Warframe's first major update of 2025 has a launch date. Rebecca Ford and Megan Everett hosted Devshorts 94 from Toronto on St. Patrick's Day to confirm that the Shadowgrapher update goes live March 25, and they packed a lot into fifteen minutes.
The Shadowgrapher is arriving with 61 pages of patch notes, a new Warframe, new adversary weapons including Coda Lich and Tenent weapons, and the Gauss and Grendel Eat and Run Pack. Nintendo Switch players are also getting Warframe for the first time with this launch, making it the biggest platform expansion the game has seen in a while.
One of the more interesting additions is an experimental Tennokai mod tied to the Arbiters of Hexis vendor. The mod allows you to slot Tennokai onto any melee weapon and grants the Truth bonus alongside a 120% melee damage boost. The catch: if your Tennokai strike fails to kill its target, you eat 100 self-inflicted heat damage and your combo counter resets. It's a deliberately punishing design, and the team acknowledged they're a little nervous about the self-damage element but want to see how players respond. Think of it as a confidence check before you swing.
Quality of life improvements for relic and Kuva farming are also part of the package. Players will log in to eight free Eternal Requiem Relics, designed to reduce the grind friction around Lich hunting. A new music track composed by Matthew Chalmers is included as well and will be available for permanent purchase through an in-game vendor.
The week after Shadowgrapher drops, a new operation launches March 28 alongside the PAX East dev stream, where Digital Extremes is promising a prime reveal and what Rebecca described as a trailer "beyond anything we've ever done." Audience participation will also shape the following update, with the PAX panel formatted as a competitive game show where viewers vote to determine what gets added next.
On the anniversary front, the 13th birthday alert schedule is running through the week. Week one included the Excalibur Duck Skin and Elite Mode Alert for the Exilus Weapon Adapter. Week two, starting March 20, brings the Dex Ivara Weapon Slot, Excalibur Dex Cliff, and a Double Affinity Weekend Booster running March 20 through March 23.