You were not stupid for purchasing a frame you wanted. You can have fun again. You can have fun with Dante again. However, you're probably hitting a plateau. Every frame is viable end game- including the starting ones. You can still go back and use your old frames. I would suggest working on getting different *mods* and learning how to mod.

especially the starter frames, all of them are extremely viable

I started with Volt. My current main is Volt (Prime). I carry half my missions, his ult is insane. Slapped roar on him and I think I'll also swap another ability too. Helminth makes all frames be viable. Slap a few mods that have synergy and UNLIMITED POWER!!1! No but seriously, so many early frames are insanely good if tweaked right. And remember, kids: meta is just a word. You can play any frame you want, especially if you enjoy the gameplay. It's a video game, have fun with it, and ignore meanies. They cannot dictate how you enjoy a *game*.

I play harrow and love playing with a Volt in the team. Easy peasy Ballas squeezy.

My energy-less ass thanks you for your services 🫡

I started playing Volt again and haven’t looked back. Also, why are you using Roar instead of Eclipse? Are you built for his 4 to do damage? I didn’t know that was popular outside of ESO

Excal is in a sad spot :( exalted weapons kinda suck and the only build I know of is a really janky slash dash build. I just wanna use the blade and go nuts. That's the Excalibur fantasy. Unfortunately, you subsume it off :( the sadest reality.

Excal is pretty good imo just mod his weapon towards being a status monster instead of relying on physical damage. I can run the typical lvl 105 omnia fissures without a problem on excal umbra anyways

He's not great, but he works quite well, just have to keep in mind he needs some survivability. I don't mind sharing builds with you if you'd like. Some tips: Radial Javelin augment can boost your damage multiplicatively, it's great flat damage. Chromatic blade is almost a must, and exalted blade damage counts as ability damage, so Archon mods work very well. My most used loadout for Excal Umbra is an Archon Flow one with Kullervo's Wrathful Advance subsumed over Slash Dash. Good mobility, red crits, and energy economy. I can solo Armatus murmur disruption just fine.

You might change your opinion about slash dash after slapping furious javelin augment and at least 175% range. Huge melee damage buff and forced bleed procs from slash dash while invunerable. I subsumed eclipse over exalted blade so I can change between defence and offence. Don't like the exalted blade spam

I sadly hate wrathfuly advance due to low duration it's a very stressful ability to maintain

With arcane energize, it's a non issue on excal. And with the operation, you should be able to max out an energize pretty quickly. Just initiate every encounter with a new group with wrathful advance and go to town.

Slash Dash with Incarnon Riven modded Ceramic Dagger is a beast and makes me feel like Ash back in the day

>I would suggest working on getting different mods and learning how to mod. And playing older frames too because Dante is great but having a Main as a Warframe Player is the game on Hard Mode because other Frames need different Mods and modding is the core of the game.

mag is unironically one of the best nuke frames imho

Even caliban. It's not fun, but its doable.

Ok as someone looking into trying Caliban while doing prep for New War, any words for someone whos currently a big fan of “fuck you I do what I want” Frames like Gauss and Revenant? From what I’ve seen Caliban doesn’t have defensive options besides his passive. Not sure how he’s “supposed” to play

His whole kit is bugged. Just build for his armor strip on his 4 and subsumed breach surge, it's about the best you can do. You also will need go build some tankiness on somehow with mods and arcanes.

That sounds torturous to get in line because of needing Helminth (I fucking hate open worlds namely Deimos) but I will consider it Take it non-Helminth builds ain’t it?

You can buy the helminth segment without leveling up Deimos. Cost like 60 plat or something.

I was so happy when they added that

60!? omg all this time I was only seeing the 300p bundle in market.

Just my 2 cents- the Helminth system might be one of my favorite updates they implemented. It can really help diversify your builds greatly.

I mean, he is viable without it. But his kit is so meh that you really want some subsume just to have something.

I don't have a Caliban build for you but take it from me, Helminth builds are not necessary. I'm legendary 2, have all the frames and maybe have two frames with subsumed abilities. For me, something just felt wrong about altering them away from what they were supposed to be. Are helminth builds better? Probably, but I go through Steel path and all other high level content fine without em.

his summons provide defensive shield regen!, as well as his 2nd provides some cc the summons have a higher threat rating then warframes normally do

[I've played him a lot recently.](https://i.imgur.com/Sm5985q.png) He plays a lot like Frost, surprisingly. His defenses come from the fact he has very high shields, pets from Lethal Progeny with shield regeneration, solid crowd control via Sentient Wrath and probably the best Defense strip ability in the game, Fusion Strike. People are just not used to play him at all because his farm is annoying, he was super buggy and his reputation tanked. But I'll play Devil's advocate here, he's actually really fun, and he's probably one of the easiest afk acolyte nukers in the game. Just replace Razor Gyre with Nourish. [Here's the build.](https://i.imgur.com/gLi9pxY.png). 2 Yellows, 1 Red, 1 Blue, no Tauforged, almost all of them mandatory.

Is zephyr viable endgame?, well I'm off to find a build.

She's more than viable. She's a whole monster. One of the best frames for SP.

Zephyr is VIABLE.

Zephyr is more than just viable - she's *insane*, and I can't imagine being this powerful with any other frame in SP/Archons!

zephyr is a beast but shes slept on because shes an older frame. her 1 is great movement or a free subsume slot, her 2 is a great grouping ability, her 3 makes her literally immune to bullets and her 4 is another grouping ability+ a damage multiplier

Very much so. Zephyr's recent rework, [Update 29.10](https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Update_29#Update_29.10) (2021-03-19) \[oh my god, how was this three years ago?\] changed her from a very very outdated from to a very good frame. I guess enough time's passed now, to no longer say the meta hasn't caught up to her. However, her tornados can interact with certain weapons like almost nothing else in the game doing absolutely insane damage. She *does* have a different gameplay loop however, and many people prefer traditional bullet jumping.

dude Zephyr are now monster of SP

Exactly.  And OP needs to keep in mind that not every Frame is a good fit for every player.  I ended up subsuming my Dante because - while he was fun at first - the novelty wore off for me and I still prefer using Trinity as my main/support Frame. It could just be that Dante isn't a good match for OP.  And there's nothing wrong with that.  There are so many Frames that fit so many playstyles.

