You wanna buy that new Grakata blueprint on the market so you can summon forth your inner Clem, but your Mastery Rank isn’t high enough. This may seem like a daunting barrier to overcome initially, but Mastery is not all that difficult to earn.
Earn Mastery by completing the Star Chart and leveling equipment.
Mastery Rank is an overall indication of your account’s progress in Warframe. The more you have seen and the more items you have played with, the higher it will be. It doesn’t correlate with power, though it can make better items available, earn you additional loadouts, and increase your daily trade limitation. That said, the simplest way to earn Mastery is to progress through the Star Chart. Any blinking blue node indicates a mission you have not tackled, and completing it will reward you with a set amount of Mastery.
As you work through the Star Chart you will come up against a Junction, a gate between the planet you are on and the one you want to move on to. Highlighting the Junction will display the tasks that need to be completed to unlock it, so be sure to knock those out. Completing a Junction not only allows you to further push ahead in the Star Chart, but rewards you with 1000 Mastery points when you kill the opponent frame within.
The best way to level your Mastery Rank, though, is to level equipment. Warframes, Sentinels, weapons: if it can be leveled it will reward Mastery. The total amount of Mastery rewarded differs between the types of items, broken down below:
- Weapons, Sentinel weapons, and Archwing weapons
- 100 Mastery for each rank, for a total of 3000 at rank 30
- Zaws and Kitguns must be leveled to 30, gilded, then leveled to 30 again to earn the 3000 Mastery (it’s only earned after gilding, essentially)
- 100 Mastery for each rank, for a total of 3000 at rank 30
- Warframes, Companions, Archwings, and K-Drives
- 200 Mastery for each rank, for a total of 6000 at rank 30
- K-Drives do not require gilding for Mastery
- 200 Mastery for each rank, for a total of 6000 at rank 30
It behooves you to farm up new Warframes, and to acquire new weapon blueprints in the market as they become available. Leveling items will catapult your Mastery Rank into the stratosphere in the earlier ranks, and becomes essentially to progress once you clear the Star Chart. Remember this bit: re-leveling something does not reward Mastery, only the first time it reaches rank 30 (there is an exception to this rule, but it’s towards the later parts of the game, and very grindy). The UI will tell you if you have Mastered something, and that item will no longer reward Mastery. I.E. don’t think you can Forma your favorite weapon and re-level it for easy Mastery. Warframe wants you to play with all its toys, and you will have to if you want to level up your Mastery Rank.
That said, you don’t need to keep these items once you have mastered them, especially if you are low on slots. Master the item, then sell it from your inventory if you don’t want to hold on to it for later. This will not only free space for the items you care about, but allow you to pick up new items for even more Mastery.
One final piece: you will need to take a Mastery test when you max out a rank in order to reach the next one. Mastery earned, however, continues to contribute to your overall rank, so don’t fear leveling while you are capped: it will all be there once you pass the test. You can only attempt the test once a day until you succeed, but you can visit any normal relay and practice as much as you want at Cephalon Simaris’ hub.
That’s Mastery Ranks for ya: seems complex, but is pretty damn simple in execution. For more guides, like how to trade or earn platinum, stay tuned here at Attack of the Fanboy.
