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Warframe – Everything You Need To Know About Arbitrations

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Arbitrations are a unique form of Alert mission in Warframe. These missions take the form of elite level endless missions with modifiers that increase the difficulty. Once you have Arbitrations unlocked, they will be displayed in the Operation window. Only one Arbitration can be active at a time, and it will change on an hourly basis.

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How To Access Arbitrations

To gain access to Arbitrations, you need to have completed all available missions on the Star Chart at least once. The only exceptions to this are the Mutalist Alad V and the Jordas Golem nodes. If you wish to check which nodes you still have to complete, you can do so by speaking to the Arbiters of Hexis on any of the Relays.

The mission themselves have a difficulty rating of 60-80, and will only occur on nodes that usually host endless mission types. These include Defense, Excavation, Survival, Interception, Defection, or Infested Salvage missions.

Once you have access to them, you can launch Abritration missions from the Alerts menu in the Navigation screen.

Arbitration Rules

Arbitrations are not like other missions and follow their own rules, so make sure you are aware of them before you take on one of these high difficulty missions. These rules are as follows.

  • You cannot self-revive, or revive other players. There is no bleed timer, so once you lose all your HP, you instantly die.
  • Other players can revive you by collecting Resurgence Tokens that drop from Arbitration Drones. These only begin to drop when a player ties.
  • They need to bring five of the tokens to the capsule that will spawn on your body when you die to revive you.
  • While carrying these tokens, you suffer a debuff that reduces health, shields, and drains energy.
  • The reward rotation is ABCC, this replaces the AABC rotation of regular missions and allows you to get better loot for your efforts. Once the rotation hits C, it stays there until you leave, it will not cycle back to A or B.
  • The rotations have double the duration of regular missions, so will give rewards every 10 minutes instead of every 5 minutes.
  • On Survival missions, the life support capsules will only provide 75% of their usual value.
  • On Interception, the enemy towers will fill twice as fast as usual.
  • Defense missions will have a roaming NPC, much like on Sortie Defense missions.
  • On Excavation, the required defense time is extended from 100 seconds to 180 seconds.
  • On Defection, the rescue target cannot be revived.
  • On Infested Salvage, the consoles only have half their usual health.
  • Arbitration Shield Drones can spawn on all missions. They will make nearby enemies units immune to all damage and Warframe abilities. When they are destroyed, they will explode with a large AoE, doing Blast damage to nearby enemies.
  • Each mission will grant you a random +300% Ability Strength Bonus, and a +300% Damage bonus to a random Warframe and Weapon. This can be different for each player.

Arbitration Rewards

You can find the potential drops for each Rotation below. Remember, the Rotation pattern is A-B-C-C, and it does not reset. Once you hit Rotation C, it will stay there until you leave.

Rotation ARotation BRotation C
900 Endo1200 Endo1500 Endo
Ayatan Ayr SculptureAyatan Piv SculptureAyatan Orta Sculpture
Ayatan Sah SculptureAyatan Vaya Sculpture3 Vitus Essence
Ayatan Valana Sculpture3 Vitus EssenceSeeding Step Ephemera Blueprint
3 Vitus EssenceArcane Blade ChargerArcane Blade Charger
Arcane BodyguardArcane BodyguardArcane Pistoleer
Arcane PistoleerArcane Primary ChargerArcane Primary Charger
Arcane TankerAdaptationArcane Tanker
AdaptationCombat DisciplineAura Forma Blueprint
AerodynamicShepherdCombat Discipline
Combat DisciplineAura Forma BlueprintMelee Guidance
Aura Forma BlueprintSwift Momentum

One of the best bits of advice I can give is to use the Warframe and Weapon that get the bonus when you can. The additional damage will make the earlier waves trivial, and allow you to run the mission for much longer when the difficulty ramps up.

If you are worried about staying alive, then classic tank options inlcude Rhino, Inaros, and Nidus. That’s is about all you need to know about Arbitrations, it’s really about getting stuck into the mode and learning from experience.


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Author
Image of Aidan O'Brien
Aidan O'Brien
Aidan O'Brien has been playing games for over three decades and has been writing about them for five years. When not getting stomped on by the creations of Hidetaka Miyazaki, he enjoys spending too much time in Warframe, Destiny 2 and any other ARPG with a solid grind. When not writing, he is doing inexplicable behind-the-scenes magic for GAMURS Group.