How to: Eidolon Hunting – Warframe

Detailed guide for starting out Eidolon hunting. Everything from focus to hunting.

Introduction

DISCLAIMER: This guide contains heavy spoilers! – If you have not completed [The War Within] stop reading now, complete it and come back!

For everyone else. This is a guide on how to gear up for Eidolons and how to fight them. We’ll go over everything from spoiler mode, focus, frames, weapons, mechanics etc. – Some things mentioned in the guide are personal preference, and will vary depending on who you ask.

The Quills

This is your primary Syndicate/Reputation hub for Eidolon hunting.

To unlock The Quills you need to complete [The War Within] and [Saya’s Vigil] once these are completed you can go to the door located at the right side of cetus behind Konzu, enter operator mode at the door and go through.

First time you enter and talk to Onkko, you will receive your first amp (the Mote Amp) while it’s not a strong amp, it will help you start fighting vombalysts at night in the plains, and can in groups take down a Teralyst.

When killing Vombalysts and Eidolons they will drop [Sentient Cores] which can be traded for reputation with The Quills (At the moment this is the only use for them). This will unlock higher ranks, which will allow you to craft better amps.

Amps

When talking about amps they are generally referred to as 111, 223, 333 etc. This is the tier’s of amps. (Tier 1, the first blueprints you get access to. Tier 2, the second blueprints etc.)

For your first amps it’s better to craft one as you get access to them. i.e. make a 111 then 222 and lastly a 333. This gives you the best start possible (and you need them for the MR)

Once you’ve gotten your 333 (or 323) amp, start getting ready for making a 223 amp also. This will be your 2 main amps for hunting.

The 333 (or 323) is great for hunting when you don’t have the optimal focus talents

The 223 is the one that will one shot shields when you do have the talents.

Focus

For focus you primarily want to prioritize Zenurik and Madurai.

My best suggestion for Focus tree progression is:

1. Naramon

• Get Affinity Spike (This will help you a lot at the start since it will increase affinity gained by melee and make it easier to cap your daily focus)

2. Zenurik

• Energy Pulse and Energizing Dash (Max these. These are the most overall useful talent for general gameplay)
• Void Siphon & Void Flow (Waybounds, these increase your energy with operator, and allows you to use your amp and void mechanics more, unlock these fully)

3. Madurai

• Void Strike (Once you got the waybounds from Zenurik use this. It will increase your amp dmg when you leave void mode.)
• DO NOT UPGRADE VOID RADIANCE! – It doesn’t help you, and it wastes your energy! only unlock it so you can get Void Strike, and then leave it alone.
• Inner Gaze & Eternal Gaze (Max out your waybounds for more energy)

4. Rest of the waybounds are survivability and movement. I suggest going back to naramon and waybound Mind Sprint, and then move on to Unairu for the Unairu Wisp. After that just do Waybounds as you see fit.

Warframes

Frames are devided into 4 categories: Buff, Lures, Shields and Protection.

The 2 most important roles are Buff and Lures.

Buff is there to increase your dmg when you need to destroy limbs. – If you don’t have a buff, it might take a while, and since you are using weapons will low ammo capacity you’re likely to run out of ammo.

Lures is for making sure the lures don’t die. – This role is mostly important for the Gauntalyst and Hydrolyst. Since it’s generally unlikely that the Terralyst will be able to kill them. (Still worth bringing no matter what)

For the 2 other roles (Shield and Protection)

Shield: This is volt. Volts shields increases crit damage, even when shooting through it with operator, so it’s used to increase your damage against the Eidolons shield aka. make the phase shorter.

Protection: Once you destroy a limb the eidolon will release magnetic waves after a short period. It’s your job to nullify that damage.

When running Eidolons you do not want more than 3 Corrosive Projections! Your radiation damage requires the Eidolon to have armor, if you remove it all it’s goodbye to +75% radiation damage!

Using Coaction drift can be overkill, You can replace these with [Enemy Sense] for an easier time locating Vombalysts.

Buff – Chroma / Rhino

Chroma:

As Chroma your focus is to have Vex Armor active when the limbs become vulnurable. This requires you to have a weapon on you for self damage. You can use a secondary with concealed explosives, castanas, etc. my suggestion would be a Cerata since it’s pure toxic damage and will therefore bypass your shield + You don’t need to swap weapons, Just hold E, Other good suggestion is Glaive Prime (so if a trinity decides to use bless while you’re ramping up your vex armor it’s no issue)

For build you want a lot of duration and Strength.

