Warframe Sortie Guide to Getting Rewards By Tackling Challenge Missions

By Yi Xiaomei | March 7th, 2019 | Categories: Warframe

If you’ve been playing Warframe for a while, chances are a lot of the missions you do are starting to feel pretty easy. Even though mowing down wave after wave of enemies with god-like Warframe abilities and weapons can be fun, you might start to wonder where you can find a challenge again in this game. Well, a good place to start would be Sorties, a trio of daily challenge missions for experienced players that offer some incredibly rare rewards. So how do you get started taking on Sorties? Read our Warframe Sortie Guide and find out!

Table of Contents

What are Sorties?

Sorties are a daily roster of three high-level missions players can complete to earn rare rewards. And when we say “high-level,” we mean it: Sortie mission levels range from level 50 all the way up to level 100, with enemy levels scaling accordingly, and you’ll need to complete all three missions in order to claim your reward. On top of the high enemy levels, Sorties also include additional obstacles in the form of challenge conditions that buff enemies, debuff players, add environmental hazards, or limit what weapons you can use. For these reasons, Sorties are among the most difficult missions in the game and should only be tackled by experienced, well-equipped players—the kind who’ve already ready a handy Warframe Sortie Guide, for example.

Sorties also refresh every 24 hours, so if you start a Sortie mission, make sure you complete the other two before time runs out to claim your daily prize!

For more Warframe, check this out: 3 Warframe Starter Frames for the Journey

What kind of rewards can I win from Sorties?

To start, Sorties grant a higher credit payout than most missions, awarding 20,000, 30,000, and 50,000 credits for that day’s first, second, and third Sortie missions respectively. Finish all three missions and you’ll be granted a random reward from a drop table, which includes the following items:

Anasa Ayatan Sculpture (28% drop rate)
Random Riven mod (27.9% drop rate)
4,000 Endo (12.1% drop rate)
6,000 Kuva (12% drop rate)
3-Day Credit, Affinity or Resource booster (9.81% drop rate)
Exilus Adapter (2.5% drop rate)
Forma (2.5% drop rate)
Orokin Catalyst Blueprint (2.5% drop rate)
Orokin Reactor Blueprint (2.5% drop rate)
Legendary Core (0.18% drop rate)

Many of the items on this list, such as Riven mods, Orokin Catalysts and Reactors, and Legendary Cores, are only very rarely offered from other sources, making Sorties the most reliable (and cheapest) way of getting your hands on them, even with the low drop rates.

What kind of challenge conditions will I face during Sortie missions?

As tempting as those rewards are, you’ll face some stiff challenges if you want to win them. Every Sortie mission you run will have one challenge condition, adding an extra layer of difficulty for you and your squad.

Strengthen Enemies

First, there are challenge conditions that strengthen your enemies. These include Augmented Enemy Shields, a challenge condition exclusively applied to Corpus sortie missions, and Augmented Enemy Armor. There are also challenge conditions that apply bonus damage to certain kinds of enemy attacks and increase enemy resistance to those same kinds of attacks inflicted by players. These include enemy damage and resistance enhancements to Impact, Puncture, and Slash damage, as well as elemental damage types. You should avoid weapons and frames that primarily deal these kinds of damage on these types of Sortie missions, as the enemies will be resistant to these damage types.

Environmental Hazards

Next, there are challenge conditions that add hazards to the environment. These include Cryogenic Leakage, which adds freezing ice patches that slow Warframe movement if touched, Dense Fog, which limits visibility, and Electromagnetic Anomalies, which create blobs of energy that draw in players and inflict a Magnetic status effect if touched. Even more bizarre is Low Gravity which… well… lowers gravity. There’s also Fire, which will add a damage-dealing fire hazard and Radiation Hazard, which will inflict Radiation damage for all physical damage received. Finally, Eximus Stronghold causes that mission to spawn more Eximus units than normal, making for a greater challenge.

Weaken Warframe

Then, there are challenge conditions that weaken your Warframe in some way. For example, Energy Reduction reduces your Warframe’s max amount of energy and the speed at which your energy regenerates. There’s also Extreme Cold, which disables sprinting and reduces the speed of your Warframe’s running, rolling, bullet jumps, reloading, and ability casting.

Weaponry Limit

Finally, there are challenge conditions that limit what type of weaponry you can use during the mission. These challenge conditions might limit you to only using an assault rifle, melee weapon, secondary weapon, shotgun, sniper, or bow during the mission, though your Warframe’s abilities will also still be usable.

You’ll be able to see all of these challenge conditions under the mission type on the Sorties screen, so you can plan in advance before launching the mission. Try to use Warframes and weapons that suit the challenge condition shown. For example, consider slapping a Diamond Skin radiation resistance mod onto your Warframe before launching a Sortie with a Radiation Hazard or bringing a weapon effective at stripping shields to a Sortie where enemies have Augmented Shields.

For more Warframe, check this out: The Best Warframe Builds for Simple to Tough Missions

What strategies should I use to succeed at Sorties?

In general, the strategy you adopt during a Sortie mission should depend on the mission type. One thing to remember is that defeating the high-level enemies is often the most difficult and time-consuming part of a Sortie. This doesn’t always mean you should consider how to make killing them easier; instead, ask yourself if killing them is actually necessary. In many mission types, such as Sabotage, Spy, and Rescue, you don’t actually have to kill any enemies in order to complete your mission objective. This means that for these missions, you should focus on avoiding conflict, completing the mission objective as quickly as possible, and getting out just as quickly. Consider bringing a Warframe that can bypass combat using stealth, such as Loki, Ash, Octavia, or Ivara, or a Companion that can make you temporarily invisible, such as a Huras Kubrow. Or, bring a Warframe that will make you speedy enough to bypass enemies without needing to fight them, such as Volt or Nezha.

Other missions, such as Defense, Exterminate, and Interception will require you to take out enemies, so bring weapons you know will hit hard and Warframes with damage-boosting abilities, such as Rhino or high-damage-dealing abilities such as Mesa. Be aware that Warframe abilities that deal less concentrated damage, such as Ember’s World on Fire, often aren’t as effective during Sorties due to the more resilient enemies. Also note that in Sortie Defense missions, you’ll often be defending a vulnerable NPC rather than a stationary objective, so consider bringing a Limbo to Banish the NPC, making them invulnerable to enemy attacks.

Finally, if you’re having trouble with a particular Sortie mission, consider forming a squad with friends or through Recruiting chat and coordinating your builds for greater efficiency. It’ll certainly be easier than jumping into a high-level mission with a bunch of uncoordinated strangers!

Sorting Out Sorties

Sorties can be among the most challenging missions in Warframe, but as our Warframe Sortie Guide has explained, they’re far from impossible. Just know your challenge conditions, plan ahead, and don’t feel guilty about taking the most efficient route when necessary—and enjoy the rare loot that comes with your success.

For more Warframe, check this out: Shedding Some Light with a Warframe Leveling Guide