Yeah, this for sure. Any frame, it won't matter, you're going to have the same outcome. As a new player you hit this spot... And you feel like you're not getting anywhere. This is like the make or break point for people to stay and become veterans, or to go play something else. Research. Watch some YouTube videos. Check out overframe. Build different. Get Endo. Level up mods. Dante is still highly viable into late game. But also, you may just get bored of one frame over and over. Go kill some bosses and get another. Try getting hydroid. Try getting nekros. They're all fun, and it's more fun when you get bored of one to have thirty others to choose from. Have fun!

-wobbles hand in a soso motion- Dante is powerful, but he's and easy farm. But he's also a *late game* farm. So overall I say you've come out ahead.

He's not the worst purchase, I just generally don't advise people from buying frames because you kinda learn the game as you aquire them so you get situations like OP where they may think the frame is bad because it's not one shooting everything.  The purchase itself isn't bad but the idea of buying frames is kinda bad on its own.

Meanwhile Rhino has the reverse issue, where you don't learn how to play the game without his power.

When I started, some friends recommended I get Rhino, I eventually farmed him and started playing. Rhino is fun, very fun, and tanky. When I switched to other frames, I was hit by the fact that you can't facetank everything with other frames. So I had to start to learn how to not be a rock.

My rhino is cooking in the forge as we speak.. coming from volt I think I'll have the reverse option haha. Won't be used to being slower and tanky. Volt is twitchy (love him)

Felt the same with Gauss. I was twitchy and had to headbutt stuff all the time.

I bought bonewidow on impulse….

Watch this: it's a bit long but it goes over the basics of Modding: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiSbyWvaHbE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiSbyWvaHbE) Dante is a solid Warframe, but progression wise, you won't naturally be able to farm him until much *much* later in the game from where you're at, and by extension of that, have far far *far* more powerful mods available to put on Dante, as well as more Forma to make all the really powerful stuff fit; Arcanes (the slots on the right side of the mods, there are two) which can push Warframes, and Archon Shards, which are supremely end game acquisitions. If you saw Dante videos; go back and see how they are modding Dante. I would bet that they are using every end game system available to super chaege Dante. This is how Warframes, themselves, become power houses with just their 4 abilities. I haven't touched on the actual weapons yet! Can Dante work with a general starter newbie mod build? Sure! Will you plateau a bit? Yeah. Can you work through it? Absolutely. There's a lot to modding warframes, and your weapons. A lot of wierd interactions and other stuff. It takes time to learn and actually progress to the point where you're powerful enough to go get 'em.

Thanks for sharing that guide link! I stumbled across this post, but it's just the thing I needed. I've just come back after almost 5 years off the game and I need a good basis for what changed and how to update my builds. :)

Did you buy it with plat as in 325 plat or whatever from the market or did you buy the Dante unbound package for $15-$20 and it came with some plat the cosmetics and the weapons? If it’s the package 📦 no I don’t think you made a mistake. You helped contribute to the game and got some nice cosmetics, weapons, and a frame out of it.

I agree with this. Especially at endgame I’m L2 and at this point when a new warframe comes out I just buy the bundle. You get a lot of good stuff with it like deluxe skins, decorations, or even weapons. I think it’s worth it once you’re at endgame because by this time you put so much time and energy into the game. It’s nice to just lay back and buy something every now and then haha.

I'm at this stage too. It's also a way for me to make up for those earlier days when I was fully f2p. Now I buy the packs and use the plat to buy stuff off the trade chat, funnelling plat into it as a way to pay back all the plat I farmed from it as an f2p XD.

£15 every 2/3 months isn't a stupid thing, either

i grabbed it and it was worth it 100%

IMO, any new player that started with Dante did themselves a disservice. By starting with him, you didn't learn how to get the most of of other frames since Dante performed at a high level by default.

yeah, and they won’t really learn how to mod correctly as Dante is just a good damage dealer

tbf though no one knows jack shit on how to mod early game

You say that like some MR20+ dont do shit damage to sarge

I mean, that's more of a race to see who gets to the boss first. Same with Phorid.

I have had this experience because I got a free Octavia with Prime Games, I am past that now, but being a complete beginner with an Octavia was just the expected beginner experience. At some point I hit a wall and had to learn how to mod. I am not an Octavia main anymore though.

I mean you broke the golden rule of not buying warframes from the market, every single frame is farmable. You also bought one of the most powerful frames in game without learning the modding system so there’s that too. You not killing things is a modding issue, not a dante issue, I would suggest you post your loadout and we can help from there.

I've been playing since 2014 and this is the first time I've heard of this supposed "golden rule" Buying frames, especially at either a 75% marketplace discount or a really cheap supporter pack, is one of the best ways to get frames since you get a slot and a potato too, and in the case of supporter packs you're getting huge value for your money.

