Warframe‘s recent change to defense missions have proven to be a wonderful quality of life change that save player’s time and make the mission type far more pallatable across the game, but there’s a funny catch. A Nightwave weekly mission has proven a tad arduous due to the change, throwing players into a bigger grind than usual.
To break it down, the recent change has reduced the number of waves per Defense rotation from five to three. What this means in super simple terms is now players only have to wipe out three waves of enemies before they get a reward, which is nice and makes that new Warframe 1999 Temple defense quicker and easier. However, a Nightwave weekly quest called “Defense” requires players to finish a Defense mission after reaching wave 20. This, with the new format, doesn’t quite add up.
In the past, to complete this Nightwave weekly, you’d have to extract from a Defense mission after clearing four rotations. This is a nice bit of design, ensuring players take home at least one prize from each rotation tier. The standard reward tier is AABC, so it made sure you’d get a two A-rank rewards, a B-rank reward, and a C-rank reward. For clarity’s sake let’s say you’re doing a Dark Sector Defense mission and get two Meso relics, a Neo Relic, and an Axi relic.
However to clear 20 waves now requires you to actually complete 21 waves. So that’s seven full rotations of a Defense mission. In terms of rewards, the tiers would go AABCAAB. Following the prior example, that’s four Meso relics, two Neo, and an Axi. It loops back around, all while enemies get stronger. As such, if you’re doing Defense missions for any other reasons other than the Nightwave weekly, there’s no real reason to stay after wave 12.
Okay so why does this matter. Well, it terms of time spent in a Defense mission, it’s not actually going to take significantly longer to clear this than it would in the past. Sure, you’ll have to sit throw addition extraction screens which’ll add a few minutes, but unless you’re unlocking void relics it won’t enflate the time spent in-mission that long.
Well, this change makes it harder to keep a squad of four in-mission for the entire duration. As mentioned above, there’s no real reason to stick around past wave 12, meaning those taking on the weekly without a super powerful warframe and loadout could get bodied by the later waves. Also, some may be tempted to quite out of the mission on wave 20 – don’t do that! You’ve got to actually finish the Defense roation you’re on for the weekly to complete – so get to wave 21 and then extract normally.
But, aside from that, it’s not the biggest deal in the world. In fact, it’s a pretty funny holdover from the old Defense format. If you’re struggling to do this weekly, you can either look for likeminded players in the group-finder chat, find yourself a big void trace Defense farm and lock in for the long haul. Or, if you’re unable to find other players to help you out, bring the best loadout you can to Lith on Earth and blast through a bunch of low level Grineer until you’re done.
This will probably get fixed in the coming weeks, but honestly, there’s a sick part of my brain that wants Digital Extremes to keep this. It’s the same part of my brain that loved the old Ash farm. Look, it’s a wackey little weekly mission that pushes players to do something weird. Just slap on a podcast and vibe out, mate. Or, if you aren’t vibing with it, don’t panic. Even if you don’t complete the mission, you can recover it in later weeks no problem.
Have you tackled this Defense mission yet? Let us know below!
