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The popular online game known as Warframe, an experience where you might encounter bizarre cosmic entities and drive a motorcycle in the year 1999, has launched a new update. The Vallis Undermind showcases the creative flair that has come to define Warframe in more recent times.

This expansion, made available this week, brings in a new mushroom-themed warframe that performs a unique animation, along with a whole new explorable fungal area. However, it also revisits core concepts, with another quest geared at making sure this complicated, expansive 12-year-old MMO makes sense to new players.

A Quest Called "The Teacher"

Named “The Teacher,” this is the long-awaited quest that trains Warframe players on how to use one of the game's most basic — yet most intricate systems: modding.

In Warframe, mods are augments that can be equipped on your warframe or arsenal to enhance their abilities. These can be simple (boosting power or shortening reload times) to the devastatingly complex. Content creators often craft hour-long videos about optimized loadouts that use powerful mods in combination to create devastating effects.

“I think a lot of people were maybe getting into the early game, seeing mods, not really understanding it,” noted a lead narrative designer. “We believed it was crucial, upon completing the mission, for players to think, ‘Hey, modding is cool. I want to try more of this.’”

Teamwork in Action

“The Teacher” was created through a partnership between the core team, who handled the story elements, and an external team, who designed the mission, which will appear early in the game.

In the quest, the player is tasked with obtaining a component for their ship, but they’re interrupted by a menacing, powerful warrior called Teshin, who takes away the player’s abilities and melee weapons, and compels them to use the mod system to handily demonstrate its power.

Many of the external team were already fans of the game, but some were newcomers, according to a principal games designer. It was this outside perspective that proved critical.

“Our initial step involved observing new players and go right play through the tutorial and take prodigious notes on all points of confusion,” the designer said. Introductory tutorials presented the mod system. But the team observed these weren't effective for all.

“Some people didn't see basic instructions where the game highlights it saying put the mod in the slot,” he said.

Addressing a Real Need

Warframe’s mods allow players to create stupidly powerful synergies that turn the screen into a blitz of numbers. But "The Teacher" focuses on different aspects. Veteran users who desire more advanced content, like optimizing for endgame challenges. But it became clear that the mission addresses a genuine oversight for early players — and that doing so isn’t as simple as it looks.

“There’s lots of little tweaks and little subtle things in the background there to just demonstrate the possibilities rather than tell you,” the designer said. For example, one of the mission's objectives is to show how mods can create elemental damage types; in this case, a magnetic effect that depletes protective barriers.

“Adjustments to the armament to be a burst-fire weapon, because it better demonstrates the effect frequency,” the designer said. “However, the goal isn't to explicitly tell players, 'with a basic modification, you only got a few percentage chance to trigger a special damage type.' How can you teach this mechanic effectively?”

Experienced players will naturally recognize these mechanics and understand how it works, but new players have to be taught to pay attention to these things.

“This type of design work that we've had to worry about as much just because our priorities lay elsewhere,” said a narrative lead. “But part of it not being our focus that we never really told people how to use mods.”

A Labor of Love

“There’s so much that goes into just making a really simple mission that — honestly — you can blast through in about 15 minutes,” said the designer. “But it's months and months of work for loads of people.”

The designer was clearly enthusiastic over being able to work on a game that he loves — and to craft a mission for one of his favorite characters.

“I'm a huge fan of Teshin,” he said. “He's my 8-year-old internal self's idea of what's cool.”

An Evolving Onboarding Process

In the 12 years since its release, Warframe has been in a consistent battle with its own player onboarding process. There are lots of complex systems that players can ignore initially — and won’t even have access to until hours into the game. And others, like modding, that increase in depth depending on how much time you want to invest. An update earlier this year streamlined the early game so that players could reach Warframe’s mind-bending plot developments with less time on the grind up front.

With “The Teacher,” it’s clear that the developers are doubling down on a commitment to make sure Warframe’s early game experience evolves beyond its origins. New players can get their foot in the door — regardless of overlooking tutorials.