Warframe: MOD 101 - Capacity

Hi All!

This post is just to go over the basics of modding your equipment. This will be old information for more seasoned players, but a crucial thing to learn as a Tenno and not well covered or taught in the game. This is crucial because in Warframe, your power does not increase with player level, it increases with mods. If an MR 30 player wants to, they can unequip all of their mods from their weapons and warframe and be on the same power level as a newly created account. In this guide, I will be going over:

-What is a Mod?

-Upgrading Mods

-Capacity

-Orokin Catalysts and Reactors

-Polarities and Forma

-Exilus Adapters

Firstly, a mod is an upgrade you can put on virtually any piece of gear in the game. Mods are sorted by what kind of gear they can be put on. For example, Serration is a rifle mod, meaning that it can be put on any rifle, but cannot be put on any secondary or melee weapons. I will go in depth on mod classification in another guide. As a new player, it is important to realize that a lot of the mods obtained early game are flawed, indicated by a crack in the mod.

Flawed Serration (notice the cracks on the left):

Normal Serration (notice the higher values from the flawed version):

Upgrading mods requires a resource called endo, as well as credits. This is done in the Mod Station located in your orbiter. You will want to click on the mod and select the upgrade option at the top. Mods are sorted into 4 categories: bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. While these can reference rarity and difficulty to obtain, this is not always the case. Rather, it denotes how expensive upgrading the mod is, requiring more resources the "rarer" it is.

Now to the modding itself. Modding is done in the arsenal, most commonly located in your orbiter. On Switch, you can access the modding menu by hovering over the piece of equipment you want to mod and pressing 'X'. You may have noticed that every mod has a number and symbol on the top right. This denotes the capacity drain and polarization of the mod. The available capacity of your gear is shown in the top left. The capacity of your gear depends on a few things. The rank of the weapon will represent how much capacity that gear will have. A rank 4 weapon will have 4 capacity, while a rank 30 weapon will have 30 capacity. 30 is the highest most weapons can go. However, if your player rank (Master Rank, or MR) is higher than that of the weapon, it will use that instead. If you have a rank 4 weapon but are master rank 8, your weapon will have 8 capacity until you reach rank 9 on your weapon.

You want to raise the rank of your gear in order to fit more mods. However, this will still not be enough for a full build. You will also have to install an orokin reactor or catalyst. These will double the mod capacity of your gear, so at rank 4 your gear will have 8 capacity, up to a max of 60 at rank 30 (for most weapons). Whether you need a reactor or a catalyst will depend on what item you are trying to increase capacity for. Reactors are used for frames, vehicles, and companions, while catalysts are used for all types of weapons.

Orokin Reactor (Yellow)

Orokin Catalyst (Blue)

Forma is another way to fit mods onto your gear. Each mod has a polarity, or shape, following the number on the top right. On your gear, slots can have polarities assigned to them. If a mod is put into a slot with a matching polarity, the capacity drained is reduced by 50%, rounding up. For example, both mods that cost 15 and 16 will cost 8 when put in the correct polarity. However, if a polarity does not match, the capacity drain is increased by 25%, rounding up. Thus, a mod costing 8 will cost 10, and a mod costing 15 will cost 19. Note that if there is no polarity on the slot, the mod will drain just as much as it says (a mod costing 15 will drain 15 capacity).

Forma will allow you to put on and change polarities for your gear. However, you are not allowed to put forma on your gear until it is max rank. Once you do, the rank of that piece of gear will reset, and you will have to rank it up to max again before you can put another forma on. This can get tedious, but leads to very powerful gear.

Forma can be bought from the market (always buy the 3-pack if you get it from the market) with platinum, while blueprints can be obtained by opening relics. These take 23 hours to craft in the foundry.

Aura forma, stance forma, and umbral forma also exist. Aura forma is a universal forma for the aura slot on warframes, stance forma is a universal slot for the stance slot on melee weapons, and umbral forma will add the umbral polarity to a slot. Don't worry too much about these when you are first starting out!

Speaking of aura and stance forma, there are also aura and stance mods! These are only for warframes and melee weapons respectively. Rather than add to the capacity drain of the gear, they add to the maximum capacity! This is also doubled if the polarity matches (an aura mod listing 7 will give 14 additional capacity), and is at 80% of the listed capacity if it is in the wrong polarity slot, rounded down (an aura mod listing 7 will only give 5 additional capacity).

Lastly, it's important to know about exilus adapters. There are also separate adapters for warframes and weapons, known as exilus warframe adapters and exilus weapon adapters (rightly so). Every warframe has an exilus slot, but only some primaries and secondaries have exilus slots. These are not necessary to unlock, but will give you some good options for your gear if you do. Be aware that these slots also add to the capacity drain.

Hopefully this helped you understand capacity! The next guide will be going over the different modding families!