Warframe Elite Sanctuary Onslaught Guide
Sanctuary Onslaught is one of one of the most fun and rewarding late-game activities in Warframe. Elite Sanctuary Onslaught (ESO) is the more difficult version of Sanctuary Onslaught and is generally performed for Focus or relic farming. The main appeal for most players is that it has a chance to drop parts for the Khora Warframe.
In this Sanctuary Onslaught guide, we’ll take you through everything you need to know about SO and ESO, how to get Khora, and what are the best Warframes you can use to tackle the harder ESO grind.
Table of Contents
How Does Sanctuary Onslaught Work in Warframe?
The Sanctuary Onslaught modes can be accessed via the Sanctuary (located at Relays) by talking to Cephalon Simaris. The prerequisite for accessing these modes is the completion of the New Strange quest. You can always find players to squad up with through the Recruiting chat.
Similar to Survival missions, Sanctuary Onslaught is endless and has a team of four facing hordes of enemies with increasing difficulty over time. Unlike Survival missions, Sanctuary Onslaught doesn’t have Life Support Modules, but instead has an efficiency counter the squad has to maintain by killing enemies. Enemies do not drop resources or mods in these missions and containers aren’t available in these zones. However, eliminated enemies do drop Health and Energy orbs as usual.
While Survival missions have a regular map with no travel restrictions, Sanctuary Onslaught takes place in “zones”. Zones are closed rooms that last for 2.5 minutes each, at the end of which the squad can either move to the next zone via a conduit, or stay back and exit the mission. Note that Eximus enemies contribute more to the efficiency meter.
Note that Elite Sanctuary Onslaught requires your Warframe to be Level 30 to be able to participate. It is harder than Sanctuary Onslaught but provides better rewards too.
Which Warframe should you use in Elite Sanctuary Onslaught?
With Sanctuary Onslaught, you can get away with pretty much any Warframe since enemies take quite a while to ramp up the difficulty. Elite Sanctuary Onslaught is much harder and requires the right team composition for the team to last as long as possible. The standard preference for ESO squads is:
Utility Warframes:
- Trinity with an Energy Vampire build. Trinity’s role is to provide the team with Health and Energy and keep them alive. A good balance of the two is essential in this mode as your team needs to be alive as well as have enough energy.
- Rhino also plays a support role, providing a much-needed Ability Strength buff to the entire team. Refresh your ability after regular periods of time to keep the buff up as much as possible. Stomp can also help stall enemies that get too close.
While these Warframes provide strength, Energy, and survivability to the team, they can certainly still use their weapons to deal damage.
DPS Warframes:
- Saryn is the perfect damage-dealer for ESO. With a large number of enemies in closed rooms, it’s pretty easy to spread your spores. Uptime is key for Saryn; be sure to keep your spores alive throughout the room. Sometimes when the enemies die, the spores begin weaking in strength.
- Equinox (Day Form) is a bit more straightforward, since you don’t have to aim at enemies to spread spores. Be sure to activate your team buff for extra Ability Strength.
- Volt and Equinox are interchangeable. Along with great crowd control with his fourth ability, Volt can also shield your team, which contributes a great deal to survivability.
Best strategies for Elite Sanctuary Onslaught
Sanctuary Onslaught doesn’t need a whole lot of planning, unlike Elite Sanctuary Onslaught. The former is more casual, where each player can pick whatever frame they want and nobody has the responsibility of supporting the rest of the squad. You also don’t need a team of your own and can join a random lobby and start once you are matchmade with at least two others.
Have a Premade Squad
With Elite Sanctuary Onslaught, having a premade squad is a must. You honestly can’t survive without a Trinity on your team. On the other hand, having two of them on your squad is pretty much a waste, since it sets you back on DPS and the difficulty ramps up much faster than otherwise. You can easily find a group via Recruiting chat- look for messages like “LF ESO dps” rather than “LF ESO 2/4”. I’ve always found groups looking for specific Warframes to be more useful in Elite Sanctuary Onslaught, as the rest of the squad is already ready to go.
Stick Together
In the mission, don’t stay far from each other. It is important to stay nearby so that you can receive the health, energy, and ability buffs from your teammates. The most important thing is to stay alive, and sometimes that’s pretty hard, especially in the later zones. Being close to your teammates will make sure that you have someone ready to revive you. The mode gets considerably harder if one teammate is knocked down for too long.
Watch the Efficiency Meter
Keep your eye on the Efficiency meter as well as on your own Ability cooldowns. It is important for all Warframes to keep up their abilities in these mission- right from Saryn’s spores to Trinity’s healing. Don’t waste Efficiency pickups unless you really need them, and when moving around the zone, make sure you don’t pick them up by mistake. Mark them so that everyone knows they’re there, and clarify the same in team chat before you start the mission.
Use your best builds for your Warframes and weapons. Elite Sanctuary Onslaught matches are quite annoying if you go in with sub-par gear or Warframe builds.
If you need Warframe items to complete your build, PlayerAuctions is the best place to buy them safely, securely, and quickly.
Endnote
We hope our Sanctuary Onslaught guide helped you understand the game mode better. Make sure you discuss how many zones you want to complete with your squad! With the right builds and the good team, you can easily tackle the most common eight-zone target easily. You can even go further, but most teams will stop at eight and restart, due to the nature of the loot pool (AABC).
