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Pre-TNW Warframes

Last updated: 2026 january 27

TNW + Duviri are a major milestone both in story and in Warframe Acquisition, so here's what you can technically get before this major scary quest! I'm also adding a small description of what each frame can do, so that you may have a step between "eh, healer??" and "read all the ability breakdowns on the wiki" to help you figure out if you might like that specific frame! These descriptions are bound to be non-exhaustive and rather simplified tho since 1) you can make pretty much any frame do anything with enough hubris and resources and possibly augment mods, and 2) I don't extensively play every frame

This first list is of frames whose main blueprint either comes from mission drops or purchasing either from NPCs or the Market. See others below!

Frames with "★" next to their name also have a Prime variant. Not all Primes are readily available in the game at any given moment, but if you like the idea of a frame but reeeally not the idea of their grind, you might wanna check if anyone is selling them for a decent price on warframe.market (tip: buy individual blueprints instead of sets, it's usually cheaper)! (Also tip: you cannot trade plat you received for free, only plat you paid real money for or someone else had traded to you)

(The only frames not listed here that have Primes currently are Caliban and Gyre)

Ash ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• Component blueprints drop from different tiers of Railjack missions (which itself is unlocked via the quest Rising Tide, but you wanna spend a while after beefing up your Railjack before you should be running around in Pluto Proxima looking for Ash imo)
  Description: Sneaky ninja guy who can turn invisible for short bursts, as well as teleport to ppl to kill them or just have his shadow minions do the killing for him

Citrine

Acquisition: All blueprints come from Rotation C of Tyana Pass on Mars, or if luck fails you, can be bought from Otak in the Necralisk on Deimos for the crystals you get running said mission. Unfortunately a long grind I know a lot of ppl burnt out on :( but hey I enjoyed it (there's something wrong with me)
Description: Tanky and will keep your squad alive kicking and screaming, all while dishing out a lot of status effects in a specific area or freezing enemies for a short moment

Dagath

Acquisition: Okay normally you need to get her blueprints from your clan Dojo but there's currently alerts going on (https://www.warframe.com/news/dagath-alerts-2026) that can get you her blueprints without needing to have a Clan. You will however still need materials to craft her, acquired from the Abyssal Zone (https://wiki.warframe.com/w/Abyssal_Zone)
Description: Damage boosting glass cannon with a headless horsewoman theme

Ember ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• Component blueprints drop from Sargas Ruk (Tethys, Saturn)
  Description: Damage dealer who can clear the map but absolutely guzzles energy in return. Has some sort of micromanagement I don't get??

Equinox ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• She's a weird one! All her component blueprints come from Tyl Regor (Titania, Uranus) but instead of the usual 3, she has 8 of them. She requires you to craft her Day Aspect and Night Aspect as if they were separate frames, and then glue them together to create one frame
  Description: Can switch between a butch and a femme a day and a night form. Day form is a defensive support while night form is an aggressive damage dealer and map clearer. Can switch in-mission but is more worth it to build her for one form per build imo

Excalibur

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• Component blueprints come from Lech Kril (War, Mars)
  Description: Swordy McSwordface. He sure has a sword!

Frost ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• Component blueprints come from the Vor + Lech Kril fight (Exta, Ceres)
  Description: Chunky defensive boy who can freeze enemies in place and remove their armour, good for letting you use your weapons in peace

Gauss ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• Component Blueprints: Rotation C of the disruption mission on Kappa, Sedna
  Description: So speedy that running into walls is an actual mechanic with him. Can nuke, support his weapons, and be pretty sturdy while doing so, but on top of managing his energy you also need to manage his battery

Grendel ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• Component Blueprints: Complete Eris Junction -> unlocks Arbitrations which are Difficult Endless Missions -> use resources from there to buy mission keys to get Grendel -> these are also increased difficulty missions that reward his blueprints on completion
• He's definitely one of the ones easier to get if you just trade for his Prime blueprints and build the Prime. Trust me, you would not be enjoying his grind currently
  Description: He eats ppl, turns into a bowling ball, and also sometimes spits ppl back out. He can get damage boost and armour strip out of this. Tanky as hell. Extremely funny to roll around as a ball

