Recently, Digital Extremes’ space ninja simulator Warframe received a major update with the very simple and unusual name of Warframe 1999. It brought with it a new, rather interesting story quest, a dynamic location, several quests, frames, syndicates, a relationship development system, rewards, changes, improvements and other, sometimes very useful things. In this article, we will discuss what I consider to be the most important and interesting features of this update.
Story
This time, we have to travel to the 31st of December 1999 in a parallel timeline and explore the city of Höllvania, which is under a colossal threat. This is where the brilliant Orokin scientist Albrecht Entrati (hereafter just Albert) has fled to try and fix the situation he caused long ago by sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong. The main character this time is the Wanderer, not the cameraman.
In order to fulfill his grandiose plans, Albert introduces a plague into this timeline and creates protoframes, which eventually attract the attention of a powerful entity we know as ‘The Man in the Wall’ and get stuck in a time loop along with the protoframes. In order to get out of the loop, Albert decides to blow up the nuclear power station in the city to get the right amount of power, sacrificing the population in the process.
The Wanderer doesn’t agree with Albert’s radical plan and, together with the Protoframes, decides to save the city, but everything goes back to the same place as usual, after which the Wanderer, with the help of Duviri’s powers, restarts the loop by pounding the ground with his fist. To get things going, Albert suggests that the Protoframes need to get to know the Protoframes better, and this seems to be the main feature of the story. It is up to the player to develop relationships with the protoframes and then replay key events in the story in the hope of a desired positive outcome.
Protoframes
Unlike normal frames, protos are ordinary people who have been voluntarily infected with a helminth and, as a result, have changed their appearance and gained all sorts of abilities. At the same time, they are still human, can speak, express emotions and retain their personality. At the time of release, there are a total of 6 protoframes:
Arthur Nightingale. Eleanor Nightingale. Aoi Morohoshi. Leticia (Lettie) Garcia. Amir Beckett. Quincy Isaacs.
In terms of gameplay, protoframes act as special skins called ‘Gemini’ and work according to the following scheme:
- It can only be purchased in the platinum shop.
- They can only be used on certain frames, either by equipping them as a skin or by activating a special emotion directly in the quest.
- They can be customized just like regular skins.
- Skins are currently only available for the Excalibur, Meg, Bolt, Nix, Trinity, and the new Cyte-09 frames. The album below does not have a sample skin for the Cyte-09 because I do not own that frame.
- If you have voice lines, you will hear them periodically.
Trade Center
The main social hub this time is a regular shopping center, which you access via a computer located on the right side of the nose of the player’s ship. Inside the centre there are NPCs and objects that provide access to the following standard functions:
- POM-2 computer, which allows you to perform the usual update activities, view the calendar and open the interface to communicate with the protoframes.
- Reputation improvement interface with a new syndicate called Hex, made up of the protoframes already mentioned.
- Contracts launch interface. By default, these contain side quests, hidden collectibles, and additional small mechanics in addition to the main quest.
- Shop with new hoaxes. To avoid writing the same thing a hundred times, I’ll just say that the items in all the shops in the centre are tied to a certain rank in the Hex Syndicate.
- A shop with profile avatars, scenes for the training room, skins for new weapons.
- A shop with new music.
- Shop with stickers and blueprints for new weapons, frames.
- Interface to trade collectibles for reputation with Hex.
- Backstage is a separate place, analogue to the ship, where various important game systems are collected and where Albert’s cat lives, allowing you to repeat the loop (story mission).
Höllvania
Hollvania
The story and all the new quests take place in a specific, rather large part of the city of Höllvania. It consists of several corridors with modern buildings on the sides (some of which can be climbed), some fairly large areas, and underground areas in the form of an underground ruin. The main feature of this new location is the system of changing seasons, which is linked to the seasonal cycle, which lasts a real week. For example, at the time of writing, Höllvania is in winter. Spring will start on 22 December, summer on 29 December, autumn on 5 January, and so on. With the arrival of a new season, the place changes its appearance.
Season Calendar
A season in the game lasts 3 months, and each month has a small list of tasks and events. When you successfully complete a task, you immediately gain access to the events that follow. In my opinion, the tasks themselves are quite simple, but some take much longer to complete than others. Some examples of tasks are killing X enemies of a certain new faction, killing X enemies in Y way, break X containers. Events, on the other hand, are of the following types:
- Some give you a reward of your choice, such as a Mystifier or an Archon Crystal.
- Others are tied to a system of relationships with Hex members.
- Still others allow you to choose a special enhancement that lasts for the entire season. For example, a boost to your Energy regeneration rate.
Quests
In Höllvania, the developers have added several new quests, some of which are old but have one or more additional mechanics. It is important to note that after the first playthrough of each quest, its Steel Path variant will open up immediately.
Sweep
- Eliminate X opponents, no change here.
Elimination
- You have to make your way through and then defeat a very fun boss, the H-09 tank (and it has two stages).
- As you get closer to the boss, you have to summon enemy troops several times to get the RPGs you need to destroy the gate.
