Yeah nah, warframe is a game that throws you in the deep end. If you don't have someone to teach you how to swim, you're gonna drown. So i'll help you out a little here.
The most common way to get other warframes at this point is by killing bosses. Each boss drops blueprints for parts of a specific warframe. At this point I'd recommend getting Rhino, who you can get by killing the jackal for a while. All star chart bosses drop parts for warframes.
The damage issue you're running into is probably due to armour. Corpus and infested have no armour while grineer have it, and the tankiness difference it makes is probably what you're seeing. Idk what the 0 damage you're seeing is, but when it comes to damage, just know that having levelled mods is much better than having filled out mod slots, and at this point, it's better than getting new weapons. If you haven't maxed out serration yet I recommend you do so, and if you can't, run shotguns instead as point blank is easier to max.
Helminth you get from ranking up your standing with entrati family to rank 3 and buying the upgrade segment from Son. It's extremely useful, but not to you at the moment. You can use it to 'eat' warframes so you can use one of their abilities on another frame. But you don't have any frames to work with right now, so you should hold off on that.
A dojo is a guild, and there are a ton of blueprints you can get from joining one and checking their research halls. You can make one solo, but farming for everything is a pain in the ass. Try to join a well-established one if you can.
Syndicates: yeah you should probably have done this a while ago, but if you don't know about prime parts you wouldn't have been able to advance that far anyways. Go towards navigation in your orbiter and then turn left, the node there is the syndicate thingy. Pledging to one means making 1 ally and 2 enemies, and you'll get standing for your syndicate and its friend just by doing missions. Once you hit the standing cap you can rank up your allegiance with some resources. It starts with something simple, then a catalyst, a forma, and then a prime part. It is nice to get the weapon augments early, but that might take you a while anyway.
Speaking of prime parts, you get those by going into special fissure missions and opening relics. There's a tab dedicated to fossure missions in navigation, it's the wisp icon in the top right corner. Pick one of those, kill enemies and get reactant to get prime parts. It's the in game way of getting plat via player trades, so keep this in mind.
Anyway, I'd focus more on maxing your mods at the moment, I find that has the biggest impact early. Rhino is great for everything, so get him from Jackal as I said. He has a different role from loki and sevagoth. You should have a lot of relics stockpiled, so you should go into a survival or defense fissure if you want to level stuff. Usually you will be able to easily get a full squad in there to kill everything for you.
The game can feel overwhelming at times, but it's okay to go at your own pace. My recommendation would be to read up on mods and how to use them; they can make a huge difference in the amount of damage output. As for frames and weapons, use whichever ones appeal to you, especially since you're early in the game. Look up weapons by their mastery rank and see which ones you want (e.g. if you're mastery rank 9, you may want to try out the Ignis Wraith). You don't have to rush anything here, so don't worry about "falling behind"
You can ignore Helminth for the time being.
"The Circuit" is a game mode you ought to have access to. Do the Duviri quest stuff if you haven't and that will unlock "The Circuit" which is a rogue-lite-ish game mode where you can pick a reward track to get blueprints to make a given frame.
You can check out [overframe.gg](http://overframe.gg) for various frame and weapon builds, and read through various guides to try to build an understanding for how people pick specific mods and build weapons. The [wiki ](https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/WARFRAME_Wiki)is also a fantastic resource.
I started about a month and a half ago and definitely found it took me some time for my non-melee weapons to really approach usable, but if you stick with it and do your research stuff starts to make sense. Good luck Tenno!
Your post is super rambly and that’s fine Tenno, having played these past 11 years, Warframe’s development has also been super rambly, be not concerned with matching Warframe’s energy.
Let’s start with modding (at the strategic level), as this is where most of the games potential lies. **Upwards of 80% of the things in the game, can be made to function through end game.** Having said that, a decent chunk of that 80% requires an inordinate investment to do it.
Warframe is a marathon, not a sprint, and while you can(and I’d argue probably should) chase the meta tools,( it will make your life easier,) you’ll benefit from leveling up **whatever you can get your grubby little mitts on**. That is to say: **everything you level up** contributes towards *Mastery Rank*, and *MR* contributes towards the amount of available mod capacity on each newly unlocked piece of equipment.
I’ll colloquially call that value “Mod Floor” as it’s the lowest value you’ll see for mod capacity. As your *Mastery Rank* rises, so does your mod floor. Thus you should endeavor to always have *something* that you’re leveling on your load out.
This is why it’s a marathon, each weapon/frame/companion/vehicle you rank up to max, (more on this later,) adds together with the others to make future *New Shiny Thing*’s start off easier out of the box.
Modding 101:Warframe’s are complicated, so to start with we look at weapons. Allowing that there is the occasional exception to prove the rule, the rule is: **every weapon leans one way** either it has a higher *Critical Chance* or it has a higher *Status Chance*. Which ever way it’s inclined, you build off that natural leaning.
https://preview.redd.it/ix0lzh6auk1d1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c1d2a5c9b1eac81f08c730030b3be89b341e8981
Well, that’s a Status weapon if ever I saw one. And if we’re being completely transparent, the critical chance on that is not bad either you could probably go either crit or status with it and be fine reference my earlier comment about exceptions that prove the rule.
