Warframe Incarnon Despair build guide: How to farm, recommended mods, Arcanes, and more

Warframe Incarnon Despair excellently showcases how much the Incarnon Genesis system can buff a weapon. One of the possible armaments dropped by the Stalker, this pair of thrown daggers was previously plagued by the useability issues of its weapon class. However, the Incarnon mode fundamentally changes this weapon to a carpet bomber, giving it both viable damage and use cases in end-game content.

As is the case with all Incarnon weapons, the Incarnon mode on Despair has to be charged by landing headshots in Warframe. Even when partially charged, you can transform the weapon on the fly by pressing the alternate fire button.

At maximum charge, you gain 20 daggers in this mode. Each of these daggers explodes in a four-meter impact area upon contact, much like the Concealed Explosives mod.

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Warframe Incarnon Despair drop location

Warframe Incarnon Despair can be selected during the seventh weekly rotation of Steel Path Circuit rewards (Image via Digital Extremes)

Like all other weapons in the Incarnon Genesis system, to build the Warframe Incarnon Despair, you need both the original weapon and the latter's specific adapter for it.

As mentioned previously, Despair only drops from the Stalker. The regular Stalker has a 5.5% chance to drop it on death, whereas the Shadow Stalker only provides half that chance. There are no alternative sources for this secondary weapon, although you can force Stalker encounters with Stalker Beacons purchased from Baro Ki'Teer.

The Incarnon Genesis adapter for Despair, on the other hand, is a guaranteed drop, provided you can wait for its specific rotation. All Incarnon Geneses are put on weekly rotations, of which there are seven different sets so far. The Despair Incarnon Genesis comes on the seventh rotation among other Stalker weapons.

During this rotation, you can select the Despair Incarnon Genesis Adapter, along with another one, from the set of five possible choices. You then have to play the Circuit in Steel Path mode, where the Despair Incarnon Genesis Adapter will appear either on the fifth or tenth tier of rewards, depending on the order of your selection.

Once you have both the Despair and the Adapter, you can fuse the two by visiting Cavalero, a vendor found in Chrysalith, Zariman Ten-Zero. Note that the installation of the Adapter has a one-time fee for Duviri-exclusive resources.

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Warframe Incarnon Despair mod and Evolution tree build in 2023

Warframe Incarnon Despair is tailor-made for the Cascadia Flare Arcane (Image via Digital Extremes)

Most Incarnon Genesis weapons are made viable by high critical chance values to use with the Hunter Munitions mod, but Despair is a happy exception to this norm. The Incarnon mode explosion deals heat damage primarily, meaning you can forego the inclusion of Slash procs altogether and still gain scaling.

For this, you can either pick either Survivor's Edge for a critical-status hybrid or Critical Parallel for a purely critical-centric Evolution tree. Due to the carpet-bombing nature of its Incarnon Mode gameplay, the latter would be more practicable for average Warframe gameplay.

You can build for either Corrosive or Viral while maintaining a heat damage mod as the constant. The Cascadia Flare Arcane, alongside the decent scalability of heat damage itself, makes the Incarnon Despair capable of destroying base-level Steel Path mobs with a few rounds just with Critical Delay and a critical damage mod.

For even more scalability, a pair of Galvanized mods also bump up the end-game viability of this weapon in both its regular and Incarnon form. At the moment, you can benefit greatly from Rivens due to the high disposition that Despair brings to the table.