Hildryn ★

Acquisition: Lvl5 Solaris United -> Lvl2 Vox Solaris -> Specific difficult bossfight you might also need to first do a reoccuring world event for I genuinely don't know, I never bothered with any of this. Just get the Prime. Before her Prime released, she was one of the no1 recommendations for "if you really wanna buy a frame with plat"
Description: Tanky, supportive, and strips enemy armour. Uses her shields instead of energy to power her abilities, which means she can also recharge said shields via said abilities

Hydroid ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• Component Blueprints come from Vay Hek (Oro, Earth). MR5 is required to be able to enter the mission
  Description: Can set up stationary zones of damage and ragdolling enemies to defend an area, boost damage, and turn into a really fast puddle (yes really)

Ivara ★

Acquisition: All blueprints drop from Spy missions if you crack all three vaults successfully, see wiki for which part comes from which missions exactly. As this can take quite a while, if you don't enjoy spy, maybe look into her Prime instead
Description: Sneaky sneaky! Invisiblity and various other utility related to stealth. Her invisibility makes her slow but she can summon dashwires to balance on that make her speedy again and cross gaps without jumping

Khora ★

Acquisition: All blueprints drop from different stages of Sanctuary Onslaught (normal only, not Elite). Another source of many grind complaints so maybe peep at her Prime if you're interested
Description: Feral cat lady with a whip, multiple ways of binding enemies, and, well, a cat

Lavos ★ <3

Acquisition: All blueprints are bought from Father in the Necralisk on Deimos, requiring Rank 3 with the Entrati syndicate and a total of 20k standing on top of what it takes to get to Rank 3. If you don't love open world stuff, maybe look into his prime - being only a year old, he should not be as difficult to buy as some others on this list
Description: I'm extremely biased about him sorry. He's my best boy. Damage dealer who leaves status effects all over the place, has a funny long dash movement ability, and an absolute ridiculous amount of health. Instead of energy, his abilities have cooldowns, with some of his abilities working to reduce said cooldowns

Loki ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• Component blueprints are from the Hyena Pack on Psamanthe, Neptune
  Description: Invisible teleporting gremlin man. Go confuse the fuck out of some enemies. If you don't like the movement limitations of Ivara's invis or the spam crouch of Octavia's, he's probably your man

Mag ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• Component blueprints from The Sergeant on Iliad, Phobos. He is legendarily a pushover
  Description: Have you met August in the past two weeks? Goofy ragdolling, crowd control and armour strip. FYI the damage from her abilities does fall off into late Starchart as is often the case with frames whose ability damage scales only on Strength, but she will continue to support weapon-based murder forever thanks to crowd control and armour strip

Nekros ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• Component blueprints from Lephantis on Magnacidium, Deimos
  Description: Generates extra loot and summons his dead enemies as minions that fight for him

Nova ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• Component blueprints from the Raptors on Naamah, Europa
  Description: Funny little damage booster who can put portals for players to travel through all over the place, and can choose to either slow down enemies (to keep them under control) or speed them up (to make slow defense missions faster). The latter used to be unintended but ppl used it as a hot strat for years so eventually it got properly implemented

Nyx ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• Component blueprints come from the Phorid on any Assassination node that falls under an Infested Invasion (check world state)
  Description: Can mind control a single enemy to turn it into an ally and makes fun of the rest by 1) confusing all of them, 2) stealing their defenses, and 3) going invincible for short bits of time

Oberon ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• Component blueprints come from Railjack "Points of Interests" which are bonus objectives. He specifically comes from Earth and Saturn, so you wanna be chunky enough to be able to handle the latter
  Description: Support to the point of basically making everyone immortal, but hey, if that fails, he can still heal you! Also armour strip and minor crowd control through confusion. Yes i was nuking Hydron with him but you need an augment for that

Rhino ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• Component blueprints from Jackal on Fossa, Venus
• Fun fact, after his components are done, he only takes 1 day to build instead of 3 bc he's expected to be most ppl's second Warframe!
  Description: Strong tank, strong damage boost, some nice crowd control as well but sorry to say he's otherwise a gun holder

Saryn ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• Component blueprints come from Kela de Thaym on Merrow, Sedna. This assassination requires earning points in the Rathuum arenas on Sedna to enter
  Description: Extremely powerful nuke with fuckall survivability and a constant micromanagement mechanic to keep her nuke capability alive. Makes gross squelchy noises

