Warframe The UP TO DATE Eidolon Guide. (April 2021) [WIP]

Intro

If you clicked this with no knowledge of what eidolons are in warframe then thats great, keep reading and everything should be explained.

Before we get into specifics, its required that you have completed the War Within & Saya’s Vigil quests in order to be able to contribute to eidolons. If you have not done these 2 quests then you will have a hard time actually keeping up with a group, or even hurting the eidolon at all for that matter.

Furthermore, dont take this guide as gospel. some of these builds are not the PERFECT build, notably the wisp, harrow, and rubico builds.This guide is meant to get you into the door for eidolon hunting in a group, its not meant to make you some god tier hunter right off the bat. There is always more you can do to improve at it that this guide doesn’t cover.

With all that out of the way, let’s begin :).

Chat Terminology and Lingo

Before we get into eidolons, assuming you know NOTHING of the topic, lets go over some basic terms that you should know before reading this guide.

Xx3: A number in front of x3 means that group wants to do X clears of tridolons in that night cycle. 3×3 is the best place to start after reading this guide if you dont have any experience in it, then moving to 4×3 is good if you can get the rotations for your role down well. a 5×3 requires good team synergy where everyone knows whats going on, and a 6×3 needs everyone to be perfect and perform perfectly.

Voms: Vomvalysts. you need to kill 3 of these and put them in a lure to charge it. they drop an orb if you kill its ghost form without a lure nearby that you can pick up and take to a lure to give it credit.

Shrine: The thing in the middle of the Gara Toht Lake.

If there are any other terms you can think of, lmk in the comments and ill add it here.

The Basics of Eidolons

To start all this off, its best to know wtf even is an eidolon? What do they do? Or better yet why do you care?
Eidolons are a boss monster that only spawn during the night in cetus, which is on a 100 minute day to 50 minute night cycle, they have shields that are immune to ALL damage types and debuffs EXCEPT for void damage, and they are also the BEST source for arcanes and operator focus.

Lures
First thing’s first. You need to get lures and charge them with 3 vomvalysts (voms) each and get enough of them to capture the eidolon for better loot and a brilliant/radiant eidolon shard to sacrifice in the shrine at Gara Toht Lake in order to summon the next eidolon.

Gara Toht Shrine
When you capture one of the first 2 eidolons, they will drop an eidolon shard that you can pick up and sacrifice in the shrine in the middle of gara toht lake. This is how you spawn the next eidolon for your hunt and make this your #1 priority after the eidolon is completely captured

The Teralyst (Terry)
The first of the trio of eidolons and also the easiest. terry has only 4 synovias, or better known as limbs, compared to his brothers which each have 6. He is the smallest in size, has the smallest amount of different attacks, and requires only 2 charged lures to capture instead of 3 like his older brothers. Needless to say, terry doesn’t have a good time most nights and he gets what he ♥♥♥♥♥ deserves cuz he hoards all those arcane nullifiers.

The Gantulyst (Garry)
The second of the trio and the most annoying. as mentioned before, Garry has 6 limbs, takes 3 charged lures, but he has the most annoying attacks you will ever have to deal with in your hunts. THE LIGHT PILLARS. These things just kill you and your lures if you aren’t careful but thankfully there are methods to avoid this. No mercy for Garry cuz he always blinds me with those beams seemingly at random. its not funny bro.

The Hydrolyst (Harry)
The biggest and eldest of the trio and the hands down coolest one. Absolute Chad of a sentient. Harry also has 6 limbs and takes 3 charged lures to capture like Garry but comes with a completely different set of relentless attacks like constant lightning bolts and makes areas damage you and apply green rain effects on your screen while inside. Harry doesn’t threaten your lures safety as much as Garry does so its not quite as stressful, though if you aren’t modded up for enough survival then this guy can be tricky to survive.

The Roles Of The Hunters

In eidolons, there are 4 distinct roles that all do their part to help kill the eidolon and/or protect the players and lures from dying.