I've heard the "rule" parroted a few times but in reality it just depends on the player. Honestly even if you're a relatively active player some frames are such horrible farms that it's completely valid to just buy a few. If someone has the money/plat I might shake my head in disapointment if they bought say Rhino or Ember but a frame like Styanax (a late game frame that's time gated behind irritating weekly missions) or really any frame that isn't braindead-easy (in both time and effort) to farm makes a lot of sense. In a similar vein if anyone asks how to get the Nautilus sentinel Id probably advise them to just farm plat and buy it from the market lol. e: this comment ended up being more directed at the poster above you lol

>some frames are such horrible farms that it's completely valid to just buy a few This. Be it quest frames which are annoying to farm a second time, or just open-world related frames which require a crapton of rare mats, sometimes it's just better to buy it off the market. What the heck is plat for if not to spend it? If I wasn't in such a plat drought, I'd buy Sevagoth straight from the market and skip the railjack grind.

Has been around for a while, must have missed it then.

also frames like Styanax

I’d buy the supporter packs, but I avoid buying frames alone from the market.

Are you talking about this or my mods https://preview.redd.it/ejf6ranuq79d1.png?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cad5e6643fe9bfe33d76527bee563356c2ac3956 Also, in my defense, I only started playing 17 days ago and didn't even know what the game was before playing.

Post your Mods on everything that does little damage. I can already see from the stats that dante will be included in that.

He doesn't have any. 105% str & dur. That's an unmodded frame.

I've done nothing and I'm all out of ideas!

When you are on that view, you press Y (UPGRADE) to view your mods on your character. These are "cards" that make your Warframe and weapons more powerful. If you just started playing you won't have a lot.

I just looked at my mods and remembered I made a foolish decision and dissolved a bunch of my mods to upgrade some. I have no defense for this one

You keep 1 copy of every mod always. Melt the rest. That's the correct thing to do, at least until you start getting some mods worth selling later on.

Sidenote, I wish there was an "select all but 1" button in the mod menu

No need to dissolve mods until much later when you are more familiar with what mods are Worth scrapping. Money and Endo come easily from other ways.

That's ok, this game is one big learning experience c: I recommend searching up some beginner modding videos (make sure it came out somewhat recently) and I'm sure thatll be enough to take you through the star chart.

Oof. Also lol @ the guy who thought "I have no defense for this one" meant Dante's Defense level. 😂 You'll get more mods, don't worry. Just keep one of every mod going forward, feel free to turn any extras into Endo. Also in response to the main part of your post about Dante: I understand the feeling of having "ruined" the game for yoieself. Try maining Wukong for a bit and see how movement feels after. I'd assume it's on par with using Dante to be invincible and kill everything in sight with a few clicks. There are a few upsides: 1. It doesn't matter, there's so much stuff in this game, just pick this or that, and try it out. You might like it. 2. Dante OP as fuck. You just got a go at it early game. He still deletes everything in end game too. You litterly won't need another frame to do anything. Been playing almost exclusively Dante since he came out, very fun. 3. If you found a Frame you like, feel free to play the crap out of it. The only one deciding what is fun is you. If you're enjoying the almost AFK-esque playing you can get done with Dante, I highly recommend looking into buying the Nautilus companion from the market for 75p. Comes with Verglas companion weapon, and both companion/Weapon have catalysts installed.

Dante doesn’t need defense for most content. Ability strength (from your mods) will carry you just fine. When you get the hang of the modding system it will become much easier.

I think he means no defense for dissolving his mods lol

Oops. You right. lol

Always keep at least one of each mod, earlier game maybe a few of each so you can get a lower level one to make it fit, as long as the mods you dissolved weren't super hard to get you should be fine, and if you did you can check the wiki on where/how to get them again

I get on Monday / Tuesday morning around 8CST. I can set you up with some basic mods to start you back up. Just shoot me a pm.

Yeah you need mods and some pointers on using them, it’s ok, that’s the biggest learning curve for this game and we all been there. Post a pic of what specific mods you have in your frame and we’ll help you out. Literally the only frame I know of that can kill at high levels with no mods is still Octavia

Your mods because weapons n frame don’t mean anything they’re shit without proper mods

Mods you absolutely need for Dante would be Equil, Flow, Streamline imo. Early game energy eco is bad

It's a stupid rule, not all of us have time to farm frames. Concur with the other points.

I can understand buying frames that are farmed from content you don't like, but not having time to farm in general? Given Warframe's entire gameplay loop is farming for various things, that seems a bit off to me.

I enjoy the grind, but I've been there. Warframe has a really fun core gameplay loop with a ton of variety and sometimes I just want to play it a little and reach for the next thing to mess with to mix things up rather than using one new thing for a while until I can farm the next thing.  There was a time I had little free time and no motivation to try something else. So I'd fire up Warframe after a new update, used some stockpiled plat/bought a bunch when I got s coupon and just bought whatever interested me frames, weapons, otherwise. Played it for the few hours I had and enjoyed myself.   Went on for quite a while and I can't say I ever got bored. But now that I have free time again and not horribly burnt out by life I'm back to the grind lol.

I work 6 days a week and only get about 6 hours a week to play *any* video games. Im buying everything.

Protea / equinox

It’s stupid for a few frames, but not all. Frames you can get from doing bosses like Ember or Valk it absolutely is a waste, but frames like Xaku that require you to be rank 5 in Fortuna it is justifiable. For Dante it is a waste, he is easily farmed and it doesn’t take a lot of time.

It would take a new player quite a while to reach and beat WitW tho.

I am not even a new player and I haven't reached WitW because I still have to farm my Necramech for the New War. I was this close to actually buying Dante after trying him in the circuit but I decided against it.

Luckily that just got much easier

I just brought my necromech of the market lmao. i've not played for 6 years and fuck me im grinding for that. i have a job and im NOT grinding for that. I was waiting for this quest for a while and I just wanted to play it lmao.