It’s a good idea to get around 100% range too so that it can better reach your team incase someone is in a better position for the limb.

If you’re running public or helping some new hunters, it could be suggested to add some efficiency to lower your vex armor costs since it can end up requiring a lot of energy pads.

(My Chroma is missing a forma, add a power drift in exilus)

Because of how Vex Armor scales you want to focus your weapon on the radiation damage (Lanka is your best choice). When building your weapon for Chroma, you don’t want to add %dmg (Serration). Use: Multishot, 90% elemental mods, crit, Primed Cryo Rounds.

Rhino:

Build is similar to Chroma. Since rhino’s buff is instant on activation you can skip on some duration, and focus more on strength and range. (I run 70% duration which is 21 sec and more than enough)

For Rhino weapons refer to the weapon section.

Lure – Trinity

Trinity:

For Trinity you use a Bless build. Your job when the hunt starts is to get lures and make sure to keep them alive by always having your Bless buff up!

For build you want to have 150% strength (no more, no less. get as close as you can to this!) after that you want to focus on duration and efficiency.

Range is not needed on Trinity since her bless works in affinity range and not based on ability range.

Lure map:

These are the spots I use, dependant on Teralyst spawn, one other player grabs a lure closest to the entrance towards the direction of the Teralyst generally lake to the west. Trinity should do a round starting the opposite side of where the first lure was grabbed.

(The spot just below Hek’s Stiletto east isn’t a 100% spawn, so might not be there. If you want to get more lures at once include the large camp bottom right in your round, but be careful of Turrets)

Shield – Volt

For volt all you want to focus on is duration and efficiency.

When playing volt the most important thing is to place your shields smart! – If you put them randomly around the fight people won’t use them, and make your job worthless.

Volts shield increases the crit damage of everything shot through it, so it will increase the damage of both your amp and weapons!

Best suggestion is set up a wall of shields (3 on the ground next to each other and 2 in the air above them) and then set a marker where you put them.

Try to put them towards where the Eidolon is moving so you don’t have to relocate them.

Important note for shield placement: If your team is running 223 amps (Madurai – Void Strike) make sure your shields are close to the eidolon. Void strike uses the secondary fire, and has a short range!

For the final phase stack the shields and mark it so that your Buff player can get ready.

Protection – Harrow

Harrow:

For Harrow you want between 95-100% duration (any more can mess up your job if the team is too fast)

Beyond that you want Strength and efficiency in your build. Just like trinity his Covenant is based on affinity range, so range is not needed.

Your job is to use covenant just as the Eidolon is about to do his magnetic waves after you’ve destroyed a limb. This is the easiest role, but also the hardest aka. you got 1 job and if you mess it up people will die or lose all their energy. When trying to time it you can listen for the eidolon to breath in, or you can pay attention to its movement (it will do a headturn then do the waves)

Your job at the start of a hunt is to get 1 lure, charge it up and then join the volt and buff on the teralyst.

Weapons

When fighting an Eidolon you want your weapons to do Radiation damage!

Because of how the fight works you want weapons that do high dmg and are accurate. Limbs cannot be affected by status effects, so crit weapons are your best choice.

Weapons for these fights are forma intensive, and requires atleast 5-6 forma’s to work. (None of the weapons comes with a polarity. Except for the Vulkar Wraith and Vectis Prime)

Primaries – Snipers

For primaries when fighting Eidolons you want to choose:

Snipers:

Lanka

• Does electric damage at base, and can be build to do pure radiation damage. If you don’t own a good riven for any of the weapons go with the Lanka, it will outperform everything else.
• It’s Zoom multiplier increases it’s crit chance, so it damage will ramp up as you shoot (remember to zoom all the way in)
• You want to add a [Vile Acceleration] to lower it’s charge time for the shots.

Rubico

• Best second choice for snipers.
• Lowest base damage of the snipers but has a 30% crit chance and 3.0x multiplier.
• It’s zoom multiplier increases crit damage, and has the fastest hit multiplier of the snipers.

Vulkar Wraith

• Hits very hard, but got a 20% crit chance and a slow reload
• Zoom multiplier increases headshot damage (not useful for anything but last phase)
• Got an augment that increases zoom damage.
• got a 5/5 riven disposition, and it needs the riven to challenge the others.

Vectis Prime

• Hits hard, but got a very low ammo count.
• 30% crit chance like the Rubico but 2.0x multiplier
• Zoom increases headshot damage
• Same as with the Vulkar. It needs a riven to compete.

