Warframe Guide – Everything About Riven Mods

Whether you have just finished The War Within, completed a Sortie, or got fragments from a Requiem relic, you might have come across a strange purple mod. You get your first one from completing The War Within questline, but what does it do? Why does it not have any stats tied to it and has an unlock requirement? This guide will cover the how’s and what’s of Rivens: what they are, what they do, and how to obtain them. If you can complete the challenge associated with them, you can very well be awarded one of the strongest mods in the game.

Riven mods are randomly generated mods that can only be equipped by one weapon family. Almost everything on them is randomly generated: the weapon it works on, the polarity, the mastery rank requirement to use it, the stats and the percentages of those stats. Before you can use it, however, you will need to unveil the mod. When you acquire a Riven (which we will get to in a minute), a challenge will be present and a weapon archetype that the mod can be applied to – rifle, secondary, shotguns, archgun, companion weapons, and melee. You must equip the mod on that corresponding weapon type, otherwise completing the challenge will not unveil the Riven. These challenges can be as trivial as killing enemies, or as complex as synthesizing a Simaris target without taking damage using no abilities or traps with a hobbled dragon key equipped. These can get rather time consuming, so if the challenge can be done in coop (some are restricted to solo) find a team that can help you.

Once the challenge has been complete, your equipped veiled Riven will become unveiled, revealing the weapon it is usable on, its polarity, mastery rank requirement, and the stats it changes on your weapon. The stats that can roll on a Riven are generally modifiers you have seen before: critical chance and damage, multishot, elemental damage of a specific type, ammo capacity, et cetera. What differentiates Riven mods from the rest, however, is the percentages on these stats and how many a Riven can come with. Rivens can have no more than 3 positive traits and 1 negative trait at a time, and the percentages on those traits is determined by the Rivens disposition.

Every weapon in Warframe comes with a Riven disposition that can be viewed if you own a Riven for said weapon. The disposition determines the magnitude of the percentages on those Rivens. In laymen’s terms, higher Riven dispositions equals stronger Rivens. Weapons that are weaker than meta picks typically have high dispositions. Note that weapon families – gear that shares the same (an example being Boltor and Boltor Prime) – share the same Riven disposition.

It is unlikely you will get a desirable Riven straight out of the gate. A negative might prevent your gun from doing damage, or make the magazine capacity literally zero. When this happens, you can reroll your Riven using a resource called Kuva. Kuva can be obtained through Kuva Floods and Siphons found on planets near the Kuva Fortress. A survival node, Taveuni, can also provide Kuva. The amount of Kuva obtained from any of these activities is increased with a resource booster and Smeeta Kavat’s charm buff, so I would recommend using at least a resource booster if you are committed to farming vast amounts of it.

Rerolling a Riven will change the positive and negative stats only. It will not affect the weapon, polarity, or mastery rank lock tied to the mod. While rerolling, you can choose to keep your current roll or take the new one. Note that the first 10 rolls of a Riven will cost less Kuva than rolls afterwards.

You can acquire Rivens as a reward from daily Sorties, shards from Requiem relics, archgun Rivens from Arbitration Honors, and companion weapon Rivens from Cephalon Simaris. They are also sometimes rewarded from tactical alerts and Gift of the Lotus alerts. Requiem relics are obtained from Kuva Floods and Siphons with a 100% and 50% chance of dropping respectively. If you have a stockpile of Rivens pleading to be released, you can trade them with other players. Not only can you sell them to make platinum, Warframe’s paid currency, but you can purchase them from other players if you fancy a certain weapon.

That’s all there is to Riven mods. While they are a complicated system with plenty of moving parts, these mods provide a significant power boost to your arsenal. While not required for any activities, Riven mods can make your favorite weapons more competitive for the hardest content available. Warframe is a free-to-play game available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.