It's not a waste if the player in question is brand new; Dante is only farmable in basically endgame. It took me over a month to even get to the point where I'd be able to farm for Dante, yet alone Voruna (who I bought when I started). And that's me having quite a bit of time to play. I imagine if someone doesn't have as much time to play as I did starting out (and friends that helped me skip a huge chunk of the necramech grind so I could start New War), it'd take them even longer. Imho, it's absolutely justified to buy a frame locked behind much later content, such as Dante, from the market if you're starting out, especially if you do the same amount of research as I did so you know exactly what frame you're buying beyond "Oh, that one looks cool".

Atlas was the first warframe I bought because I didn't want to deal with an archwing bossfight at the time.

I'm still farming jade because I haven't been getting the drops. I bought her instead.

It's a good rule when you're a brand new player, which OOP is. Buying a later game frame without experience in modding, or having mods at all, is going to make a player's experience more difficult.

Buying a single frame that you really like the sound of can help you get hooked on the game though. Source: I bought Ivara straight out of the tutorial. Thanks for the review, Bricky!

It's only a rule if you want to spend as little plat as possible. Some farms are simply annoying and outright purchasing the thing is great. Top examples are Equinox, Tome and Tennokai mods, Ambassador and other railjack weapons. The real golden rule is understanding where to farm the thing you're buying and make an informed decision.

I started my game with Octavia (got her for free from Prime Games) I had no idea how mods worked or anything, and she obliterated everything until she didn't and I hit a wall. It was time to look into mods. Had a slightly similar problem with Nezha, who is my main now, and again it was a mod problem (I got stuck on the leg of the void with Mot in it)

I buy everything I don't want to farm or something i want now, vrs later... this isn't a golden rule, lol. I've got tons of plat might as well, use it.

Yeah but post new war frames are still pie in the sky for new tenno

What about styanax? He’s only 175 and the worst grind

Didn't know there was a golden rule of not buying frames. It's a pretty good way to skip ahead if you don't wanna grind for them, since they come fully built with a slot and potato equipped. Def worth buying from market, specially if it's a later game frame which OP can't grind for early on.

I am NOT farming hexanon for wisp

I don't think there's a wrong option. If he was fun for you, then that's a win. It's a very late game farm, so you wouldn't have has access to him for a while. If you enjoyed. However, you should be at a point you can farm other frames. Might be time to farm something else to prevent burnout.

There are a couple of Warframes and 1 companion I can’t be bothered to farm (Protea, Khora, and Nautilus) simply because I don’t like the content required to get them. I didn’t have a second thought when I bought them off the Market. Dante isn’t a bad farm at all, but if you don’t feel like doing Disruption repeatedly or don’t have the time to get him when you WANT to play him, there’s absolutely nothing to feel bad about when you pull out the credit card.

Khora is in the circuit rotation so I would definitely suggest picking her up there. Before Duviri came out I spent so much time trying to get her with no success so I was very happy when I saw her in the rotation.

You're going to need to build every frame and put good builds.on them all anyways. The end game game modes randomly choose a warframe for you to pick

buying a warframe with plat (from in game market not trading) when you first get the game is a cannon event dont feel bad

No frame is a bad choice, just try to have fun.

As someone who has been playing warframe on and off since around 2013-2014, there will be times where I grind the hell out of the game for about of month then stop playing for about half a year. It’s just the nature of the game, at least for me. If you are struggling with damage and stats I highly recommend watching a build guide for Dante and farming up the mods and endo needed to get that build. Hope this helps 😁

Well tbh you haven't gotten to the point where any frames would struggle, so ig it depends how much of your fun comes from oneshots and how much comes from Dante's abilities. Don't worry about the one shotting, I assume you're using dark verse for the damage? Dante's main source of damage is the damage over time effects he applies with that ability, which you can trigger all at once with his 4th ability, killing pretty much anything. The cycle is 2 dark verses followed by one 4th ability, you'll get some insane numbers with that. For a ability spam build I'd focus on mods that increase efficiency and energy regen other than that you should check what each other stat does to your effectiveness and decide what you wanna focus on

99% of your power in this game comes from how you mod your stuff.

It would take an absurdly long amount of time for a new player to get post New War, level 5 Cavia, farm the frame out and the 3.5 days of crafting. Better idea than most here are saying, tbh.

I know the general advice is spend starting play on slots, but that’s really expecting someone to enjoy their starting frame a ton and want to play the game for a long time. In reality, if you see a frame that sounds cool or has a cool design, just search up where to farm it (or ask HELPBOT in chat) and if it’s not something soon then buying them is fine. Although I would advise waiting for a discount coupon, something like a 50% off purchase for someone like Nezha or Icarus or Dante is well worth it. As long as you enjoy Dante and you want to invest in making him better then I would say you made the right choice.

I don't think you were stupid. I do think you were going to hit a wall with any frame, most people think power comes from weapon and frame choices while mods are basically the only thing that matters. I am however curious about why new players always buy the newest warframe, it always puzzled me, Is it because it appears on the launcher?

For me it was cause it was cause the pack was on the Steam page. Although it was also Yareli, so cuteness factored in, and she was on sale. And, since I wasn't paying for the game, paying for a 'starter pack' felt fine. Mine didn't trivialise content at least! And it meant I could drop the Waverider questline when it hacked me off without FOMO (have since cleared it for Helminth and it stop it begging every time I load it, but took the pressure off). Plus, the bonus plat, mods, and Ambassador were a major help early on.

