Ran Scarlet Spear a few times, it's a pain in the ass - my Railjack is definitely not equipped for Murex raids.
I do fine running solo ground missions, though I can only get to Wave 4 or 5 by myself.

 

Fair! I've done a couple Infested missions already (that one survival on Venus is great for melee practice), but good to know if that one's main-main story (wait...of course it is, I need it to unlock the Earth-Mars jump). Wouldn't mind a space doggo - though of course it's a tradeoff, I do really like the overshield and default loot pickup of my sentinel.

 

Its worth your while anyway as Kubrows themselves count like any other equipment you gain exp on - first time up to level 30 gets you mastery points for your overall rank, you can put forma and potatoes in them to switch around some mods, etc.

 

You know, since I'm here and have some screenshots...

Spoiler

My beautiful little abomination, Basilisk.


All aboard the Mag Train! (from left to right: Classic Mag, Mag Prime, Angel Mag, Graxx Mag)


My faves.

 

<Ordis>M-m-my optics are bleeding.</Ordis> G2 camo ahoy!

Weekly notes: not a lot of play this time, just pootling around doing a couple Nightwave achievements. Switched back to my Paris 'cause I was feeling stealthy; boy, I missed ragdolling mooks like that. Also picked up a fishing spear in Cetus...and promptly forgot not to go out onto the Plains at night. That was a lot of running from the stupid mini-eidolons. Couldn't scan the silly things either.

Outside of the game, found a folk/shanty cover of We All Lift that's pretty cool.

Excal.: Your interest in the small mechanics is reassuring, Player. Proficiency will come.

 

Go home Ordis, we've been over this, you know nothing about fashion.

Oh, right, pre-Second Dream/War Within you're pretty much helpless against Vomvalysts.

 

Weekly notes - didn't have a lot of time, so no quest advancement; just another round of random missions for Nightwave points. Boy, the teleporting Grineer flame-axe dudes are not that bright, are they? They pop in right in front of me, usually when I'm already going into an attack. And keep punching Eximus guys in the hope of Oberon bits.

Scored my first Ayatan sculpture though! It was just...sitting on a box in that low-level Earth sabotage mission as I was blitzing through it, go RNG. Not a rare one or anything, just a sah, but I have more than enough stars to turn it on (although, placing it as ship decoration, I kind of wish I hadn't), and figured out how to set up ship decor. I'm one of those people now, I have a kinetic sculpture and that koala floof sitting around.

Excal.: *somehow staring despite having no visible eyes*

 

Knocked around some more Nightwave points this week, and cracked open a couple of void relics as part and parcel. Of course, didn't get anything useful, just parts of things that I'm way too low-level to actually make. So many random parts of things in my inventory already. Also learning how to fish out in Cetus; I get the idea, but it's hard to find a spot where I can actually sit for a few and not get shot.

Did make a little story progress - I'm tired of bashing my head on the current step of Vox Solaris, so I went ahead and started Once Awake just to work toward opening up more of the map. "Officially" smacking Infested around now, and OA is the last thing I need to unlock the Earth-Mars jump. Once I get into Mars, then it's kubrow time.

Excal.: There is no rush, Player. The flow of the Void will carry us.

 

Went about building up intrinsic points in Railjack, trying to get to the Veil Proxima.

Doing the Galleon attack solo is a pain in the ass - I got swarmed so many times, by so many enemies, could barely keep up with all the damage.

 

Man, I am so cosmically far away from railjack mode it's not even funny, but it still sounds cool. Wasn't the latest big download a rebalance patch?

 

Made some story progress this week, especially since Nightwave is over for now - polished off Once Awake, which was way shorter than I expected, and got started on HotK. Slightly confused on the map because Mars Junction hasn't unlocked, even though I've completed the checklist (OA was the last thing I was missing). Do I need to get HotK or mastery 3 (I'm within a couple hundred mastery XP) for that, even though they're not on the list?

Excal.: Fishing. Perhaps the ancient Earth art of "sushi"?

 

railjack just seems like a huge grind to me. Really not that interested in the capital ships. I'd rather goof around planetside.

i do need to get back into Warframe, though. Next story beats look sick.

 

Progress!

One, I am derpframe and hadn't actually done the mission immediately prior to the Mars Junction. By now I'm rather over level for it, so no trouble cranking that out; nor did the Junction specter prove any issue. Mastery 3 test popped up as well after that one, and Excal's Bo made short work of it. So Mars is open to me now, and I'm hoping to pick up some new goodies.

I did start building the heatbrand sword that OA gave me - I haven't looked into whether it's "good" or not, but it gives me a second and different melee option, which I find pleasing since I also have two primary and two secondary weapons in my collection. Speaking of weapons, though, I did find and am of level to build a Gorgon. That thing useful in general? I don't feel like I need another spray-n-pray gun at the moment, but the stat charts still make me scratch my head in general.

Starting to consider new 'frames. I know I could go grind Jackal for Rhino parts, but since I just opened up Mars I kind of want to go find the boss that gives out Mag instead. Something completely different from Excal, y'know? That and I keep punching Eximus units in the hope of Oberon bits; alas, I have two-thirds of him and the only other chunk I've seen drop was a duplicate.

I've also started seeing the new Nightwave stuff pop up; gotta get those achievments, right? Since this is the first one I've been in the game at the start of, I got to play the intro scene, and (for lack of other comparisons on my end) I got a vague Thief vibe off the investigation minigame. The glassed guys look pretty cool, I just need to be better about shooting the shiny bits first and being away from the ones that blow up.

Only other story quest I'm actively in at the mo' is HotK, and it took about eight runs to find an egg, but I have that running in the incubator now. Shall figure out how pets other than sentinels work out, I suppose! And outside of mechanics, I appreciate that Ordis is chattier now that I'm back into the story stuff. His rant about Void Relics was rather excellent.

