Warframe is a game about collecting as many destructive weapons and characters as possible. Every gun and Warframe in this game can either be purchased with real money or from farming resources to craft them.

As with most looter shooters, there are more efficient methods and strategies that make this easier and more time-efficient. While using boosters is an obvious way of increasing your farming gains, certain nodes on the star chart and certain squad combos make earning items easier. Whether you are farming resources to make a new gun or break your way into Railjack, here are ten farming methods that you need to be using in Warframe.

Updated March 27th, 2021 by Charles Burgar:Even after various updates, most farming methods we originally listed are still viable in Warframe today. With that said, we were missing a few methods for farming rare resources, Railjack Intrinsics, and Relics. We've consolidated certain entries into one and added a few more farming methods that should make your farming experience much more efficient.

10 Farm Preparations

Warframe Smeeta Kavat

Before you start any farm, you'll want to bring any gear that will increase your loot returns to maximize your efficiency while grinding. There are a few things you should be using if you are going to farm anything for an extended period of time:

  • Boosters: Purchase an associated booster for whatever you plan to farm. Credits? Get a Credit Booster. Farming Kuva? Get a Resource Booster. These go for 40-200 Platinum in the market.
  • Smeeta Kavat: This sly Kavat has the unique Charm buff, granting one of six random effects periodically. One of these effects is a two-minute double Affinity, Credit, and Resource booster. With the Tek Enhance Mod, it lasts 156 seconds. This buff stacks with boosters and even itself if you get it consecutively.
  • Loot-Enhancing Warframes: Khora, Nekros, Hydroid, and Atlas are a few Warframes with abilities or augments that increase the amount of loot enemies drop. Bring one along if you're in a team. If you're solo, consider playing Khora.
  • Play Steel Path: If you're farming resources, Steel Path nodes have 100% increased resource drop chances. With frames like Khora , the added difficulty can be easily circumvented.

9 Hydron Leveling

Warframe Banshee Prime and Euphona Prime

Most Warframe players know of this method of leveling Warfarmes and new weapons quickly. This Defense tileset gives amazing experience gains in a short period of time.

Hydron leveling is a nickname the community has given this strategy. The name simply refers to a node on Sedna called Hydron, a Defense mission that gives great experience. Bring a Warframe like Banshee or Volt to your team and let them cast their area-clearing powers. With how small this tileset is, you will always be in Affinity radius of the damaging Warfarmes and get your gear leveled incredibly fast.

8 Corrupt Vault Runs

Warframe Corrupt Vaults

Out of most methods of making Platinum, few are as consistent and quick as Vault runs. Head to your Clan Dojo and create all four Dragon Key blueprints, which can be found in the Orokin Dojo. Equip one of every Dragon Key to guarantee your ability to open a corrupt Vault every run.

Head to Horend, Deimos, and keep an eye out for a Vault. Open it with one of your keys, grab the item inside, then evac to obtain a Corrupted Mod. These Mods go for 10 to 20 Platinum each, and each run only takes a few minutes to complete. If you're a new player and desperately need slots, this is a solid way to get Platinum without much RNG involved.

7 Credit Farming

Warframe Deadlock Protocol

With how many items are in Warframe, many credits are required to build everything in the game. Fortunately, there are two methods for quickly farming Credits.

The Index

Warframe The Index

Neptune has a unique gamemode called The Index that players can try. In this mode, players will fight tough AI that will drop points when they die. Retrieve them and bank them at your team's vault to score points and win. The catch is every point you carry reduces your effective health pool, and the enemies here scale in damage and survivability quickly. Bring tanky Warframes like Rhino to survive the brunt of the attack, and you can leave this gamemode with a million credits in as few as 2 waves with a booster active, taking little more than 7 minutes to do.

Profit Taker

Warframe-Profit-Taker-Orb

If you're a grizzled veteran with min-maxed Mods and Warframes, farming Profit Taker is more efficient than Index runs. You'll want a Chroma decked out for as much Power Strength as possible. Bring a well-modded Archgun, a Fortuna Kitgun, a Redeemer Prime or Infested Zaw covering two elements, and a Primary weapon covering the last two elemental damage types—the Zenith and Acceltra are good for this.

You'll want to use weapons that deal a certain damage type that the Profit Taker is vulnerable to, displayed on the front of the boss. Damage it with that elemental type, and it'll switch its elemental weakness. Since you have every elemental damage type covered, you alternate your weapons until its shields break. Equip your Archgun of choice, then go to town on the boss. Break the pylons that appear around the arena (the Zenith can one-shot them through terrain if its punch-through mode is active), then repeat the process. Once you've completed this process four times, deploy Chroma's Effigy behind the Profit Taker before it completes its death animation to receive 500,000 Credits with a booster. This takes three to five minutes, and the Credit returns can be enhanced by bringing a Smeeta Kavat and using other Credit boosters.

6 Sanctuary Onslaught

Warframe Khora

Do you need Relics? Do you need XP for your weapons or Warframes? Focus? Sanctuary Onslaught and the Elite variant allow you to kill multiple birds with one stone.

