequent quests yet, as well as some other story bits, so be warned.
Still here? Ok then.
When you go down one of the ramps right behind the arsenal in your orbiter there’s a corridor leading to three doors, all of which are locked initially. By now I’ve managed to open them all.
A couple of days after I’d played some missions teamed up with strangers I noticed some kind of cyst growing on one of my warframes’ neck. Turns out there’s a virus going ’round, and someone had infected me with it. It’s fully grown one week after the infection, and then the frame in question can enter this room. As of now the only function available here seems to be to cure the frame, but Ordis says that this entity, known as Helminth, serves the warframes and the ship, so there might be more upcoming.
Instead of curing the infection one can use the ship’s incubator unit to drain the cyst (yuck!) and grow a special kind of Kubrow (= doggo) from it, so choose wisely.
This is the last part of the Octavia’s Anthem quest, which is all about music. Naturally I loved it, although the finale is pretty heavy on the jumping-puzzles, so you better limber up before going in. Unfortunately the quest doesn’t gave me access to the finished Octavia frame as I’d hoped, I only got its blueprint. Getting all blueprints for the subcomponents will take another while.
Moving on to the big story quests and the remaining doors.
When starting out in Warframe the player doesn’t know much about what a Tenno actually is. Where did they come from, what’s the source of their powers, why do they even exist?
The Second Dream and The War Within delve into that and answer some of those questions. I won’t spoil the stories and revelations in detail, but suffice it to say at the end of The Second Dream I at least had a pretty good idea about who’s inside of my frames…because I had to actually create him (or her, if you so choose).
From that point on every frame has a fifth ability, which makes the operator (he still has no name) leave the frame for a couple of seconds and shoot a big fricking laser beam at his foes.
He “lives” in the second of the three eponymous orbiter-rooms, and his appearance, equipment as well as a whole new progression system of active and passive skills are managed here.
During The War Within he learns more about his past and how to control his powers, making him capable of leaving the frame indefinitely and fight with some powers of his own.
In my opinion these quests as a whole are very well done. The end of TWW was also a pretty strong emotional moment, storywise as well as visually and audibly.
One of its rewards is access to the third and final room, which is the operator’s personal quarters. As I’ve talked about before you can place decorations anywhere in the orbiter, but this room is designed specifically to make it your own and feel at home.
It’s not huge, but pretty nice. There’s a large pedestal in the middle to install another, bigger aquarium, or one of several vignettes depicting the various planets. I’m using the Plains of Eidolon, mainly because it’s accompanied by very soothing outdoor sounds.
I haven’t played around much with the room yet, but I intend to knock myself out and make it into something special over time.
The first item on the agenda was getting some fish for the aquarium of course. So I grabbed my fishing spear and off to the Plains of Eidolon I went.
The room also provides a jukebox of sorts, the somachord. Actually using it is unlocked by completing the Octavia’s Anthem quest mentioned above.
Nothing’s easy in Warframe though, so I have to find and scan some more fragments to unlock songs before I can actually use it. That’s fine by me however, because I intend to play the game for a good long while yet.
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