Mods are used to improve the stats of your weapons and Warframes. In the beginning you only have a few weak mods but as you progress through the Star Chart you will acquire more mods including some more powerful mods.
Mods are usually divided into Warframe, Rifle (incl. Sniper Rifle), Shotgun, Pistol and melee mods. Most Warframe mods may be used on all warframes but others (e.g. Syndicate mods) may only be compatible with a specific Warframe. This also applies to weapon mods.
Mods drops from enemies when running your missions; however some mods only drop on special missions e.g. Riven mods can be rewarded from the daily Sortie, some dual-stat mods can only be aquired from Nightmare Mode missions, Orokin Derelict missions, Sortie (Riven mods). If you have unlocked Lua there are also some special Drift mods to be acquired by completing the random Halls of Ascension challenge rooms. The Void Trader Baro Ki’teer will also sell some random Primed or dual-stat mods when he visists a relay station.
You can use the Codex on your Orbiter to see all the available mods and where they drop – or you can search the Warframe Wiki.
Mods can be updated to make it stronger (more on how to do that below) – at the bottom of the mod are a number of dots, as you upgrade the mod these dots will turn light blue to display the current rank of the mod. As an example the Pressure Point mod at rank 0 will give you 20% extra melee damage – when fully upgraded to rank 5 it will however give you 120% extra melee damage as displayed in the image to the right. Notice that as you upgrade a mod, it will also drain more of your mod capacity when equipped.
Som mods also come in both a standard and a “Primed” version with higher stats; for example the normal Pressure Point mod gives an additional +120% melee damage when maxed out – the Primed Pressure Point mod gives +165% melee damage. Primed mods can either be bought from Baro Ki’teer when he visit a Relay station or as a daily login reward (scroll down for details).
Mod Capacity
Each Warframe and weapon has a certain mod capacity, that is usually the same as the rank of the warframe/level or your Mastery Rank whatever is highest. A rank 30 (max) warframe/weapon will have a a mod capacity of 30. However, you may double the mod capacity by installing an Orokin Reactor or Orokin Catalyst respectively; these can be rewarded from special missions and can also be bought for Platinum at the market. It is highly recommended that you upgrade your favorite Warframes and weapons with an Orokin Reactor/Orokin Catalyst in order to make them as powerful as possible.
Mod Polarity
All mods have a certain “polarity” which is displayed with a symbol in the upper right corner of the mod next to the capacity drain number. The most common mod polarities are Madurai, Naramon and Vazarin as displayed to the right.
If your warframe or weapon has a mod slot with a specific polarity you should aim to equip mods with the same polarity as that will case cause the mod capacity drain to be reduced to 50% (rounded up), i.e. if you have a mod with a drain of 14 points but with a matching polarity, it will only drain 7 points of your mod capacity – a mod with 15 points will drain 8 points if matched with the correct polarity. If you have to mods with the same polarity but only one mod slot has the specific polarity you should equip the mod with the highest drain into that slot and equip the other mod in a slot without any polarity.
You can add or change the polarity of a mod slot by using a Forma – however this can only be done on max level (30) Warframes/Weapons. When you equip a Forma then the Warframe/Weapon will be reset to rank zero and must be leveled again – once it is rank 30 again, you can equip another Forma in another mod slot if you need to increase your effective mod capacity further.
Aura Mods
Aura mods are a special kind of Warframe mods that will not use mod capacity but instead increase the mod capacity. If you equip an Aura mod with the same polarity as displayed on the Auro mod slot (top left mod slot) you will gain twice as much mod capacity, e.g. an 5-point Aura mod will give you 10 more mod capacity if it matches the polarity of the Auro mod slot. For this reason you should always try to equip an Aura mod with the right polarity and make sure to upgrade it to max rank in order to increase your mod capacity.
Most Aura mods will provide a passive buf not only to you but to the entire team and these will usually stack. For instance, if you equip the Corrosive Projection mod the enemies armor will be redused with 30% but if 3 members in your team has this mod equipped it will stack and reduce enemy armor with 90%!
Stance Mods
Stance mods are another special kind of mods that will increase the mod capacity of your melee weapon and also provide some unique attack combos. I highly recommend you try different Stance on your melee weapon as they greatly affect how the weapon “feels”.
