Warframe is game built around grind, if there were no grind, there would be very little game. With that said, Orokin cells are a necessary material for various weapons, Warframes and prime Warframes throughout the game.
General Orokin Cell farming tips:
I feel I should confess something first before getting into this. I’ve never had to actually actively farm for Orokin Cells and I doubt I will ever need to. This was a wonderful side effect of playing wayy to much Saturn, Helene when I hadn’t yet unlocked Hydron for gear levelling. I was able to amount more Orokin cells than I can reasonably shake a stick at, and still be able to progress through the Mastery ranks.
- If possible, play in groups, be that with friends or even public lobbies. This helps in multiple ways. Firstly, more players mean more spawns, which in turn means more chances to get the drop we’re after. Secondly, playing public lobbies means you may very well run into other players farming away for Orokin Cells too, and chances are they brought a lootframe with them, a great bonus.
- If possible, bring a lootframe, if you’re playing with friends, get them to bring lootframes too. Lootframes like Khora and Hydroid with augments or a Nekros give you more chances for drops, so obviously, more chances for Orokin Cells, even better if they’re forma’d and modded well.
- Never underestimate the power of boosters in Warframe. If you have the plat, boosters can dramatically reduce the grind. However, not all boosters are equal. If you’ve got an ample supply of unranked weapons and warframes, the affinity booster would be better for you. If you just need mad resources, the resource drop booster is what you’re after. The only exception for me is the drop chance booster, from a value point of view I don’t think it makes sense to spend plat on doubling a drop chance. It wouldn’t matter on more common drops, you probably have enough anyway, and it wouldn’t make much difference for a rarer drop to go from a 0.5% to a 1% drop chance.
- All the places below can be coupled with running boosters to increase your chances even further.
Suggested farming locations:
Helene, Saturn:
Given my experience, it would be wrong to ignore this little gem of a map. A grineer defence mission that serves two purposes.
It’s great for getting affinity to level gear in the earlier game and it’s a great spot to farm up some of those precious Orokin Cells.
All you have to do is extract every 10 waves to maximise affinity and keep the enemies easy enough to kill.
Gabii, Ceres:
A survival mission with a twist.
In dark sector missions you’ll be fighting against the Infested, some rather tough enemies without proper gear.
However, to make it a wee bit more appealing, dark sector missions will have a bonus applied to them.
In the case of Gabii, it’s a +35% resource drop chance booster.
This means every action that has a chance to drop resources – Breaking crates, killing enemies – will have a +35% modifier applied to it.
You can couple this with a lootframe for even further increased drop chance.
All you have to do here is run around destroying any Orokin Cell arrays around the map and keep killing enemies. Extract at around the 20 -25 minute mark if you start struggling and go in again.
Exta, Ceres:
This is an interesting one. It’s essentially a normal assassinate mission.
Only difference being, you have to kill two bosses this time.
This seems to equate to two chances for Orokin Cells to drop per run over the one chance in a more traditional mission.
The only downside is you will need slightly beefier gear as you’ll have to fight both Vor and Kril at the same time.
Once you’ve got it down though. You can blast through as quick as any other assassinate mission.
Magnacidium, Deimos:
Finally we have Magnacidium, a cheeky assassination mission where you’ll be tasked with killing Lephantis, a three headed boss.
It’s a relatively pain free fight and once you understand the mechanics, can breeze through it as well.
The benefit of running this node is that every head you kill will drop loot. That means THREE chances for Orokin Cells per run. Plus if you don’t have a lootframe yet, You’ll get a Nekros part after every successful extraction.
Orokin Cells may also spawn naturally in the world in a container you can destroy to make them drop, similar to other resources.
How many Orokin Cells do I need?
To build everything currently in the game, you’ll need 1103 Orokin cells. And this number will only go up as more and more equipment gets added to the game.
If you were to purchase all these with plat, it would cost 11,030 platinum in total at a rate of 10 plat per Orokin cell which you can do in the market. This is why farming is so important because buying a large amount of Orokin cells is… unrealistic, to say the least.