Secondaries

Euphona Prime:

• Is a great and competitive secondary to use for limbs.
• Needs [Primed Target Cracker], [Primed Pistol Gambit], [Primed Heated Charge] to be used as your main limb weapon
• Bring it, and if you by chance get downed you can still contribute.

Melee

For hunts you use a Melee for 2 reasons:

a. To strip armor from the Eidolon

• Sarpa

(use this with [shattering impact], for the rest of it you want attack speed. Use this for solo runs if you want to use it. For group it’s very likely to make the fight worse if you strip too much armor, removing all armor will remove the +75% bonus radiation damage!)

b. To quickly aoe down vombalysts

• Your classic maiming strike weapons (Whips, polearms, staves)

Arcanes

There are a lot of combinations, and a lot of good reasons for doing A, B or C for Arcanes.

Simply for choosing arcanes when you’re not trying anything specific.

Get a Arcane Nullifier set. (a rank 2 and a rank 1 Arcane Nullifier) If you use these 2 you are 96% immune to magnetic damage, making mistakes less costly!

For amp arcane you either use strike or fury. With the nerf to Adarza Kavats it’s suggested you now use Virtous Fury since it’s more reliable with your 223 amp.

Teralyst

Teralyst is the first of the 3 Eidolons you need to fight.

As soon as you get into the plains people got different jobs.

Buff+Volt: Find the Teralyst and start removing it’s shield with your amps

Harrow: get 1 lure, find 3 vombalysts to charge it up, and then go to the Teralyst so you can start killing it.

Trinity: This depends on if you are doing Teralyst or all 3 Eidolons.

• Teralyst: Get 1 lure and join the others (if Harrows isn’t charged, go find vombalysts to charge it too before you join)
• Tridolon: Find 7 lures while the others fight. You need to be quick, and this requires an archwing. Once you hear them destroy the 3rd limb it’s time to join the others (If you haven’t found all the lures yet, you need to find the rest later!)

The fight in itself is quite straight forward. The Teralyst got 5 attacks in his shield phase and everyone can be negated by going into void mode (crouch as operator)

1. Knockback

• The Teralyst will the a wave that will knock you back around 70m. This can contered by either jumping over the wave, or entering void mode as it comes near (this is a very tight timing, so you are often better off jumping the wave). If you do get hit just do 1-2 quick void dashes (crouch+jump) to get back.

2. Spikes

• he will release a spiked wave in all directions that do a lot of dmg. When he does it enter void mode to avoid it. when it has passed you, you can continue attacking but don’t stand on the blue ground, and it will come back again so be ready. If your operator dies to it, quickly roll and enter operator again.

3/4. Missiles

• It’s the same attack in 2 different forms. either he does a spray in a rotation around him, or shoot it upwards to make it heatseeking. Both are avoided by using void mode.

5. Starfall

• Like missiles but large area with shots raining down. Either move around or use void mode.

After you shot all 4 limbs vombalysts will start moving to him. The more that reach him the more hp he will have once he gets up again. This is where you charge your second lure (and the ones for the other Eidolons if you got those) shoot the shell off the vombalysts and the lures will take them.

Once he’s about to get up Harrow uses convenant for the crit buff, and you shoot the Teralyst til he’s down.

One of the lures will explode and give you your Eidolon shards.

Gauntalyst

To summon the Gauntalyst you need to use the Brilliant Eidolon Shard you got from capturing the Teralyst. Go to the middle of the large lake outside the gate of cetus, and put it on the small altar. Once the whole party has done so the Gauntalyst will spawn.

The Gauntalyst has a few extra mechanics, but just like with the Teralyst.. Void mode to bypass (most of) them.

1. He will make some orbs that will drop to the ground and do an AoE. Either move away from them, or void mode.
2. He creates a large sphere around him. Be inside the sphere.
3. Sometimes his pushback (like with the Teralyst) will come in multiple waves. jump these, Void mode is too unreliable for this, and if you are using Void Strike, void mode is a viable strat.
4. He will summon large beams randomly around him, these cannot be bypassed with void mode! – If you get hit by these you get thrown out of operator cause they hurt a lot, if that happens quickly roll and hurry into operator again. (roll gives you a 75% damage reduction, which is enough in most cases to not die to the beams)

Other than that he got 2 extra limbs at his shoulders. If you can, destroy these first since they are a hassle.

Make sure to keep an eye on the vombalysts around him and kill them, they will at times tether to him and provide an extra shield.