Excal.: Variety is appreciated, Player, whether in locations or armament. And no, Ordis is not a "dog person".

 

So! Put in a little extra game time thanks to the long weekend and things are definitely getting !!fun!! again.

Biggest thing is finishing off HotK - her name is Adira, a tan Sahasa. Got her ranked up a little, got the "do 10 missions with a dog" achievement. And given my play schedule, she's probably going to spend a lot of time in stasis. As neat as having a new pet is, and getting the quest done, and all that, I at least at this level find a few of the kubrow mechanics a little annoying. The whole 'do something daily or suffer stat loss' is kind of a wash, it's what's the stasis option is for; but at least with Excalibur and my current playstyle she has a real hard time keeping up with me. The doggo pathfinding is a bit shit, especially when the map is more vertical (or Corpus at all), and I had to de-quip the dig behavior 'cause it was making things worse. Add that to a tendancy to get stuck, or to go haring off after a nearby enemy, or not attacking things that haven't attacked or can't attack me (like Blinded guys) and...yeah. Having to pay attention to dog heath and shields on top of everything else is difficult for me. Specific to current events, exploding glass enemies and melee doggo is a bad combination too. Unfortunately, looks like Taxon is going to stay my go-to companion for most mission types for a while.

Put a bunch of levels on the new sword too; not that it's difficult to level melee gear! The heatbrand is so, so much faster than my bo staff - fast enough to get me in trouble a few times. Given that my melee style is "slam into people and button mash", the drop in reach hasn't been an issue, but more than once I've gotten myself stuck in making ten swings when the first two killed my target. Add that to the fact that I was one-shotting mook-level enemies with even the barest of mods and yeah, it's a fun one. Spend a fair few rounds in one of the Infested defense missions to level both sword and dog (and here, melee lifeleech made absolutely sure she wouldn't die), and I was wholly amused: by the time I jumped out of the mission, whoever was in that crypod was almost literally buried in ammo pickups. Enjoy the stock, you nameless NPC model.

As for other gameplay, got started on Mars, nothing fancy yet but I really like how the Mars maps look. And I really appreciate when Nightwave throws the 'gimme' achievments in, like opening chests or taking pictures of things. Looting and space polaroids are easy pickings for a player like me who's only worried about getting up to the "free weapon slots" tier.

My next questions as far as gameplay...I'm up to Mastery 3, which means I can talk to the Syndicates now. Any sales pitches?

Excal.: The next steps in the larger universe, Player. Also, yes, Adira is a good girl.

 

I'm maxed out Steel Meridian. I did that so I could get their Rhino frame mods.
Pick a faction that has mods for the frames you like. Politics aside that's the important part.

I too prefer my floating buddies to kubrow or kavats. I swear by my Carrier Prime. He's a groovy little space vacuum that keeps me in ammo.

I'm still not sure what I'm supposed to be doing with all the nightwave stuff, specifically the glassmaker thing. I'm confused by the whole thing.

 

You have to find clues in the crime simula, memorize certain aspects of them (such as symbols, objects, or words, which will be highlighted when you examine the clues), then gather Cephalite Resonance in order to do a segment in the Weave where you follow those clues to help determine...Something. Glass resonance spawns in 25 minute intervals in missions, including landscapes and Railjack, and will turn enemies into Cephalites that you kill to get Cephalite Resonance in order to enter the Weave, the way Void Fissures turn enemies into Corrupted.

That sounds way more complicated and involved then it was supposed to.

 

A fair cop - I just don't have any other frames yet! Makes considering mods difficult.

Broke out my bow again for some runs today, and boy is it hard to snipe the glass weak points with a weapon that slow. Melee blitz still works great though!

Back to just bouncing around doing random missions for now. I've almost 100%'ed Mercury - beat up Vor a few times for Nightwave points and got the blueprint for his Cronus sword; but the one last tick on the map is a damn Intercept mission and I'm terrible at solo'ing those. The map very much doesn't help, and the best run I think I got was 76% before I failed out. Meh, I'll come back to it. Also wound up with a Fragor blueprint from somewhere, and I gotta say I am tempted to build the thing. Playing whack-a-mook is always fun.

Excal.: find the rhythm, Player.

 

So my brother and I did a Railjack mission in the Veil Proxima. I stayed on the Railjack while he acted as the Away Crew (because, for some reason, I can't use energy restores in Railjack - it works until I launch in Archwing, then it breaks and won't work). It was a mess. We need to get better shields, health and armor for it - oh, and the enemies are horrifying bullet-sponges. Shooting them didn't help much, but ripping into them with melee worked better.

 

Only had a little playtime this weekend, but made a bit of progress - mostly just opening up the Mars map some. Close to the Nightwave weapon slot reward, so I went ahead and started cooking up that Fragor to try out. Still haven't picked my next quest; Archwing, or Man Of Few Words. Whether it's short or no, I think I wanna go meet Clem.

 

Welp, didn't realize Man Of Few Words starts on flipping Uranus, that's not happening anytime soon. On the other hand, got the second Glass investigation done and punched out a few more pips on the Mars map. Also had my Fragor finished and started putting some levels on it; it's a fun mook masher for sure, and it is sort of forcing me to learn some of the combo stuff instead of button-mashing melee, but yikes is it slow. First mod into it is the biggest attack speed buff that fits.

Out of other random runs, the new Corpus art looks...good, I guess? I didn't have it stuck in my memory enough to compare, really - though I did find a couple of new things. One dude scattered a bunch of glowy blue [ ] looking things around that didn't seem to do anything; and I found a Solaris prisoner on one map that needed some kind of medallion to free - no idea what that was, and I couldn't find it on the wiki.