XB1 Buried Debts: Update 24.5.0 (In Cert!)

Buried Debts: Update 24.5.0 has just been sent to cert! Our second mainline update of 2019 is on its way, and it’s bringing with it the first Operation of the year, the newest Warframe Hildryn, Phase 1 of the Melee Revisit, and much more!

Huge round of applause for the teams who worked so hard to get this out to cert late tonight. We made it! As we head into the weekend with some relief, we hope you are as excited as we are to kick off Buried Debts. In the meantime, I’m sure we’ll be seeing you out in The Index enjoying the Double Credits bonus weekend – oh! And I hear that Nora Night is broadcasting Episode 2 of The Wolf of Saturn Six, you can tune in to hear what she has to say, Dreamers.

Now onto the meat and potatoes of this thread!

This update includes everything from Fortuna: Hotfix 24.2.13 to Buried Debts: Update 24.5.1*. Many of you are experienced with what comes with a mainline update, but for those of you who might not know – they tend to be quite bulky in size when first released on PC, and since we want to give you guys the most we can in a single cert build, that usually includes a big chunk of content from everything that was released after mainline. That said, the download size for Buried Debts: Update 24.5.0 will be roughly 3 GB!

*The Nightwave updates/hotfixes on PC included changes and fixes that were not included in the launch of Nightwave on XB1, so we have included them in this release!

Once we have passed cert, we will share the good news and an official launch date with you here and on the usual Warframe channels.

Let’s get into what Buried Debts: Update 24.5.0 (and its whopping 22 pages of additions, changes, and fixes!) will bring: 

OPERATION: BURIED DEBTS

Deep in the bitter heart of the Orb Vallis lies a hidden mystery.

Band together to complete the first community event of 2019 and work to bring a secret to light in Operation: Buried Debts. You can receive Operation Specific Rewards by participating in parts of this event.

The first reward is more abstract – you can expand the Orb Vallis by solving a puzzle…. Together.

Thermia fractures are cracking open the surface of Venus, a consequence of Nef Anyo’s unrelenting greed. He’s willing to do whatever it takes for a quick profit, including putting the whole Orb Vallis at risk. By figuring out how to stop the Thermia fractures, you’ll be able to earn these rewards:

• Operation Emblem
• Amalgam Mods x4
• Operation Sigil
• Opticor Vandal

And eventually, an incredible new boss fight will unlock where you can earn Hildryn! We will keep you updated on when you can expect the next phase of the Operation to begin. Free players – rest assured Hildryn is a completely free Warframe for you to earn as the Operation unfolds!

Brief note about difficulty intention: some players may find some of the combat encounters of this Operation difficult. It is intended that this is a higher difficulty. Use this time to get your Arsenals ready to take on the Operation!

Brief note about event recurrence: we have this set up to occur as a world event frequently. This will not be a case of Hildryn being inaccessible as Thermia Fractures will occur in the Orb Vallis regularly, enabling the boss fight. It will be frequent to make sure she is available to all! This event is cycled similarly to Baro Ki’Teer in cadence. In the same way you can get Sands of Inaros from Baro Ki’Teer with Ducats when he visits regularly, you can use Thermia to get Hildryn. Fractures will occur often – like ghouls – to keep thermia in high supply.

NEW WARFRAME: HILDRYN 

PASSIVE
Become invulnerable for a brief moment after Shields are depleted. This ability is restored when Shields fully recharge.

BALEFIRE
Charge and launch devastating bolts of fire.

SHIELD PILLAGE
Pillage a percentage of Shields and Armor of nearby enemies to replenish Hildryn’s own Shields and Overshields. Also removes status effects from Hildryn and her allies.

HAVEN
Create a Shield aura around allies. Enemies that approach Shielded allies will take damage.

AEGIS STORM
Take the skies and rain Balefire rockets down on the enemy. Nearby enemies are blasted into the air where they will create an Energy Orb every few seconds. When Shields runs out the enemies are smashed into the ground.
Notable Hildryn Changes: 

• Changes included from Hotfix 24.4.2:
  • Hildryn’s Main Blueprint has moved from Vox Solaris’ Offering Rank of Shadow (Rank 5) to Agent (Rank 2).
  • Removed Hildryn’s Shield-gate mechanic that was applying to Eidolon Lures, resulting in an invulnerability for 3 seconds after their Shields are destroyed before becoming vulnerable again.
  • Greatly reduced the camera angle when casting Hildryn’s Haven.
• Change included from Hotfix 24.4.4: Hildryn can use Shields for Melee Channeling!
• Changes included from Update 24.5.0:
  • Hildryn can use her custom dodge while in Aegis Storm at the cost of her Shields (50). We’re starting with this cost because many abilities of this nature have movement restrictions that can be overcome with Augments (Peacemaker, Resonating Quake, Assimilate).
  • Removed ability to access Gear/Emote/Hotkeys when Hildryn is in Aegis Storm due to it breaking functionality.

