Warframe Modding Guide for Beginners (Updated to 17.8.1)

Welcome!

UPDATED--Current with update 17.8.1

So, chances are if you're reading this you're here for my vast wisdom of modding! Sadly i have no wisdom of my own, thus i have borrowed some! The point of this guide is to try and help new players figure out what mods are and what the hell you're supposed to do with them without too much headache, so without further adue, onward! Please note this is my first guide so feel free to rate and comment!

NOTE: This guide is intended for new players and while I have left out some of the more advanced parts/notes I still feel you can learn more then enough from this guide to get you started on your journey through Warframe and If you desire the advanced complicated things i suggest checking out the Warframe wiki.

So, first things first, Mods are used in-game to upgrade/improve your warframes, weapons and sentinels and can be acquired from enemys you kill.

This shiny thing in the center of the screen is what a mod looks like after a dead enemy has "dropped" it. To pick it up you simply have to walk over it. So now you have a few mods but you're still standing around your ship wondering what to do with them, right? Look no further! What you're gonna wanna do is open your arsenal, now there is two ways of doing that, the first is hitting your Esc key, that will open up your menu. From there you want to click equipment, then arsenal. The second way is simply running to the very back of your ship and hitting E when you're close enough, and TA DAH! 

you should now be looking at your self like this.

Now, for this guide i'm gonna show you how to equip warframe mods, but its pretty universal when it comes to weapons and sentinels. Hover your mouse over your chosen warframe and four options will come up, ignore two of them and just click on Upgrade. Now before i get ahead of myself i'll tell you what a mod actually is. As I said mods are used to upgrade Warframes and weapons and each mod is different. The example one here is a high ranking (we'll get to ranks later) health mod that, you guessed it, increases your max health. The list of mods is EXTREMELY long and boring but mods can range from health boost/ shield boost/ damage boost/ faster sprint/ more energy/ magic cookies/ to /Power Strength/ I think you get the picture...

BROKEN MODS-- Broken mods have cracks acrossed them and are simply starter mods that you get through doing 'Vor's quest' thingy (and possibly other ways to, not sure). They are simply crappy versions of a mod that you get so you get a feel for some of the mods out there. Once you acquire a non-broken version of a mod I suggest you get rid of its broken counter part 

TO SUM IT UP---Mods are collected from enemys you kill ingame and are how you upgrade/improve your gear to get you to those higher level missions.

Broken mods suck, get rid of them.

Now every Warframe has ten mod slots, you'll note some of them have symbols in the corner, we'll get to that later, but to equip a mod is really quite simple. The mods that you currently own are displayed at the bottom, so from there you simply drag and drop with the mouse to any slot.

See? Its not that hard, right? Now something to take note of is in the top left corner of the screen you'll see the word CAPACITY and a number beside. Now if you look at your mods in the top right corner of each one will be a number, thats how much that mod is going to drain from your MOD CAPACITY, obviously you can not exceed your capacity. Now this is where polaritys come in and it might get a bit confusing, so hold on to your butt. In the top right corner of your mod beside the little number we talked about there will be a symbol, thats the mods polarity. You might also notice that some of the mod slots of your Warframe have polaritys. Whats the point of polaritys?

Well the are actually quite useful, EXAMPLE---> Lets pretend for a moment that I want to put a mod on my Warframe that has a four point drain. If I match the mods polarity with the same polarity of one of my Warframes mod slots, that mod will only drain two points from my Mod Capacity as opposed to four.

You can tell if you have matched up the polaritys correctly by looking at the mods number. As you can see in the picture the number is now green (thats a good thing) and it also is a two as opposed to a four. Putting mods in a slot with a polarity that does NOT match will cause the mod to drain additional points from your mod capacity 

The number is now red and is a five point drain

To sum it up--To equip a mod just drag and drop with the mouse

--Match mod polaritys with mod slot polaritys for less mod capacity drain so you can put on bigger mods.

