Warframe celebrates six years with a full set of giveaway gear
Happy birthday! You're a ninja!
Time flies when you're having fun, and six years have just whizzed past playing space-ninja loot n' shooter Warframe. I can't think of many other games that have changed as drastically since launch, either. What was once a scrappy last-ditch attempt to keep the lights on at Digital Extremes is now a sprawling free-to-play monster with its own annual convention. To celebrate this endurance, for the next two weeks players will get a few cosmetic goodies just for logging in, and a complete matching set of gear for hacking and slashing through some low-level bonus missions.
The Gift Of The Lotus missions in the Events tab shouldn't be too rough if you have a full squad. They recommend you be at least level 10, though. Each of the weapon missions limits you to that weapon slot only, so make sure you bring your best. Melee-only gets you dual Dex Dakra swords, pistol-only to claim the Dex Furis akimbo SMGs and primary only to earn the Dex Sybaris lever-action rifle, which only has one barrel but fires two bullets at once. While none are top tier weapons, they're vastly better than what you start with, and with the right mods can last until endgame.
While the weapons up for grabs in this anniversary event have appeared in previous years, even veteran players should probably take the few minutes to snag them. If nothing else, it'll earn you three extra weapon slots (normally bought with real money or through grinding Nightwave challenges), and selling the extra weapons will earn you some extra credits.
There's a lot on the horizon for Warframe this year. Digital Extremes are hard at work remastering both the original Plains Of Eidlon open-world area and the Corpus Gas City environment. They're still working on a total overhaul of the game's melee combat, with the first part of it (smooth chaining from gun to melee) added recently. Further off is the absurdly ambitious Empyrian expansion (formerly known as Railjack), adding space travel in multi-player-crewed ships and some FTL-inspired capital ship combat. The main story arc will continue at some point as well, too.
Warframe is free-to-play, and available on its official site or on Steam. I am also happy to say that Fortuna instance 69 is still alive and well.