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The popular online game known as Warframe, a title where you can feed yourself to a giant mouth and pilot futuristic vehicles, has released a significant update. The Vallis Undermind exemplifies the distinctive charm that has come to define Warframe in the past few seasons.

The new content, made available this week, adds a new mushroom-themed warframe that performs a unique animation, along with a brand-new biome to discover. But it’s also going back to basics, with a new mission designed to making sure this complex, vast long-running online game is understandable by new players.

A Quest Called "The Teacher"

Named “The Teacher,” this is the highly anticipated mission that educates Warframe players on how to use one of the game's most basic — yet most intricate systems: modding.

In Warframe, mods are augments that can be added to your character or your weapons to boost their performance. These can be simple (boosting power or shortening reload times) to the devastatingly complex. Dedicated players often craft hour-long videos about optimized loadouts that use powerful mods in combination to create overwhelming power.

“I think a lot of people were maybe getting into the early game, encountering mods without grasping their purpose,” explained a lead narrative designer. “We believed it was crucial, at the end of the quest, for players to think, ‘Hey, modding is cool. I'd like to experiment further.’”

Teamwork in Action

“The Teacher” was created through a partnership between the core team, who handled the story elements, and a supporting studio, who crafted the gameplay, which will appear early in the game.

In the quest, the player is asked to retrieve a new segment for their spaceship, but they’re interrupted by a menacing, powerful warrior called Teshin, who removes the player's powers and close-combat arms, and compels them to use the mod system to handily demonstrate its power.

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

“Our initial step involved observing new players and go right play through the tutorial and take prodigious notes on everywhere they fell out,” the designer said. Introductory tutorials presented the mod system. But the team observed these weren't effective for all.

“Some people didn't see basic instructions where the game highlights it saying equip the modification,” he said.

Addressing a Real Need

Warframe’s mods allow players to create incredibly strong combinations that fill the display with damage values. But "The Teacher" focuses on different aspects. There will be some long-time players 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 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 goals of “The Teacher” is to show how mods can create elemental damage types; in this case, Magnetic damage that eats chunks out of enemy shields.

“We had to change the weapon to be a burst-fire weapon, because it better demonstrates the effect frequency,” the designer said. “But you don’t want to say to people, 'with a basic modification, you only got a low probability to proc an elemental effect.' How can you teach this mechanic effectively?”

Experienced players will instinctively look for that kind of weapon effect and understand how it works, but new players have to be taught to notice these details.

“This type of design work that we previously focused on just because that hasn't been our focus,” said a narrative lead. “However, this oversight meant that players weren't properly taught the modding system.”

A Labor of Love

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

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's my 8-year-old internal self's idea of what's cool.”

An Evolving Onboarding Process

In the 12 years since its release, Warframe has been in a consistent battle with its own new user introduction. There are many intricate mechanics that players can ignore initially — and won’t even have access to until much later. And others, like modding, that scale in complexity depending on your level of engagement. 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 initial hours doesn’t stay locked in 2013. New players can get their foot in the door — even if they miss the menu prompts.