Digital Extremes' popular looter shooter MMO, Warframe, is all about collecting some of the most overpowered weapons in gaming. But in order to complete that arsenal of goodies, players need to acquire their blueprints - and a small hoard of resources necessary to build them up in the Orbiter's Foundry.
There are many different types of resources to find across Warframe's many planetary nodes, but some of these resources are far easier to find than others. For instance, players will likely find resources such as Ferrite, Nano Spores, and even Neurodes in extreme abundance as they play through the game. These are much rarer resources that players will have to seek out as they complete their Star Chart.
10 Oxium
Any resource that only drops from a single enemy is bound to be pretty rare, and that's the case with Oxium. This resource only drops from variants of the Oxium osprey enemy. These enemies can only be found in missions where the player is fighting the Corpus faction. Each Oxium osprey only drops 7-12 Oxium, and to make matters worse, if the enemy self-destructs by ramming into a player, it won't drop the resource at all.
Luckily, Oxium can also rarely be found in lockers and other storage containers, and can sometimes drop from the 3rd supply cache on Uranus' Sealab Sabotage mission. Players will passively destroy many Oxium ospreys as they complete their other objectives in Warframe, so this rare resource will definitely accumulate over time.
9 Neural Sensors
A necessity for building new Warframes, Neural Sensors are a rare planetary resource that are limited to the Jupiter and Kuva Fortress tile sets. They rarely drop from enemies, loot containers, and resource deposits found throughout missions.
Neural Sensors are especially rare for new players since the planets that they drop on are fairly inaccessible at the beginning of the game. Jupiter is the only way that new players will be able to farm this resource, and navigating the gas cities is no easy task for someone unfamiliar with the game's fluid parkour system.
8 Orokin Cells
Much like Neural Sensors, Orokin Cells are a rare planetary resource. Thankfully, this resource is available on more than two planets. Orokin Cells can be found on Ceres, Saturn, and Deimos. They drop from enemies, loot containers, or Orokin Cell Arrays located throughout the mission. Orokin Cells also rarely drop from certain enemies and bosses outside these planets.
What makes Orokin Cells tougher to come by for many players is the sheer amount necessary for Foundry blueprints. Many Warframes and weapons take between 1-3 Orokin Cells to build, and certain Prime blueprints can take upwards of 10 Orokin Cells to build. This rare resource is a tough one to adequately farm out in the bulk players will need them.
7 Hexenon
This resource was added alongside the Wisp Warframe and her arsenal, and it's a key component in the blueprint for these weapons. Hexenon only drops on the Jupiter tile set, which already heavily limits where players can farm it.
Hexenon rarely drops from loot containers, but otherwise exclusively drops from Amalgam enemies. It drops in relatively low amounts, like Oxium, making this grind particularly tough. Players farming Hexenon, however, can kill THREE birds with one stone, since Oxium and Neural Sensors can also be found on the same planet.
6 Cryotic
This resource can only be found in a single game mode - Excavation - the objective of which is to defend excavators as they drill into the ground. The excavators are unearthing Cryotic, and by successfully defending an excavator, players will earn 100 of this resource.
There's no way to speed the excavators up, and there's no other way to earn Cryotic. This particular resource grind must be done in this specific game mode, and it can't be sped up in any way. Players will need lots of Cryotic for certain blueprints as well. The Sibear, one of the game's unique melee weapons, requires a whopping 30,000 Cryotic to build.
5 Kuva
The lifeblood of the Grineer Queens, Kuva is one of the most important resources in the game. Kuva is used in certain Foundry blueprints, but it's also the necessary resource for rerolling Rivens, the most powerful mods in the game.
Kuva can be earned by completing Kuva Siphon missions, certain bounties in Cetus, Fortuna, or the Necralisk, and the survival node on the Kuva Fortress tileset. Certain endgame content such as sorties and Archon Hunts offer Kuva rewards. Riven slivers, vitus essence, and steel essence can also be traded in for bundles of Kuva weekly. Even still, Kuva isn't easy to acquire, and players need hundreds of thousands of this resource due to the randomness inherent to rerolling Riven stats.
4 Argon Crystals
Argon Crystals are a rare resource found within the Void tileset. They are about as rare as Neural Sensors and Orokin Cells, dropping from enemies as well as purple crystalline outcroppings called Argon Pegmatite.
The Argon Crystals are a rarer commodity than the other resources because they have a unique mechanic that isn't shared by any other resource in the game. These crystals decay over the course of a day. When Warframe's daily reset occurs, whatever unused Argon Crystals a player has accumulated will disappear. This decay rate makes the resource rarer than most, as players need to head to the Void to farm these out whenever they're needed for a blueprint.
3 Tellurium
A special case among rare resources, Tellurium doesn't drop according to the planet a mission node is on. Instead, Tellurium only drops from enemies on certain mission types. This resource is a rare drop from enemies in both Archwing missions and Uranus missions that feature submersible level sections.
There aren't many Archwing or submersible mission nodes on the Star Chart, and players won't be grinding them for other resources very often, so actively farming Tellurium very quickly becomes a tedious task.
2 Entrati Lanthorns
One of the newer resources introduced to Warframe, Entrati Lanthorns are a resource that drop exclusively from missions that take place aboard the Zariman Ten Zero. Since the Zariman only becomes accessible after "The New War" quest, players need to have made significant progress into the game - possessing a Railjack, a Necramech, and an extensive arsenal of weapons - before even having a chance to farm Entrati Lanthorns at all.
Once players are able to do missions on the Zariman, the Entrati Lanthorns are still fairly rare, with similar drop rates to resources such as the Orokin Cells, Neural Sensors, and Argon Crystals on their respective planets.
1 Nitain Extract
Nitain Extract is potentially the most unforgiving resource to grind for in the entire game. It doesn't drop from any enemy or loot container. Instead, there's a 2% chance to get one Nitain Extract from finding all three caches in certain sabotage missions, and a 4% chance to get one Nitain Extract from ghoul purge bounties on Cetus.
Luckily, the Nightwave rewards pool has a constant offering of Nitain Extract, where players can spend fifteen of the current Nightwave credits for five Nitain Extract. Even still, this is a grueling trade to make, and there's no easy and reliable farm for this Warframe resource.
Warframe is available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Switch.