Focus, Operator and Drifter explained

In the quest “The Second Dream” you learn who actually controls your Warframe: your Operator. They fight with Void powers and an Amp of their own. Their strength comes from five Focus schools. Each school has a tree of abilities that improve the Operator, your Warframe or both. You buy them with Focus, which you collect in missions.

The key terms in short:

Operator

Your own Tenno. They control the Warframe from afar and can also jump into the fight themselves.

Transference

Switching between Warframe and Operator. The Warframe stays behind and is usually invulnerable while you are out as the Operator.

Focus

Your Operator’s experience. You spend it to unlock schools and to buy and upgrade their abilities.

Focus Lens

An item for fully ranked gear. It turns excess experience into Focus for one specific school.

Amp

The Operator’s weapon. You build it from three parts with the Quills in Cetus or Vox Solaris in Fortuna.

Waybound

Special abilities in the Focus tree. Once fully upgraded and unbound, they work in every school.

Drifter

An adult version of your Operator from another timeline. You can play as them instead of the Operator.

1. 01

   Finish “The Second Dream”

   At the end of the quest you pick your first Focus school. Afterwards you can briefly summon the Operator, who fires a Void Beam and disappears after 10 seconds. Only the two passive abilities of each school are available at this point.

2. 02

   Finish “The War Within”

   Now you get real Transference. You can switch between Warframe and Operator at any time with no cooldown. Your Focus bonuses apply from the start of every mission, even if you never use the Operator.

3. 03

   Finish “Saya’s Vigil” and visit the Quills

   This opens the door to the Quills in Cetus. You get your first Amp there, and all remaining abilities of the Focus trees become available.

4. 04

   Unlock more schools

   Every other school costs 50,000 Focus once, so 200,000 for all four. You can change your active school on your Orbiter at any time.

5. 05

   Later: “The Old Peace”

   This quest opens Tauron Strikes, a third Operator ability per school. More on that below.

• Void Beam: The basic attack without an Amp. It deals Void damage and removes the adaptive resistance of Sentients.
• Void Sling: A short dash through the air that hits and knocks back enemies. It also gets you past Grineer sensor bars.
• Void Mode: You become invisible and invulnerable as long as your energy lasts. Great for hacking or reviving teammates in peace.
• Two abilities per school: Each school gives the Operator two abilities of its own, cast just like Warframe abilities.
• If your Operator loses all health, you snap back into your Warframe, which then gets a debuff that lowers its health.

Each school has ten abilities: passive bonuses, two active Operator abilities with upgrades, and two Waybounds.

• Your first pick is not final. You can add every other school later for 50,000 Focus each.
• Many players start with Zenurik, because extra energy helps almost every Warframe.
• If you plan to hunt Eidolons soon, Madurai pays off thanks to Void Strike and higher Operator damage.
• Every school you unlock also gives your Operator its own animation set.

Most Focus comes from Focus Lenses. You install them on max rank gear (30 or 40), such as a Warframe, a weapon or a gilded Amp. After that, experience the item no longer needs turns into Focus for the matching school. A Madurai Lens gives Madurai Focus.

• Kills with Warframe abilities give all their experience to the Warframe. If you mostly kill with abilities, put the lens on the Warframe.
• If you get a lot of experience from teammates, a lens on a weapon is more effective.
• With a lens equipped, glowing Convergence Orbs appear in missions. They give 5,000 Focus right away and multiply the conversion by ten for 45 seconds.
• An Affinity Booster (e.g. “3 Day Affinity Booster”) also boosts your Focus.
• You cannot remove a lens. Installing a new one destroys the old one.

Good places to farm Focus:

• Sanctuary Onslaught and its Elite version with Cephalon Simaris (after the quest “The New Strange”): lots of enemies in a short time. The Elite version needs a rank 30 Warframe.
• The Zariman and the Circuit in Duviri: every Thrax Centurion and Thrax Legatus gives the whole squad 2,500 Focus for the active school. Void Cascade spawns especially many of them.
• Eidolon hunts: You convert the shards into Focus on the Focus screen. They do not count toward the daily cap. Details in Eidolon hunts: Teralyst, Gantulyst and Hydrolyst.

