#warframe mods

Just like trading cards, they come in a variety of colours, which usually indicates the Rarity - now don't be confused, there's a difference a mod which is Rare and a mod which is rare. You might have a Common mod, that is very hard to acquire. You might have a Rare mod that is very hard to acquire. Most mods are in the standard scale:

Bronze / Common - sort of a brown colour

Silver / Uncommon - more of a Blue to be honest.

Gold / Rare - Yellow, essentially.

Platinum / Legendary - a nice bright white with a subtle blue tint. Usually these are reserved for Primed Mods with a few exceptions. They are always Rank10s

There's more kinds - but generally speaking they'll just be Reskins of Rares or Legendaries.

Now mods have Ranks, most mods you acquire them at rank 0 and pour in Endo and Credits to rank them up. The higher the Rarity, the more it costs. And each mod has a set number of Ranks - usually 3, 5, or 10 with a few exceptions here and there.

Almost all mods work on a Percentile Basis. This means that if the Base stat is lower, the mod can still be used but it presents less benefit. Consider: a rifle with 10% Crit chance, and then you use Point Strike, this only adds 12% crit chance for a total of 22%. Not a great use of the mod slot, which you only get 8 of.

Most mods are quite straightforward - just a flat increase to a stat. E.g. Serration just makes you do more damage. Some mods will boost two stats, or three. Some mods reduce a stat, and also increase a stat, usually by a lot more. E.g. Blind Rage gives you a LOT of Power Strength but at the cost of making abilities cost more. Some mods add entirely new effects. E.g. Aviator reduces the damage you take while in the air.

There are even mods that are purely cosmetic.

And there are a lot of them, though a lot of them you won't ever use. Over time we've figured out the winning combinations, though it changes from time to time.

Let's start simple: Weapons. Relatively simple anyway.

After a while, you'll notice that for each category of weapon - rifle, shotgun, pistol, melee, so on - there's a set of 'core' mods.

Damage - sometimes called Raw Damage, mods like Hornet Strike, Serration, Point Blank, and Pressure Point. These are the very first mods you should be putting on a weapon almost every single time.

Your usual firearms variables like magazine capacity, reload speed, fire rate, recoil, so on so forth. Melee weapons have their own, stuff like Range (the length of the sword) and attack speed (how quickly you swing)

Elemental Mods - each category has mods for four base elements: Heat, Toxin, Cold, and Electric. So if you want Incendiary rounds, or a poisoned sword, this is how. These have complexities in and of themselves, enough for a separate post.

Critical Mods - Think like in Pokemon, there was a chance your moves would sometimes deal double damage, like that but now its something you have control over.

Status Mods - the likelihood that you'll inflict some kind of effect upon the enemy, like poisoned, bleeding, or even irradiated. There's also mods that make these effects last longer.

Faction Mods - Mods that somehow make a weapon do more Damage against a particular faction of enemies.

And many, many, many more.

Warframe Modding gets more complicated quicker - at first you'll just be putting in mods to make sure you stay alive; more health, more shields. And then maybe wanting your Warframe powers to hit harder, or hit more enemies, and that's where builds get interesting. We'll do a separate post for Warframe stuff

As you get further into the games, you'll start collecting enough mods that you have Options. Like some weapons won't be useful for damage, but maybe they're good for a utility like stripping enemy armour, or healing you.

So as you get further along, enemies will get tougher, and you'll need to hit them harder. You maybe rank up your mods more, or add new ones. I won't go into huge detail, so here's a scenario to plant the idea of Multipliers vs Additions: If you add Serration to a Rifle, you are multiplying that rifle's base damage. B x S If you then add Heavy Calibre, you are adding more damage. B x (S+HC). Sure, this is an increase... But. If you instead add Point Strike, and get decent consistent critical hits, then you multiply the damage by the Critical Damage stat. B x S x CD. You can also add Vital Sense to make the CD multiplier bigger. B x S x (CD x VS).