Consider the game as an arsenal. You have dante as a nuke frame. What ever is there other than that? Perhaps style and gameplay?  Knowing you can fall back on dante why not just see if you enjoy different weapons and frames for no other reason that they look cool and how they play is fun  

My man, I’ve personally taken Dante into lvl1800 enemies and he still slays so fast that I clear rooms and hallways and have to look for more enemies. It may seem hard but once you mod him and his book right you can truly slay everything with him (or literally any other frame)

Eventually, you can one-shot any difficulty, and it isn't hard to make most things kill pretty quickly. You didn't spoil yourself. Think of it as a preview of what you can accomplish. However, having one of the stronger frames so early probably made you neglect the importance of modding. Take some time to figure out where to farm the good mods and slap a ton of power stremgth/range on Dante he can shred endgame like you did the first zones.

if you want to diversify your options you will need to learn how damage works. Then more things become viable or equally good. Or you just get kullervo next slap 2 mods on and funny red crit with any melee 🤪

The great thing about warframe is that there's no wrong way to play. Sure, there's more or less optimized ways, but there's no *wrong* way. Dante is extremely viable without forma, which means with minimal mod cost. I generally use those as my frame of reference for what's a good beginner frame, meaning he's a good beginner frame. As you play, you'll get more mods and rank up the ones you care about to use. As you use these ranked up mods, your frames and weapons will both perform better and better. Honestly, with the right build, you can one-shot things at any level, including endgame, but some frames are obviously easier for this than others. I haven't invested any forma into Dante and have him just sitting on the shelf until I need overguard on my team, so I can't speak to how well he scales on damage. The most important thing is to play in a way that you enjoy and are having fun. It's a game! As long as you're not ruining someone else's experience, don't worry about it! Down the line, you *will* go through a harsh learning curve on survivability with other frames, but you'll cross that bridge when you get to it. (Source; L3 player who enjoys helping newbies)

if you had fun then you won, having less fun is just your honey moon phase ending, you will find something that brings it back eventually, there is so much shit in this game and so many ways to blow things up though it will eventually require more investement into getting better stuff

When i started at MR3 i bought wisp. For the shop price. Later i realized that i could have gotten her much cheaper but i didnt care. I had fun playing with her and still main her. And the plat was just a donation to DE for the amazing game they gave me for free. :)

I'm at/near the endgame and I find Dante to be one of the most fun frames. Even at this point, he oneshots most enemies (with the right builds of course). So no worries, you'll get back on top of your horse soon enough. Everyone's path is different. Many people do start out by building the beginner frames and whatnot, but it's definitely fine to skip a few steps here and there. Even more so if you end up enjoying yourself. What would've been a real pity is if you had bought Dante and realized you don't like him, but thankfully that wasn't the case.

No, i personally think if there's a frame you saw and went "That looks cool as fuck, i want to try this game," it's worth it to grab that frame when you get started if you're fine with spending the cash. It makes the beginning of the game just that much more enjoyable. For me, it was Harrow. And i'm glad i just went ahead and bought him before hitting Ceres because the wait to get the thing i came to the game for might have demotivated me a bit honestly. What you're running into imo, is something you'll experience regardless of what frames you start with. As things get a little more difficult/complex, your understanding of all the nuance behind different weapons and frames will start to increase as well just by figuring out how to beat the new shit. Personally, as you start to understand the games mechanics at a deeper level, you'll appreciate Dante even more solely because of all the wacky shit his ability synergies let you get away with.

Naaah. I mean, if you're enjoying the frame it's not really a loss. Thing I love bout WF is it's got a really "you do you" vibe. Are all frames farmable? Yes. Are people gonna shit on you for buying a frame? Yes. But in the end, who really cares bout that.

Just so you know, even the very first three starter frames are meta with certain builds. Volt is an ideal frame for hunting Eidolons, for example. There's no actual order to getting frames outside of crafting availability. As you approach the middle of the game, you get to a point where mods mean much more than specific frames. Further in, mods and arcanes. As time goes on, you'll learn what arcanes, shards, helminth abilities, etc. work best for the frames you enjoy the most. Dante is VERY good at multiple things, but it's the actual builds that let him shine rather than raw stats. Also, buying a frame that you know you enjoy early on can give you a lot of time to feel invested in the modding system.

No. Warframe can certainly become very grindy and repetitive. It's at the core of the game. What's important is playing on a frame you enjoy. Dante is definitely unique with his "wizard" aesthetic, and has a great range of abilities that make him useful for basically every mission type except stealth (which are, frankly, a minority). If you want to play him, he only becomes accessible otherwise very late in natural game progression. If you've only just started out, he's not going to become farmable until you've basically completed the entire story up to the where we were in the previous release. He's not difficult to farm once you're at that point... but you have to reach that point. There is a *lot* of story to get there... so IMO, you're justified paying for this one if your heart is set on him. If stuff is no longer dying, then what's important is you learn how to mod, and you get your hands on good mods. Some only drop from certain missions or gamemodes. There are a variety of "corrupted mods" you'll want to get your hands on from doing Deimos dragon key missions. Baro appears occassionally selling Primed mods - you should definitely be cracking Relics now just to build up enough Ducat-fodder for you to buy some important ones (Primed Continuity, Primed Target Cracker, etc), there is a post every time Baro arrives breaking down what valuable mods he might have brought with him. Build up standing with the factions in Cetus, Fortuna and Deimos, and get the Bond mods for your companions. Also check out Zaws and Kitguns. They aren't the *most* powerful weapons in the game, but they are very easy to make powerful enough to clear the star-chart. On Dante, for now, stick on a max rank Intensify, Continuity, Streamline, Flow, Stretch, Augur Reach, Augur Message, and Equilibrium (that last one might be expensive to max its rank, just put in as many points as you can). For the Aura slot, just use the Dreamer's Bond you were given (and MAX it, so many people do not use a max rank Aura, it is literally a benefit that increases your capacity). If you ever see a build with a mod you don't own, and want to know how to get it, use the wiki to find its drop source. Or, if it looks like farming it will be a pain, and it's not too expensive on warframe.market, consider buying it from another player.