Shard	Focus
Eidolon Parçası	2,500
Brilliant Eidolon Shard	25,000
Radiant Eidolon Shard	40,000

• An ability has four ranks. The further out it sits in the tree, the more it costs: the central ability costs 380,000 Focus to max, the outermost ones 1,180,000 each.
• Maxing a whole school costs about 9 million Focus. That is a long-term goal, not a weekend project.
• Each school has two Waybounds. Once one is fully upgraded, you unbind it for 750,000 Focus and one Brilliant Eidolon Shard. After that it works in every school.
• Waybounds raise the Operator’s base stats, such as health and armor (Vazarin), speed (Naramon), energy (Zenurik and Madurai) or the self-revive Last Gasp (Unairu).

After the quest “The Old Peace”, Marie Leroux in the Sanctum Anatomica sells you a Tektolyst Artifact for each school. Each one costs 150 Lyroic Bridge, 150 Ren Hypercore and 150 Ascaris Prime. You need to have that school unlocked first.

• The artifact unlocks a Tauron Strike, the third Operator ability. Your Operator summons the Warframe, which performs a powerful attack with the artifact weapon.
• The weapons: Thara (bow, Madurai), Nidri (staff, Vazarin), Vexoric (sword, Naramon), Cogron (hammer, Unairu) and Lorak (grimoire, Zenurik).
• Each artifact adds five new abilities to the tree. They cost Focus plus the three resources above.
• The Tauron Strike charges through kills. Convergence Orbs speed this up a lot, and each lens on your gear adds 10% more charge.
• With a Tauron Strike unlocked, orbs keep spawning after the daily cap. They no longer give Focus, but still charge the Strike.

An Amp has three parts: Prism (primary fire), Scaffold (secondary fire) and Brace (energy and stats). You buy the blueprints with standing from Onkko of the Quills in Cetus and from Little Duck of Vox Solaris in Fortuna. You can freely combine parts from both vendors.

• You get your first Amp for free the first time you talk to the Quills. It is weak, so build a better one soon.
• Once your Amp reaches rank 30, you can gild it for 5,000 standing. You need the Adherent rank with the Quills or Hand with Vox Solaris. Only then does it give Mastery, accept a Focus Lens and take Arcanes.
• The Sirocco is the Drifter’s Amp. You get it already gilded after “The New War”. More copies are sold by Cephalon Simaris.
• Magus Arcanes boost the Operator, for example Magus Elevate or Magus Repair. You buy them ready-made from Onkko and Little Duck.
• Virtuos Arcanes go on the Amp and are sold by the Quills and Vox Solaris. Eternal Amp Arcanes, such as Eternal Eradicate, come from the Zariman.
• A second Arcane slot on the Amp is opened by the Amp Arcane Adapter from Cavalero (Holdfasts, rank 5, 20,000 standing).

In “The Duviri Paradox” you play the Drifter in Duviri. There they fight with a melee weapon and the Sirocco, use cooldowns instead of energy, and improve through their own Intrinsics. Read Duviri and the Circuit to learn how those work.

• After the quest “The New War”, a toggle at the top right of the Operator menu lets you choose whether you play the Operator or the Drifter in missions.
• Both use the same Focus schools, but each can carry their own Amp and Arcanes. That gives you two setups, for example one for Eidolons and one for the Zariman.
• On the Drifter every Amp looks like a pistol, but it behaves exactly as it does on the Operator.
• In Höllvania you always play the Drifter, no matter what you have selected.

1. 01

   Do the quests

   “The Second Dream”, “The War Within” and “Saya’s Vigil”. Only then is the Operator truly playable. See Quest order: which quest when? for the right order.

2. 02

   Pick your first school on purpose

   If in doubt, Zenurik for energy or Madurai for damage. Neither is a mistake, and you can add the other schools later.

3. 03

   Get lenses

   Buy the Greater Focus Lens blueprint for credits in the Market. Install the lens on your favorite Warframe once it hits rank 30.

4. 04

   Core abilities first

   Start with the passive abilities of your school that help in every mission, such as Inner Might for Zenurik or Stone Skin for Unairu. The active Operator abilities come after that.

5. 05

   Build a better Amp

   Rank up with the Quills, build a stronger Amp and gild it. Vox Solaris and their parts come later.

6. 06

   Grab Focus every day

   Play missions with lots of enemies and pick up the Convergence Orbs. Later, Eidolons help because their shards bypass the daily cap.