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Discover everything you need to know about Grendel guide in Warframe and how to craft it while progressing.
Grendel is a well-rounded Warframe that has unique abilities and tank capabilities, making him a strong choice for various game modes. He can also act as a support frame, buffing allies with energy and damage. He excels at spreading viral status and stripping enemy armor. His damage-dealing abilities make him a valuable asset in any team. Grendel is a popular choice for casual and hardcore players alike. He can roll into a ball, gaining speed and allowing him to use his abilities. Grendel can help you a lot in a tough encounter where you need a supportive ally. In our Warframe: Grendel Guide, we’ll discuss Grendel and what are the best builds along with a deep dive into its abilities.
Grendel in Warframe – Overview
Grendel in Warframe is well-known for his devouring abilities and provides buffs and healing through his unique Nourish ability. You can obtain his required components from exclusive mission nodes, which require Vitus Essences and, in turn, Arbitrations. He has the capability to consume the foes in his stomach, removing them from the battlefield. Grendel can also convert a stored enemy into a buff, providing different effects based on the buff chosen. However, this character requires a lot of energy to keep his abilities active. He can dominate enemies due to his rolling Pulverize and enemy-devouring Feast. His Regurgitate ability allows him to deal damage over the area as he vomits high-speed projectiles.
How To Craft Grendel in Warframe
Grendel can only be obtained even post to vary by obtaining his locator parts. These can be purchased from the Arbitration vendor for 25 Vitus Essence, making a total of 75 needed for all three Grendel locators. You need to play Arbitration missions and Special drones in these missions to get Vitus Essence. The first locator will be a 20-minute survival mission which must be completed to obtain the Grendel Neuroptics Blueprint. The second locator will unlock a 10-wave defense mission which will need to be completed to unlock the Grendel Chassis Blueprint. One thing to note is that each locator allows you to unlock a unique mission on Europa, such as Survival, Excavation, and Defense.
The final locator will unlock an Excavation mission, which will require 800 Chirotic to be completed for the mission to be completed. This allows you to unlock the Grendel Systems. All three of these missions strip any frame weapon or companion of mods equipped. This makes this more tedious than any other mission. Locators are only consumed after completing the evolution successfully, requiring the purchase of another locator to unlock once again. The squad host requires the locator, allowing them to invite other players to participate in the mission and complete it to receive the component reward. Each part takes around 24 hours to craft, and the Warframe itself takes 3 days. To unlock the Arbitration missions, you need to complete every mission on the Star Chart.
Grendel Blueprint
- 25,000 Credits
- 1 Grendel Neuroptics
- 1 Grendel Chassis
- 1 Grendel Systems
- 3 Orokin Cells
Grendel Neuroptics
- 15,000 Credits
- 2 Argon Crystals
- 5 Control Modules
- 3,500 Ferrite
- 3,800 Alloy Plate
Grendel Chassis
- 15,000 Credits
- 25 Condroc Wings
- 30 Kuaka Spinal Claws
- 20 Tralok Eyes
- 15 Murkray Liver
Grendel Systems
- 15,000 Credits
- 1,125 Circuits
- 10 Morphics
- 125 Fish Meat
- 100 Fish Oil
Grendel Endurance Mission Tips
Use Warframes like Hildryn with Blazing Pillage, Octavia with Resonator and Nocturne, or Zephyr with Tornadoes for crowd control and damage reduction, or Citrine with her Prismatic Gem ability. You can also bring heavy damage-dealing weapons and abilities like Octavia, a Sniper Rifle, and the Broken Scepter. Octavia’s Mallet allows it to reflect a large portion of incoming damage. Sniper Rifles can increase their damage potential.
This is an excellent choice for the player who prefers killing Eximus targets. You can also use Zephyr, which uses stationary Tornadoes for crowd control. Citrine has Prismatic Gem which is great for clearing enemies, especially Eximus units. Hildryn has Blazing Pillage augment and Elemental Ward that can make missions trivial to solo. She has a massive shield that provides additional defense in combat. Revenant, on the other hand, can deal solid damage by combining Reave and Enthrall. It’s best to bring a buddy, a beer, and an innate toxin weapon.
How To Craft Grendel Prime in Warframe
You can acquire the Grendel Prime by opening the Void Relics. These Relics have Grendel Prime components. Void Relics is opened in Fissure missions. It is also revealed as a random reward from the Relic’s loot table. You can upgrade the Void Relic to a higher quality to enhance the chance of getting an uncommon component. Grendel Prime Blueprints are found as rare drops from Axi-G11 relics, which are obtained from Void missions.
