It’s a bit of a grind to complete 10 Nightmare missions in Warframe for the Night Terror weekly challenge. Even if it does get you the 7000 standing bonus of an elite task. But there are ways to speed up the process — and maybe even earn some mods you don’t already have in the process! Let’s take a look at the Night Terror and the best Warframe Nightmare missions to clear.
Let’s get this part out of the way for new players: Where do you find Nightmare missions in Warframe? Technically the answer is on your star map. You can find them on nearly any planet, moon, or satellite in the Origin System. That is to say they’re special, harder versions of existing missions. Enemies will be a tiny bit tougher and the mission itself will include one or more debuffs to make things interesting. Though they’re not nearly as hard as their name suggests. Nightmare missions are a bit of a holdover from the early days of Warframe.
Nowadays, most players have access to gear, frames, weapons, and tactics that trivialize Nightmare missions. The “hard” part is mostly just clearing them quickly. You could thumb through every node on your map looking for one you like. Nightmare missions appear as a semi-circle brushstroke within a red diamond. When you select the mission, you’ll have the choice to complete its normal variant or the slightly tougher Nightmare option.
The more direct solution is to just look at your Alerts. It’s the mission tab in the upper-right of your screen when you sit down at the map. The Alerts tab is usually the first or second (if you have any active quests) in the bar. From there, you’ll see a dropdown list of activities including the currently active Arbitration, Clem’s mission, Maroo’s treasure hunt, and Kuva Siphons. Way at the bottom is the list of currently active Nightmare missions.
Each Nightmare is only active for a limited time before it expires. After which a new Nightmare will appear somewhere else in the system. So if you don’t like your options, you can always wait. Though I highly recommend jumping into any Capture or Exterminate missions that are available — regardless of the modifier. These are two of the absolute fastest and easiest missions to complete in Warframe and will speed up your Night Terror Nightwave completion considerably. Sabotage, Rescue, and even simple Assassination missions are also good options.
As for modifiers, Death Detonation, Vampire Mode, No Shield Mode, and Low Gravity Mode are all easy debuffs to contend with. No Shield Mode is easily circumvented with tanky, health-oriented Warframes: like Rhino, Valkyr, Inaros, Nidus, and Chroma. Vampire Mode isn’t as scary as it sounds, either. You lose health over time, yes, but only very slowly. Plus enemies drop tons of restoratives to counter the drain. Low Gravity does exactly what it says (which barely matters) and Death Detonation simply makes enemies explode on defeat. So long as you use a gun, you’ll barely notice.
Energy Drain mode is the only truly nasty modifier. It makes it nearly impossible to use abilities. That’s usually a huge problem in Warframe — where defensive and crowd controlling skills are frequently what keep you alive. Not to mention you won’t be able to use offensive skills to clear Exterminate missions quickly. Nor speed powers to boost through Capture.
One last thing to consider is location. Nightmare missions are the primary source of, well, Nightmare Mods. These special add-ons can be vital to many Warframe and weapon builds. Thankfully, nearly all of them have pretty reasonable drop rates.
The two exceptions are Blaze and Hammer Shot. These weapon mods have just over a one percent drop chance on Nightmare missions across Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Luckily these are also the easiest planets out of the bunch. So prioritize Nightmare missions across those worlds if you can — even if you already have Hammer Shot and/or Blaze. Both items sell for a pretty penny (i.e. Platinum) on the in-game trade channel. Even after all these years, people have difficulty acquiring them on their own.
All these tips together should make your Night Terror challenge go a lot more smoothly. Hell, they should help you farm Nightmare Mods going forward, if you want to chase those precious weapon boosts. Best of luck on filling out the rest of your Nightwave ranks in the meantime!
