Devstream 179 has come and gone, featuring a preview of what’s to come before TennoCon later in July -- and a sneak peek of 1999 as a treat (learn more about that update with TennoCon proper).
In this recap, we’ll be going through the content in terms of its release date, starting with our May 15 Interim Update, followed by Jade Shadows, and then a little tease of Warframe: 1999. If you want to catch all the details (including a peek at The Stug, our reclusive Weapons Lead), you can watch the full livestream, or just read up on highlights in our overview below.
TennoCon is a two-day event this year, featuring extra celebrations on July 19th! If you’re planning on attending, you can enjoy early access to merch and a special TennoVIP on Friday, July 19th. Make sure to grab your TennoCon badge earlier that day to make it into the event, and be ready to party it up like it’s 1999.
The next series of Nightwave is soon approaching. For Vol. 6 of Nora’s Mix, she’s prepared a Daybreak line of items, including the following:
Here’s a look at them in-game.
If you’re still working on finishing Vol. 5, you have until May 15 at 11am ET to earn your rewards!
We’re also releasing some amazing creations courtesy of our community, with new TennoGen! Here’s what is coming in our 3rd TennoGen Unbound release:
Check out the official forum post for more details on their release.
Get your Parazons ready, Tenno. We’re adding the following weapons to the Kuva Lich and Sisters of Parvos system:
If you currently have an Adversary hanging around, now may be the time to Vanquish or Convert them in preparation of these new weapons!
Our next major update, Jade Shadows, explores more of the Warframe universe post-The New War Quest. There are already quite a few narrative threads to follow after completing this Quest, including Kahl-175’s story with Veilbreaker, the Angels of the Zariman, and of course Whispers in the Walls -- but with Jade Shadows, we’re revisiting the Stalker himself. There’s a lot to come in this update, including a ~30min cinematic Quest, so let’s dive into it.
Jade is our 57th Warframe, featuring a blend of seraphim and choir aesthetics. You can expect a look at her abilities in May’s Devstream (featuring a light-focused kit offering support and debuff mechanics), but for now let’s take a look at Jade herself, and her signature equipment.
As you can see featured in the clip above, Jade’s form opens up with her abilities, leading to a truly angelic effect!
This also applies to her Alternative Helmet, named the Aurelot Helmet:
In addition to her aesthetics, Jade is coming with 3 weapons. In a way, she is the opposite of the Stalker, and her weapons are meant to be the antithesis of Stalker’s Despair, Dread, and Hate.
Pablo mentioned that each weapon has its own special mechanic, and offers an additional boon if all 3 weapons are present in-mission.
How does Stalker get to Point A to Point B? Here’s a look at his ship! Also he may canonically be a bad driver, according to Reb.
This ship will be available as a universal Landing Craft Skin.
Jade Shadows is coming with a new game mode, and Clan Event. Learn all about the new Ascension mission and Operation: Belly of the Beast in a future Devstream.
With Ascension, we are introducing a new Eximus type: Jade Light Eximus. This enemy is available across all faction types, and we fear Parvos Granum may have had something to do with it. Lore-savvy Tenno may recognize the term “Jade Light” and infer more about this enemy as a result.
This section of the Devstream is going to offer a brief recap of talking points, as we have an extensive Dev Workshop that goes over these changes in more detail.
This rework comes in three stages:
Enemy Armor scaling its current iteration means that Armor Stripping is almost an all-or-nothing game, especially at higher levels. This results in players focusing on Armor Stripping as a way to tackle Grineer at higher difficulty content. Our goal is to reduce some of the extreme damage reduction offered by Armor at high levels, and make partial Armor Stripping more feasible. To do so, we are making the following changes:
To balance out these changes, we are tweaking health scaling values to ensure they maintain some of their tankiness.
Additionally, we are increasing Corpus shield recharge speeds of enemies above Level 70 to make Shields more impactful at those levels.
If you glance at the Codex or the Wiki, you’ll notice enemies have a variety of different Armor or Flesh types, with their own corresponding weaknesses -- 13 different variants to be exact! We feel that this system is too complicated for players to engage with meaningfully, so we’re these resistances to be per-faction.
In addition to the core factions, we will be adding special resistances for specific sub-factions:
With this simplification, it allows us to better communicate these nuances to players in places like the Star Chart!
We’re still finalizing exact details, so expect more information closer to Jade Shadows’ release.
We are making changes to the following Status Effects to make them feel more useful to players:
Please review our official Dev Workshop for more details.
In addition to the Enemy Scaling and Status changes listed above, we have a slew of other Quality of Life content coming with Jade Shadows.
With Cross Platform Play and Save, squads have to accommodate for Tenno being on a variety of different platforms. This means that hosts on lower-performance equipment may result in fewer enemy spawns for their squad. This is a necessity to maintain performance quality, but we have been auditing enemy caps for various platforms to ensure a balance of a) performance needs and b) player experience.
At this time, we’re exploring our options to increase enemy counts for the next-gen consoles that can handle it (without sacrificing performance stability) -- namely PS5 and XSX.
We’ve further audited the Voidrig acquisition process to reduce player grind leading up to The New War. These changes include a further revision of crafting costs, and possibly more. Stay tuned for more info!
We are making improvements to Shadow Stalker’s weapon drop rates to remove the incredibly low drop chance for weapons other than the Dread.
Bounty drop tables have been revised to increase Debt-Bond acquisition rates (not just Medical Debt-Bonds!) across the board. Stay tuned for more information in our patch notes.
We still can’t say much about Warframe: 1999 just yet -- we’re saving that for TennoCon! -- but we can touch on some of the reveals from our PAX East Devstream.
Here’s a look behind the scenes at some of our Protoframe concepts. The first iteration of Warframe with a face:
Here’s a look at Aoi’s concept:
Here’s a look at the Atomicycle, both its concept and model!
Thanks for reading, Tenno!