Warframe Plague Star 2021 – Full Plague Star Guide and Dates

After waiting for so long, Plague Star finally returns in 2021! To prepare you for some efficient runs, here is my full Plague Star guide.

Contents

1. Warframe Plague Star Return 2021
2. Plague Star Guide Walkthrough
   1. Stage 1: Find Thrax Toxin
   2. Stage 2: Mix the Toxin
   3. Stage 3: Escort the Drone to the Boil
   4. Stage 4: Defeat the Infested
3. The Fastest Way to Farm Standing
4. Best Equipment for Plague Star
   1. How to strip the Hemocyte’s Armor
   2. Elemental Damage Type
   3. Best Weapons for Plague Star
5. Operation: Plague Star Rewards

Warframe Plague Star Return 2021

As recently announced on Devstream 156, Operation Plague Star will return in 2021 on the 8th of September!

Unlike recent years, it will last for a whole three weeks and one day, so up until September 30.

Plague Star Guide Walkthrough

Let’s quickly go about what you will have to do in this event.

Stage 1: Find Thrax Toxin

After accepting the Plague Star bounty from Konzu in Cetus, enter the plains and you will be tasked to find the Thrax Toxin in one of the Grineer caves. Simply follow the waypoint and then look for the storage unit in the marked area. It looks like this:

Stage 2: Mix the Toxin

After you picked up the Toxin, you will be guided to one of the Grineer outposts where you’ll put it in a mixer and defend it for 3 minutes. Here is where it gets interesting:

While the Toxin is mixing you can add up to 4 Infested Catalysts and 4 Eidolon Phylaxes. If you choose to do that, the difficulty of the last stage will increase but you will also gain more standing.

For every Infested Catalyst added, a Hemocyte boss will appear in the last stage and you will get 250 bonus standing. Hemocytes are basically the boss Lephantis from Deimos.

For every Eidolon Phylaxis added, the regular Infested will become stronger in the last stage and, again, you will get 250 bonus standing.

Here is an awesome table from the wiki which is more specific:

Stage 3: Escort the Drone to the Boil

This is really just a simple drone escort as you know it from the regular bounties. Simply defend the drone while it transports the Toxin to the boil.

Stage 4: Defeat the Infested

In this last stage you are fighting off Infested around the boil until your progression meter reaches 100% at which point the bounty is finished. If you added Infested Catalysts earlier, Hemocytes will spawn at 25%, 50%, 75% and 99% and halt your progress until you defeat them.

The Fastest Way to Farm Standing

Update: After some testing I found that using a Necramech is a viable way but by no means necessary. Other weapons are perfectly able to melt the Hemocyte after stripping its armor, too. Check the “Equipement” section below.

In the past, usually the fastest way to farm standing was to add 4 Eidolon Phylaxes but no Infested Catalysts as the Hemocytes were taking too long to kill. But by now I would argue that they shouldn’t be a big problem anymore.

Even if you put in 4 x Infested Catalysts, the strongest Hemocyte (level 75 as seen above) only has about as much effective health points as a level 115 Heavy Gunner. Granted, the Hemocyte is immune to status effects but at the same time you can easily strip its armor using various Warframe abilities.

With todays means, this isn’t a challenge. Just pull out your Necramech and melt the heads within seconds. Unfortunately, they have a damage cap for every shot so you won’t be able to instantly destroy it with the Mausolon alt fire for example. Still, with a bit of fire rate on your archguns or even Voidrig’s Guard Mode (4) the Hemocyte shouldn’t last long. Also, primary and secondary weapons have been buffed, so maybe you won’t even need a Necramech.

To sum it up, the fastest way to farm standing would be to add all 4 Infested Catalysts as well as all 4 Eidolon Phylaxes. Ideally, play in a coordinated squad and each focus on one head of the Hemocyte. Strip its armor using one of the methods from the next paragraph and once your designated head is vulnerable, quickly kill it with one of the weapons I mention below.

Best Equipment for Plague Star

How to strip the Hemocyte’s Armor

My favorite for Armor Stripping is Ash’s Shuriken (1) with the Seeking Shuriken Augment. If you have subsumed Ash to the Helminth, you can actually use this on any Warframe. With 143% Strength, you will strip 100% armor for 8 seconds with a single, one-handed, 25 energy ability on any Warframe!

Next up is Nyx with her second ability, Psychic Bolts. At just 125% Ability Strength, it strips armor by 100% while also slowing Infested! On top of that, she can become completely invincible to both the hemocytes and regular Infested using her Assimilate augment. I made a quick build for her on Overframe.

After testing, Nyx has become my favorite Warframe for the event due to the simplicity of being untouchable and dealing incredible damage.

Oberon can strip 100% armor, too, by using Reckoning (4) while the enemy is standing on Hallowed Ground (2). I suggest building him for at least 167% Ability Strength which would result in 50,1% armor-stripping and then casting Reckoning (4) twice.

For more ways to get rid of armor, check the wiki.

Elemental Damage Type

This is simple:

If you manage to strip 100% armor, use Corrosive damage by combining Electricity and Toxin.

If you leave any amount of armor on the Hemocyte, Radiation damage is the way to go by combining Electricity and Heat.

Best Weapons for Plague Star

As already mentioned, the Hemocyte has a damage cap for each shot. Because of this, high fire rate weapons have a huge advantage. Also, Kuva and Tenet weapons come with the benefit of extra elemental damage. Especially Corrosive is easy to build for if your bonus element is toxin which, I assume, is often the case due to the dominance of Viral.

Do not take this list as complete! Warframe has too many weapons to go through all of them in a Plague Star guide…

• Kuva Karak
• Kuva Seer
• Kuva Twin Stubbas
• Tenet Diplos
• Tenet Cycron
• (Prisma) Grakata
• Baza (Prime)

Apart from these regular weapons, I also want to mention Titania’s Dex Pixia. Titania has been a community favorite for the Plague Star event because her Razorwing ability with its exalted pistols, the Dex Pixia, work very well. They come with very high fire rate and Titania’s ability to fly let’s her stay out of reach of most regular Infested, too.

Operation: Plague Star Rewards

Before you can access some of the rewards, you will have to rank up with the Operational Supply Syndicate at Nakak in Cetus. Fortunately, that doesn’t require a whole lot and your rank will carry over to the next time Plague Star appears.

For every time you complete the bounty, you will earn 1k base standing plus up to 2k bonus standing if you add the maximum amount of Phylaxes and Catalysts. This is 3k standing in total for a single run which is exactly the amount you need to buy a fully-built Forma. I hope my Plague Star guide helps you to stock up on those as you will need them eventually.

The most important rewards are:

• fully-built Forma (3k Standing)
• Plague Zaw parts (2k Standing)
• Exodia Arcanes for Zaws (5k Standing)
• Snipetron Blueprint (3k Standing)
• The new Ghoulsaw and Stance “Butchers Revelry”
• Nidus Prime Relics

On top of this, the Hemocytes will always drop a mod from the Hunter set. Hunter Munitions in particular is important for a lot of endgame builds while Hunter Adrenaline can be quite useful, too.

The full list of rewards can be found here.

Thanks for reading!

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