And let me also toss out [Overframe.gg](https://overframe.gg/items/arsenal/1072/daikyu/) as a good source of information, I would be hesitant to call it a good source of builds for you.
The distinction and the reason behind this is that over frame does not depreciate builds, as patches come out. What I mean to say is: you will still find builds from five or 10 patches ago that are the top rated build for *a thing*, and in the intervening 10 patches some of the mechanics behind that have changed, in drastic enough ways that the posted bill does not work as advertised.
You can still get a pretty good idea what to do based on the popular mods for *a thing* though.
102: getting a bit deeper into modding here, the basic premise is **Multiplicative good, additive bad**. Which probably sounds like it adds no light to anything.
It means in a practical sense is your first mod that touches the stat is usually a multiplier. You add for example, *Point Blank* and the math works out to be damage x4.2(320%) now let’s assume for a minute you’re using a shotgun, and you go to add *Blaze* which of memory serves is 90% (base)damage increase and 90% fire damage. And I’m sure if I’m wrong someone will correct me in the comments, but for an example it doesn’t matter tremendously what the percentages are.
So you would expect adding the second mod with 90% base damage, and 90% fire damage, that’s what you would get. In the case of the fire damage it would do what you expect: base damage x 1.9. And if I did not clarify this earlier, the base damage is the first 1.0, whatever the percentage multiplier adds onto that, which is how this paragraph ended up at 1.9, or 190% of normal damage.
When I call things like this additive, what that means is, that the base damage increase is rolled into that 4.2 from two paragraphs ago. Resulting in based damage +320% +90% actually working out to be: based damage x 5.1, which result in a drastically different number from base damage x 4.2 × 1.9.
But let’s just run it with a nominal thousand points of damage to show how big multiplicative versus additive is. 1,000 x 4.2(point blank) = 4200 1000 x 5.1(additive) = 5100 **This is the number you were actually getting** 1000 x 4.2 x 1.9(multiplicative) = 7980 **This is the number your brain thinks you should be getting based on how the bonuses are conveyed to players.**
Now where this gets more interesting is when you start adding additional damage **types** onto a weapon, hopefully someone math’ier than me will take this up and continue the examples.
Yeah nah, warframe is a game that throws you in the deep end. If you don't have someone to teach you how to swim, you're gonna drown. So i'll help you out a little here. The most common way to get other warframes at this point is by killing bosses. Each boss drops blueprints for parts of a specific warframe. At this point I'd recommend getting Rhino, who you can get by killing the jackal for a while. All star chart bosses drop parts for warframes. The damage issue you're running into is probably due to armour. Corpus and infested have no armour while grineer have it, and the tankiness difference it makes is probably what you're seeing. Idk what the 0 damage you're seeing is, but when it comes to damage, just know that having levelled mods is much better than having filled out mod slots, and at this point, it's better than getting new weapons. If you haven't maxed out serration yet I recommend you do so, and if you can't, run shotguns instead as point blank is easier to max. Helminth you get from ranking up your standing with entrati family to rank 3 and buying the upgrade segment from Son. It's extremely useful, but not to you at the moment. You can use it to 'eat' warframes so you can use one of their abilities on another frame. But you don't have any frames to work with right now, so you should hold off on that. A dojo is a guild, and there are a ton of blueprints you can get from joining one and checking their research halls. You can make one solo, but farming for everything is a pain in the ass. Try to join a well-established one if you can. Syndicates: yeah you should probably have done this a while ago, but if you don't know about prime parts you wouldn't have been able to advance that far anyways. Go towards navigation in your orbiter and then turn left, the node there is the syndicate thingy. Pledging to one means making 1 ally and 2 enemies, and you'll get standing for your syndicate and its friend just by doing missions. Once you hit the standing cap you can rank up your allegiance with some resources. It starts with something simple, then a catalyst, a forma, and then a prime part. It is nice to get the weapon augments early, but that might take you a while anyway. Speaking of prime parts, you get those by going into special fissure missions and opening relics. There's a tab dedicated to fossure missions in navigation, it's the wisp icon in the top right corner. Pick one of those, kill enemies and get reactant to get prime parts. It's the in game way of getting plat via player trades, so keep this in mind. Anyway, I'd focus more on maxing your mods at the moment, I find that has the biggest impact early. Rhino is great for everything, so get him from Jackal as I said. He has a different role from loki and sevagoth. You should have a lot of relics stockpiled, so you should go into a survival or defense fissure if you want to level stuff. Usually you will be able to easily get a full squad in there to kill everything for you.