Trinity ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• Component blueprints come from the Ambulas on Hades, Pluto
  Description: A good old fashioned healer with survivability and energy generation

Valkyr ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• Component blueprints from Alad V on Themisto, Jupiter
  Description: Aren't you tired of being nice? Don't you just wanna go apeshit? Valkyr is an unkillable melee berserker. Benefits from energy efficiency or some way of getting more energy on the way bc her 4th ability is expensive and prevents energy regen from sources like Dreamer's Bond (all channeled abilities do this ftr)

Vauban ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• Component blueprints purchased from the Nightwave shop with Nighwave Creds
  Description: Funny area control man. Do you want to yoink every enemy within sight into a rotating pile and pelt them with nails and perhaps an orbital strike or two? Bc i do. He's not tanky but he's really really funny

Voruna

Acquisition: All blueprints come from Yuvarium and Circulus on Lua, unlocked after completing The War Within (post-TNW you will also unlock a pity system to purchase her parts for extra Lua Thrax Plasm dropped in the mission if your luck is mean, but watch out! You also need that shit to craft her)
Description: Feral wolf furry woman putting status effects everywhere. Can turn short term invisible outside of combat. Can also go on all fours a bit to tear enemies apart with her bare hands bc she's normal like that

Outliers

Warframes whose blueprints aren't a mission drop or from the Market/NPC vendors OR access to them requires a specific quest in another way, but which can nonetheless be acquired before TNW.

Atlas ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Awarded from The Jordas Precept quest (which itself comes after completing the Pluto-Eris Junction)
• Component Blueprints: drop from The Jordas Golem bossfight on Eris
  Description: Throw rocks at people. Hit people with rocks. Turn people into rocks. Make friends with rocks.

Banshee ★

Acquisition: All blueprints purchased from the Tenno Lab in the Clan Dojo.
Description: Puts glowing weak points on enemies while shutting off their abilities, making eximus 90% less annoying

Chroma ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: The New Strange quest
• Component blueprints are awarded from Junctions
• Each component + the entire guy need an extra warframe part (built) to build. These are Saryn, Ember, Frost, and Volt, meaning you will also need access to a Clan Dojo and the bossfight on Sedna
  Description: Big damage boost. Big survivability. Big just keep two abilities active and otherwise run around with guns

Gara ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Saya's Vigil quest
• Component blueprints drop from various Plains of Eidolon bounties, with the neuroptics climbing as high as lvl20-40 enemies
• Frankly with no pity system and how messy open world bounties are, maybe peep at her Prime instead
  Description: Hit ppl with glass in every way imaginable, including a sword. Survivability and various forms of damage, also some area defense. You can run into ppl to kill them

Garuda ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Vox Solaris quest
• Component blueprints come from Orb Vallis bounties, the neuroptics climbing as high as lvl20-40 enemies. As with Gara above, perhaps look into the Prime
  Description: Bloodthirsty woman with claws who tears her enemies to pieces round 2! Can set up healing zones but imo her main survivability is just that everything else dies before she does

Harrow ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Chains of Harrow quest
• Chassis Blueprint: dropped plentifully from Void Fissure enemies
• Neuroptics Blueprint: spy missions on Kuva Fortress OR Rotation C on Kuva Survival
• Systems Blueprint: Rotation B and C Defection OR Rotation C Kuva Survival
• Another where I gesture gently towards his Prime
  Description: Ties down enemies, generates more energy than you'll ever need, and gets some limited time crit bonuses. Gun holder, sorry

Inaros ★

Acquisition: All blueprints from the Sands of Inaros quest, which in turn you must buy from Baro Ki'Teer when he visits every two weeks
Description: Ridiculously tanky. Can turn into a tornado and yeet or yoink ppl all over the place. Can also summon some cats

Koumei

Acquisition: All blueprints come from Saya's Visions, Earth, which in turn requires the completion of the Saya's Vigil quest. If your luck bullies you, you can also purchase her blueprints at her Shrine in Cetus using Fate Pearls, the resource dropped by Saya's Visions (the Pearls are also required to craft her, so watch out)
Description: Weird RNG mechanics where aspects of her abilities are determined by dice rolls. Can put a fuckton of status effects everywhere. Gets random buffs

