In Warframe, Nitain Extract is one of the more limited rare resources one can acquire. And that’s saying something in a game where farming crafting materials, blueprints, and parts is the chief way to progress. On the bright side, this once very elusive item is now a bit easier to acquire than it used to be thanks to the Nightwave “battle pass” which is free to all players. So, let’s take a (very quick) look at how to get Nitain Extract in Warframe!
As alluded to above, Nitain Extract is most easily available through Nightwave: the de facto battle pass found in Warframe. Though in this case “battle pass” simply refers to a series of weekly and daily challenges available to all players. It’s on a seasonal rotation like most battle passes, but unlike most games, you do not need to purchase anything with real money or any other currency to activate Nightwave. It’s totally free and automatically available to all players.
You can access Nightwave — along with its challenges, rewards, and “cred offerings” (i.e. the Nightwave shop) — in one of two ways.
Getting Nitain Extract Through Nightwave
The first is to simply bring up the basic in-game menu! At the bottom-right corner of the screen, you should see a rectangular Nightwave button, along with whatever the current season of Nightwave is called. Oftentimes the subtitle is just “Intermission,” “Nora’s Choice,” or “Nora’s Mix,” followed by the descriptor “Vol. 1” and so on. This simply indicates the name of the current ongoing story in Nightwave (assuming there is one at all during that particular season). Whatever the storyline, though, you should always have access to Nitain Extract.
The second way to access Nightwave is from the star map. The same Nightwave button will appear in the same bottom-right corner of the screen. If you don’t see it, that’s because you have Resource Drones selected instead. You can flip back to Nightwave (and potentially your Kuva Lich or Sister of Parvos) by clicking the button “Episode Status” in the same quadrant of the screen. Then, when you want to flip back to Resource Drones, you can do so by clicking the “Resource Drones” button. Pretty simple!
By default, opening the Nightwave menu should show you a page featuring the currently available Nightwave challenges beneath a series of ranks and the rewards each one offers. Every challenge awards experience points that level you up along those tiers — up to a maximum rank of 30. Every one of these ranks requires 10,000 XP to reach, but some challenges can award you up to 7,000 XP apiece, meaning it’s not too terribly difficult to level up quickly.
You can find Nitain Extract by pressing yet another button in the bottom-right corner of this screen — which only appears when you open the Nightwave menu. Press the button “Cred Offerings” to see what Nora Night (the quest-giver for Nightwave) has in stock for you to buy.
Many of the Cred Offerings are purely cosmetic. A few — like Nitain Extract — are more directly useful. And, sure enough, you can find the crafting material near the top of the Cred Offerings store page. It’s the large, silver cannister with the blue circle in the center. It’s also worth noting that this is a bundle of five units of Nitain Extract. Don’t buy more than you need, as the currency used to buy Nitain Extract can also earn you Orokin Reactors and Orokin Catalysts instead!
The currency in question is “cred.” The exact name of the currency changes slightly with each season of Nightwave. The principle always remains the same, however. Just look at the “Reward Tiers” section of the Nightwave menu. If you hover over the available rewards, the rectangular-looking chip item will be labeled as some kind of cred — “Nora’s Mix Vol. 3” Cred in the example screenshot above.
Like the crafting material, this currency also comes in large bundles. Most of the tier rewards should give you 50 cred or more with some giving 150. Just one of these bundles is more than enough to get you a single stack of Nitain Extract (which costs 15 cred for each bundle of five at the time this article is being written). Meaning that the very first reward for Nora’s Mix Vol. 3 gives out enough cred to buy a total of 50 Nitain Extract. That’s way more than most players will probably want or need, so make sure to save some of the cred for those reactors, catalysts, or something else you want from Nora’s store.
More Ways to Get Nitain Extract in Warframe
There are a handful of other ways to obtain Nitain Extract in Warframe that don’t involve Nightwave directly. Though they’re far, far less reliable than this 100 percent guaranteed method.
The first is through battling certain bosses. Both the Zealoid Prelate and Wolf of Saturn Six have an extremely miniscule chance to drop Nitain Extract on death. The upside is that the Zealoid Prelate can be fought over and over again; they’re a normal “Assassination” target found on the Exequias node of Deimos. Players can run and rerun the mission over and over again if they so choose. In which case you’ll have infinite chances to acquire free Nitain Extract.
The Wolf is a bit trickier. Like the prelate, he was previously a special event boss also tied to Nightwave. Now, you can still draw him out using Wolf Beacons (which are also purchased from the Nightwave store using cred) or you can wait for him to become available during Kahl-175’s weekly “Break Narmer” missions.
Note that this requires you to have completed “The New War” cinematic quest, which is quite deep into the overarching Warframe storyline. The Wolf of Saturn Six is also exclusive the Prison Break mission archetype — which only has a one-in-three-chance of being the available mission with Kahl each week. If you really want to farm bosses for Nitain, you’re probably better off hunting the Zealoid Prelate instead.
Other mission types with a tiny chance of dropping Nitain Extract include Exterminate nodes on the Jupiter, Lua, and the Kuva Fortress. Though you specifically need to open all three of the hidden supply caches found in each of these missions for any (once again very small) chance to acquire the resource. The same goes for opening all three hidden caches on the following Sabotage missions:
- Ishtar, Venus
- Terminus, Mercury
- Gradivus, Mars
- Ker, Ceres
- Thon, Ceres
- Adrastea, Jupiter
- Calypso, Saturn
- Rusalka, Sedna
- Cypress, Pluto
- Marduk, The Void
- Stribog, The Void
These are all technically “infinitely farmable” mission types, but opening secret resource caches is often both very time-consuming and very tedious. Not to mention the drop rate is still exceptionally low. If you’re just looking for Nitan Extract, I don’t recommend it. Though the caches can drop other rare and often very valuable items as well.
The final method for obtaining Nitain Extract has much better odds than either bosses or resource caches. The downside is that you need to wait for the Ghoul Purge: an event which occurs every few real-world weeks on The Plains of Eidolon open-world zone. Ghoul Purge bounties will sometimes offer Nitain Extract as a reward with a more than four percent drop rate. While that might seem low, it’s worth pointing out that the other methods listed in this section all have a less than one percent drop rate for comparison.
All of which is to basically say… You should really just spend that cred. The time it takes to get it elsewhere just isn’t worth it when getting it through Nightwave is quick, easy, and guaranteed.
And that’s it for collecting Nitain Extract in Warframe. We hope this guide helped those of you struggling to craft that Wukong or whatever else you might need. Best of luck finishing out your Nightwave challenges along the way!