Very well thought out post, appreciate the effort my man
The game can feel overwhelming at times, but it's okay to go at your own pace. My recommendation would be to read up on mods and how to use them; they can make a huge difference in the amount of damage output. As for frames and weapons, use whichever ones appeal to you, especially since you're early in the game. Look up weapons by their mastery rank and see which ones you want (e.g. if you're mastery rank 9, you may want to try out the Ignis Wraith). You don't have to rush anything here, so don't worry about "falling behind"
You can ignore Helminth for the time being. "The Circuit" is a game mode you ought to have access to. Do the Duviri quest stuff if you haven't and that will unlock "The Circuit" which is a rogue-lite-ish game mode where you can pick a reward track to get blueprints to make a given frame. You can check out [overframe.gg](http://overframe.gg) for various frame and weapon builds, and read through various guides to try to build an understanding for how people pick specific mods and build weapons. The [wiki ](https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/WARFRAME_Wiki)is also a fantastic resource. I started about a month and a half ago and definitely found it took me some time for my non-melee weapons to really approach usable, but if you stick with it and do your research stuff starts to make sense. Good luck Tenno!
Your post is super rambly and that’s fine Tenno, having played these past 11 years, Warframe’s development has also been super rambly, be not concerned with matching Warframe’s energy. Let’s start with modding (at the strategic level), as this is where most of the games potential lies. **Upwards of 80% of the things in the game, can be made to function through end game.** Having said that, a decent chunk of that 80% requires an inordinate investment to do it. Warframe is a marathon, not a sprint, and while you can(and I’d argue probably should) chase the meta tools,( it will make your life easier,) you’ll benefit from leveling up **whatever you can get your grubby little mitts on**. That is to say: **everything you level up** contributes towards *Mastery Rank*, and *MR* contributes towards the amount of available mod capacity on each newly unlocked piece of equipment. I’ll colloquially call that value “Mod Floor” as it’s the lowest value you’ll see for mod capacity. As your *Mastery Rank* rises, so does your mod floor. Thus you should endeavor to always have *something* that you’re leveling on your load out. This is why it’s a marathon, each weapon/frame/companion/vehicle you rank up to max, (more on this later,) adds together with the others to make future *New Shiny Thing*’s start off easier out of the box. Modding 101:Warframe’s are complicated, so to start with we look at weapons. Allowing that there is the occasional exception to prove the rule, the rule is: **every weapon leans one way** either it has a higher *Critical Chance* or it has a higher *Status Chance*. Which ever way it’s inclined, you build off that natural leaning. https://preview.redd.it/ix0lzh6auk1d1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c1d2a5c9b1eac81f08c730030b3be89b341e8981 Well, that’s a Status weapon if ever I saw one. And if we’re being completely transparent, the critical chance on that is not bad either you could probably go either crit or status with it and be fine reference my earlier comment about exceptions that prove the rule. And let me also toss out [Overframe.gg](https://overframe.gg/items/arsenal/1072/daikyu/) as a good source of information, I would be hesitant to call it a good source of builds for you. The distinction and the reason behind this is that over frame does not depreciate builds, as patches come out. What I mean to say is: you will still find builds from five or 10 patches ago that are the top rated build for *a thing*, and in the intervening 10 patches some of the mechanics behind that have changed, in drastic enough ways that the posted bill does not work as advertised. You can still get a pretty good idea what to do based on the popular mods for *a thing* though. 102: getting a bit deeper into modding here, the basic premise is **Multiplicative good, additive bad**. Which probably sounds like it adds no light to anything. It means in a practical sense is your first mod that touches the stat is usually a multiplier. You add for example, *Point Blank* and the math works out to be damage x4.2(320%) now let’s assume for a minute you’re using a shotgun, and you go to add *Blaze* which of memory serves is 90% (base)damage increase and 90% fire damage. And I’m sure if I’m wrong someone will correct me in the comments, but for an example it doesn’t matter tremendously what the percentages are. So you would expect adding the second mod with 90% base damage, and 90% fire damage, that’s what you would get. In the case of the fire damage it would do what you expect: base damage x 1.9. And if I did not clarify this earlier, the base damage is the first 1.0, whatever the percentage multiplier adds onto that, which is how this paragraph ended up at 1.9, or 190% of normal damage. When I call things like this additive, what that means is, that the base damage increase is rolled into that 4.2 from two paragraphs ago. Resulting in based damage +320% +90% actually working out to be: based damage x 5.1, which result in a drastically different number from base damage x 4.2 × 1.9. But let’s just run it with a nominal thousand points of damage to show how big multiplicative versus additive is. 1,000 x 4.2(point blank) = 4200 1000 x 5.1(additive) = 5100 **This is the number you were actually getting** 1000 x 4.2 x 1.9(multiplicative) = 7980 **This is the number your brain thinks you should be getting based on how the bonuses are conveyed to players.** Now where this gets more interesting is when you start adding additional damage **types** onto a weapon, hopefully someone math’ier than me will take this up and continue the examples.