You can purchase relic packs using Steel Essence, a resource earned from completing Steel Path missions. It’s best to join a clan or find a squad to help with relic farming. Keep in mind that relic sharing can significantly speed up the process. You can craft them in your Warframe’s Foundry after obtaining the blueprints for Grendel Prime (Chassis, Neuro-Optics, Systems, and Helmet) from the relics. Grendel Prime is the variant of Grendel and it has bonus armor and energy.
Grendel Prime Blueprint
- Drop Source- Lith G8 (Rare)
- Crafting Costs
- 25,000 Credits
- 1 Grendel Prime Neuroptics
- 1 Grendel Prime Chassis
- 1 Grendel Prime Systems
- 5 Orokin Cells
Grendel Prime Neuroptics
- Drop Source- Meso B8 (Common)
- Crafting Costs
- 15,000 Credits
- 2 Argon Crystals
- 600 Cryotic
- 1,100 Circuits
- 4,975 Nano Spore
Grendel Prime Chassis
- Drop Source- Neo S18 (Uncommon)
- Crafting Costs
- 15,000 Credits
- 2 Tellurium
- 450 Plastids
- 1,425 Polymer Bundle
- 5,500 Alloy Plate
Grendel Prime Systems
- Drop Source- Axi G11 (Rare)
- Crafting Costs
- 15,000 Credits
- 2 Nitain Extract
- 3 Neurodes
- 1,250 Rubedo
- 3,800 Salvage
Grendel Abilities
Here are all the Grendel Abilities in Warframe.
Grendel
- Armor: 370
- Energy: 175
- Health: 1,095
- Shields: 95
- Sprint Speed: 0.95
Grendel Prime
- Armor: 400
- Energy: 200
- Health: 1,095
- Shields: 95
- Sprint Speed: 0.95
Passive
Each enemy consumed grants 250 bonus armor. This passive ability allows him to slowly digest the enemies he swallows via Feast. Each enemy still alive in Grendel’s belly passively grants him 250 armor to a maximum of 1,250 bonus armor at the five enemies. This armor is unaffected by mods that add it to your armor total after mods are accounted for.
Feast
- Drain- 25 Energy
- Radius- 25 Meters
- Damage- 500 Toxin
On cast, Grendel opens up his stomach and attempts to swallow any enemy he’s aiming at within range. There’s a very narrow cone on this ability, so you do need to aim at the enemies to scoop them up. If an enemy is held by another ability or immune to hard crowd control, such as due to Overguard, then it cannot be swallowed. While swallowed enemies appear on the griddle to a Unique UI indicating a type of consumed unit and how much health or Shields they have remaining.
Their hit points will drain at two percent of Max per second, meaning each enemy will be killed in at most 50 seconds. Usually, this will be quicker still as you can swallow enemies that are already damaged and deal additional damage to them through Grendel’s other abilities. To keep Grendel at full capacity, then we’ll require swallowing more than five enemies per 50 seconds. They usually won’t all conveniently die at the same time.
Since the rework, swallowed enemies have no drain on Grendel himself and instead,d they provide a 250 armor bonus per enemy in his gut up to a maximum of 1,250 armor. Considering Grendel only has a base 350 armor, even a couple of enemies can make a substantial difference to his defenses. Grendel can freely expel all enemies from his gut at any time by holding a casting Feast. This explosively dumps any remaining enemies in front of Grendel, dealing damage in an 8-meter-long cone to them and other enemies in the area.
How to Use
The damage according to the UI is 500 Toxin and Modified by your strength. However, it is also modified by the total enemy level of the units you’re ejecting. Except for the very first level on one enemy, every enemy level per unit increases the damage by 1/15th. This means that with five enemies swallowed, you deal one-third extra damage per level of the enemies. The 5 level 30 enemies, this means roughly 10 times the damage, and for 5 level 100 enemies it’s over 33 times the damage.
This damage also forces a toxin status effect, dealing even more damage over time. Compared to enemy hit points, this is an incredible amount of scaling. Unarmored enemies outside of the steel path will either die outright or be killed by the toxin proc from this ability. Onto the steel path, it’s less effective due to the health bonus. However, it can still carve through the majority of hit points on most units so long as they have no armor. There are a couple of downsides to this damage, however. The cone is both short and narrow and cannot be boosted by range mods. This makes it hard to apply this damage very widely. This also dumps out the enemies, meaning losing all of Grendel’s arm bonus and the fuel needed for Grendel’s other abilities.