Before I even begin talking about this i want to say this is a very "touchy" subject amongst the Warframe community, with everyone having their own ideas of what a "good" build is, so this is just gonna be some general ideas and information for new players, mostlly focusing on survivability.

(NOTE: "Build" refers to how you mod your Warframe and weapons. Most users have specific "builds" for their gear. E.g., A tank build might have lots of health, shields and armor.)

So now that you know how to equip the mods you own, you may be wondering which mods you should use. I will attempt to give you some insight on what I would personally recommend as a new player.

Redirection and Vitality

Redirection- +40% SHIELD CAPACITY

Vitality- +40% HEALTH

These two mods, are gonna be your best friends in this game. Not matter what kind of build you are using these mods should go with you. 

Intensify

Intensify- +5% POWER STRENGTH

Power strength effects how strong you abilities will be. For example, if you ability is a damage dealing ability, power strength effects how much damage it will deal. The more power strength, the more damage. Power strength also applies to some abilities that stop damage. Another example would be Rhino's Iron Skin ability. When active Rhino takes no damage, instead his Iron Skin absorbs it all. Power Strength effects how much damage Rhino's Iron skin can absorb before deactivating.

Streamline

Streamline- +5% POWER EFFICIENCY

Power efficiency determines how much energy it takes to use an ability. The more power effciency, the more you can use your abilities.

Stretch

Stretch- +7.5% POWER RANGE

This mod is quite useful on most Warframes, as increasing your power range can allow you to hit targets that are further away with your abilities. It will also increase the size of things like Frost's Snowglobe.

Continuity

Continuity- +5% POWER DURATION

This mod increases the amount of time your duration based abilities will remain active for after being cast. An example of this would be Nyx's Chaos ability. Once cast, enemies within the powers range will attack random factions, the amount of time they stay in this confused state is effected by power duration.

So, as I said, these are some mods that you will probably find on most peoples builds, and I would recommend putting on your warframe build when you start (and as you aquire them). Obviously as you play the game you will get an understanding of how mods work and how they effect your different abilities and mod accordingly, as well, what might work for one Warframe, may not work for another...

So I won't tell you exactly how to build your Warframes and weapons, I feel everyone should experiment on their own time and see what suits their play style.

Ever wonder why you have a bunch of mods equipped but they don't seem to be having any effect on mid/high level enemies? The reason, is more then likely, that your mods need to be leveled up-

Fusion--Upgrading a mod itself to enchance its effects. 

Just as it says, fusion is a way to upgrade a specific mods effects, making the mod more valueable or make it stonger, not to mention useful in higher level missions. basicly you are adding a bunch of random mods to another mod to make it more powerful. So to do this you are going to go to your arsenal again, and down in the bottom right corner you should see a button that says MODS

Click on that and you will get this

The mods you currently have equiped on your warframe will appear at the bottom so, you click on the mod you wish to fuse (upgrade) and hit FUSION in the top left corner

Now, right above your equiped mods you will see symbols, a head, a gun, sword etc. you can click on those to cycle through all the mods you own. Now you need to select other mods to fuse. This will consume them . You can select any mods you like or wish to use up to get rid of. Once you have selected the mods you wish to fuse press APPLY FUSION in the top right corner and BOOM! You've fused your first mod! I'm gonna cry! Really i am...

BTW it does cost credits to fuse mods, based on how many mods you fuse.

(NOTE: Fusion Cores are mods that drop from most enemies (like most other mods) and there sole purpose in life is to be used when you Fuse(level up) mods. They are one of the more prefered mods to fuse as they give you more "bang for your buck".)

Now-MOD RANK-every mod has a rank, when you first get a mod it is rank 0, yes thats right, 0 so when you fuse a mod (upgrade it) its rank increases and with that its mod capacity drain also increases. 

SO, to sum it up---fusing a mod increases its effect (whatever that may be), its rank, and its mod capacity drain.

Rank really means nothing to you until you start to trade WHICH I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT IN THIS GUIDE!!!! But to tell your mod rank you can look at the small lights at the bottom of the mod.

