The best Cyte-09 build in Warframe

Warframe: 1999 doesn’t just have new content; there’s a new Warframe, too. It’s still early days with the community figuring out Cyte-09, but he’s shaping up to be quite powerful.

You should also check out 1999’s new arcanes, the Nyx rework, and make sure you know how to actually acquire Cyte-09. But if you’re ready to build, here’s how we kitted out the latest Warframe.

The top Cyte-09 build in Warframe right now

While one of Cyte-09’s abilities is an Exalted Weapon, a sniper rifle, that playstyle isn’t to everyone’s taste, so this build subsumes off this particular ability to turn Cyte-09 into a capable weapons platform that can work with just about any weapon you’ve got if you can hit weak points.

The premise of this build is using Resupply to buff your weapon with corrosive elemental damage, using Nourish to buff your weapon with viral elemental damage for a nasty elemental combination, and deploying your antennas with Seek to increase weak point damage for ultra-efficient killing.

All the while, you’ll keep Evade active to stay invisible for as long as you can keep earning weak point kills. To achieve this, we’re focusing on strength for more damage through Resupply and Nourish as well as the duration to make staying permanently invisible as easy as possible.

Arcanes: Molt Efficiency and Molt Augmented (or Arcane Crepuscular)

Aura: Growing Power

Exilus: Power Drift

Mods:

• Primed Flow
• Blind Rage
• Narrow Minded
• Augur Reach
• Umbral Intensify
• Primed Continuity
• Streamline
• Stretch

You can swap Umbral Intensify with Archon Intensify, but keep in mind that the extra strength of the Archon version will only apply when you regain health. Cyte-09 does heal itself upon weak point kills when invisible, but you’ll need to be damaged and actually restore health for it to count.

Arcane Crepuscular is a new arcane that looks like it’ll replace Molt Augmented quite nicely, but it requires quite a bit of standing with the new 1999 syndicate to acquire. You can trade for it, but at the time of writing, it’s quite expensive. Molt Augmented will work just fine, though.

Best Archon Shards for Cyte-09

Cyte-09 isn’t terribly hungry for Archon Shards, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be a meaningful improvement over his unsharded form. Naturally, Tauforged Shards are ideal, but regular shards will work just fine since we aren’t trying to hit a specific breakpoint here.

More strength will translate directly to more damage, so Crimson Shards is an option, but we wouldn’t recommend using too many of those, as you already will do tons of damage. Accordingly, we suggest using Archon Shards to make playing Cyte-09 more comfortable with the following:

• 2 Amber Archon Shards: + Parkour Velocity
• 1 Amber Archon Shard: + Spawn Energy
• 1 Amber Archon Shard: + Casting Speed
• 1 Crimson Archon Shard: + Ability Strength

Spawn energy means you’ll be able to pop all your abilities immediately and focus on weak point kills to stay invisible, while parkour velocity and casting speed make moving around and using your abilities a lot quicker. Ability strength means you can replace Power Drift with another Exilus mod.

How to play Cyte-09 in Warframe

Cyte-09’s kit is built around getting weak point kills. Weak point kills extend the duration of your Evade invisibility skill, and Cyte-09’s passive increases his critical chance with every weak point kill. Plus, Cyte-09’s placeable antennas with Seek increase the weak point damage you do.

So, the basic idea here is to pop your Evade to go invisible, which is incredibly important to maintain as you will die very quickly without it active, and then to use Nourish, Resupply, and Seek to make getting weak point kills as easy as can be, no matter how tough your foes are.

Keep in mind that Seek will highlight enemy weak points and give you enough punch through to shoot through walls, too. Since this build runs Nourish for viral damage, using Resupply to add corrosive damage is a nightmarish combination for enemies, but any element can reasonably work.

The one thing to keep in mind is survivability. Cyte-09 is effectively immortal in areas with lots of enemies for potential weak point kills, but if you can’t keep that pace up, Evade has a minute-long cooldown that can put you in a dangerous situation if it expires too quickly. Keep this in mind.

If you don’t mind sniping, keeping Cyte-09’s Neutralize Exalted Weapon ability is a fine option. This sniper excels at getting weak-point kills, so staying invisible will be easy. However, you may find it difficult to deal with large groups of enemies when using a sniper rifle, but your mileage may vary.