The Old Peace, Warframe’s next big story expansion, is just around the corner. Launching on December 10, 2025, on all platforms, it brings with it a whole new galaxy’s worth of new features like a new game mode, an expansion of the Focus School system, new enemy factions, and a new Warframe. Additionally, players will need to have completed up to The Lotus Eaters quest in order to access The Old Peace at launch.
“We know how important it is to shake things up for a game that’s been around for 12 plus years,” said Community Director Megan Everett in a release to the press, and on paper, The Old Peace promises just that. Let’s look at what’s coming in a little more detail.
Get BWT in your inbox!
Get BWT in your inbox!
The Old Peace
The titular quest will put The Operator and The Lotus back on the trail of Dr. Entrati, Warframe’s current bugaboo, who is a time-traveling mixture of The Wizard of Oz and The Dark Tower’s Man in Black, both a step ahead of the protagonists and the hidden hand that has had a finger in everything they meet.
Though unclear so far, players will return to Tau, a solar system that has loomed over Warframe’s background lore for quite some time. The hour-ish long cinematic quest will detail a world where Orokin and Sentients lived in harmony right up to the point where that tranquility collapses and plunges its people into endless war.
New Warframe Expansion, New Game Modes
Post-quest, you will have access to two different new game modes – The Descendia and The Perita Rebellion. If you return to the Sanctum Anatomica on Deimos, you’ll see a new door to La Cathedrale, the prison of three characters known as The Devil’s Triad. They need The Drifter’s help to get to the bottom of The Descendia, literally.
The Descendia is a 21-floor tower, each floor its own challenge, from standard exterminate missions to a race against time, to battles in necramech suits. The gauntlet changes weekly, with rewards to be earned at each of 3 checkpoints, and of course, at the bottom.
The Perita Rebellion is a dive into The Operator’s ancient memories of the war in Tau. You select one of three bosses to fight – called recollections – and then dive into the warzone of the Perita Moon.
While there, you will have 12 minutes to explore the area, completing as many quests as possible, each growing your power to get you prepared for the final fight. When the time is up, you get dragged to the boss. It’s a big, multistaged fight more akin to a single-player action game than anything that’s been seen in Warframe before.
These grindable play modes replace the regular syndicate-style grinds of expansions past, a welcome switch-up for long-time players.
Skipping Ahead
If you’ve read all of that and thought, “wow, that seems cool, but I have a lot of content to do before The Lotus Eaters, so I guess I can’t play it,” Digital Extremes has good news for you. Newer players will have the option to participate in the new content in a limited capacity.
Players with mastery rank 10 or lower can be taxied into The Perita Rebellion or The Decendia by more veteran players, while players with higher mastery ranks can queue up into matchmade games themselves. This is just for the gameplay and no story content, but of course, there’s potential for spoilers by simply exposing yourself to the new content.
The plan right now is to keep this as a feature going forward, but the possibility of applying it to previous updates’ content isn’t completely off the table. “We would probably go back to 1999 if it’s successful,” said Game Director Rebecca Ford in a Q&A session for the press earlier in the week, admitting that they don’t have a real gauge to determine success internally at the moment.
This is a very welcome feature. I know personally, chatting with people about Warframe 1999 a year ago was always a two-stage conversation, starting with explaining to them how cool of a concept it was, and then watching the light leave their face when it was clear that they had to do 50 hours of content before they could even sniff the pizza from the retrofuture cybermall.
The Old Peace Brings New Warframe and New Weapon Type
The 63rd Warframe, Uriel, makes his debut in The Old Peace. The Orokin commander can summon conscripted demons to do his bidding and free fly around spaces like a comet from Hell. DE is being cagey on any more specifics about him right now, but the two abilities revealed so far already put him in a very unique space among his peers.
Uriel’s signature devil bayonet, Vinquibus, is actually an entirely new class of weapon that is both a melee and ranged weapon, switching grips when players switch modes. Each role has their own mod sections, but they both share the same polarity and formas, so upgrading this weapon to be good at both functions might be an expensive challenge.
New protoframes for Uriel, Harrow, and Wisp will launch as well, taking the form of The Devil’s Triad’s Roathe, Father Leon, and Sister Marie (who will also be romanceable additions to the game’s expanded KIM system).
New System Expansions and QoL Updates
A long-requested update to the cosmetic options for The Operator/Drifter will launch with The Old Peace expansion, including completely redone hair and face options, and new features like makeup and body types. Based on the preview from Devstream 190, it truly is a night-and-day effect on this feature.
Tauron Strikes are new additions to the Focus School system, giving The Operator a big offensive super move based on their school (see the big ass sword from the world premiere trailer of The Old Peace from TennoCon 2025. These come from so-called tektolyst artifacts, weapons from the old Tau war once lost to time. Players can rebuild them with resources gained in the Perita Rebellion game mode, and they are weapons that can be upgraded with unique sets of mods.
Big time Warframe updates that move the story forward and adds big new features are few and far between. I’m excited for another big expansion to take a bite out of, and very curious to see how The Old Peace stacks up against last year’s wildly popular 1999.
Its leaning way back into its own hard, far-future sci-fi setting, while also riffing on it with demonic and infernal level and warframe visuals inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy.
The Old Peace launches December 10, 2025, on PlayStation 5 | 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, PC (via Steam), Xbox One, and iOS.