Upgrading mods: Fusion
When you loot a new mod it will have some week stats but you can upgrade it to more powerful stats using the Mods station in your orbiter. Activate the Mods station, select the mod you wish to upgrade, then click the upper left Fusion button. On the image below you can see the current stats as well as the upgraded stats in the upper left corner. In the upper right corner you can see how many credits and Endo the upgrade will cost. Endo is a special currency used for upgrading mods.
If you do not have enough Endo (or credits) a red cross will be displayed as in this example – in this case you must farm some more Endo before you are able to finish the upgrade. In the top middle section you can click the plus and minus button to add or remove upgrade “points” in order to find the biggest upgrade you can afford.
How do you get Endo?
Primed Mods
Most of the mods you get are drops from normal missions. However, each 14 day a NPC named Baro Ki’teer will arrive at a random relay station – his arrival will be announced by a mail; check your star map, there will be a small white symbol next to the Relay Station where he is currently visiting. Baro Ki’teer can be found at the central part of the relay – go talk with him to see what he is selling; each time he arrives he will have some random mods or cosmetic items for sale.
Baro Ki’teer will usually have either some dual stat (60/60) golden mods and/or some Primed mods for sale. Primed mods are simply improved versions of standard mods – e.g. the standard Pressure Point mod gives you +120% Melee Damage but the Primed version gives +165% Melee Damage.
Before you can buy anything from Baro Ki’teer you must first acquire some Dukats to pay for them as Baro Ki’teer will usually ask for both credits and Dukats for his items. Dukats is a special currency that is only used to buy items from Baro Ki’teer. You earn Dukats by selling Prime blueprints or components to the Ducat Kiosk, which is located close to Baro Ki’teer. You can farm Prime parts running Void Fissure missions and have a Void Relic equipped during the mission. For more information on Void Relics, Void Fissures and Prime parts see this guide.
A mod may usually cost 300-400 Dukats and 100.000 – 300.000 credits so besides farming for Dukats you also need to farm some credits! One of the most efficient ways to farm credits is by running The Index on Neptune – I recommend you run the Medium risk Index as this is the most time efficient way to earn credits – the High risk Index have a bigger reward but also takes longer time to complete and has a bigger risk of failure, in which case the invested credits are lost! There are many guides on the Internet and on YouTube about how to run The Index. The Index can be hard to solo but when Baro Ki’teer is visiting there is usually many players that need fast credits, so you should not have trouble getting into a full public group.
If it is your first time I recommend you take Rhino with a decent tank build and equip a powerful shotgun e.g. the Arco Plasmor. My personal favorite for The Index is Revenant as he is unkillable as long as you keep his Mesmer Skin active; any enemy that attacks you while Mesmer Skin is active will sleep for a few seconds giving you time to kill them. You can see my Revenant build for The Index here.
Riven Mods
Riven mods are a special kind of mods that can only be equipped in a specific weapon but it comes with some extra powerful stats. When you first acquire a Riven mod, its stats are veiled – only after completing a random challenge will you be able to see which weapon the Riven is compatible with and what stats it has. Riven mods will often have 3-4 stats but in some cases not all stats are positive, e.g. you may get a Riven that give you more damage but cause reload to take longer.
If the stats on the Riven mod is not what you wanted, you may use Kuva to roll for other random stats – however you can not change which weapon it is compatible with. For each roll it becomes more and more costly to change stats (up to an upper limit). You can farm Kuva from the daily Sortie, at the endless Kuva Survival mission on Kuva Fortress or by doing the Kuva Siphon missions on the two planets closest to the Kuva Fortress.
Riven mods can be acquired from the daily Sortie mission or as a special Gift From The Lotus mission after a DevStream has been streamed on Twitch – check the News panel in your orbiter for when next DevStream is coming up! You can also acquire Riven mods by trading with other players for Platinum but be warned: Unveiled Rivens for popular weapons can be very expensive!
For more Riven mod related information see these guides:
Augment Mods
Augment mods change the behavior of Warframe abilities. For example, the Frost’s Chilling Globe augment will give a 50% chance of freezing enemies that walks into the Snow Globe, which can be a great help in e.g. defence missions. Some augments are very good, others are highly situational.
Augment mods can be aquired from the Syndicate vendors by earning Syndicate standing. On the Syndicate page you can see which syndicate provides Augment mods for the various warframes. It is also possible to buy Augment mods for a few special weapons.