Nourish
- Drain- 50 Energy
- Radius- 25 Meters
- Duration- 25 Seconds
- Energy Multiplier- 2x Energy earned
Onto Grendel’s second ability and the one he provides to the helmet system we have Nourish. This is a buffing ability that requires a solid enemy for Grendel to be able to use it, but not for other Warframes. When cast, Grendel removes 20 of the max hit points of the first swallowed enemy in his skirt. This will heal Grendel for 1000 health and applies a buff to him and his nearby allies. This adds 75 viral damage to weapons and increases the energy gain from all sources by 100 %. This energy buff includes energy orbs Zenurik Wellspring, Energy Siphonor, Trinity’s energy vampire, and so on.
All of these values are affected by strength, increasing the damage to the swallowed enemy, the healing, the viral buff, and the energy game buff. Nourish also applies a defensive buff. If you or an affected Ally are damaged by an enemy, then all enemies within 12 meters are staggered. They also receive viral procs with a small amount of viral damage. It’s 10 procs if Nourishes cast by Grendel or one viral proc if it’s cast by a different Warframe.
How to Use
This viral stagger feature has a brief cooldown on it, so it doesn’t spam out multiple procs if there are some enemies with a high rate of fire weapons. This ability is a huge amount of sustain for Grendel. With five swallowed enemies for armor and the adaptation mod at full 90 damage reduction, Nourish will provide over 60,000 effective healing in a single cast. You can increase it further by strength. The Stagger on nearby enemies helps to reduce the incoming damage. The viral procs makes it easier to kill nearly all enemies. The energy gain enhancement allows Grendel to liberally apply his abilities.
With 200 strengths, easily achieved these days, all energy income is tripled. Zenurik’s Wellspring alone will be giving you 15 energy per second on Grendel. Zenurik’s passive also double dips on the knowledge bonus. As Nourish will increase the energy gain from the orb before Zenurik’s passive triggers. After that, it increases the energy over time, and gains from that passive effect. At 200 strengths, this means a single energy orb will grant 75 energy upfront. Then it grants an additional 112 energy over 5 seconds for a total of 187 energy.
Further to this, weapon builds made specifically to work with Nourish can completely do away with modding for viral. Opening up spaces for direct damage types such as corrosive or radiation status moddings. This is going for toxin or heat or doubling down on other stats such as more crits or attack speed. As Nourish is pure viral rather than a combination of cold and toxin to make viral, it doesn’t override the cold or toxin damage you’ll have on a weapon already. This allows you to apply their effects at the same time.
Pulverize
- Drain- 3 Energy/Sec
- Radius- 5-15 Meters
- Health Regeneration- 200 HP/Second
- Reduction in Armor- 50% on hit
Grendel’s third ability used to be his fourth, and that’s Pulverize. Previously, you needed to have a swallowed enemy to cast this ability but now it’s more flexible. With no swallowed enemies, it’s free to cast and then drains three energy per second whilst active. However, if you have any number of enemies swallowed then the ability is completely free to cast. While in Meeple mode, Grendel is unable to use any weapons or the helmet’s abilities. He’s unable to carry objects and has an altered movement system. He can roll around with decent control and speed, or sprint to go faster, but with worse control. You still retain the ability to do double jumps and strangely enough you can also wall jump, but you can’t wall latch.
While Grendel is quite restricted in this mode, he can still cast his other three default abilities to go alongside it. On activating Meatball form, Grendel also gains 200 hit points per second. This scales down to 100 hit points per second over the first few seconds. In contrast to the healing, the enemies in the Granola’s gut take additional damage whilst Pulverize is active. It’s only 25 hit points per second though which on higher levels isn’t going to matter. As Grendel rolls around, he collides with enemies forcefully, dealing them and dealing a modest amount of damage. The damage is 500 plus 300 per swallowed enemy to a Max of 2,000 before ability stats. The radius of this impact of his Meatball gets larger with more swallowed enemies. This makes it easier to hit enemies by rolling around.
How to Use
Alternatively, Grendel can jump or fall to slam into the ground and deal damage in an AOE. This damage once again scales with solid enemies. It deals a base of 150 damage and 70 extra damage with each swallowed enemy. The range on the slam also increases with swallowed enemies from a base of 5 meters whilst empty to 15 meters whilst full. Due to enemy-level scaling, the damage from both direct hits and ground slams folds off rather quickly.
This begins to fail to kill basic units by the end of the star chart. Once you’re onto steel path, it’s meaningless damage at that point. To help it remain relevant at higher tiers, Pulverize also provides an arm reduction effect. Every time Grendel deals damage with the Meatball, either by direct hits or by slamming the ground, all affected enemies lose 50 percent of their Maximum Armor permanently. This is modified by his strength. With five enemies swallowed, this means you can use no energy to go into Meatball form. It slams twice or just once with 200 strength to remove all armor in a 15 meter radius.