DPS
In the past, this role used to be played by Chroma but ever since the removal of self damage Chroma has fallen off HARD. The new meta pick for DPS is volt with the build further down. With that said, the DPS is usually the host of the squad due to being the one that fast charges lures, which is best if he gets out of the gate faster and so that he can more reliably break limbs as soon as the shield goes down.

VS (stands for Void Strike, a trait in the madurai tree)
VS is played exclusively by another volt, no real exceptions to this. The reason why is because volt’s shield is the only warframe ability that can buff operator shot’s crit damage, which is crucial in 1 shotting its shields. you have no other real responsibility other than getting those shields down for the DPS to break a limb.

Magnetic Proc Immuner
This is best suited for harrow since not only does he make all players completely immune, but he buffs crit chance afterwards as well. That being said there are still some frames that can also do this job albeit it’s a lot more difficult. This role is also considered the 2nd VS user as a tag in while the VS volt charges their stuff.

Lure Sitter
This role is most accessible to newer players since it doesn’t deal as much with the eidolon directly. With that being said, its not some walk in the park to do well at. Trinity and Wisp both fill this role equally well and offer different things for the team and require more or less attention to lures themselves.

Main Weapon Choices

Compared to warframes, weapons are a bit more nuanced when it comes to eidolons. The general rule is snipers > all and crit is a must have. All the eidolons are weak to radiation so hellfire + stormbringer are must haves. on the top end, there are 2 sniper rifles that are hands down the better pick than any other option. the Vectis and Rubico prime.

Rubico Prime

The Rubico Prime is by far the easiest to get your hands on and also the easiest to mod. Critical delay gets the rubico up to 100+ crit chance so you never have to worry about missing a crit. Rivens are not necessarily needed for this gun, especially because its disposition is 1/5 so even if you get your hands on one its gonna take a lot of kuva to be worth putting into the build.

Vectis Prime

The Vectis Prime is my personal weapon of choice, but that doesnt mean its better. It is MUCH harder to build, requiring Primed Chamber and a riven with at least crit chance on it. it is possible to go rivenless if you use Argon Scope and remember to headshot the eidolon before going for a limb break in order to get 100% critical chance. The reason you do not also take Depleted Reload with Primed Chamber is because your first shot should kill a limb anyways and you can always just reload so its on the first shot every time. the second shot in the chamber also helps with stacking your shot multiplier which can get you more damage.
This is my main build, so i took off charged shell since shock trooper creates radiation with hellfire already, allowing me to fit on vigilante armaments. you can do the same thing with the rubico if you want.

“But What If I’m Too Low MR For Either Of These? Or What’s The Point If The DPS Is Breaking The Limbs Perfectly Fine Already?”
That is fine, there are other sniper rifles that can get you by for 3/4x3s no problem. the normal vectis is an MR 2 weapon so if you want to use that for the time being, go right ahead. The Lanka is another viable option since you can pack A LOT of radiation onto it due to it’s innate electricity.
There is another option as well if you trust your DPS player to do his main job perfectly as well. You could take a shotgun with Amalgam Shotgun Spazz since it gives bonus revive speed, helping you pick up others in case they go down.

Secondary Weapons
Secondaries don’t really matter. the best pick if you REALLY want to get specific is probably the rakta ballistica or synoid gammacore because they can restore energy with enough affinity gain i guess?

Melee Weapons
There are 3 different choices here that have any significant impact.

• Sarpa
• Redeemer
• Empty Melee Slot

The Sarpa with Shattering Impact is an amazing tool to s*rip armor off of the eidolon, the Redeemer Prime is able to break a limb with a heavy attack albeit very close range, and no melee at all in order to avoid doing a slam attack when dismounting from your archwing, which would use a VS stack if you are VS volt or harrow.
If you don’t care about any of these, then i recommend some kind of hammer like the kuva shildeg or something to kill voms but it doesnt really matter. your just going to use your primary for almost everything anyways.