NEW REINFORCEMENTS

HILDRYN COLLECTION
Load up with Hildryn and several iconic additions for this stolid Warframe: the robust Surator Syandana, the intimidating Asuron Helmet and the distinctive Larkspur Archgun. Includes 3-Day Affinity and Credit Boosters as well as an Archgun Gravimag device.

LIMBO LIMINA COLLECTION
Standing in the doorway between one world and another, be sure to cut a memorable figure. This bundle includes the Limbo Limina Skin, Tarock Thrown Blade Skin, Interga Sugatra and the Sidereal Syandana.

QUARO SYANDANA
Extol the virtues of Profit with this Corpus-styled Syandana.

TATSU
Fearsome and noble, the elegant two-handed Nikana is the pride of any Arsenal.

WISE RAZOR (Two-Handed Nikana Stance Mod)
Deftly executed sweeps and slashes.

• Change included from Hotfix 24.4.3: Increased the Coolant Raknoids chance to even drop a Mod for 10% to 30%, thus increasing the drop rate of Wise Razor (and all Mods on the enemy).

MELEE REVISIT: PHASE 1: “Flow”

Let The Gun & Blade Flow
Swap between your gun and melee at the press of a button, no holstering required! Combos will be able to be executed and resumed between movement and more. Blocking will be automatic in melee mode when aiming at an attacking enemy. Your stance combos may change, so be sure to check out the Stance interface when the update goes live!

Death From Above
A Tenno is a master of aerial tactics – soon you will be able to better target enemies on the ground with deadly and responsive aimed ground slams.

• All melee weapons have had their ground-slam ranges increased based on their type and new FX added!

Effects Upgrades
We’ve done a complete overall of all Melee Effects! Hit animations, elemental effects and slam attacks: making melee look as good as it feels!

• Because this is Phase 1, it means all the unique weapons will have new generic FX for a little while (Jat Kittag etc.) until we can get through them all and make new clean variants.
• New and cleaner FX have been created with the idea of beautifully short, highly detailed lifespans. Not infinite – meaning the ‘Constant Weapon Trail’ option will be removed as a result of this change (at least for Phase 1, we really do think it looks better removed).

CONTROL BINDING CHANGES 

General:

• Your Y button will exclusively swaps between Primary and Secondary weapons with a tap.
  • Change included from Update 24.5.0: Pressing Y when in Melee mode will switch you back to your “other” weapon. For example, if your Primary weapon is equipped when you trigger a Melee attack, you will return to your Primary weapon when you aim or fire. If you instead press Y while in Melee mode, you will equip your Secondary weapon.
• Your RT will be gun fire, always, instantly.
• Your LT will always aim, instantly.

Channeling: 

• Channeling will be a toggle set to your alt-fire button when in melee mode.
• Melee Channeling will no longer be able to be rebound due to it completely breaking the Melee changes. We apologize for the discomfort this may cause for those who have built their controllers comfortably around a different binding.

Blocking:
Blocking with a melee weapon is now automatic when facing enemies who are dealing damage to you in melee mode. Your Reticle determines all!

However, we have also included Manual blocking/parry when players wield only a Melee weapon in a mission (i.e NO Secondary or Primary equipped). This is possible because in this specific state, some bindings are free to allow this manual blocking. We do not plan on adding it to any other state yet.

The default binding to block with Melee-only equipped will now be the LT (“Aim Weapon”)! Which will require a bit of a muscle memory adjustment, as expected with the rest of the binding changes. This is mostly due to the toggle we have added to enable Melee attacking with the Fire Weapon input:

We have added a toggle to preserve one aspect of the older melee system. You will be able to toggle it, allowing you to continue melee attacks with the RT once in melee mode. You will find it under Options > Controls > “Melee with Fire Weapon Input”.

More to Come
Fundamentally, we aim to upgrade Melee. This is Phase 1.