As the radius is affected by your ability range, you can take this even higher. As Grendel can cast his other abilities whilst, in Meatball form, you can continuously consume new enemies. This is only to maintain the range and no energy drain as well as cast Nourish to help heal, restore energy, and deliver viral procs.
Regurgitate
- Drain- 50 Energy
- Radius- 6 Meters
- Armor Reduction- 75%
- Damage- 2,000 Toxin
Before his rework, this ability was his third and it was free to cast so long as you had an enemy consumed. Now, regurgitate costs 50 energy to cast, launching a swallowed enemy as a ragdoll projectile. On collision with another enemy or a surface, the projectile deals AOE toxin damage with a guaranteed proc to itself and all enemies within 6 meters. Affected enemies are temporarily slowed, and crucially they have 75 percent of their armor stripped in the process. The armor strip is modified by strength, and this strip happens before the damage is applied.
This gives you a greater effect from the attack. The damage to this ability is not a fixed value. At base, it deals 2,000 toxin damage modified by your strength. It also deals extra damage equal to 10 percent of the current hit points of the launched enemy. The conversion from enemy hit points to damage is not affected by strength, so you are locked to that 10 percent. For example, an enemy with 10,000 hit points remaining would make for a 3,000 damage projectile.
How to Use
If you had 200 strength, it would be a 5,000-damage projectile. As toxin procs last for six seconds and deal 50 of the base damage per second, the total damage delivered is four times the initial hit damage. The skinny on this isn’t as strong as escalating from hold casting Feast as it’s tied to current enemy hit points rather than the enemy level. So, enemies that have been swallowed for some time or otherwise were already damaged will make for weaker projectiles. However, they’ll still deliver the full armor strip effect.
As far as armor strip abilities go, this is one of the highest base values, requiring only a small increase in strength for the total armor strip. The downside, however, is it requires swallowing an enemy first. It gives up some of your armor bonus from Feast when you get rid of said enemy. It has one of the smallest effective areas with only a 6 meter radius. For comparison, terrify has a 60 armor strip and reaches out to a range of 15 meters at the base up some of your armor bonus from Feast when you get rid of said enemy. It has one of the smallest effective areas with only a 6 meter radius. For comparison, terrify has a 60 armor strip and reaches out to a range of 15 meters at the base.
Grendel Augments
Grendel has three Augment mods and each ability excludes regurgitation. You can purchase the Augment mods Steel Meridian and Red Veil Syndicates for 25,000 Standing. It’s required to get to a max rank with either Syndicate to get these augments. You are also allowed to trade these mods with other players utilizing the trading system of Warframe.
Gourmand
Instead of Energy, consumes 200 Health on cast. Glutton grants an additional 150 Armor per enemy. This will remove the energy cost of casting it, instead draining 200 Health with every Feast. The armor bonus per enemy climbs from 250 each to 400 each. This gives you a maximum bonus of 2,000 armor. Without any other armor modifiers on Grendel, this means your max damage reduction from armor climbs from 84.2 percent to 88.7 percent. This change effectively reduces the damage taken with five swallowed enemies, but a little over 28 or less if you have any other armor bonuses.
As for switching from an energy cost to a health cost, it’s a matter of preference but it’s not needed. Grendel can amplify his energy gain already with his next ability. This means that the cast cost of Feast isn’t an issue like it was pre-rework. This element also removes the ability to Shield gate with Casa Feast, further impacting Grendel’s survival. You can use the augmented fit suture build, but we don’t rate it that highly now. Swallowed enemies are effectively removed from the game, so any auras they have don’t function whilst they’re swallowed. They don’t count towards objectives such as delaying the end of a defense wave.
Hearty Nourishment
Nourish Augment: Clear Status Effects and gain 5s of Status immunity for each victim in Grendel’s stomach. This will cleanse the status effects from Grendel and give status immunity for five seconds per swallowed enemy. Up to a base maximum of 25 seconds, that 25 seconds is the same as the duration on Nourish, and both of these are affected by ability duration. This means that with five solid enemies, you can constantly match your status immunity to the duration remaining on Nourish. This augment, however, has no effects if you use it on another Warframe, including not removing active status effects.
Catapult
Press the alt-fire key to launch Grendel in your aim direction. Costs 5 Energy per use. Crouch to slow down. Pulverize also comes with an augment that can go into the Excellus slot. This allows you additional movements in Meeple mode by expending five energies for a surge of speed. At any point during the speed boost, you can hold crouch to very rapidly lose the momentum to regain more normal control at will.
Grendel Builds
Here are the best Grendel builds in Warframe, and each build has its effectiveness if you use it correctly.