Ideal Companions

You have a lot of versatility in this slot but first thing’s first, REMOVE VACUUM/FETCH. Just make another config to replace vacuum/fetch and use it in your loadout. The DPS makes these tiny wisps that anyone can pick up which doubles operator damage so it is very bad if you steal them from the person who really needs it at the time.
Now onto actual companions to consider:

Carrier Prime
This is my go-to pick. Carrier helps with ammo sustain with its ammo conversion and bonus max ammo and is also tied for tankiest sentinel companion. This is a great choice for the DPS role for better ammo management but for the other roles there are better picks.

Sahasa Kubrow
I love taking this pet with lure sitters since they basically provide free energy orbs sometimes and put more ammo on the ground. Energy is always nice especially when its free but its annoying to pick up when it goes down.

Adarza Kavat
This pet is a good tool since it can give you and your allies bonus ADDITIVE crit chance, which really helps you hit those red crits.

Wyrm Prime
Tied with Carrier prime for tankiest sentinel companion, this pet has the ability to absolutely LAUNCH nearby enemies. It’s great as a VS user to keep voms away from you so you dont have to worry about getting knocked down by them.

Pets other than these are not really useful but it doesnt really matter what you bring AS LONG AS IT DOESNT HAVE FETCH/VACUUM ON

Gear to bring with you

There are 3 KEY gear items you need to bring with you on any hunt:

• Archwing launcher
• Energy pads
• Ciphers (press Y to instantly use it in the hack terminal btw)

in any run you will use these 3 gear items just about every time, only semi exception is VS probably wont touch lures at all so you wont end up using ciphers.
I tend to use about 5 energy pads per run, so about 25 per 5×3 on average.
Other great gear items to consider are:

• K-drive since for some reason hopping on it fixes all the soft-lock bugs
• Health pads
• Ammo pads, pads are self explanatory
• A necramech, but not for actual use.

You can summon your necramech near the door to cetus to keep it open for everyone. its a courtesy thing to do but its not really required for anything. Voidrigs are slower for DPS than any warframe with a good sniper rifle so please dont actually consider using for dps. Though it is handy for soloing if you dont have the best loadout.

Operator Focus Schools

Let’s be honest, your most likely here for this exact reason. Brilliant and radiant eidolon shards give you free operator focus for any school you want without counting towards your daily focus cap so its quite appealing for leveling your operator. That being said, there is a bare minimum you will need to be able to really clear eidolons

Madurai
Void Strike (VS) is the most important trait in eidolons ever. the clear speed of eidolons would just not be achievable without it boosting operator damage. 3/4 of the squad will take this on average, with the 1 being the DPS taking unairu instead.

Unairu
This is basically reserved for the DPS to take due to the Unairu Wisp trait helping the VS users. MAKE SURE YOU DONT TAKE THE INVIS AURA TRAIT PLEASE. It is so annoying when a DPS has this trait on and makes all the lures invisible, making hard to keep track of which ones are attached or charged or specifically where they are. you dont need it. you just need Unairu wisp.

Vazarin
The vazarin protective dash can heal and protect lures, but thats something that trinity and wisp and limbo for that matter can do. Your better off just taking one of the 2 schools above.

Zenurik
I guess if your the lure sitter and you trust the other VS users you can use this to help with energy but its honestly insignificant compared to energy pads and protea dispensers if others have them. This tree has nothing else worth consideration.

Naramon
Why? wtf you using the melee tree for? shooting guns > swinging swords against eidolons.

Operator Amps

Basically, you have 2 options here.

• Shraksun (x2x)
• Propa (x7x)

These are your secondary fires and what you will be using to break shields 99% of the time. They both have their advantages and disadvantages but are similar enough in effect that its not a big deal, especially for low clear amounts like 3/4×3.

You also have the lohrin(xx3) and certus(xx7) braces which increase critical rate by 12% and 20% respectively. Certus brace is obviously better but if your not rank 5 with little duck then you can settle for lohrin for the time being. 6x3s are still possible using an amp with shraksun and lohrin.