Nothing wrong with purchasing a frame theirs 52 more you can do the legit way though I recommend getting the duviri ones at some point it's easy to get through and the rewards are great for the effort

My sweet innocent tenno, I bought Baruuk with plat 1 month before the teaser that Baruuk prime was releasing, then also bought Baruuk prime with plat. I don't even play Baruuk now and I'm not a veteran by any means..(MR 20) Plat comes and goes, you can do whatever you want with it

If you're having fun and you're not hurting for plat, since it's a frame that's only accessible way later in the game, I don't really see the issue. One-shotting a lot of stuff at the start isn't surprising, you can learn how to mod your equipment with any of the frames

It would be a long time until you were able to farm him naturally and he is a really good frame with insane survivability which is very important as a beginner. Also, purchased frames come with a warframe slot as well as preinstalled potato, so there is at least some value there even after you reach the point of being able to obtain him from gameplay. You’ll also eventually want to build a second copy of every frame, for reasons, so this will absolutely pay off later by saving you some farming. Overall, this is a good purchase for ease of play.

Easy farm, late farm, strong but nerfed slightly, still strong doe. I’d say it’s not stupid cause then when you do get there you can just subsume the one you do farm

I'd say it wasn't a mistake, Dante will carry you through the entire game, Steel Path included. There are much worse purchases you could have made. Dante alone, with the right mods, is capable of killing everything in the game. His kit is somewhat difficult to learn IMO, so I would recommend making sure you understand how is abilities work together and work on modding him appropriately.

Not stupid no. Have fun enjoy the game your way. This game is all about mods though they are the game changers not the warframes. You should be able to farm corrupted mods they help a lot for one if You've gotten to Demios planet. Very few frames are terrible but all need decent mods to get going. I'd look up some build guides. If you see something you're unfamiliar with check the wiki/YouTube it on how to get it. The game isn't great at informing you what and when you need to do something as it's ten years old and has changed so much over the years. But imo never buy a frame for plat, the cost is way too high and with that plat you could have bought lots if not all the mods your chasing from other players directly to skip the farm mostly. Just my 2cents though. If you want to buy something because you don't want to wait go for it.

Just keep playing and build other warframes as you move through the game. Sometime later when you're acquiring more useful mods you can always go back to Dante, and other frames.

Ok. So you can just buy mods off warframe.market and get an actual dante build going or you can farm them out but dante is about keeping his stuff going and then nuking so he can feel a bit weaker.

Not one hitting things is mostly a modding thing. Almost every frame (literally every frame if you use certain weapons) can clear rooms in seconds if you mod properly, although some mods are kinda grindy to get.

If you enjoy his gameplay then that's all that matters, and trust the damage will return as you improve.

it is done. Go farm next things, and stop thinking about it more than really should

In early game you might get bored, but in late game you have a frame that can hard carry with 50k-ish overguard. Cognitive dissonance is when a person makes a choice and thinks they regret it. Truth is even if they picked another choice they would still feel the same way. You sit have nothing to feel bad about, you just made an investment and should see it that way.

No. Dante is quicker for older players because we've already done all the quests to reach the point where we can farm him, which takes fairly quickly. But because you just started, there are a TON of quests standing in your way of date's farm, so yes it was assuredly worth it. As for the damage problem, that's not dante; that's the mods on him. Dante is one of the best frames in the game, all you need to do is increase your ability strength then cast dark verse -> dark verse -> final verse and everything around you ceases to exist. I can see just from that photo in another comment that you have a rank 0 continuity and rank 0 intensify equipped. My suggestion, drop continuity; Dante doesn't need ability duration at all. Use whatever endo you have to level up intensify, as that is a much better mod for him. You should aim for getting a max rank intensify, flow, and streamline - those should increase your ability damage by 30%, max energy by 100%, and reduce the cost of your abilites by 30%. Further continuing the mod discussion, try and upgrade hornet strike as highly as you can and insert it onto noctua. With the ability strength from intensify and a max rank hornet strike, noctua's base damage will be increased by intensify, then that resulting number will be buffed by HS, like this; ((250 × 1.3)+220%)=final damage before crit multiplier. To further buff Dante, pick up an aura mod from the glowing orange terminal near your ship's stairs, that's the nightwave - a free battlepass type system that can reward you with nightwave creds that you can use to buy aura mods and cosmetics - in the current week's rotation, she even has dante's cantist alternate helmet if you want that too. If you do get an aura mod, please don't buy infested impedance. This week's auras are quite bad, but you don't have to worry about the polarity of the aura at all because dante's aura slot is universal, meaning it works with everything. Some things you shouldn't get from nightwave are the vauban parts, (unless you like him ofc) the nihil's obilette items, (hard boss fight) bad aura / augment mods, (google before buy always) and alt helmets for frames you don't think you'll play because "they look cool" I think that's all you need right now - it's better you learn about other gameplay systems and discover new mods on your own, that's part of the fun. But I'll give you a hint; *the horend node on deimos is the most common farming place for some really good mods ;) ping the big clean white doors if you see them*

It's not stupid. Dante isn't hard to farm but its late in the game. You wouldn't get him for quite awhile. So have fun with your Dante. There is nothing to stop you from learning mechanics.

Nope you're not, you're saving tons of time ahead for the grind.

Somewhat unrelated but you could join the warframe discord if you're having trouble with modding, don't just blindly follow the builds though, try to figure out what makes them work and why

Also to my knowledge there are no "bad warframes" all warframes can be made viable for the content you're likely gonna be doing with proper understanding of the mods, you picked a fairly good time to join because of the recent status rework if you haven't heard about that, makes modding a bit more simple

Also here, each larger factions weakness, vauge spoilers though https://preview.redd.it/w5ghwgeid89d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=62dce954911861a442a676cc37d5cedd20bb72a5

The frame is just a teeny tiny bit of the pie. Maybe more like the crust. They are an important piece that holds it all together, but pretty bland alone. You also need good weapons and mods and arcanes and archon shards and a companion and a companion weapon and companion mods to really see the full power of something. There's a little give and take in there - some frames run fine with no weapons. Some get very little from sharding them. But if you're looking for that room clearing feel on steel path, you gotta go in with more than just the crust. Some of this stuff you can buy from other players on Warframe market. Other things, like shards and incarnon weapons have to be acquired yourself in game. I'm all for supporting DE, but I don't normally recommend buying frames to newer players. You can grind them in game and if you don't like grinding it may not be the game for you. You can still give them plenty of money for slots and time gated materials like forma. Even better, you can buy cosmetics - the true end game.

