Railjack Basics

 



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/Empyrean
https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Railjack