In Warframe, Mastery Rank is how the game measures your overall progress. Rather than tracking your star chart or mission completion, Digital Extremes opted for a system that focuses on the exploring of all weapons, ‘frames, and other items that can level up.
Players start at Mastery Rank 1. The current cap is technically 30. Although you can only reach 26 at the moment. The remaining ranks will gradually become available as more content is added.
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Increasing your Mastery Rank
To progress your rank, you need to level up your gear. Weapons, Sentinel weapons, and Archwing weapons each reward a total of 3000 Mastery points when maxed out. Warframes, Companions, Archwings, and K-Drives earn double that (6000).
You also earn some mastery points when extracting from any mission for the first time. Clearing junctions to unlock new planets rewards a larger sum of 1000 Mastery.
It’s worth noting that you do not earn additional Mastery points when you Forma an item and have to level it up all over again. Each item only needs to be completed once. This also covers items that have been sold and repurchased.
Both dual and Prime versions of weapons, ‘frames, and the like count as unique items with their own Mastery points to earn, too. The same can be said for the different Kubrow breeds.
That said, weapons make up the bulk of total available Mastery Rank experience. More than half of the available points come from the pool of 300+ weapons in Warframe.
Mastery Rank Bonuses
Increasing your Mastery Rank gives you a number of benefits. As we mention in our mod guides, your rank determines the minimum mod capacity of new weapons and ‘frames that you acquire. You’ll also up your daily trading limit, unlock additional extractor deployments, increase the daily cap on Focus points (after you complete The Second Dream quest), Void Trace capacity, and daily Syndicate standing gains. Phew!
There are many weapons in the game which are locked until you reach a specific Mastery Rank, as well. But here’s the specific breakdown of everything you unlock with Mastery Rank:
- Unlock new weapons at various Mastery Ranks.
- Increase your minimum mod capacity by one for each rank.
- Increase your daily trading limit by one for each rank.
- Increases Void Trace capacity by 50 per rank.
- Increases your daily Focus point cap by 5000 per rank.
- Increases your daily Syndicate point cap by 1000 per rank.
There are also a few special unlocks:
- Mastery Rank 1: Unlock Maroo’s Bazaar.
- Mastery Rank 2: Unlock the trading system.
- Mastery Rank 5: Gain an additional extractor drone deployment.
- Mastery Rank 10: Unlocks auto-slotting of Ayatan Stars into Ayatan Sculptures. Gain an additional extractor drone deployment.
- Mastery Rank 15: Unlock all game content for purchase.
- Mastery Rank 16: Unlock all Riven mod requirements.
Mastery Rank Tests
Increasing your Mastery Rank isn’t quite as easy as just earning points. When you finally have enough points to roll over to the next Mastery Rank, you also need to pass a test to qualify for the rank. But don’t worry! You won’t lose any surplus Mastery points you earn over each rank if you don’t complete the test right away. They’ll simply roll over towards the next test when you’re done.
In general, these tests get progressively more difficult. These span a variety of game features, including simple survival, terminal hacking, stealth, wall movement, and more. Many come with a time limit or some other kind of restriction — and they can get awfully tricky.
When eligible, the game will alert you and give you the option to attempt each Mastery test right away. We recommend you decline this, though. All relays have a testing area in Cephelon Simaris’ corner of the public relays around the star map. Here you can attempt the challenge as many times as you want before moving on to the real deal.
Fail your real test, however, and you’ll need to wait 24 hours before you can make another attempt. Any progress you make while blocked still counts towards the next rank up, though. So don’t sweat it too much!