Using these parts makes up an x23, x27, or x77 amp. These numbers refer to the tier in quills/vox solaris you have to be to earn these. 1-4 refers to the parts from onkko, and 5-7 refers to the parts from little duck. as you can see, propa and certus are on the same tier so there is no reason not to combine them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZc74RHnoaQ
(ignore the stuff about Magus Melt, its outdated but everything else still applies)

The primary fire doesnt really matter, though if you really care then you have raplak (1xx) which is a semi automatic higher damage fire that can be used for easy shield pops if you have enough VS stacks, and there is the klamora (7xx) which is a whole freaking Kamehameha wave that pierces through everything in a 13m range and has the HIGHEST primary fire dps. Overall though, as a VS user you wont use your primary fire much but to DPS and lure sitters i highly recommend a 777 amp.
(I call mine Lucky 7s so you can steal that name if you want:))

DPS Role In-Depth

Starting off with my primary and most comfortable role, DPS has arguably the most responsibilities in the run. In this role it is important that you have your weapon loadout squared away and ideally have the Unairu Wisp trait leveled.
In order of what you need to do:

1. Fast charge a lure
2. Take the lure to the teralyst
3. Break eidolon limbs
4. Create Unairu Wisps for the VS users so they can pop shields faster
5. Charge 2 lures during the Teralyst fight while doing #3 and 4
6. Fly to the lake with the charged lures so the loot drops near the shrine for easier summoning
7. Repeat #3 and 4 for Garry and Harry

This listing is loosely what you will be doing in an ideal eidolon hunt if everyone else does there part.

What is fast charging?
https://youtu.be/IoQSCuSGca4?t=135 This demonstrates multiple fast charge and vom spawning techniques you can use to charge a lure as fast as you can. this is really something that you have to see to understand. I personally like to fast charge on the East Camp, also shown in the video, though it usually has only 2 voms spawn more often than 3 but I trust my friend to manip spawn a pack elsewhere to guarantee the lure gets charged fast.

Breaking Limbs
This is where the meat of the role is at. This is your #1 job in the role of DPS. A volt DPS build should ideally look something like this:

MY build has 3 formas, one being an umbral forma. You do not need this many formas to do well, This is just min/maxed in order to fit in umbral vitality and intensify together. The core of the build is Vitality, Dead Eye, Shock Trooper, and strength mods. Ideally you should have 200%+ ability strength in the build. Adaptation is highly recommended since it gives you a load more survivability. I would also recommend Vigorous Swap to anyone who thinks they could use it. (if you dont like vig swap, then streamline is a good replacement for energy economy)

Creating Unairu Wisps
For those who don’t know, Unairu wisps are summoned when someone has the Unairu Wisp train and void blasts an enemy. Anyone can pick up this wisp which DOUBLES their operator damage. As DPS, you want to be away from between his legs, then void blast his right knee (their left, the one touching the ground) right after you break their limb. This is why its not good for people to bring vacuum or fetch with them in order to avoid picking up the wisps that someone else needs to get, ESPECIALLY for the dps who doesnt need to pick them up at all.
“But Why Am I Taking Unairu Wisp Instead Of Madurai For The Extra Damage?”
The simple answer to this question is you have so much damage already. Shock trooper + volt shield + ally auras + Vigorous Swap if you use that + consecutive shot multiplier + Sarpa armor shred is more than enough to let you 1shot a limb with considerable overkill, along with the fact that who else is going to use it? the lure sitter is preoccupied with getting lures and voms so they aren’t always present and the VS users entire role depends on madurai to boost their operator damage as is. You are just the role best fit to do it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpw5M8cmIv4

What Ability Should I Subsume If I Have The Helminth System?
Mirage’s and Rhino’s subsumed abilities are both pretty good. in terms of damage given Mirage’s Eclipse ability Eclipses rhino’s but if you dont have it then roar is fine. Replace the 4 on your config since you will end up using the other 3 abilities without question.

If your weapon and warframe builds are not fully complete then thats OK for 3/4×3 and can be made up for with better shot multiplier control. Just remember, it was possible to 1shot limbs with volt even before the helminth system so it is more of a booster than something you MUST have.

