[h2]How To Spend Your Money[/h2]
As I said before, the good news is that almost everything in the game can be built or found. Blueprints for new Warframes, weapons and more can be purchased with credits or found while playing missions. In addition to finding a blueprint and the right building materials, you’ll also be required to wait in real-life time while your gear is being built. Warframes themselves take the most time, as they require three days to construct.
Platinum, in most cases, is just a shortcut. The number of things that can only be bought with platinum is a fairly short list. It includes cosmetic items, such as a larger color pallet to paint your Warframe, and some cool scarves for your Warframe to wear. It also includes additional slots for new Warframes and weapons. When you first start the game, you are given a Warframe and can build one more before you need to essentially purchase an addition to your virtual garage of killing machines. These extra slots cost 20 platinum, which means that PlayStation Plus members can build and hold nine different Warframes, as long as extra slots are the only things they purchase with their starter platinum.
The alternative is to build a new Warframe, and then sell off one of your first two Warframes to make room for your third. Additional weapon slots are even cheaper, at 12 platinum for two fresh weapon slots. Because extra slots cannot be found or built in game, they are probably the best use of your platinum. Buying an Orokin Reactor or a Sentinel early into your first Warframe can also help you quite a bit when it comes to unlocking all of the areas required to farm the rest of the game’s Warframes and weapons.
And buying a new Warframe — while not really necessary — is certainly not the worst way you could spend platinum, especially when you consider that buying a Warframe outright includes a new Warframe slot and a pre-installed Orokin Reactor. These items alone would run you 40 platinum if bought in the store, effectively making cheaper Warframes seem closer to a 35 platinum investment, rather than 75.
You can also get a color pack for 75 platinum. While that might seem a bit pricey, it will allow you a much greater variety when selecting colors for your Warframe, primary weapon, secondary weapon and melee weapon. Each color pack only needs to be purchased once to be used on all of your Warframes and weapons. For the best variety, I would suggest either the basic colors, or the saturated version of the basic colors. You can also preview any color from any pack before you decide to spend the money.
One last thing new players should be aware of is the login rewards system that Warframe uses. By playing daily, Warframe recognizes that devotion and rewards players accordingly. The rewards are randomized, and the best rewards are given to players who have played for at least seven consecutive days.
This can be very confusing at first, when you see a new pistol or melee weapon and are told to “claim your reward.” The login system will never simply hand you a new weapon. Instead, you’ll be given the blueprints required to create that weapon. You can also be awarded Affinity — Warframe’s name for experience, which will appear as a picture of a weapon, and can confuse new users. That picture simply indicates which item is gaining the Affinity bonus. The experience boost can be awarded to your primary weapons, your secondary weapon, your melee weapon or your Warframe itself.
In addition to blueprints and Affinity, you can also be awarded credits, rare building material, or keys to unlock special “void” missions.