Warframe's Ship Combat Expansion Empyrean Is Out Now On PC

During The Game Awards, the developers at Digital Extremes revealed a new trailer for Warframe's expansion Empyrean, which focused on the new ship-combat gameplay and team-based squad battles in deep space. At the end of the trailer, the developers announced that the hotly anticipated update is available right now for players on PC.

Revealed last year at Tennocon 2018, the new expansion is one of Warframe's most ambitious updates yet. It focuses on new gameplay involving the Railjack, a custom ship that every player can acquire, allowing them to travel into deep space and take on a variety of space-combat missions. Though Warframe does have space missions using the Archwing, the Railjack focuses more on larger ship-combat, taking cues from sci-fi like Star Trek and Star Wars. In a previous update called Rising Tides, players could start a quest to acquire their Railjack, allowing them to piece it together and customize it. But with the Empyrean update, you can now take the ship out for a spin.

While out on your ship, you and your squad of tenno can take control of various areas of the ship. These roles include the pilot, an engineer, a gunner, and a tactician. In a similar vein to Sea of Thieves, you'll have to manage different aspects of your ship while actively facing off again enemy vessels. If you receive enough damage, you'll need to step away from your post and repair the damage before it's too late. While this is going on, you can also send members of your squad on away missions to invade enemy vessels and destroy them from the inside.

What's interesting about the Empyrean update is that it adds a more unifying aspect to Warframe, bringing together some of the more isolated parts of the game. For instance, if there's a mission in space that requires remote assistance, whether that's disabling a systems relay or destroying an enemy base, you can send a request out to other players to get help. While much of the content in Empyrean is designed for team play, it is possible to complete the game solo by leveling up different aspects of your ship's systems to compensate.

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