Warframe’s new update goes to an infested planet, gives us Kirby powers

Warframe is getting a new update that takes players to an infested planet thick with rot and murder. There’s also a giant mouth on your ship that has multiple animations to loudly munch and crunch on valuable materials and even entire Warframes.

Saturday’s TennoCon presentation unveiled the next big update to Warframe, which is set to debut across all platforms simultaneously on Tuesday, Aug. 25. Here’s everything you need to know about Heart of Deimos, which will be free for all players.

A new open-world zone

Heart of Deimos unlocks the second moon of Mars, Deimos, which hosts a ton of hidden technology and was once a site for research into the Void — Warframe’s take on the unspeakable cosmic powers. Unfortunately, Deimos has been nearly consumed by the Infestation, and the player needs to ensure that the Heart of Deimos does not stop beating.

Deimos is an open-world zone, similar to Orb Vallis and the Plains of Eidolon. However, Deimos is smaller and much more dense. The above-ground portion will have canyons and peaks to navigate, with giant, dragonfly-esque beasts that can work as temporary mounts. There are also procedurally generated caverns that are closer to a standard Warframe mission.

There is no standard day or night on Deimos. Instead, two giant worms are battling back and forth for dominance. One worm, a striking orange fellow, signifies that waves of Infested will attack. But each day, the blue worm will triumph, and the planet will become a more peaceful place for a time.

The new player experience is here

Warframe is intimidating for new players. Last year, Digital Extremes announced that a new player experience is on the way, to make for a better tutorial and introduction to the world of Warframe. The Heart of Deimos will bring this new player experience to live servers, allowing players to go through a much smoother road from the early game into the meat of the story.

More Warframes

The next new Warframe is named Xaku, and they were designed by the community from start to finish through a process set up by developer Digital Extremes. Xaku is a “broken” Warframe, and their design is a creepy mass of muscle-looking metal and plasma ropes.

Image: Digital Extremes

The next two Warframes after Xaku are the Alchemist, a massive mad scientist with detachable arms, and Wraithe, a sleek reaper character who was designed by a community artist two years ago. Now that the community artist in question works for Digital Extremes, this fan-favorite concept is becoming a Warframe in earnest.

Stompy war mechs

Tenno will have access to a new tool thanks to their Operator: Necromechs. Necromechs will be available to use in every open-world zone, not just Deimos, and they transform Warframe into a true mech title. The Necromech is much slower than a Warframe, but it’s loaded with heavy weaponry and armor, making it feel like a BattleTech tank that players can use and upgrade over time.

Meet the Helminth

There’s a room on the player’s personal spaceship that has been underused for years. This corrupted Helminth room is being brought to the forefront in Heart of Deimos. Players will have a giant mouth in that room, and it’s hungry for materials. Once players feed the mouth, they will be able to select a number of powerful upgrades to their Warframe’s core abilities.

But there’s a catch that makes the Helminth much more powerful: Players can actually feed Warframes to the Helminth. This takes multiple prompts, but will permanently destroy the Warframe. Then players can take that Warframe’s signature ability and apply it to other Warframes. For instance, Volt’s Shock ability can be put on Khora or Mag, replacing one of their other skills.

This essentially makes the Helminth like Nintendo’s Kirby, taking the key ability from one unit to apply it to others.

More of that good lore

Heart of Deimos’ main quest line will bring players through Deimos to uncover the Orokin experiments that took place on the planet. Low-level players will be able to start playing on Deimos to level up and earn experience and rewards from open-world events. However, parts of the planet will be barred to them until they complete the quest “The Second Dream.”

There will be archives on the planet that reveal more about the Orokin Empire. Based on the demo shown at TennoCon, it looks as though we’ll be finding out a lot more about the Void, and the circumstances under which the Tenno were created. Heart of Deimos will not continue the narrative of the New War and the return of the Sentients; instead, we’ll be taking care of an existential threat and finding out more of the past.

The Heart of Deimos update for Warframe will be released Aug. 25 on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One.