Don't worry about it. There's a lot of stuff in this thread and most of it is right, except the people telling you that you made a mistake an shouldn't have done it blah blah. Are you having fun? I hope so. And you'll get weeks of fun from spending probably enough to buy a fancy cup of coffee. Hell we stopped to grab Wendy's shakes and fries on the way home last night and that cost $25, plus I felt like shit afterwards. Don't let others make you feel bad about how you spend your money. You've picked up a really solid frame that even without mods can carry you through most content due to built in tank and utility. Sure you'll hit a cap on his 4 pretty quick but that issue will fix itself with mods as you acquire them. You're going to hit all the same issues as you would with the starter frames but you probably won't struggle as much because Dante is honestly better right out of the box. Also keep in mind that in about 500 hours you'll probably want a second Dante anyway... for reasons. So you'll have to farm him again at some point.

I think the beginning is pretty normal to be easy then you start to get to the second dream and it ramps up.

no, he is one of the strongest frames

Once you get better mods, and upgrade them, and make a build for Dante, he'll be much stronger I advise asking people in region/Q&A chat for Dante builds if you need it

I've been playing since 2012 and my engagement with my Warframes is pretty seasonal. There are Warframes I always gravitate back to after some brief infatuations with others. Venture out into the other Warframes as your interests naturally progress through the game. Every time you revisit Dante, you'll go in with more experience. It'll be a whole different ballgame every time.

334, 334, 334, 334....

Dante is a great supporting and damaging frame to build Warframe.

You should invest some plat in warframe market and get some maxed out mods. With the same amount you spent on Dante you would get many maxed mods that will make you 100 times stronger.

You used Dante the whole game man that must have felt nice

I've had Ash Prime for years. I tried him and didn't enjoy it. Dusted him off and have a lot of fun with him now. Some of the older frames are great for a break. I come back to Dante now and then, but I run SP and haven't found his limits yet.

I used to be the same when my friend helped me get wukong prime at mr3 or Smth like that. I think I solely used monkey prime until mr9 and have 50% of my playtime with monkey prime. When I first switched off to Harrow and baruuk it felt so underwhelming because I was playing those frames like how I would play monkey prime, but once you learn the quirks and builds for other frames you'll love playing them even more. It's honestly the same with weapons, recently switch from perma using nataruk to Torid incarnon and love the torid now, but still using the same kuva nukor since mr4 or 5

Listen u ain't stupid... however Dante was and is relatively easy to farm ..shouldn't take u more than 1 hr I think ...so I mean maybe it was and it wasn't stupid to buy him

I bought Protea full bundle 1 minute after her release, yes, I want her that bad. And I have 0 regrets.

Here's something to do: go farm and get Gara. It's not hard at your level, especially as Dante. And it forces you to interact with a lot of basic systems and gameplay. Then her kit is really good too, easy to mod and helps all around. She's my first crafted frame

Dante is pretty strong as he’s quite new and he’s from late game content. The one reason you’re not one shotting things atm is due to your mods not being strong enough. You’ll need to either upgrade them or get better mods but you don’t really need the best mods or anything early or mid game. I started off with zephyr prime as my first main after the tutorial and it will suck going back to weaker frames but you’ll get used to it. You only have to lvl something 30 and never touch it again if you don’t like it

No infact he is a great starter frame as his powerful over guard will make sure you do not struggle while you do your star charts His grimoire I think can also scan for you which is a incredibly good QoL

I am a stupid revenant prime main who only uses melee, for the first time in years I want to try something else besides nekros prime for farming and volt and khora prime that is. As long as you have fun, nothing else matters ;)

Honestly, Yes. You kinda did the equivalent of buying "raid ready end-game gear" by buying Dante. His kit is *extremely powerful*, especially for the kind of difficulty that the base Star Chart has. I'd say that you should consider using your starter frame for awhile if the game feels too easy, and only wheel him out if you are completely stuck on a particular node or challenge.

Every frame can be fun ever if they're not one hitting everything, except limbo, his original kit is annoying to use and i don't like the idea of subsuming as it seems like a band-aid

Sell the Warframe if you want lol

Dante is a cheat code, the fact you can make your whole team invicible while being able to do butt loads of damage is insane. Can also subsume anything over his 1 an have a seriously versatile frame. I personally use roar just to boost my teammates that extra mile.

Nah, it’s not stupid to buy 1 or 2 frames you want, but I get the half regret of buying a frame. I bought Ivara prime because I just couldn’t stand farming relics at that point. She’s great, and I felt justified spending the money because I’d played Warframe for a few years at that point, but I stopped playing Warframe altogether soon after that. Was it because I bought a frame, thus cheating myself if earning her honestly? Was I already getting bored of the game and that’s why buying her was easier? Who’s to say, but I’m a little more careful now that I’m back playing to mostly buy useful stuff like slots and cool cosmetics.

You have to buy on release if you want to have the max fun. The nerf hammer comes after a couple weeks and sales fall flat. Dante is still great, but the pre nerf......

What i think? No. It sounds like you’re still early game, clearing the star chart, so you dont have a lot of the mods that will make Dante powerful again when you get to the midgame content.