Low Intensity Build
This build is good as a more forgiving-to-use build, having neutral efficiency to keep energy costs in line. We have enhanced strength range and duration to make effective use of Grendel’s entire kit. As also a natural Talent making cast of Nourish and Pulverize significantly faster and primes your footer to handle those pesky knockdowns. With this build, we have an armor strip of 95 with Pulverize in combination with corrosive projection before any additional Buffs come into play. When Archon Intensify triggers or after 42 kills due to Malt augmented, Pulverize will be up to a complete armor strip.
With an enemy and Grendel’s Gut, this means you can quickly jump into meeple mode, do a quick jump, and slam. It then returns to normal mode having armor stripped everything within up to 26 meters for zero additional energy cost. The combination of organ mods adaptation and vitality means Grendel tanks through both Shield gating and health tanking. It’s not necessary for most content as you can use the decaying Dragon key. This maximizes the shield gate value that Grendel gets along with this setup.
Weapons
As Grendel can take a lot of hits this way, the second Arcane can be Arcane Avenger. This is for its incredible critical boost to all weapons, which goes a very long way. The build only requires two V polarities, former dance arc on continuity, and argon Intensify. The difference between Archon and Prime continuity is a master preference and availability. The Archon version is giving you corrosive procs when you hold cast Feast or use regurgitate. All it’s adding is a proc for conditioner overload in those cases. Archon Intensify is also optional versus normal Intensify, but it is more impactful.
If Grendel heals himself with Nourish, Archon Intensify will grant you 30 Extra Strength for 10 seconds. This affects the armor ship on Pulverize, the viral and energy bonuses are Nourish, and the healing on Nourish and Pulverize. This is the damage to all four abilities. It’s nice to have, but not necessary for all sold. If you don’t have a wand Prime short footage, you can instead feel the extra slot with your choice of catapult for more mobility and Pulverize. This clone drifts for more range or power, drifts to hit total armor strip, and Pulverize immediately once the mission starts. For a more budget build with no former, you can drop Prime sure footed and downgrade to normal continuity and Intensify. This includes power drift, which would still be a good idea for the total armor strip.
High Intensity Build
This build relies on Shield gating and rolling guard to stay alive. Ronald’s impressive energy generation means we can get away with low efficiency from blind Rage. This also then allows us to use overextended for a substantial bonus to our range. From the start, this build applies 96-arm reduction via Pulverize. It rapidly reached the 100 Mark with just 34 kills or any healing cast of Nourish.
You can exchange both Archer mods for their variants if you so wanted with minimal overall impact on this setup. With Shield gating, you don’t want to be taking constant damage unless you burn through all of your energy. This means that Arcane Avenger wouldn’t trigger as often by default. We can instead swap that out for Arcane nullifier to protect against energy in each Xmas and other magnetic blocks. Alternatively, you can apply a nor reformer and open up the aura to combat discipline to damage yourself and activate Arcane Avenger that way.
You can use Energy Siphon for constant energy gain, and that has a buff by Nourish. You can go for gross and projection. If you do, you no longer need a motor augmented to get yourself to that key breakpoint of total armor strip and Pulverize. You can switch out the Arcane slots for any other preference. The idea with this build is that again each of Grendel’s one, two, and four abilities will fully restore Shields. This allows Grendel to hold out even in harsher missions. The added range allows for Armature and Pulverize to reach 40 meters with every slam.
Grendel Cosmetics
Glutt is an alternative helmet for Grendel and you can get its blueprint as a Cred Offering. Move to the Arsenal” page and press the LMB on the Appearance’ tab to equip this helmet. Nian Skin is a deluxe skin for Grendel. You can purchase it for 165 Platinum or get it as part of the Radiant Lunar Renewal Collection for 515 Platinum. Voidshell Skin is a unique skin for Grendel that you purchase as part of Grendel Voidshell Collection for 90 Platinum or get it for 215 Platinum as a Void Adornment Bundle.
FAQs about Warframe: Grendel Guide
Who is Grendel in Warframe?
Grendel is a well-rounded Warframe that has unique abilities and tank capabilities, making him a strong choice for various game modes.
What are Grendel’s abilities in Warframe?
Feast, Nourish, Pulverize, and Regurgitate are the abilities of Grendel in Warframe. Each ability deals massive damage, allowing you to dominate enemies in tough encounters.
What are the requirements to get Grendel Blueprint in Warframe?
25,000 Credits, 1xGrendel Neuroptics, 1xGrendel Chassis, 1xGrendel Systems, and 3xOrokin Cells are the basic requirements to craft Grendel Blueprint in Warframe.
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