You’ll soon be able to adjust the behaviour of some of your frames’ abilities and weapons, thanks to an upcoming crafting feature. This has just hit the Public Test Server – it’s not yet live, and we don’t have an ETA for its implementation, but we can expect to see these changes in an upcoming patch. (And because this is not yet live, it’s subject to change without notice, of course. Once it goes live, we’ll post a cheatsheet for handy reference.)
These crafted item variants are created by crafting an item in the usual way, and adding an extra optional component. These optional components are dropped by different enemy types, and their quality depends on the stage of the creature that dropped them. The component quality will affect one attribute of the modified behaviour, and these components also increase the constraints cost of the item just as ordinary components do.
Adding one of these components will permanently change the behaviour of the item you’re crafting, so you’ll probably want to keep the ‘vanilla’ versions of these items around as well, to use in other situations.
The introduction of this system adds new behavioural variants for all the Accord frame primary weapons, and two abilities per Accord frame – one damaging ability and one “utility” ability. Because these are all Accord abilities and weapons, this gives the advanced frames a chance to try out these variant abilities as well.
Crafted Item Variants
Assault
Dragonborn Plasma Cannon
Requires: Fire Gland (from Explosive Aranhas and Ash Dragons)
Quality modifies: Effect range
This replaces Scattershot Alt Fire with “Dragon’s Breath”, shooting a burst of fire forward in a cone.
Shielded Crater
Requires: Drone Module (from Chosen Drones)
Quality modifies: Effect health
This adds a Blast Shield to Crater. Blast Shield spawns centered on the impact site of Crater.
Soaring Afterburner
Requires: Wings (from Culex and Wasps)
Quality modifies: Effect duration
This adds Quick-Deploying Gliding Gear to Afterburner. Glider wings sprout from the Assault at the end of Afterburner. (Note that unlike a real glider, these wings don’t last indefinitely.)
Biotech
Noxious Needler
Requires: Poison Gland (from Toxic Aranhas and Toxic Varants)
Quality modifies: Percentage of increased damage taken
This replaces alt fire with Plague Blaster, which increases the amount of damage enemies take when hit by the alt fire. This effect also spreads to nearby targets.
Toxic Poison Trail
Requires: Ink Sac (from Nautili)
Quality modifies: Enemy accuracy reduction.
This adds Blinding Fumes to Poison Trail, decreasing enemies’ accuracy while in Poison Trail.
Ghostly Triage
Requires: Space Manipulator (from Chosen)
Quality modifies: Duration
This adds a Phase Unit to Triage, which allows the player to be able to pass through enemies/allies causing damage to enemies and healing allies.
Dreadnaught
Barrier HMG
Requires: Brontodon Ivory (from Brontodons)
Quality modifies: Shield health
This adds an Upgraded Forward Shield to the HMG alt fire, creating an improved full-body shield.
Spiny Heavy Armor
Requires: Shell Fragment (from Rageclaws, Terrorclaws and Baneclaw)
Quality modifies: Percentage of damage returned
This adds a Damage Reflector which harms enemies that hit the Dreadnaught while Heavy Armor is active.
Attracting Repulsor Blast
Requires: Space Manipulator (from Chosen)
Quality modifies: Effect range
This adds a Magnetic Repulsor to Repulsor Blast, drawing enemies in to the Dreadnaught before Repulsor Blast is fired.
Engineer
Burrowing Sticky Grenade Launcher
Requires: Brinewyrm Goo (from Brinewyrms)
Quality modifies: Damage magnitude
This adds Burrowing Explosives to Sticky Grenade Launcher, which applies a Damage over Time effect to the area that they were detonated on.
HKM Supply Station
Requires: Hypercapacitor (from Chosen)
Quality modifies: Amount of charge given
This adds High Capacity Arcfold Tech to the Supply Station, replacing health pickups with HKM powerups.
Rocket Turret
Requires: Explosive Device (from Tanken)
Quality modifies: Rocket damage
This adds Rocket Turrets to Heavy Turret, adding rockets to the projectiles fired.
Recon
Sharpeyed R36
Requires: Cornea (from Wargrim and Rimehunters)
Quality modifies: Magnification
This adds tech to increase the magnification when zooming with the R36.
Advanced Decoy
Requires: Drone Module (from Chosen Drones)
Quality modifies: Effect duration
This adds AI behavior to Decoy which allows Decoy to move and shoot before it explodes.
