Free-To-Play ‘Warframe’ Updating With Open World Map, Crafted Weapons This Year

Explore an open world teeming with wildlife, pick up quests from the city of Cetus, and craft custom weapons in the upcoming Plains of Eidolon update coming to Warframe. The free-to-play third-person shooter from Digital Extremes is now in its fourth year of official release, but it still receives regular content additions. New warframes, essentially classes or kits, and weapons are added often. New missions and maps are also debuted throughout the game’s lifetime.

Up to this point, additions to Warframe consisted primarily of randomly generated but limited linear maps. Although some spaces are large, players are still moving from their spawn point to an extraction point. This year, though, Tenno will finally have the opportunity to explore an open world. The Plains of Eidolon update will add an open world map, called a Landscape, for players to traverse according to the game’s official site.

When the update launches, players can visit the new city of Cetus inhabited by a new civilization in Warframe called Ostrons. Up to 50 players can visit the city at one time according to the PlayStation Blog with the open map hosting the traditional party size. Up to four players can explore the surrounding area where Grineer patrol, streams of fish await, and a day/night cycle provides new challenges.

In the demo presented at TennoCon, players can see an Excalibur warframe move from the city to the open world map rather seamlessly. In the Plains of Eidolon, players can stay as long as they choose with new objectives and missions offered on the map rather than a player needing to return to their ship to start a new session. Side activities like spearfishing are available to players in the new open world, too.

In an interview with PC Gamer, developers of the game confirm that the open world map is not procedurally generated. The encounters and activities on the map are, though. That means the new Landscape area is always laid out in a static way, but what players experience on the map will be different each time. The new day/night cycle also contributes to this with the new Spectral Sentient appearing when darkness falls.

The Warframe update will also give players a chance to craft their own weapons at an anvil in Cetus. In the video below, a player easily chooses a blade, link, and hilt for their weapon before spending credits to craft it. Not to mention, the new Landscape zone even lets players call in their Archwings to battle foes or simply get around the Warframe map quicker.

[Featured Image by Digital Extremes]