WARFRAME on PS4 - Survival

(For an intro into Warframe, Tutorial Videos and Gameplay, check out these two posts:  
Warframe - a Christmas Present  and Warframe - More Info, More Gameplay) 

Warframe, the very nice F2P-Title available on the PS4 and PC is built around what is called a "tile set". Basically, these are different building blocks that can be mixed and matched to create ever different levels - albeit with the same parts. There are seven relatively unique tile sets, and while you'll often come across familiar areas during your missions, the game keeps it fresh by randomly changing the arrangement - and it's actually quite easy to get lost, because you thought you knew the way.

What's more, Warframe has different types of missions, and in this post, I will take a look at one that, as is my experience playing with randoms, seems to be a bit misunderstood:

SURVIVAL

Logic would dictate, that you'll try to keep your Tenno-ish Deeds unknown for as long as possible when engaging in a mission. An alerted enemy is a tougher enemy, and all that. Not so in Survival. Your goal is to draw attention, specifically away from another Tenno Operative doing sneaky things somewhere just out of sight. The longer you manage to do that, the more sneaky stuff your operative will get done, of course, but that part is admittedly kind-of omitted by the game.

Your Survival is measured in five minute segments, with a five minute minimum to successfully finish the mission, and every additional five minutes netting you increasingly rare rewards. The timer starts after you, hesitantly but intentionally, trigger the alarm, and the enemy will do its very evil best to kill you. Your Goal: Survival! (So, yeah, that was kinda obvious, but I couldn't resist.)

Which sounds not that hard, given that the tile sets come with many handy bottlenecks, where one could set up and dig in. Which is why, simply out of spite, the evil enemy turns off all life support systems. (How do you know they're the evil enemy, by the way? Shutting off life support even for their own guys in order to get to you is a very clear indicator. It's a check mark. A pillar of Evil Enemy-ness.)

With time, quite literally, running out, Lotus, that Cyber-Honey with the Helmet on, manages to teleport life support capsules into your vicinity. For some reason, though, she cannot teleport them all to the same place, but the game did need a reason to keep you on the move, and this one is not as bad as some I've seen.

So what you do, is you run around the level, trying to stay alive against endless waves of increasingly evil enemies, while finding and then activating life support capsules. Life support is constantly draining, and it is in your best interest to keep it above zero. It is called life support. Every capsule you activate increases the life support running time by 20-30% , but the hordes of enemies can get pretty distracting, so don't just start looking for the capsules once you start taking constant damage because there's no more air.
Because once it's gone, your mission is over. Capsules - and the smaller, dropped-by-enemies personal life support modules that regain everyone 4% when picked up - will stop working, your shields and health will drain, until you have only 5 health points left, but even those will go away after five minutes of vacuum (which is quite impressive, really).

On the other hand, don't activate a capsule until life support has drained to around 70% - anything added to over 100% will be lost, and you might come to regret those lost seconds of precious oxygen. Capsule drops will become less and less frequent the longer the mission continues, so you need to find a balance between keeping it up and not wasting any.

After five minutes of running and killing and killing and killing, your extraction becomes available. You'll still have to reach it, but it will be there waiting for you, which apparently seems to be the General Call to Flee for many of the newer players. Granted, once you hear "Extraction", people unaware of Survival's possibly endless mission length, could be forgiven for heeding the siren call of freedom - especially if you managed to net a nice mod for your collection. If you die and fail the mission, everything you picked up (except for the things you "picked up" in way of experience) will be lost, and the way to the Extraction Point will be filled with enemies.
In Survival, enemies will follow you and appear where you are, even if you don't do anything but stand around the extraction pods, waiting for your teammates to do all the heavy lifting and get you some more XP and Survival Rewards.

But still, there's really no reason except "I really need to use the bathroom, RIGHT NOW!" for a team of three or four Tenno to not remain, and last until minute ten. After ten, things might get tricky for newer or lower level players, but for the love of Pete, don't start a 60-second Extraction Timer with at least half of the team waiting near the pods at 8:50 min. Just don't. Do remember, however, that once you decide to bail out, there might be tight hallways teeming with enemies between you and a successful mission. If you get downed, you can be revived or revive yourself (eventually), and if just one of you makes it out alive, it's all good. But if at any given time all players are down, the mission fails and all those nice rewards are gone, gone, gone.

Wow. That was a lot of reading, and in these literally challenged times, too. So, here is a complete Survival Mission in two videos, going strong until minute 20. This is also the "easiest" Survival Mission, but by the end, the enemies are pretty damn tough.

That's me with three Randoms, playing a Level 20 Loki Warframe, toting the Braton Rifle, Sicarus Pistol and the Orthos Heavy Melee weapon. Notable Mods are an Aura Energy Recharge (with a raise in Warframe Mod Energy), a 45% increase in Shield Recharge, 120% Extra Health, and the 30% increased Maximum Rifle Ammo.
And yes, I am that bad. Also, I was not really used to the heavy weapon with its long strike animations, so you'll see me hitting air quite a lot after I actually had wanted to stop striking anything quite some time before...

Warframe on PS4 - Survival Mission Gameplay pt. 1 and 2





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