Warframe's Massive Duviri Paradox Update Brings New Modes, Maps And Missions
Warframe is an online third-person action game with an almost pure emphasis on cooperative player-versus-environment combat. It has a fairly rich world and setting by this point, with the story laid out for players through a succession of cinematic quests as well as pages and pages of text in codex entries and log files. Players take on the role of "Tenno" who pilot the titular warframes in battle against various forces in the very far future of the solar system.
Warframe has its origins going back as far as 2005, but it's been publicly available for players to enjoy since 2013. As you'd expect, veteran players are ludicrously powerful compared to a rank novice. Most updates to long-lived online games like this are aimed at those same veteran players, but unusually, The Duviri Paradox is not. In fact, it's available today to every player for free, no strings attached or experience required.
Indeed, one of the longest-standing criticisms of Warframe as a game is that it has always had a pretty poor new player experience. Newbies were thrust into combat with little in the way of a tutorial or even any sort of context on the game. Well, along with The Duviri Paradox comes a wholly-refreshed new player experience that better contextualizes the players' experiences in the game's story. It also promises to answer some long-standing questions about the game's lore.
The meat of the Duviri Paradox update is the new region known as Duviri, the fourth of the game's open-world environments. Players can experience the new content in three different ways: a mode known as "The Lone Story" that focuses on the story content without side objectives, a more open-ended mode called "The Duviri Experience," and then a battle-focused endless game mode known as "The Circuit."
The update also adds numerous new game mechanics, including for the first time, a melee target lock-on. The "Drifter" form for the player character gains the ability to fight in melee combat as well as ranged, and there are new skills for Drifters known as "Drifter Intrinsics." These come in categories known as Combat, Riding, Endurance, and Opportunity, and they improve the player's chances in the somewhat Rogue-like Duviri environment which resets its "Spiral" every 2 hours.
If players can reach the end of a Spiral before it resets, they can battle the deadly Orowyrm, a difficult boss encounter. Fighting the Orowyrm requires a high degree of mastery of the game's mechanics and controls, and isn't likely to be something that most players will accomplish without earning some of the aforementioned Intrinsics, but it's required for building and purchasing some of the new equipment in the update, including Incarnon Genesis adapters for weapons.
This post barely scratches the surface of the absolutely enormous update for the game; the full patch notes are on the game's official forums. The Duviri Paradox is currently live across all platforms where Warframe can be played, including all current- and previous-generation consoles as well as Steam and the Epic Games Store. If you're curious about Warframe and would like to give it a try, there's never been a better time to jump in.