- The troops are summoned through a snake-like mini-game where you must successfully collect several characters.
- In the first stage, you must first strip the tank of its armour and then use the RPGs to inflict damage.
- In the second stage, the tank is transformed into a mutant.
Survival
Still tied to the life-support mechanic and gradually appearing turrets with an additional mechanic.
- Periodically, parasites will latch onto the turrets and try to infect them. They must be destroyed with weapons.
- As long as there are parasites on the tower, it cannot be activated.
- If the tower is infected, it will turn into a rather thick enemy in terms of HP.
Legacy Harvest
This is a new activity that works as follows.
- First, you must activate Albert’s cat and defend it from waves of enemies while waiting for the progress bar to fill.
- Special items drop from enemies, which can be carried to the cat and add X% to the progress bar.
- Once it is full, you must kill the marked elite and then capture it.
Face-off
An all-new type of PvEvP activity is divided into two modes – the first pits you against another AI-controlled team, while the second pits you against a team of real players. Whichever mode you choose, the essence of the activity boils down to this:
- Teams try to complete three random challenges as quickly as possible.
- The challenges can be – Destruction, Elimination, Data Burning, Techron Scan, Pirate Radio, Lockbox. The last 4 are new, but some are based on existing concepts.
- As you progress through the trials, special items appear on the map – we’ll call them blue and red.
- Selected special items can be used to do the following: blue items give buffs to your party, red items give debuffs to the opposing party.
New opponents
As you progress through the update’s story and quests, you’ll encounter two new enemy factions:
- Techrot – essentially local infected mutants of all shapes and sizes.
- Scaldra – local soldiers with a penchant for corrosive damage and poison.
Motorbike
- A new form of personal transport has been added to the game – the motorbike.
- Released as part of the story update.
- It can be summoned almost anywhere in the game world, be it a large open space or a narrow corridor.
- It has four abilities that do not consume energy but simply go into the FC. Two of the four abilities are combat abilities.
- It can be customized.
- You can wear different skins, which are sold in the shop for platinum.
Relationships
As I mentioned at the beginning, in order to successfully complete the loop, you will need to establish relationships with protoframes. This feature is implemented as follows.
The development of the relationship is linked to the increase in the Chemistry level. You also need to increase your reputation with the Hex Syndicate.
- There are 6 levels in total, from neutral to best friend/lover (depending on what you have achieved).
- Once you reach a certain chemistry level, you can go on a date with a Protoframe and even kiss them at the end of the season (in honor of the New Year 2000).
You can increase your chemistry level as follows:
- Pass contracts once a day. Each contract is linked to a specific protoframe, and each time you complete a contract once a day, you gain chemistry experience.
- Once a day, you can chat with all the protoframes to increase your chemistry level and learn the lore associated with a particular protoframe. For example, explaining to Arthur what emoticons are.
- Send gifts. Again, this can be done once a day, and everyone has their own preferences. Personally, I use this cheat sheet from reddit.
- Participate in calendar events related to a particular protoframe.
Cyte-09
The new one, number 59, has a rather interesting male physique.
- The crafting blueprint will be sent in the mail after you complete the update’s story quest.
- All the parts and resources needed for crafting can be obtained by signing a contract with the Trade Centre.
- You can also buy all the parts you need from the Trade Centre. You will need a level 2 Hex reputation and 40,000 points.
- You can also buy them in the shop for platinum.
Since I don’t have this character, here’s a brief summary of the abilities based on all the information available:
- The first one – lights up enemies’ weak spots, increases their damage and allows you to see through walls.
- The second recharges your weapon magazine and drops a box of a certain type of damage on the ground at the same time.
- You can choose any type of damage you like, or you can choose a random one.
- New bullets become special and have a 100% chance of causing the appropriate status effect.
- After manual reloading, the bullets turn back into normal bullets.
- Third – Invisibility, the duration of which can be extended by head shots.
- Fourth – allows you to summon and use a special sniper rifle that fires bullets with an AOE effect.
New gear
In addition to the new frame, new gear has also been added to the game:
- Reconifex – an assault rifle, although it looks more like a machine gun.
- AX-52 – an assault rifle that looks a lot like a Kalashnikov.
- Vesper 77 – pistol.
- 8 Mystifiers – 5 for the frame, 1 for the melee weapon, 1 for the primary and 1 for the secondary.
- 11 Mods – 2 for the frame and 9 for the weapon.
As with Cyte-09, all of the above can be obtained through contracts or simply purchased, but in the latter case some options are only available at the highest possible Hex Syndicate level.
Improvements and changes
Finally, there are a couple of improvements, changes, and one oddity:
- Not far from the Amir Beckett protoframe is an arcade machine with a mini-game called Caliber Chicks 2 – it’s a 2D platformer that reminded me a lot of Contra. The developers even added a leaderboard.
- Reworked the Nix and Trinity frames.
- Improved the ancient infected.
- Made quality-of-life improvements to various components.
- Made client optimisations.
- Fixed a large number of issues.
