Stealth: Two Ways

Aside from the usual sneak and kill with a silent weapon, Warframe has two other means to achieve stealth kills: buff and debuff.

Basically either you do something to your frame, like invisibility (a buff) that helps you perform stealth kills or you debuff the enemies, like blind, to perform stealth kills or finishers.

Most people know that stealth is Loki, hands down, the goal of this article is to introduce other possibilities.

Buff Your Way to Stealth Kills

This is the easiest and most popular way to kill enemies without alerting others. basically you use a buss like Loki's invisibility or Ash's Smoke Bomb to help you get stealth kills. Wukong and Ivara also do well in this department.

Group Composition and Team Synergy

Buff frames are often solitary or go in homogeneous groups. An all Loki group is a common thing occurrence in spy sorties. This means you can't bring an EV Trinity or a Slow Nova to help out, you just have the frames that can go inviz.

If you go solo often, you probably need a Loki of your own. it's a good investment.

Although frames, like Ivara, do exist and allow for team synergy, these are very difficult to use in a group especially without coordination. An ash with Smoke Shadow also requires a lot of coordination to pull off.

Restrictions

This type of frame is more suited to missions with a non defensive goal, like Spy, Exterminate, Sabotage, Capture, etc. These froames, when modded for stealth have difficulty with defensive objectives like... Defense or Mobile Defense.

There are no race restrictions, as long as you don't step inside a Nullifier field/bubble. So you'll find it as easy to sneak past the Corpus as you would the Grineer, Sentient or the Infested.

Conclusions

This method of doing stealth kills is pretty straight forward and easy to achieve. If you like to solo levels, then this is the stealth method for you. You just need to bring a different frame/loadout for def/mob def missions.

Debuff Your Way to Stealth Kills

This Method is more uncommon. It basically exists because of frames like Mirage and Excalibur (blind) and others like Equinox and Ivara (sleep). It's more difficult to pull off and requires varying degrees of coordination.

Group Composition and Team Synergy

Unlike the buff frames mentioned above, the debuff frames thrive in non-homogeneous teams. So you can have an EV Trinity, a Slow Nova and a random damage dealer in your team.

This will allow you to complete more complex objectives as in trials.

I suggest that once you have your staples set up, you can start looking into a complex play style with more varied team compositions and get one of these frames (most likely a Mirage) unless your preference/play style requires you to choose something else.

Restrictions

Here's where all the complications come in. These types of frames will generally perform poorly against the Corpus and Corrupted, because of Nullifiers/Corrupted Nullifiers.

Unlike buff frames, even if you do not go inside a Nullifier field/bubble, the enemies inside these will be unaffected by your debuff and will be able to shoot you, raise the alarm, etc.

Another restriction is that if you cast blind near a Spy site, it'll automatically trigger the alarms. This is something I discovered in the middle of a Sortie so... I just want to pass on the message.

Conclusions

Although not as effective as the more common buff method of going stealth, debuffing does allow more varied team compositions that then lead to the ability to accomplish more complex goals.

Final Notes

My personal Recommendation is to get a Loki first, then get used to the mechanics before you go into a Blind Mirage and start stealth farm runs with other people.

Remember, you need to develop your mod and weapon collection to be successful at stealth killing or sneaking.

Thanks for reading.

[Guide] Ranking-Up Outside of Draco

Draco, since it's existence, has been the go-to place for ranking up things from weapons to Warframe. It's fast and gives a ton of EXP even without a booster. The downsides? It's difficult to find a willing damage dealer (Mesa/Saryn/Excalibur) and it's boring.

Here are a few alternatives to Draco for those who want to get the ranks without getting bored out of their wits.

SPY 2.0

Spy 2.0 gives a lot of affinity (EXP). On Pluto, Oceanum, you get 12k per terminal, that's 24k with a booster.

The catch is, you need to do it without tripping any of the alarms in the spy rooms. Tripping any of the alarms and still retrieving the data will net you 1/3 of the exp (4k without a booster/8k with a booster). Like many things, there's a learning curve. if you do your homework and learn from your mistakes you'll be doing perfect runs in record time.

Upon completion, you can also get great things like mods, and Void keys. This is where i farm my T3 Mobile Defense keys. :)

Weapons are the easiest and safest things to level using this method. You don't need to kill anything, even the cameras. Make sure you only have the weapons that you want to work on equipped to maximize the EXP, set up your Loki (Prime or Vanilla) and do it.

Frames may be possible... but it takes too much work. The next suggestion might be more plausible for frame ranking.

Here's my tricked out Loki Prime if you want an idea of what you should focus on.

Focus on Duration and Eff

Know how long your Invisibility lasts so you can find a safe spot to recast before it expires

Learning to Spy might take time, but it's worth it. You can start off with low level spy missions. These have less obstacles, but also give lower affinity. Once you are confident, you can work your way up. You also have to choose if you want to Spy against the Grineer or the Corpus. Each faction has it's own spy rooms and enemy sets, which may be problematic unless you are prepared. One of the biggest factors that you want to consider are the Corpus Nullifiers. If you can deal with these quickly, you're set. If not, you might have to Spy against the Grineer instead... just be careful of the arc traps!

Lucky look from one of the new enemies I killed during the spy mission.

One last thing though, do it solo. More people make Spy difficult, plus, other people bring complications that may become tiresome and at times, frustrating.

Stealth

Stealth has always been a part of Warframe. Each stealth kill gives bonus affinity. The first kill gives 100%. If you perform another stealth kill within 30 seconds, the bonus increases by 100% and becomes 200%. You can continue getting the bonus 100% until you're getting affinity at a rate of 500%. That is a lot of affinity.

You just need silent weapons to do this. A bow, a thrown weapon and your favorite melee weapon will do the job. If you want to use your usual loadout, make sure that you equip mods that reduce the noise of your weapon (also in the link above).

The key here is to do 1-hit kills. So pick a planet that is relatively low and start there. if you find it too easy, move up. If you find it difficult, move down. You need to also be able to deal with mistakes. Don't expect to be able to do perfect stealth kills all the time. You will need to clean up every now and then.

I suggest that you do you stealth killing sprees in Sabotage or Spy missions. Enemies are unaltered at the beginning and will not be alerted as you complete your objective (unlike capture).

Keys

These are an Alternative to Draco, but, are still very similar. You might still get bored. ODDs and T3 Mob Def Key shares are the best place to do this. People won't enerally complain since you are using your key and as long as you are not too greedy (don't being low rank frames AND weapons).

Survival

With maxed weapons and a Rank 0 frame (with much Vitality and or Redirection) I go for long survival runs at Elara in Jupiter. Going solo beyond 20 minutes gives great exp and you can also get NS, which is perfect for those who build forma every day. Thanks to the person who helped me remember here.


These are my suggestions for Draco alternatives for people who are sick and tired of it.
I also want to clarify that I am okay with people doing Draco. I also did Draco. It's just that I got bored fast. if you feel the same way, try this out. You can decide which you prefer after. :)

Hope it helps!

Thanks for reading.