Burning Cryo Grenade
Requires: Fire Gland (from Explosive Aranhas and Ash Dragons)
Quality modifies: Damage
This adds a Frost Burner to Cryo Grenade, which increases Cryo Grenade damage. It applies a DoT that burns the target top on of slowing them.
| Frame | Equipment | Effect | Creature Drop | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assault | Plasma Cannon | Turns alt-fire into flamethrower | Fire Gland | Explosive Aranha, Ash Dragon |
| Assault | Crater | Adds Blast Shield on impact | Drone Module | Chosen Drone |
| Assault | Afterburner | Adds temporary glider wings | Culex Wings | Culex, Wasp |
| Biotech | BioNeedler | Increases alt-fire damage | Poison Gland | Toxic Aranha, Toxic Varant |
| Biotech | Poison Trail | Reduces enemy accuracy | Ink Sac | Nautilus |
| Biotech | Triage | Phasing through targets, does healing/damage | Space Manipulator | Chosen |
| Dreadnaught | HMG | Alt-fire shield is improved and larger | Brontodon Ivory | Brontodon |
| Dreadnaught | Heavy Armor | Damage reflection | Shell Fragment | Terrorclaw, Rageclaw, Baneclaw |
| Dreadnaught | Repulsor Blast | Draws enemies in before explosion | Space Manipulator | Chosen |
| Engineer | Sticky Grenade Launcher | Adds DoT to detonation area | Brinewyrm Goo | Brinewyrm |
| Engineer | Supply Station | Replaces health pack with HKM chargeup | Hypercapacitor | Chosen |
| Engineer | Heavy Turret | Adds rockets to damage | Explosive Device | Tanken |
| Recon | R36 | Adds zoom on scope | Cornea | Wargrim, Rimehunter |
| Recon | Decoy | Adds AI, can move and shoot | Drone Module | Chosen Drone |
| Recon | Cryo Grenade | Adds fire DoT | Fire Gland | Explosive Aranha, Ash Dragon |
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I’m a little confused. Will only these skills be modifiable or every skill? How about advanced frames’ skills? Thanks for the info. It sounds like an interesting idea.
At the moment, only these specific weapons and abilities are adjustable using this system, but I think it’s very likely that more variants will be introduced in future updates once Red5 has the system working the way they want it to.
As for advanced frames, none of their specific modules have variant behaviors yet, but they can always fit Accord equipment in the meantime.
Awesome. I like the idea although I do foresee a lot of identical builds atm. Can’t wait till they implement new variants.
It seems like a great idea. I just would like to see them make 1 ability and give you 10 choices to augment it to your liking.
Yeah, I’m certainly looking forward to having choices for each ability.
I love options! Also, I believe there is a thread on the FF forums asking for testers to list some ideas for future ability change ups thru crafting.
Rocket Turret!! I can’t wait!
I don’t recall seeing any of those item drops. I assume they will be added in the same patch. Any idea of their rarity?
Side note: I’m waiting for when we’ll be able to craft armor with enhanced protection against fire/blast, toxins/acids, and power surges.
They are indeed new drops. At the moment they’re fairly rare on the PTS, but that may change when it goes live – Red5 has said on the forums that they’re still tweaking the rate at which they enter the economy.
What exactly is blast shield on crater? Is it heavy armor, is it thunderdome, is it like electron’s bulwark?
No idea yet; “blast shield” is all I know. We’ll be experimenting as soon as we get some drops, though!
Thinking ahead, there’ll probably be a need for a decent list/table that not only shows what abilities can be modified (and with what) but also a table that shows where you can get these components. Some might be obvious (Brontodon Ivory for example) but not everyone might think to kill Chosen for Explosive Devices.
Plus, there’ll probably be a time where we could add, say, a Cornea and a fire gland to the R36 rifle or an Inc Sac and brinewyrm goo to the poison trail. I do hope they go down this route because then there could be some really unique combinations of items down the road. If not, even if I could use any one of the components on an item/ability, that’d be cool too. Wings on a cryo grenade for even further throwing range! :D
Yeah, I was thinking of tabulating the basic information – everything is there in the list but it’s not the easiest to sort through, and it’ll just get harder as they add more items like this.
It’s a really interesting system with a lot of potential – I can’t wait til they expand on it!
There we go – I’ve put in a table which will serve for now; obviously it’ll need to be reformatted a bit once we get more items to add to it.
I understand what you mean about when they add more items… Headache city though in some respect, one could sort the table or generate it based on either class and/or dropped item so people can either find out what options exist for their class or if they picked up an inc sac randomly and have no idea what it’s good for, they could sort by that component and see what classes us it (assuming it ever gets put into anything beyond just the one ability)
But this is an awesome start! Thanks a bunch!
The table is currently sortable by each column, and the table plugin we use also has advanced features for filtering, paginating and so on. They’re overkill for now, but we’ll be able to snazz it up a bit once it’s big enough to warrant it. :)
Nice work. I would just add a column for Quality and indicate how it affects crafting–for example, duration, radius, damage/heal, range.