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Here’s What You Need
Of course, blueprints aren’t much good without the components they require. Every set of plans you acquire comes with its own requirements that, besides credits, are usually unique to whatever you want to build.
You can see these requirements by reading the blueprint description on the marketplace or wherever you earned the item. However, it’s often more practical to just look at them in the Foundry. This is the workbench-like structure toward port-and-center of your ship. In the Foundry all of your blueprints will be sorted by category and show you how many components you need to build them. Plus you can see how much of a given resource you already have.
Components are earned in many ways. The most common, if not the most direct way of doing so is to simply play Warframe. Most components that are flagged as common or uncommon drop like crazy from fallen enemies and containers strewn about missions. Each has its own distinct shape, so you’ll almost always know what you’re about to pick up even before you do so.
The Hum of Extractors
A more passive means of gathering minerals is to use Extractors. These are unique in-game devices that can be deployed, one at a time, to any location in the game. By “location,” we mean planets and moons such as Saturn, Earth, Mars, etc. You can deploy Extractors, as well as check what planet might give you which resources, from the same map that you select missions from. This also corresponds to the components that have a chance to drop in these areas on regular missions.
You can only have one Extractor deployed at any such satellite at any given time. Meanwhile, the total number you can deploy across all of Warframe space is determined by your account level, or Mastery Rank. After a set amount of real-world time the Extractor soaks up a semi-random number of semi-random minerals from that location.
Level 0-4 lets you use one Extractor, and 5-9 is worth two. Anything higher than that gives you three. You can further bump that number by being a Warframe founder (which would have meant paying for the game while it was still in beta) or by spending real money for Prime Access on the game’s website.
Finally, Extractors aren’t invincible. Once you claim them (and the delicious crafting parts they’ve collected) after a cycle, there’s a chance they’ll take damage. This damage heals naturally over time, but if you send out a damaged Extractor and it loses all of its health it’ll be gone forever, so you’ll need to create a new one. If an Extractor takes damage, then, it’s best to wait while it heals before re-deploying it.
Special Resources
Certain components simply can’t be obtained by Extractors, however. You’ll actually need to search for what planets and moons have what resources you’re looking for and hope that they drop in the course of a regular mission.
Like blueprints, most of these categories aren’t worth specifying. A few crafting components deserve special attention, however:
Argon Crystals can only be acquired in the Orokin Void zone as a rare drop from enemies and containers. What makes them really special, however, is that they decay over time - about 24 hours. So it’s usually best to collect them last when planning to build off a specific recipe.
Cryotic is rewarded from Excavation missions on any planet. Rather than drop on the ground, this resource is awarded by in-mission drills that players must protect from enemies. Every one percent of a completed drill cycle is worth one Cryotic. So a 100 percent complete cycle will award 100 Cryotic and so on.
Oxium drops in any mission where you fight the Corpus faction. They’re a guaranteed drop from flying, suicidal “Oxium Osprey” enemies that spawn at random in such missions, although you need to kill the Ospreys before they have a chance to blow themselves up otherwise they’ll drop nothing. Oxium also has a minuscule chance of dropping from containers on any mission and as a reward for finding secret caches on Sealab Sabotage missions. Those are pretty unreliable methods, however.
Nitain Extract is only awarded for completing specific Alert missions. There are guaranteed to be at least four Alerts with Nitain as a prize within every 24 hours.
Tellurim might just be the biggest hassle of a resource to earn in the entire game. It has an extremely rare chance of dropping in any Archwing mission and very rarely appears as an Alert reward. It’s harder to get than it sounds, though only because of how exceedingly rare this stuff seems to be.
Kuva can only be earned after completing The War Within story quests. You’ll get it for destroying “Kuva Siphons” in the environments during missions in the Kuva Fortress or on planets near the Kuva Fortress. The fortress moves from level to level in real-time, however, so you’ll need to periodically check. It’s also a semi-common reward from bounties in Earth’s open-world zone, Cetus.
Ore, fish, flora, and fauna are unique resources that can only be gathered in open-world zones like the Plains of Eidolon. Ore is collected with mining lasers. Fish are caught with spears and bait. Plant and animal parts are earned simply by destroying the corresponding lifeforms on the plains.
Simple Farming Tips
If you understand all the information above and still can’t get the resources you need, there are a few last-ditch tips and options available to you.
The first is to equip a companion drone with the “Vacuum” mod equipped. This hoovers up nearby ammo and resources for you, which makes individually picking them up much less of a hassle. You might even accidentally grab some that you didn’t see in the first place.
The Smeeta breed of Kavats (Warframe’s mutant attack cats) also comes with a neat, but unreliable mod that sometimes causes extra materials to drop.
Or you can try looking for “endless” missions (Survival, Defense, etc.) sporting a Warframe logo over their icon on the star map. These used to be tied to a PVP system called “Dark Sectors” – the system has since gone away, but the missions now permanently offer bonus resources and experience points to anyone who plays them. You’ll need to make sure the mission is on a planet with the materials you need, however.
Alert missions also often give guaranteed resources as a reward, and this is an especially great way to earn Oxium. Any Alert rewarding the stuff gives out 300 units a pop, whereas Oxium usually drops in bundles of about 10. The @WarframeAlerts Twitter account will even give you real-time updates on Alerts and their rewards.
Lastly, as with most things in Warframe, you can just buy most resources with Platinum on the in-game marketplace - assuming you’re very desperate.