Please Note: When the update goes live, we encourage you restore your controller bindings to default to experience the changes.
Additional Phase 1 Information and Changes:
Expand spoilers for full list! 

If you missed the full workshop discussing Phase 1, you can find it here: https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1063446-melee-changes-phase-1/

NEW SPECIAL FX: EPHEMERA

Introducing a new way to customize your Warframe: Ephemera! These new ‘ATTACHMENTS’ can only be earned and crafted by the brave. Once you acquire an Ephemera Blueprint and craft it, the ability to equip an Ephemera will appear in your Arsenal under Attachments!

• Seeding Step Ephemera (obtained from Arbitrations)
• Freezing Step Ephemera (obtained from New Boss Fight)
• Shocking Step Ephemera (obtained from New Boss Fight)
• Blazing Step Ephemera (obtained from Elite Sanctuary Onslaught)
• Bleeding Body Ephemera (obtained from Arbitration Honors)
• Smoking Body Ephemera (obtained from Stalker)

NEW OPERATOR HAIR:

3 new curly haired Operator Hairstyles are coming! Choose from Curly Bun, Curly Braid, or Curly Ponytail.

In addition, Operator hairline has been improved to show less scalp. The Tenno have improved their hair care routine and it shows!

General Additions:

• A new Corpus K-Drive is arriving! Corpus inspired Highbrow, Two-Sloops, and Thugs Blueprints will be available from Roky.
• Added Mastery Rank 27 Test!
• Added a shockwave that ragdolls nearby enemies when using the Archgun Deployer.
• Added new Business and Hai-Luk VO lines about Fish rarity.
• Added different aim pose animations for enemy MOAs.
• Added a hint sound to the Fishing Spear during Profit-Taker Bounty Phase 1.
• Added sword impact sound effect to Excalibur’s Slash Dash for a little added oomph as your slice through your foes!
• Added whooshing sounds to Valkyr’s Hysteria heavy attack.
• Added FX to Heavy Weapon equip of the Grattler and Fluctus.

Plains of Eidolon Changes:

• Bounties will be available out in the Plains of Eidolon! Certain tents placed throughout the Plains contain a console that encompasses the power to contact Konzu himself.
  • With Bounties available out in the Plains, Incursions will be removed. These were meant to give players something optional to do as they spend their time in the Plains, but since Bounties will be able to be activated on command, they will no longer serve a purpose.

UI Additions and Changes: 

• The Warframe Abilities screen has received a visual and functional overhaul!
  • Added stats to your Warframe’s Passive description in the Abilities menu.
  • Ability information will be displayed in a more condensed form, with hover-over functionality to display specific Stats and expand the information.
  • A new ‘Tips’ section has been added that covers a range of information  on the Warframe’s abilities from synergies to modding tips, and more!
  • Respective Ability videos will also appear upon hover-over to add that little extra spice! This initial Ability video aspect will only be functional for Excalibur, Mag, Volt, Garuda, Baruuk, Revenant, and Hildryn! More to gradually come!
  • Your chosen UI Theme will be thematically reflected.
• The Arcane Manager has received a visual overhaul to match the chosen UI Theme! Along with the new visual appeal, the Manager now also:
  • Lists which Arcanes you do not own (hovering over will display information)
  • Arcane Ranks displayed on the right-side are now selectable, allowing for a more direct Rank Up mechanic.
• The Dojo Trading screen has received an overhaul!
  • 6 Trading Slots instead of 5!
  • Faster item selection responsiveness and improved UI to help you easily find the items you want to Trade.
• Added UI themed particle FXs to the Trading UI screen.
• The Trading screen now contains a Riven category and specific search functionality!
• Added checkmark to the ‘Ready to Trade’ UI screen.
• Added respective Warframe Ability stats in the Warframe Arsenal Upgrade screen.
• Added the ability to unequip Arcanes in the Warframe Arsenal Upgrade screen the same way Mods are.
• The Dojo Decoration screen and Dojo Room Construction screen will reflect your chosen UI Theme!
• HUD Damage Numbers and Affinity Numbers will be separately toggled in the Interface Settings!
• If Coupons, Boosters, 2x Events, etc are active, hovering over the Icon in the top right will display a list of the respective active events.
  • Selecting the Foundry notification in the UI will take you to the appropriate Foundry screen to claim.
• Swapped the order of Operator Hair ‘Tips’ and ‘Highlight’ in the customization menu so it made more sense with the tint masks used.
• Scrollbars will default to a condensed mode where necessary. Hovering over their hitbox will expand them to a normal size.
• Improved successful Mining discrepancies where it would appear you hit the perfect sweet spot in the heat gauge but were told otherwise.
• Updated all mentions of Solar Map/Solar Chart to Star Chart.
• Added a checkmark for prerequisite Dojo Research preview and completed material requirements.
• And some minor adjustments to text, etc.!