Trinity: As the Trinity you need to be really up on your bless, if you are not careful the Gauntalyst will destroy the lures! – It’s better to bless too much than too little!

Hydrolyst

You summon him the same way as with the Gauntalyst, this time you need to use the Radiant Eidolon shard you got from the Gauntalyst instead.

This fight adds 3 new mechanics and changes 1 from the Gauntalyst.

New:

1. Magnetic Bubbles these will spawn where you’re standing and deal damage, this can be countered with void mode, but in general you avoid these by moving around/not standing still for too long.
2. Blooms (aka. pink rifts). Throughout the fight pink rifts will spawn that supercharges vombalysts and the Hydrolyst, when you see these start shooting them with your amp. Vombalysts will make the hydrolyst invulnerable by tethering to him, and these rifts makes 1 of them unkillable until it’s down. (THESE TAKE TOTAL PRIORITY!!)
3. Green magnetic ground. The ground will look weird and green’ish. When this happens don’t stand on it. It will deal a high ticking damage.

Changed:

1. The sky bubbles. These are now much larger and will fall to the ground, pay attention and move out of the way.

Current bugs

There is a few bugs to be aware of when hunting at the moment.

1. Your warframe abilities stop working. Tell your group right away if this happens! 

• If this happens try jumping into the nearest water. If that doesn’t fix it, you need to get downed and revive yourself (if your team revives you the bug will continue) Lure: If this happens you need to inform right away! – The team needs to know not to attack, and you need to find a place to die without the lures being in danger. If the lures dies and you don’t have enough, hurry and find more!
• If you do not plan to use a secondary for the fight. Bring a self damage weapon in case this happens. – Sometime it bugs the weapon too, but worth the loadout!

2. You can’t place your shard on the shrine.

• I haven’t seen this as much lately, but I still hear people mentioning it happening. This can’t be fixed in plains. Hurry back into cetus, and start over. – If you want to be extra sure, go back to your orbiter, and load directly into Plains.

3. Host migration, now you’re stuck at the door (or booted back to your orbiter/cetus)

• If you’re the host don’t ever leave the squad before you’re back in cetus!
• If you’re not the host. Best suggestion is don’t go through the gate before the host. It seems that if the host leaves and you’re waiting at the gate, it won’t open.. Wait outside it for the host to go in, then go.

4. Your focus talents stop working.

• To my knowledge this can only happen to the host, and I haven’t been able to find a fix for it. Inform your group, and make a decision together if you want to finish it, or go to cetus and redo the hunt.

Commenter Suggestions

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Lostprophet:

• As Chroma, I like having 145% range. You get less duration, so it’s more work keeping your buff up, but it’s better for your team. Also, I like running with a toxic glaive with Power Throw and Quick Return. Cast 3, aim at your feet, charge a quick melee attack, full +822% dmg buff. And you don’t have to switch weapons to do it.

Story behind making the guide

This is part is about the reason why I created the guide, and doesn’t contain anything important to know in order to hunt Eidolons.

I created this guide back in march 2018. It was around the time that Adarza kavats got nerfed to no longer provide crit to operators, and when the first group had succeeded in completing a 3×3 hunt.

Back then the steam guide section generally consisted of troll guides like “How to get platinum… Steal your moms credit card”. There were a few people making quality guides, and I chose to start creating guides here since I liked the format + it was easy to use and find for the people looking for specific guides.

I started out with my “How to: Get/Earn Platinum (Trading guide)”, and after that created this guide to help my clanmates understand and get into eidolon hunting and whoever else would find it helpful.

I’m not a hardcore Eidolon hunter, and I’ve never pretended to be. This guide was created through hunting, talking with other players, and a ton of research back then to make a guide for people to get into eidolons. This has never been aimed towards 3×3+ hunts, this has always been to provide an easy to understand format with a lot of basic info and tips to give you an understanding for hunts, so that when you start to look into advanced hunts you are well enough off to then look into speedrun strats.

I’m writing this because I recently found out that my 9+ month old guide is currently being talked about by high capture hunters as “giving autism” and “laughable” to mention a couple.

This has always been meant for new hunters, and I’m extremely proud of how it has been received here on Steam. I loved getting messages from you and taking the time to read and answer everyone of you.

But for now I’m stopping all plans for updating the guide. I will still answer your comments but for now I’ll let the guide sit.

If things changes too much for hunts, I’ll declare the guide outdated, but as of now the content is still relevant for new hunters.

Thank you for the support and I’m very happy that the guide helped so many of you!

Original Link – Continuation of discussion