You
want a Railjack or you've received your Railjack, but you're confused
about what to do with it? There is a lot of stuff that goes into
operating your own Railjack, so let me help you out a little with it.
First and foremost, if you haven't gotten it yet, you need to do the
Rising Tide quest and The Archwing quest done. After that, head over to
your dojo's Dry Dock and let's get to building!
Railjack missions are basically everything you know, but out in space.
There's spy, survival, defense, pretty much everything we are exposed to
on the ground is here. You go in, kill a bunch of enemy fighter ships
and the bigger crewships, do the other objective(s), and then move on to
the next mission. Sounds easy enough, but it gets a bit more technical
from the start.
One
of the things you need to do as a Railjack owner is keep your Railjack
updated and upgrade as needed. There will be a point where you realize
that your are outclassed by the enemy ships and barely make it out of a
mission. If that happens, don't fret. During your missions, you
collect a lot of materials used to craft various upgrades, including
better shielding, better guns, just better everything. It can take a
lot of resources to get these upgrades, but trust me when I say this:
it's worth it. Ideally, you will want to aim for the tier 3 items.
While you're sifting through the various parts that are collected, you
might notice that some have different numbers than another, yet have the
same name. Pay attention to this! For example, I have 2 Lavan Photor
Mk 3 that have different stats as shown below. Depending on what you
are wanting for your Railjack, this can make or break your enjoyment.
 |
| A side by side comparison for the 2 Lavan Photor MK IIIs |
Keep
in mind that you DO HAVE the ability to do Fusion on parts here. If
you're familiar with Kuva weapons and their Valence Fusion, this is
almost exactly the same thing. The only difference with this and the
Kuva weapons is that when fused, it keeps the better stats during the
merge but gives you the choice of the bonus to keep.
 |
| 2 different examples I've come across while fusing |
Your
Plexus should look familiar, so not much of an explanation here.
However, there are actually 3 separate tabs that you need to work on.
Each one of these, much like the upgraded parts for your Railjack
mentioned earlier, can make or break your enjoyment. Pay attention to
matching symbols for the mods in the Battle and Tactical sections.
These feel a little limited BUT they do offer a lot of extra pew pew
power. Build accordingly.
 |
| The arrows point to the 3 different tabs and the red circle is for the new symbols |
Intrinsics
are essentially the standing for the Railjack missions. It takes quite
a bit of time to get these maxed out (as of this writing, I totally
forgot that I haven't completed it so I'm working on that now), but I do
recommend getting them upgraded fully. I do want to suggest that you
read everything in each section when you are upgrading the standing.
There are some really nice perks the higher the tiers that can help
tremendously for harder, possibly solo, missions. Command, Gunnery, and
Tactical are ones I highly recommend further advancement than the
others when starting out. My reasoning is as follows:
- Command Rank 5 unlocks the third and final crew member NPC, which helps with the Railjack overall.
- Command
Rank 7 allows you to redistribute the points to your crew members, just
in case you did and oopsie and don't want to hire another NPC in it's
place.
- Gunnery Rank 2 gives the full 360 degree combat engagement for the turrets, which makes fighting WAY easier for everyone aboard the Railjack.
- Tactical Rank 3 allows you to fast travel within the Railjack. This means that you can teleport to the forge or to areas that need to be fixed quickly.
- Tactical
Rank 4 gives you the recall option back to the Railjack from within
another ship. This comes in super handy when you're really far into a
tileset, the Railjack is taking a lot of damage, and in order to save
the mission from failing, you just teleport back to the Railjack. This
is also great to pull a recall at the extraction door in some missions.
 |
| Almost done! |
You
get to employ NPC crewmates! Head over to Fortuna to pick up 3 of them
and as you experience more Railjack missions, the more you'll figure
out what you want. I do want to suggest that you focus on gunnery,
repair, and combat mostly. Endurance is good to get as well, but it
won't hurt to put it on the side. I don't suggest getting anyone that
is proficient or high in Piloting because you'll be the pilot most of
the time.
 |
| My current crew members |
What
can you do while you're in one of these missions? There's actually
quite a few things: pilot the Railjack, gun the side artillery, act as
the engineer, dispatched the boarding parties, fix the hazards that
occur with the boarding parties, go out into space and fight the
enemies, and board an enemy crewship then either pilot it or destroy it
(this also applies to outposts). Luckily, if you destroy the crewship,
you get jettisoned back into space without taking damage from the
explosion. These missions can get pretty overwhelming at first, but as
you continue your space seafaring adventures, it'll start feeling like
second nature.
References:
https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Railjack