Mods & Your Arsenal

Mods are where nearly all of your power comes from. An unmodded weapon at Mastery Rank 20 is weaker than a well modded starter weapon. This section covers where they come from; the Damage Mechanics group covers how they combine.

Where Mods Come From

Upgrading Mods

Ranking a Mod up costs Endo and Credits, and raises both its effect and its drain. A maxed Serration is +165% damage at 14 drain, so a fully upgraded Mod is not automatically the right choice while your capacity is tight.

Void Relics and Prime Gear

Void Relics are the only source of Prime equipment. To open one, run a Void Fissure mission with the Relic equipped, collect 10 Reactant from the corrupted enemies, and choose a reward at the end. In a squad you see all four rewards and may pick any of them, which makes public Fissure runs meaningfully better than solo.

• ◆Duplicate Prime parts can be sold at any relay for Orokin Ducats, then spent with Baro Ki'Teer.
• ◆Prime parts are the standard thing new players trade for Platinum.
• ◆Forma blueprints are a common Relic reward, which is where your early Forma will come from.
• ◆Aya is the currency that buys Relics for Primes no longer in rotation. Our Aya farming guide covers where it drops.

Orokin Reactors, Catalysts and Forma

A Worked Example

All of the above is easier to see on a real build than to read in the abstract. This is a general purpose early game primary template, using Mods you can realistically have in your first few hours:

Notice the shape rather than the exact Mods. Serration is the base damage, Split Chamber the multishot, Vital Sense and Critical Delay the critical stats, and Speed Trigger the fire rate. Those are five different categories, which is why they multiply with each other instead of adding into one bracket. That rule is the subject of How Mods Scale Damage.

The three elemental Mods are the interesting part. Malignant Force is Toxin and Rime Rounds is Cold, and in that slot order they combine into Viral, which leaves the Heat from Thermite Rounds standing on its own. That is the Viral and Heat pairing, assembled out of Mods a new player can realistically own.