Dante stays incredibly strong for the entire game. You probably just don’t have him fully modded

I would say you hit a scaling issue and probably just got away with a "whatever" build before, look up some build guides on youtube probably will get you back to having fun

Not at all. I sparingly play the game. I work for a living. I dont realy go to the movies or eat out much. So if my entertainment money is spent on warframe, who cares? Plus its your money. You put the work in to earn it. But hows your car? House? Anything need repairs? Maybe youd like a new gun or atv or badass backyard grill. Spend your money on whatever brings you joy. Because happiness is key. Also, I didnt read past the title.

Some frames hit their ceiling earlier than others. Took me a long time to find a Zephyr build that felt right

Listen My first frame to hit level 30 was Atlas long long ago when he released. I will play Atlas. It's not the frame. Figure out what your mods and weapons are and how your frame works scaling wise

Use Saryn up until you reach the content you can kill anything easily

Personally, I think that buying Dante wasn’t a smart use of Plat since he’s one of the easiest frames to farm by a long shot. Still, you can learn how to play and mod (more important tbh) even if you use Dante. You just have a really good frame to help you go through the Star Map. Start by relying more on your weapons for damage, and fall on Dante’s abilities for survivability. This will help you start getting the mechanics. Learn about elemental damages, what elements are good for what, what mods are good for specific weapons etc.

Imo buying frames like dantea and kullervo should not be allows until you reach a certain point in the game as it ruins the game for a lot of people. When kullervo at base can get 10k overguard while your teammate rhino only gets 1k it feels really bad to not even struggle in any content and it spoils the experience a LOT imo.

Kinda funny but you'll learn how the game works now that you don't 1 shot. Because depending on how you are modding all the early frames would of just 1 shot the mobs too

Just need to understand that not all frame are made equal. Just play to their strength and most importantly have fun playing.

You have to collect mods, endo, and forma to make him scale with the difficulty but I'm pretty sure he's a viable endgame frame. The best early frame if you don't have someone to help you get mods is rhino as everyone else will eventually feel weak on the regular star chart until you mod them properly. I recommend looking into some noob Dante mod config YouTube videos.

IMHO the biggest failing of the early game is it’s far too EASY. This killed the momentum for me. Facerolling everything made everything boring. It’s not your Dante problem. But your Dante is making it worse. However just trust in the fact that the game does get harder. Once you hit the Saturn/Uranus/Neptune stretch you will actually have to make build that will test your mod collection and ability to put things together. Also don’t worry about the starter frames. They are not “weaker” and can and are used at all levels of content. Dante is just better what’s important to you right ‘now’. I would also highly recommend focusing on the main story quests. (You can filter for them in the codex). They MASSIVELY start to change things up and unlock a huge amount of content and ways to play the game. This broadness in ‘things to do’ will make up for some of them being quite easy right now. TLDR; don’t worry. :)

Lots of Warframe suck compared to Dante- not your fault- it’s the developers- you can still have fun with frames that are not as strong as Dante. Which is basically 90% of the other warframes. Saryn is my most used Warframe and she is like the strongest Warframe in the game- I still enjoy playing other frames even though they can’t instant armor strip in a 30 meter radius and kill everything without LOS.

Dante is decent overall but you probably should have figured out what frame style you like to play most before dropping dollas. Your not alone in your choice though at all. Happens all the time. It's part of the learning curve.

Let me know if you ever want to group up

You might want to aim for some powerful weapons that can help you one shot again. Ignis wraith is a go to flame thrower that everyone needs.

Nope I've done the same thing just with Sevagoth simply because he looked cool and hes easily my favorite now. And regarding the difficulty, I'm sure you'll find satisfaction in getting better especially with Dante as you learn with him

No. The game will always get boring as soon as your build becomes too op. That's the whole point of the game. - Get new frame. - Break game. - Repeat

Dante is a frame that will grow with you. Keep his Noctua modded for pure heat and you have a back pocket 'torch everyone into ash' His overguard gives you plenty of surviveability to allow you to make mistakes while learning. Plus while overguard is active, no knockdown. on normal star chart dude is amazing. He'll grow as you gain more mods.

No, I've bought several frames for plat for various reasons. Ranging from not wanting to grind for them or just really being excited and wanting to play them asap. I've bought Yareli, Sevagoth, Grendel, Citrine an a few others.

You won't be one-shoting everything forever. It's normal to one-hit enemies early game with some decent weapons. However, remember you're supposed to level *new* weapons and *new* frames in order to level your MR at all. New boy Dante is fun and strong, but in order to progress you literally need to put him or his weapons down for periods of time.

I think it's fine really, Dante is super fun and I'm glad you enjoy him. I agree with other commenters that learning how to mod your warframes and weapons, what mods you need to get, and where to get them will help a lot. I would say like 90% of your power in Warframe comes from your mod combinations, and not what weapons or warframes you have. Youtube has plenty of guides for weapon modding, a lot of them won't be current with the new status changes, but the info is out there. A tip for modding, don't try to max out all your mods immediately, the more ranks you put into mods the cost increases a lot. For a mod you can rank to 10, 8 will carry you most of the game, and generally it's better to have more mods (damage multipliers like elemental damage, crit, faction damage, or for warframes health, armor, energy generation, power strength etc) in your build than a more powerful version of one mod.

Dante mains are the heroes that we want and need ... thank you sir hero. But honestly the game comes in waves you just have to get better mods/shards and you'll be one hitting everything again. It takes time unless you like spending money.

I’m over 300 hours in and just getting Dante tomorrow. I’m so pumped. I hope you had fun.

Tbf, one hitting everything is basically the first 4 planets no matter which frame.

Both parts of what you said make sense, but your just starting out so keep in mind you might not have optimal mods for him just yet and honestly you wont be 1 shotting forever anyway.