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The popular online game known as Warframe, an experience where you might encounter bizarre cosmic entities and pilot futuristic vehicles, has unveiled a significant update. The Vallis Undermind highlights the creative flair that has come to define Warframe in recent years.

This expansion, released on Wednesday, adds a fungus-inspired character that does a little dance, along with a whole new explorable fungal area. However, it also revisits core concepts, with a new mission geared at making sure this complicated, expansive long-running online game is understandable by new players.

Introducing "The Teacher"

Named “The Teacher,” this is the highly anticipated mission that instructs Warframe players on how to use one of the game's fundamental yet complex systems: the mod system.

In Warframe, modifications are enhancements that can be added to your character or your weapons to boost their performance. They range from the straightforward (increase damage or speed up reload rate) to the incredibly intricate. Content creators often craft hour-long videos about optimized loadouts that use powerful mods in combination to create devastating effects.

“I think a lot of people were maybe getting into the early game, seeing mods, not really understanding it,” noted a key developer. “I think it was really important, at the end of the quest, for players to think, ‘Wow, modding is interesting. I'd like to experiment further.’”

A Collaborative Effort

“The Teacher” was developed in a collaboration between the original developers, who provided the narrative sauce, and an external team, who designed the mission, 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 takes away the player’s abilities and melee weapons, and compels them to use the mod system to effectively show its potential.

Several developers were already fans of the game, but others had never played before, according to a principal games designer. It was this outside perspective that was essential.

“The first thing we did was basically sit behind them and have them experience the introduction and take prodigious notes on all points of confusion,” 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.

Addressing a Real Need

Warframe’s mods allow players to create incredibly strong combinations that turn the screen into a blitz of numbers. But "The Teacher" isn’t really about that. Veteran users who wish the quest was geared more towards their needs, like creating powerful and specific builds. But it became clear that “The Teacher” is filling a real and significant gap for newcomers — and that executing this is quite complex.

“There’s lots of little tweaks and little subtle things in the background there to just sort of show you what it can do rather than tell you,” the designer said. For example, one of the mission's objectives is to show how mods can create elemental damage types; in this case, a magnetic effect that depletes protective barriers.

“We had to change the weapon to be a burst-fire weapon, 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 few percentage chance to proc an elemental effect.' So how do you tutorialize that without changing it?”

Veterans will naturally recognize these mechanics and understand how it works, but beginners require instruction to notice these details.

“It’s not a kind of game development that we've had to worry about as much 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. “But it's months and months of work for loads of people.”

The designer was visibly glowing with excitement over being able to work on a game that he loves — and to craft a mission for one of his favorite characters.

“I love Teshin,” he said. “He embodies everything my younger self found awesome.”

Improving the New Player Experience

In the decade-plus since launch, Warframe has been in a consistent battle with its own new user introduction. There are lots of complex systems that players don’t need to worry about — and won't encounter until hours into the game. And others, like modding, that scale in complexity depending on how much time you want to invest. A previous patch improved the introductory experience so that players could reach Warframe’s mind-bending plot developments 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. New players can get their foot in the door — even if they miss the menu prompts.