Example--(this is an example and i may have my numbers off a bit but you should get the just of it)--->Vitality--+20% health---2 point drain--rank 0-- I want to fuse this mod to make it better, so following my beautiful instructions, i select enough mods to increase this mods rank by 1, so we now have---Vitality--+40% Health--3 point drain--rank 1--

NOTE: For more advanced Fusion information i.e.; how many mods it take to rank up a mod based on polaritys and whatever, check out the Warframe Wiki- http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/WARFRAME_Wiki

Assuming you're still somewhat sane, here we go!

By this point you hopefully got the basics of adding mods and what not, but you may be going; "I have no more mod Capacity. What do i do?" Fear not! There are ways to fix this problem.

Aura Mods-- These are specific mods that fit in the top mod slot and have positive effects on your warframe

As you can see in the screenshot this mod will cause your team to slowly regenerate health :P. Now if you look where the mod drain number would be on it, you will see a number with an arrow pointing up, thats how many mod Capacity points this mod restores. So the thing with aura mods is matching there polarity up doubles the amount of mod capacity points restored.

Orokin Reactor--(Yellow Potato) Ok, now you're probably wondering why i called it a potato, i can explain and its not what your thinking...The reason is...it looks like a potato...Seriously it does. What does it do? That's a much better question! An Orokin reactor doubles your warframes mod capacity. As you level up your Warframe, its rank increases. Like mods when you get it it is rank 0. As you kill stuff you get XP (no ♥♥♥♥ Sherlock) and your Warframe levels up. So whatever your Warframes rank is, is how many mod Capacity points you get. i.e. Warframe rank--12--mod capacity---12. (Max Warframe and weapon rank is 30)

So installing an Orokin reactor will give you 60 mods points to play with (on a rank 30 Warframe).

Now, acquiring them can be interesting. Orokin reactors(or Catalysts for weapons) can be bought for real money through the market, but if you wait you can get the BP (blueprint) through special missions called Alerts. If you get the BP you can build it in the foundry on your ship.

As for installing it--> Bring this up again

Now click on the ACTIONS button in the bottom right corner and you will get this--

After that you simply click on the potato, really, click the potato... and you're done!

Its through this screen that you use FORMA as well

FORMA---used to alter or add a polarity to your warframe or weapon--can be acquired the same ways as a reactor or catalyst, but can also be gotten from the hellish void...

So yes, use a Forma to add or change an already existing polarity to better suit your needs.

Its installed the same way as a Reactor but you will get a choice as to which polarity you wish to set the mod slot to.

FORMA CAN ONLY BE USED ON A RANK 30 WARFRAME/WEAPON AND WILL RESET THAT ITEM TO RANK 0

Alright, to be totally honest, i wasn't sure where to put this tid bit of info so I'm putting it here--

Utility mods slot--To be honest, I'm not sure if it has a "technical" name but that's what I call them. What are they? They are "special" mods that go in the top right mod slot on your Warframe. What do they do? All kinds of stuff. Nothing that is going to drastically affect your gameplay but they do have some nice benefits. i won't list them all here but to give you an idea, they do things like: Increase recovery time from knockdowns- Give you a loot radar- Increase your bullet jump- Increase shield resilience to ice- Blah, Blah Blah, Blah Blah...

I threw this in here for ♥♥♥♥♥ and giggles, this is a screenshot of my Trinity Prime Warframe (10/21/2015). I am not finished my "build" for her, as I want to put a forma or two on so I can upgrade some of the mods but this is what she looks like right now, hopefully this might help give you an idea of what your Warframe might look like after following this guide! (lol)

Now go forth-and kill some ♥♥♥♥ with your newly improved gear!

when in doubt, check the Warframe wiki for any question about anything

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/WARFRAME_Wiki

I do hope that this guide was clear enough not to mention helpful, but it is my first guide so feel free to rate and/or comment if you feel there is something i should add or change.

Nyx forever!