VS Roles In-Depth

VS volt and harrow are the big VS users. This section will cover both of them together since they work so closely with each other.

VS Volt

The Volt VS build is actually very customizable. The only serious requirement here is max duration, or at least as high as you can get it. Ability strength doesnt matter at all since the volt shield’s bonus crit is a static 2x multiplier. Everything else you add is just for convenience like survivability and casting speed. Ideally the person taking down the shields will have a x27 or a x77 which you will place shields for. When putting down shields for the x77 amp, you can place them in between the legs and shoot the warframe.fandom.com – https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Propa_Scaffold in the air which explodes after some time. This can be timed right before the foot goes down after the eidolon immunity phase to instantly pop the shields. You can also place the shield directly next to the leg to be able to detonate the propa immediately on impact. Another way to pop the propa instantly is to place your warframe in front of the shield and shoot it. With the x27 amp you want to angle the shield up to be able to shoot through the leg with the warframe.fandom.com – https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Shraksun_Scaffold as it hits the eidolon multiple times.

Pre-Shielding
With normal shield placement out of the way, lets go ahead and talk about preshielding. These are shield placements for the Gantulyst and Hydrolyst. There is a total of 4 spots that these eidolons can spawn at in the lake. What’s great is that the hitbox for the leg is already at the spot where it steps when the eidolon spawns which means you can break the shields before the eidolon can even rise out of the water for the DPS to break the limb. It is best to use propa for the preshields as the shraksun can’t hit all of it’s shots in the space where the hitbox is. You should leave to put these shields down when the final limb has been shot / during the crying phase of the eidolon.

warframe.fandom.com – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZiB5xlRzN4 you can increase the chance to crit drastically for consistent 1 shots. You should proc this by Void Dashing into the eidolon’s head. In the Madurai tree, it is also recommended to also unlock Meteoric Dash to have another instance of damage to increase the chance to proc Virtuous Shadow. The last thing to increase damage is by picking up Unairu Wisps which should spawn near the eidolon from the DPS to double your operator damage. All this should allow you to 1 shot an eidolon’s shield.

The Rotation
Finally you are ready to VS and have all the recommended things for viable 1 shots. Here’s a list of what you should do for the “rotation.” 

1. Dash to the head of the eidolon to proc Virtuos Shadow. (This may take multiple dashes to proc so you can use your W and S keys to dash multiple times.)
2. Pick up an Unairu wisp on the ground spawned by the DPS.
3. Shoot your secondary fire and profit. (There is still a 1 in 5 chance for your Propa shot not to crit so be ready to shoot another one if it doesn’t 1 shot the sheild.)

This is the ideal rotation for normal shields but we know not every team is perfect or crits just don’t happen even with Virtuos Shadow. This means if you are using propa it’s good to do a double shot to instantly take down the shields. This is where you shoot 1 shot into the air to explode from the timer and a second shot either at your warframe or the leg to detonate the shot instantly. This should reliably get the shields down but with a low VS stack or no Unairu Wisp then you may need to fire 1 or 2 more shots or use the primary fire of your choice to finish the job.

https://youtu.be/jdMkZWtZdAI
https://youtu.be/MBkhkSwfSHM
These examples are from casual 4×3 but it shows the basic movement of what you want to do.

First Shield Prepops/Water Pops
When you insert the shards into the shrine, the next eidolon will begin to spawn. At this time, the shield is vulnerable at the location of where they normally arrive to. Adding to the rotation, there should be pre-shields left by the volt for the prepop. After dashing at the spot to proc Virtuos Shadow, there should be an Unairu Wisp at/near the shield. Then you should shoot 2 propa shots through the Volt Shield which should take down the shields depending on your VS stacks. Your teammates may need to help take the shields down if a shot doesn’t crit, VS stacks aren’t high enough, or Unairu Wisp isn’t there.

https://youtu.be/bxcpTflc3RI
Like the examples above, this isn’t the best but it shows the rotation. In the linked YouTube video in Pre-Shielding, they also show rotation of volt shield placements.

