Like plenty of other free-to-play games, Warframe asks you to spend a lot of time gathering resources, forging items, and grinding away at various in-game systems. The official companion app isn’t essential, but it can help you speed up some of that grind.
The app comes with a handful of features that are nice, but that don’t necessarily do anything for you in-game. It gives you access to your entire inventory, but unless you are theory-crafting or showing a friend your latest weapon drop, scrolling through all the items might not do much for you. Similarly, having the ability to chat with your friends in the app is somewhat nice, but if you’re an active player, you probably let Discord handle all your messaging.
On the other hand, some of the app’s features are legitimately useful. It has a tab for news about the game that makes for a quick and easy way to stay in the loop on things like updates, hotfixes, and upcoming events. It also lets you check in on day and night statuses, Nightwave challenges, invasions, and Void Fissure locations, so you can spend your bus ride home planning out your next session.
Get to work
Ultimately, there are two main reasons to download the Warframe app: Extractors and the Foundry.
Warframe is all about the grind, and the time-gated mechanics can really slow down your progress if you don’t manage them appropriately. Extractors take four to eight hours to do their job, and if you send them out before leaving the house, the app will let you assign them to a new task when they’re finished without logging back into the game. It’s a great way to keep a steady stream of resources coming into your Orbiter.
The Foundry is another piece of the game that takes real world hours to progress. Just like it does with Extractors, the companion app lets you start new construction projects on the go. Taking advantage of these features can seriously speed up your progress in the game, which means you can spend more time playing Warframe with your new toys and less waiting for that sweet new weapon to finish building.
If your Warframe experience looks like casually logging in every few days to bullet jump around a battlefield or two and make handfuls of enemies explode, then you’re probably fine leaving the companion app uninstalled. But if you’ve really caught the bug, it’s definitely worth getting your hands on. Getting to speed up your grind is invaluable, plus you can check in on your virtual menagerie of Sentinels and beasts to make sure you’re giving your pets enough love in between violent missions.
