Outside of doing parkour in spaceships and committing genocide against most of the galaxy, the free game Warframe can also be a puzzle. One of its most intellectually stimulating aspects is deciding which mods to outfit your warframes with. These will improve their combat capabilities.
Right now, however, there are more than a thousand mods in existence and this can be an intimidating experience trying to find out which ones are essential for new players. Hence, we're here to help you pick out the most important must-have mods for all kinds of warframes.
10 FLOW
One of the best things about warframes is their varying abilities which can be the difference between life or death. These abilities are reliant on energy and energy is not exactly plentiful at low levels until you've unlocked the later features.
That's why having a huge pool of energy using the Flow mod lets you use your warframe abilities with reckless abandon. If you can, do aim to get the Primed version of this mod whenever Baro Ki'teer is around.
9 STREAMLINE
Streamline is another mod that you can live without as it also makes your warframe abilities more usable by reducing their energy cost. It practically increases your energy pool as well.
Combined with Flow, it will make your warframes more enjoyable to use as both mods allow you to cast abilities more often. Sadly, there is no Primed version of this mod in the international version of Warframe.
8 CONTINUITY
Certain warframe abilities rely on duration and prolonging that duration can make your warframe deadlier or more useful. Abilities like Loki's Invisibility or Nova's Molecular Prime all rely on such a stat.
That's why continuity is a useful mod to have by default. It increases the duration of your warframe abilities (those affected by duration, anyway), letting you worry less about reactivating them, therefore conserving energy too. This mod also has a Primed version sold by Baro.
7 RAGE/HUNTER'S ADRENALINE
Now we move on to the more intermediate mods to have in this game. Rage or its Plains of Eidolon counterpart Hunter's Adrenaline, are two necessary mods to have if your warframe is energy-hungry.
It lets you regenerate energy by taking health damage. It works better for some warframes than others but in general, it's still one of the best ways to regenerate energy without relying on arcane schools that are unlocked later on in the game. Rage/Hunter Adrenaline is can also effectively make all warframes tanks when paired with another mod...
6 QUICK THINKING
This mod is often regarded as a complementary mod to Rage/Hunter's Adrenaline. That's because Quick Thinking is a "panic button" mod that lets you drain your energy once your health reaches critical levels (around 2 HP or lower).
That means warframes with big energy pools combined with Rage/Hunter's Adrenaline can be turned into tanks with Quick Thinking. Just be sure to have a reliable way of regaining health and you're pretty much immortal until you reach endgame content.
5 TRANSIENT FORTITUDE
Now on to advanced mods, specifically corrupted mods. These give you a ton of something in exchange for sacrificing another. In Transient Fortitude's case, you get a massive boost in power that even the Intensify mod can't beat.
The downside is that you'll have to sacrifice your warframe's ability duration. It's a good tradeoff for warframes with not much abilities making use of duration or those with negligible duration abilities.
4 FLEETING EXPERTISE
Fleeting Expertise is another corrupted mod that's all about giving you as much energy efficiency as possible in exchange for some duration once again. It's perfect for warframes that are built to have spammable abilities.
It just so happens that majority of warframes do have abilities like that. This makes Fleeting Expertise a staple in everyone's builds because it allows players to min-max their frames and be less reliant on energy limitations.
3 NARROW MINDED
In contrast to the first two corrupted mods before, Narrow Minded is all about duration this time. It will grant the warframe a staggering amount of duration at the cost of the ability's range. This is perfect for warframes with not much area abilities.
Even so, you can easily counteract Narrow Minded's negative effect with the good old-fashioned stretch mod. This will let you have your cake and eat it too but at the cost of some mod slots. Similar solutions are also available for the other corrupted mods.
2 OVEREXTENDED
In contrast to Narrow Minded, Overextended, as the name implies, is all about making your warframe abilities as far-reaching as possible. It gives tons of range at the cost of ability strength, making it perfect for warframes with utility abilities.
However, you might find that plenty of players still use Overextended on damaging warframes like Saryn as you can easily counteract Overextended's negative effect with Transient Fortitude and the Intensify mod.
1 BLIND RAGE
Last but not least, we have one of the most intimidating of all the corrupted mods: Blind Rage. Its purpose is simple, Blind Rage is all about giving your warframe as much power as it can handle in the form of ability strength.
Now, the downside is that your abilities are going to cost a lot more since it also taxes your efficiency. You can easily counteract this anyway with Fleeting Expertise or the multitude of efficiency mods at disposal. Honorable mentions for this list also include Stretch and Intensify along with the health, shield, and armor mods.