Lure Sitter In-Depth

Trinity

(Strength is actually 155% on this build with the umbral set)

To build Trinity, you’ll want max/high duration and enough strength to get Blessing’s damage reduction to 75%. Your aura is really up to you but corrosive projection and enemy radar are good picks. The reason that you have minimum range is that Blessing, like Harrow’s Covenant, affects things in your affinity range. This is a 50 meter radius base which can be buffed by Vazarin’s increased affinity range node. You shouldn’t use Vazarin but it’s a cool mention. Out of all jobs, Trinity is the easiest to learn but is “hard” to master. All you need to do is charge lures and keep them alive by pressing 4. The 75% reduction in damage will keep lures alive even when Garry fires the light beams. Just watch out on the top right for people’s health to keep them alive and remember that when entering your archwing, the blessing buff will go away so you’ll need to recast it when needed.

Wisp

This is a 1 forma Wisp build which can be more optimized. You only really need to build for Duration and Strength as you won’t be in the motes for long and strength is your survivability. The difference between Wisp and Trinity is that as Wisp you aren’t directly keeping the lures alive by healing them but placing motes down for warframe survivability, movement, and attack speed. You’re job when you do have the lures is mostly during the Gauntulyst fight, light beams will come down every once in a while and you’ll just move the lures out of those beams. For the other eidolons, they don’t have attacks that threaten the lives of the lures.

How To Lure
This information is the same for Trinity or Wisp or anyone lure sitting. The current ideal way to grab lures is to first start out grabbing 2 lures and dropping them off at Terry, dropping them, then going out and grabbing 5 more.

Here is a map of lure spawn locations from warframe.fandom.com – https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1466786211 or warframe.fandom.com – https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Vigilante_Pursuit to be able to find them on your mini map easily. Or you can just look for them spawning in a flash of blue lights.

Vom Manipulation and VS
Also linked above in DPS role here’s https://youtu.be/IoQSCuSGca4 The DPS should take the fast charge on the right camp but you can spawn Logs voms (mentioned in the video) and fast charge another lure. If you are in a good group that is charging before night starts then what you should do is charge up VS to solo take down Terry shields so the other two VS users can solo Garry and Harry shields. You will have 8 shots of VS so before or some time during breaking shields you should grab the 2 lures to drop as it only takes 4 shots to take down Terry and 2 shots for the lures which totals 6. The last thing for ANY run is if you are done with charging lures or think you have enough charged (an example is having a total of 4 charged at Garry as you only really need to have 1 charged lure at Harry for no loss of time) then you may help the VS with shields as sometimes those shots don’t crit and it can still be an instapop with your extra damage. That’s the basics + extra and the best thing to do is practice and learn it by doing it.

Advanced tips and tricks

So you want to learn some fancy tricks to use in your hunts? Here is a collection of most all the tricks I know that was not mentioned previously in any of the videos linked or the guide so far.

Not Full Stripping with Sarpa Due to the high bonus damage with radiation on the eidolon’s armor, keeping a tiny bit of armor on them can actually net you more damage than if you fully remove it. if you do 2 light attacks with the sarpa on terry, 2 lights + 1 heavy on garry, and 3 lights + 1 heavy on Harry then you will leave them with a very small amount of armor left. its fine if you overstrip, but its better if you dont.

Fosfors: Fosfors are a gear wheel item thatincrease the affinity range of all allies nearby by 200m. As you may have noticed, both Trinity and Harrow use their affinity range for their 4th ability’s range instead of actual range so this is a fun tool to use. There are 2 different kinds of fosfors that work the exact same way and they stack with eachother, meaning you can have a maximum affinity range of 475 units if you use vazarin as well. IDK where you will find a use for this but its here.
WIP

This is all for Warframe The UP TO DATE Eidolon Guide. (April 2021) [WIP] hope you enjoy the post. If you believe we forget or we should update the post please let us know via comment, we will try our best to fix how fast is possible! Have a great day!