Digital Extremes’ Warframe is one of the longest-lasting mainstream live-service games of all time, and one that’s delightfully unafraid of reinventing itself over and over again. Curiously, its Mastery Rank system remains mostly the same despite its age.
Notably, your Mastery Rank is a total summary of all the items you’ve collected and ranked up over the course of your Warframe career, with a few extra tidbits thrown in for good measure. Mastery is, as such, not necessarily a showcase of skill on its own, but it sure as heck counts for bragging rights for the time and effort a player has put into the game. Most importantly, some rather important pieces of Warframe content have a Mastery lock, meaning you’ll need to grind your way through sooner or later.
The quickest ways to rank up Mastery
Warframe‘s Mastery Rank system is fairly complex, but the crux of it boils down to the following two formulas:
- 100 Mastery points per level granted from Weapons, Archwing weapons, Sentinel weapons, Kitgun Chambers, Amp Prisms, and Zaw Strikes
- 200 Mastery points per level granted from Warframes, Archwings, Companions, Necramechs, and the Plexus
That is what the majority of the Mastery Rank system relies on: the more gear you rank up, the higher your Mastery Rank gets. The biggest caveat to this entire business, however, lies in the fact that you only earn Mastery the very first time you level up a piece of gear. Indeed, grabbing your Braton Prime and slapping three dozen Forma into it will not grant you more Mastery than just getting it to 30 and storing it for safekeeping.
Taking all of the above into account, the fastest, most foolproof way of ranking up Mastery in Warframe is to get as many different weapons, Warframes, and other assorted gear and levelling it up as quickly as possible. Simple, right? Well…
Other ways of earning Mastery points
Mastery Rank systems do get a fair bit more tedious as you delve deeper into Warframe. Specifically, while the vast majority of items won’t grant you more Mastery if you exceed Rank 30 with them, this isn’t the case across the board.
Here are some important exceptions from the rules outlined above:
- MOAs, Vulpaphylas, and Predasites need to reach level 30 and gilded with Forma at least once before awarding any Mastery points
- Necramechs continue granting Mastery points until reaching level 40, at 5 Forma invested
Further, there are some extremely specific ways for you to earn extra Mastery Rank aside from gear grinding:
- Completing regular star chart mission nodes
- Killing Junction Specter foes
- Ranking up Intrinsics for the Drifter and the Railjack
Completing Mastery Rank tests
One last thing that’s important to remember about this topic is that you’ll need to complete Mastery Rank tests whenever you collect an appropriate amount of Mastery to level up your account. These are not difficult until you reach some pretty high Mastery levels, but if you fail one, you’ll need to wait a full 24 hours before attempting to complete it again.
This means there’s some amount of tension in jumping into Mastery tests by default. The good news, though, is that you can head on over to Cephalon Simaris’ room in a Relay to practice for your test until you’re sure you can pull it off without fail.
If you’re looking to grind through as much Mastery as quickly as possible, practicing for each subsequent test may prove crucial. Otherwise, you may find yourself locked into waiting for a full day until you can give your next test a shot again, which is obviously less than ideal.
