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The popular online game known as Warframe, a title where you can feed yourself to a giant mouth and drive a motorcycle in the year 1999, has launched a significant update. This latest expansion exemplifies the creative flair that has become synonymous with Warframe in the past few seasons.

This expansion, made available this week, brings in a new mushroom-themed warframe that performs a unique animation, along with a whole new explorable fungal area. However, it also revisits core concepts, with another quest aimed at making sure this complicated, expansive 12-year-old MMO is accessible for new players.

A Quest Called "The Teacher"

Called “The Teacher,” this is the long-awaited quest that instructs Warframe players on how to use one of the game's most basic — yet most intricate systems: modding.

In Warframe, modifications are enhancements that can be added to your character or your weapons to improve their stats. These can be simple (increase damage or speed up reload rate) to the incredibly intricate. Content creators often craft hour-long videos about idealized builds that use powerful mods in combination to create devastating effects.

“I think a lot of people were maybe getting into the early game, encountering mods without grasping their purpose,” said a key developer. “I think it was really important, at the end of the quest, for players to think, ‘Hey, modding is cool. I want to try more of this.’”

Teamwork in Action

“The Teacher” was developed in a collaboration between the core team, who provided the narrative sauce, and an external team, who crafted the gameplay, which will appear early in the game.

In the quest, the player is tasked with obtaining a new segment for their spaceship, but they’re interrupted by a menacing, powerful warrior called Teshin, who removes the player's powers and melee weapons, and forces them to engage with the mod system to handily demonstrate its power.

Several developers were already fans of the game, but some were newcomers, according to a principal games designer. It was this outside perspective that proved critical.

“The first thing we did was basically sit behind them and go right play through the tutorial and take prodigious notes on everywhere they fell out,” the designer said. Early-game menu pop-ups introduced players to modding. But the team observed these weren't effective for all.

“Certain players missed fundamental guidance where the game highlights it saying put the mod in the slot,” he said.

Closing an Important Loop

Warframe’s mods allow players to create incredibly strong combinations that turn the screen into a blitz of numbers. But "The Teacher" focuses on different aspects. Veteran users who wish the quest was geared more towards their needs, like optimizing for endgame challenges. But it became clear that the mission addresses a genuine oversight for early players — and that doing so isn’t as simple as it looks.

“Numerous subtle adjustments and little subtle things in the background there to just sort of show you what it can do rather than explain it outright,” the designer said. For example, one of the goals of “The Teacher” is to show how mods can create powerful elemental status effects; in this case, Magnetic damage that eats chunks out of enemy shields.

“We had to change the weapon to be a rapid-fire gun, because it better demonstrates the effect frequency,” the designer said. “However, the goal isn't to explicitly tell players, 'with a basic modification, you only got a low probability to trigger a special damage type.' So how do you tutorialize that without changing it?”

Experienced players will instinctively look for that kind of weapon effect and understand how it works, but beginners require instruction to notice these details.

“It’s not a kind of game development that we previously focused on just because our priorities lay elsewhere,” said a story developer. “But part of it not being our focus that we never really told people how to use mods.”

A Labor of Love

“There’s so much that goes into just making a seemingly straightforward quest that — honestly — you can blast through in about 15 minutes,” said the designer. “Yet it represents extensive development for loads of people.”

The designer was visibly glowing with excitement over being able to work on a game that he loves — and to design content featuring a preferred figure.

“I love Teshin,” he said. “He's my 8-year-old internal self's idea of what's cool.”

Streamlining the Beginning

In the decade-plus since launch, Warframe has been in a ongoing struggle with its own new user introduction. There are many intricate mechanics that players can ignore initially — and won't encounter until hours into the game. And others, like modding, that increase in depth depending on how much time you want to invest. An update earlier this year improved the introductory experience so that players could reach Warframe’s complex narrative arcs with less time on the grind up front.

With “The Teacher,” it’s clear that the developers are reinforcing their dedication to make sure Warframe’s early game experience evolves beyond its origins. Beginners can find their way — regardless of overlooking tutorials.