Sanctuary Onslaught tasks players with killing hordes of enemies as fast as they possibly can. Every wave takes players to a new location with a random enemy faction that is tougher than the last. In normal Sanctuary Onslaught, players can spam their Warframe's abilities to level them up as fast as possible while also obtaining Relics after certain waves. Subsume Gauss' Thermal Sunder ability and spam it to get an incredible amount of Affinity while you're playing solo.

Elite Sanctuary Onslaught is much better for weapon XP and Relics. Rewards for Elite Sanctuary Onslaught include incredible amounts of experience, Radiant Relics for Fissure missions, and even unique weapons like the Lato Vandal. Saryn, Volt, and Mirage with her Explosive Legerdemain augment do wonders here.

5 Relic Farms

Warframe background of the Void.

Relic farming is certainly mundane in Warframe, but it's a necessary evil to obtain new Prime Warframes or gear you can't outright buy from other players in trade chat. Fortunately, the best Relic farms are rather straightforward:

  • Lith Relics: Hepit, the Void. This is a Capture mission that guarantees a Lith Relic. It takes less than a minute to clear.
  • Meso Relics: Kelpie, Sedna OR Io, Jupiter. Kelpie is a Disruption that drops Relics in Rotation A (defend one conduit). Io drops Meso Relics for the first ten waves.
  • Neo Relics: Apollo, Lua OR Ukko, the Void. Defend one conduit on Apolla for three rotations. Ukko has a 50% chance of dropping Neos after each run, each taking less than a minute.
  • Axi Relics: Apollo, Lua. Axi Relics drop in Rotations B and C, so defend as many conduits as possible.

4 Salacia Archwing Leveling

Warframe Archwing

With the focus on space combat in Railjack, having a good Archwing is paramount to success. However, leveling Archwings can take an eternity, which is why the community has found a quick way of leveling them up.

Salacia, Neptune might be the fastest way of leveling an Archwing up in Warframe. This Mobile Defense mission spawns a swarm of Corpus drones towards your location while you defend a nearby satellite. The sheer amount of enemies that you fight makes this great for leveling Archwings and Archwing guns. Bring a team with you, and the amount of enemies jumps up even further.

3 Requiem Kuva Survivals

Warframe Kuva Fortress

If you need Kuva to roll Riven Mods, there aren't many things that can beat a Requiem Kuva Survival mission. After you complete a Kuva Flood, you should do this if it's available to maximize your Kuva gains.

Kuva Survival missions are similar to normal survival missions but with an extra objective. In this case, enemies can drop Kuva canisters that can be inserted into life support capsules. Once inserted, the capsule will provide 200 Kuva to the team after a minute passes. Of course, Fissure Survivals provide additional resource quantity the longer you stay, and the Relics themselves have a high chance of providing 1,200 Kuva every five minutes. Combine this with a Smeeta Kavat to earn tens of thousands of Kuva with ease.

2 Resource Farms

Warframe Plains Mesa

Covering every resource in Warframe warrants an article of its own, but there are a few resources that certain players struggle to obtain. Here are a few farms for some of Warframe's rarer resources:

  • Argon Crystals: Hepit, the Void. Bring Limbo or Xaku to break containers on the go.
  • Cetus Wisps: Head to the northern end of Renthi Spring, then follow it south towards Gara Toht Lake. Make a lap around the lake, then return to Cetus. Do this farm at night.
  • Cryotic: Hieracon, Pluto. Defend as many Excavators as possible.
  • Hexanon: Io, Jupiter. This is also a great node for farming Meso Relics.
  • Mutagen Samples: Terrorem, Deimos. Bring a loot Warframe for this Survival node.
  • Scintillant: Isolation Vaults on Deimos. Kill any Necramechs you see.
  • Toroids: Reach a wanted level of four, then head to one of three locations: Spaceport (Vega), Enrichment Labs (Calda), or the Temple of Profit (Sola). Kill as many enemies as possible to obtain the listed Toroids.

1 Intrinsics Farm

Warframe Empyrean Railjack Update

With Gian Point's removal and the nerf to R-9 Cloud, farming Intrinsics is rather limited currently. There are two main methods for farming Intrinsics:

  1. Complete Corpus Defense missions (the higher level, the better).
  2. Use Ivara to solo stealth farm Calabash, Veil Proxima.

For the Defense missions, bring a squad that can clear waves a fast as possible, using the likes of Mesa and Nova to kill enemies quickly.

Farming Calabash involves you completing any bonus objectives you find, using Ivara to stealth finish targets. Once you reach the main objective, manually hack a terminal to reset the enemy's aggro, giving you stealth Affinity multipliers on stealth kills. Kill the listed number of enemies, then run between the two rooms just before extraction. Enemies will repeatedly spawn that you can stealth kill, giving you a healthy amount of Intrinsics.

Next: Warframe: A Complete Guide To Railjack