Limbo ★ <3

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• Component blueprints from The Limbo Theorem quest which you get for completing the Europa Junction
  Description: Rev's Best Boy. Can hide in a pocket dimension or put enemies in there with him to pick them off. Can paralyse enemies in said pocket dimension and lock down an area completely. He was to OP they specifically made eximus immune to him

Mesa ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• Component blueprints drom from Mutalist Alad V on Eris, which you unlock by doing the Patient Zero quest and then doing invasions for entry keys
  Description: Rooty tooty point and shooty. Occasionally jams enemy guns while auto-aim shooting everything in range in exchange for a bunch of energy

Mirage ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Market
• Component blueprints from the Hidden Messages quest
  Description: Fuckton of damage all over the place while confusing enemies

Nezha ★

Acquisition: All blueprints purchased from the Tenno Lab in the Clan Dojo.
Description: Speedy, nearly unkillable, and setting everything on fire. Can suspend enemies on spears to keep them from running around

Nidus ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Glast Gambit quest
• Component blueprints from Rotation C of Infested Salvage (Oestrus, Eris) which a lot of ppl hate so maybe look into the Prime
  Description: Long mission snowballing type frame but if you give him a little time to get started he literally cannot die. Grabs enemies, explodes them, optionally gives Ability Strength to your allies if you wanna be nice

Octavia ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Octavia's Anthemn quest
• Chassis Blueprint: music puzzle room on Lua
• Neuroptics Blueprint: Rotation C of Survival on Terrorem, Deimos
• Systems Blueprint: caches on Plato, Lua
  Description: Can turn invisible, give a bunch of buffs, and confuse the fuck out of enemies by playing whatever funny tune you want. Otherwise unfortunately there to hold guns once her abilities are going

Protea ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Deadlock Protocol quest
• Component blueprints come from the Granum Void, which is a mouthful to explain so here's the link for you: https://wiki.warframe.com/w/Granum_Void
• A long and difficult grind for many, I recommend looking into her Prime instead
  Description: Feral and fast paced and slapping turrets everywhere. Can technically control time a lil bit

Revenant ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Mask of the Revenant quest, which requires Rank 2 with The Quills
• Component Blueprints come from Plains of Eidolon bounties, and at least two have to be crafted during the quest in the first place to complete it
• Overall, Prime recommended
  Description: Functionally immortal, turns enemies into allies and can do a funny little dance that summons lasers

Sevagoth ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Call of the Tempestarii quest
• Component blueprints come from higher tier Void Storms (Railjack equivalent of Void Fissures)
• I recommend looking into his Prime instead
  Description: Two frames in one, with his main form slowing enemies and draining their life force while his Shadow form is melee-focused

Titania ★

Acquisition: All blueprints from The Silver Grove quest, which requires The Second Dream and MR7
Description: That Little Fairy Bitch as August called her. Turns tiny and flies around, making her really fast, while also confusing the fuck out of enemies

Volt ★

Acquisition: All blueprints purchased from the Tenno Lab in the Clan Dojo.
Description: Old reliable speedy boy with a shield and a nuke

Wukong ★

Acquisition: All blueprints purchased from the Tenno Lab in the Clan Dojo.
Description: Do you wanna fly really fast? Do you wanna hit things with a really big stick? Do you wanna undergo mitosis and let your brand new twin go feral on the enemies? Wukong.

Xaku ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Heart of Deimos quest
• Component blueprints come from Cambion Drift bounties, climbing as high as lvl40-50 enemies
• Their Prime is only a bit over a year old so it should probably be pretty okay in price on the market
  Description: Funny little skeleton who steals ppl's guns to turn them into automatically firing turrets. Can set up armour strip zones. Spends 90% of the mission as a goofy stickman (gender neutral)

Yareli ★

Acquisition:

• Main Blueprint: Waverider quest
• Component blueprints purchased from the Ventkid Bash Lab in the Clan Dojo
  Description: Skateboarding magical girl who explodes ppl with bubbles. Queen of getting stuck on geometry but she's powerful if you don't mind that

Zephyr ★

Acquisition: All blueprints purchased from the Tenno Lab in the Clan Dojo.
Description: Float around or divebomb enemies. Fling ragdolls all over the place. Spawn some fuckign tornadoes to really inconvenience them while you're at it