Mining Additions & Changes
Smokefinger has been hard at work on improving the Sunpoint Plasma Drill. Similar to Synthesis Scanner Widgets, Tenno will soon be able to purchase upgrades for their Sunpoint Plasma Drill from Smokefinger himself! Upgrades are auto-installed upon purchase, and offer the following benefits:

• Sunpoint Plasma Drill Range Widget: Increases plasma beam range.
• Sunpoint Plasma Drill Silencer Widget: Mine in peace and avoid alerting nearby enemies with this drill silencing widget.
• Reduced Focused Nosam Cutter standing cost to 750 and Advanced Nosam Cutter cost to 1000.

Orb Vallis Assassinate Bounty Changes and Fixes:

• Assassinate encounters will no longer be global, they will instead be localized to a specific area within a radius. We made this change because we received feedback that players are getting frustrated that they are so widely separated when trying to achieve the same goal in Bounties.
  • The encounter can be abandoned by leaving the radius.
• Changed bonus objective of the Corpus Assassinate Bounty on Vallis: the Bounty will fail if enough Credits are not gathered before the timer runs out, and Tenno will earn a bonus for collecting enough Credits within a shorter amount of time. This Bounty didn’t have a failstate like others, so we tweaked the objective and bonus objective for consistency.
• The timer will scale based on how many players are in the squad.
  • The less players there are the more time is granted to complete.
• Assassinate target will scale based on how many players are in the squad.
• Changed the cover evaluator for the Assassination targets in Orb Vallis Bounties so that they don’t run as far to find cover.

Individual Extraction: Non-Wave Endless!
Soon you will be able to extract from Survival, Excavation, and Defection missions independent of your squad.

• Once the ‘mission complete’ interval is met, players can head to extraction any time they choose (i.e 5 minutes for Survival).
• Any player at extraction triggers a countdown timer.
• If all players leave the extraction zone, the countdown timer is cancelled.
• When the timer is up, the extraction ship arrives and any players in the extraction zone leave.
• Anyone still playing can extract later any time they choose.

Client-Authoritative Changes:

We have made some much requested changes to the responsiveness of two things in Warframe: Weapon swapping and automatic doors. Right now in Warframe, if you are connected as a client you may have experienced delays in responsiveness of either of these essential things! The changes should result in a much smoother experience:

• Swapping weapons as a Client will soon feel more responsive because we’ve made it Client-Authoritative.
• Automatic Doors have been made Client-Authoritative. Currently they are cases of door not opening in tandem with the Host if any latency was experienced.

General Changes: 
Expand spoilers for list of changes! 

And 6 pages of fixes! 

Additional Mentions: 

• Update on TennoGen Round 14 and 15: As you may know, the most recent TennoGen bundles launched with The Profit Taker: Update 24.2.12. They included items from Round 14 (Operator cosmetics, and Warframe + weapon skins), but not all. Now that Round 15 is live on PC, we have posted an update on what you can expect for future releases on XB1: https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1070994-tennogen-round-15-now-live-on-pc-what-to-expect-on-consoles/
• An important write up was made in the PC Update 24.5.0 thread regarding Arcanes. The change that was reverted in that update will not be going live with XB1’s Buried Debts: Update 24.5.0 (as it was the reason for many issues with Arcanes + Abilities on PC), however, it is important for us to point your attention to our intentions moving forward with Arcane balancing, as all Platforms will be affected eventually. We will let you know and it will be the result of a lot of consideration. Design changes like this need to be more tempered and considered.
• The following list of changes went live with Nightwave and some were already listed in the Alert Dev workshop, but we felt they were worth mentioning here in case they were missed!
  • Increased chance of Kavat scans yielding Genetic Codes to 25% and made drop chance/amount Boosters apply to all scans that yield Resources.
  • Removed the Radio Chatter toggle trigger in the Orbiter and moved into the Settings > Audio.