Warframe Deep Archimedea guide: mechanics, rewards, and Legendary Arcanes

Of all the end-game activities in Warframe, Deep Archimedea is shaping up to be one of the most difficult. To compensate for this difficulty curve, Deep Archimedea will also be the only way to obtain Legendary Melee Arcanes in Warframe going forwards. Like most new content introduced with the Dante Unbound update, this upcoming game mode will also be related to the Cavia syndicate and the Murmur-Necramech nodes on Deimos.

Deep Archimedea inherits the permadeath gimmick of Warframe's Netracell mode. In many ways, this new game mode borrows many elements from Netracells and is meant to complement Netracell's weekly drop table.

This article will cover everything you need to know about Warframe's Deep Archimedea game mode - including its unique quirks, rewards, and what to expect.

Warframe - Deep Archimedea game mode, explained

Deep Archimedea rewards increase with research value (Image via Digital Extremes)

Deep Archimedea is Warframe's latest end-game activity on par with Netracells, but it is possible to make it even tougher than Netracells for scaling rewards.

Similar to Sorties, you need to beat a sequence of three missions to complete a Deep Archimedea expedition.
Also, like Sorties, the mission types will change randomly.
Unlike Sorties, the three missions have to be completed in one go. There will be no opportunity to switch gears in between.
Each mission comes with two innate modifiers: a Deviation and a Risk Factor, which also greatly increase the challenge in some cases.

Deep Archimedea Restrictions

In addition to Deviations and Risk Factors, Deep Archimedea missions have all of the baseline restrictions seen in Warframe's Archon Hunts and Netracell runs, i.e.:

Empowered Enemies with higher health and shields depending on the number of players in the squad.
No Self-revives: Players die permanently if not revived by a teammate before bleedout ends.
Consumable Restrictions: Restoratives like energy pads have a party-wide 3-minute cooldown, and you cannot deploy Specters and On-call Crews.

What are Research Modifiers in Deep Archimedea?

Deep Archiemdea comes with "Research Modifiers," which are further debuffs you can place on yourself akin to Keyglyphs in Netracells. Research Modifiers make the mission more challenging but also contribute to a bar called "Research Value," increasing the payout.

You can select the Research modifiers before you load into the mission.
Available Research Modifiers change every week.
Loadout Modifiers: Like in Warframe's Circuit Mode, you can select one of three preset Warframes, Primaries, Secondaries, and Melee weapons each for your mission loadout, which individually increase Research Value.
Personal Modifiers: You can select up to four Personal Modifiers to increase your Research Value further. These are debuffs imposed on you throughout the mission.

For example, four such personal modifiers were displayed during Devstream 177:

Lethargic Shields (500% higher shield recharge delay)
Abbreviated Abilities (75% reduced ability duration)
Ammo Deficit (75% reduced ammo restoration from drops and gears)
Untreatable (Pickups do not heal)

Mission requirements for Deep Archimedea in Warframe

You need to be Rank 5 with Cavia to gain access to Deep Archimedea (Image via Digital Extremes)

You must have Rank 5 standing with the Cavia syndicate to access the Deep Archimedea expeditions.
Each Deep Archimedea expedition needs a "Search Pulse" to unlock, and each Search Pulse needs 2 Netracell keys.
In other words, you can sacrifice two of your five weekly Netracell missions to go into Deep Archimedea.
Spending two Netracell keys here is a net-positive deal, as you can get up to five rewards if you beat Deep Archimidea with all modifiers.

How to unlock the Elite Deep Archimedea mission

If you beat a Deep Archimedea run with all possible Research Modifiers (four Loadout Modifiers and four Personal Modifiers), an Elite variant of Deep Archimedea will be unlocked.

Warframe Deep Archimedea rewards: What do you get from this game mode?

Rewards in Deep Archimedea unlock in tiers with research value progress (Image via Digital Extremes)

All rewards for Deep Archimedea are tied to the Research Value progress bar. The main rewards for this mission involve a tiered "chest" system, where a certain progress milestone with Research Value unlocks one reward.

There are four Research Value milestones, and you get one reward out of a specific reward pool at each milestone:

Milestone rewards at Research Value 4 and 9 will be similar to Netracell rewards, including Non-Legendary Melee Arcanes and Common Archon Shards.
Milestone reward at Research Value 14 will have a chance to pay out a Tauforged Shard or a Legendary Melee Arcane, plus one additional reward.
To reiterate, the final tier of Milestone Reward grants two separate rewards, one of which is a Legendary Melee Arcane.

Note that all the information here is sourced from Devstream 177. Changes may be introduced as developers fine-tune it before the release of Warframe: Dante Unbound.

How many Legendary Mee Arcanes can you get from one Depp Archimedea sequence?

If you do it with all the modifiers on (Research Value 29) the final milestone of Deep Archimedea guarantees you one Legendary Mee Arcane. If you get lucky, you might also get another Legendary Melee Arcane drop from the Research Value 14 milestone.

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