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The space ninja adventure known as Warframe, an experience where you can feed yourself to a giant mouth and pilot futuristic vehicles, has released a significant update. The Vallis Undermind highlights the creative flair that has come to define Warframe in more recent times.

This expansion, released on Wednesday, adds a fungus-inspired character that performs a unique animation, along with a whole new explorable fungal area. But it’s also going back to basics, with another quest geared at making sure this complicated, expansive long-running online game is accessible for new players.

Introducing "The Teacher"

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

In Warframe, modifications are enhancements that can be equipped on your warframe or arsenal to boost their performance. They range from the straightforward (increase damage or speed up reload rate) to the devastatingly complex. Dedicated players often craft hour-long videos about optimized loadouts that use synergistic enhancements to create devastating effects.

“Many players likely started their journey, encountering mods without grasping their purpose,” explained a key developer. “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.’”

A Collaborative Effort

“The Teacher” was created through a partnership 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 component for their ship, but they’re confronted by a formidable foe called Teshin, who takes away the player’s abilities and close-combat arms, and forces them to engage with the mod system to effectively show its potential.

Several developers were already fans of the game, but some were newcomers, according to a lead designer. This fresh viewpoint that was essential.

“The first thing we did was basically sit behind them and go right play through the tutorial and take prodigious notes on everywhere they fell out,” the designer said. Introductory tutorials introduced players to modding. But the team noted that they didn’t work on everyone.

“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 stupidly powerful synergies that turn the screen into a blitz of numbers. But "The Teacher" isn’t really about that. There will be some long-time players who desire more advanced content, like creating powerful and specific builds. But it became clear that the mission addresses a genuine oversight for newcomers — and that doing so isn’t as simple as it looks.

“There’s lots of little tweaks and background details there to just demonstrate the possibilities 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, a magnetic effect that depletes protective barriers.

“Adjustments to the armament to be a burst-fire weapon, because it better demonstrates the effect frequency,” the designer said. “But you don’t want to explicitly tell players, 'oh yeah, actually on a base level mod, you only got a few percentage chance to proc an elemental effect.' How can you teach this mechanic effectively?”

Veterans will naturally recognize these mechanics and understand how it works, but new players have to be taught to pay attention to these things.

“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 we never really told people how to use mods.”

A Labor of Love

“There’s so much that goes into just making a really simple mission that — honestly — you can complete quickly,” said the designer. “Yet it represents extensive development for loads of people.”

The designer was visibly glowing with excitement over being able to work on a game that he loves — and to design content featuring a preferred figure.

“I'm a huge fan of Teshin,” he said. “He's my 8-year-old internal self's idea of what's cool.”

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 many intricate mechanics that players can ignore initially — and won’t even have access to until hours into the game. And others, like modding, that scale in complexity depending on how much time you want to invest. An update earlier this year streamlined the early game 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 early game experience evolves beyond its origins. New players can get their foot in the door — regardless of overlooking tutorials.