The roiling of a gut, churning and grumbling stomachs heralds the arrival of Grendel, the eater of all things. Corpus crewman and Infested ancients alike may attempt to flee – but this warframe’s gaping belly-maw opens and inhales them with a thunderous belch. There is no escape.
Grendel is the newest addition released by Digital Extremes for its MMO-hybrid space ninja simulator game Warframe and he brings with him an eternal hunger and a very big stomach.
Grendel was released alongside the content update “The Old Blood,” which also introduced personalized adversaries in the kuva liches.
In this review, we’ll talk a bit about Grendel and the content that he is released with. That includes how to acquire and build your own Grendel warframe and some discussion of his abilities and what he feels like to play once you get him.
“When I was a child I truly loved:
Unthinking love as calm and deep
As the North Sea. But I have lived,
And now I do not sleep.”
― John Gardner, Grendel.
Acquisition
To acquire Grendel, you will need access to Arbitration – a new-ish game mode in Warframe that requires unlocking the entire Origin system.
From the Arbitration store, you will buy three different “Grendel locators” which open up missions on Europa. Each mission spawns level 45 enemies and can be really tough to beat. Once all three are completed, it is possible to craft Grendel and it’s meatball time.
Each component of Grendel’s warframe must be earned from an individual mission. The Grendel Chassis Locator sends you to the Ice Fields of Riddah for a 15-wave Defense, Grendel Systems Locator opens up Mine of Karishh for an Excavation for 800 Cryotic, and finally, Grendel Neuroptics Locator unlocks the Archaeo-freighter for a 20-minute Survival mission.
These are not easy missions – and some of them require no-mods installed – so as a result, players might find acquiring Grendel through the traditional means somewhat challenging.
Alternatively, Grendel can be bought from the in-game Warframe store for 325 platinum.
Aesthetics
At first look, Grendel appears to be a large pot-bellied warframe supporting thick, trunk-like limbs and a stout constitution. To say he is massive is an understatement and he does not so much run as roll thunderously as he crashes through Corpus ships and Grineer asteroid bases.
Grendel’s abdomen, in particular, draws attention. In the middle of his slightly bulging belly is the appearance of a sawtooth maw, it shifts slightly as he breathes, gastric juices leaking out between its Jack-o’-lantern teeth – this is the focus of Grendel’s formidable abilities: his stomach of iron.
When abilities such as Feast and Regurgitate are triggered, the stomach opens, revealing an empty space that opens unto the void. When he uses Feast, he leans back and the mouth in his belly inhales violently – sucking in any enemies unfortunate enough to be close. Thereafter, the sounds of digestion can be heard as Grendel’s stomach sloshes and churns.
The aesthetics of Grendel would not be complete without a discussion of his sound design, which is gloriously and painstakingly disgusting.
As mentioned above, digesting enemies produces a borborygmus stomach-churn inducing noise that suggests that perhaps Grendel should not have eaten that last Infested runner. Then, when it comes time to release dead occupants, the stomach mouth emits a milk-curdling belch – and not to mention that Regurgitate spews forth a loud, vomitous “bluagh!” along with its gooey corpse projectile.
We hope that players who choose to use Grendel have a strong constitution, they will need it.
Abilities
As a warframe, Grendel’s ability kit is broken up into his primary ability, “Feast,” which sucks nearby enemies into his gut gullet and the rest that make use of consumed enemy bodies.
Feast is Grendel’s primary ability and it feeds all the others. Upon activation, Grendel leans back, his stomach-mouth opens and inhales everything within a particular radius – this can be extended, potentially considerably, with mods such as Stretch. Once consumed, enemies have their armor chewed through by Grendel’s stomach until they are dead. Having enemies in Grendel’s stomach also uses energy, so it’s best to balance the number of enemies eaten at any time with the rest of his abilities.
His passive ability, Glutton, provides 50 additional armor for every enemy in his belly and those enemies also share in damage done to Grendel.
Pressing and holding the Feast trigger key (defaults to ‘1’) will cause him to violently expel the contents of his stomach. Enemies so expelled will be covered in digestive juices and have their armor greatly reduced.
Nourish acts as a buffing mechanic that eats one of the enemies in Grendel’s stomach and produces a buff based on the enemy consumed that also affects nearby teammates. The buffs available are Nourished Armor, for additional armor and a toxin aura; Nourished Energy, which creates an energy multiplier; and Nourished Strike, which adds toxin damage. When triggered Nourish also generates a massive health heal, which is good if Grendel is taking damage with enemies in his stomach.
Regurgitate vomits out a single bile-covered enemy in his stomach as a projectile. Upon impact, it knocks down a few enemies and splashes out an AoE that sprays toxin damage. This one is pretty straightforward and a great way to get rid of an enemy in Grendel’s stomach for what is essentially a vomited artillery shot.
Pulverize, Grendel’s ultimate ability, turns him into a rolling ball, lovingly referred to as the “meatball” by the community. Grendel can only turn into a meatball with enemies in his stomach and the size of the ball is determined by how many enemies he currently has roiling in his gut.
The meatball can slam into enemies, knocking them down, and can bounce atop them for toxic damage and knockdown. In this ability mode, Grendel moves with inertia and you must build up speed to move. Most importantly, Grendel must leap in meatball mode in order to inflict damage on enemies, so you end up bouncing around. This bouncing also damages enemies in Grendel’s stomach.
Before an update, Grendel used to revert back to normal warframe mode once all the enemies in his stomach were consumed, but now the ultimate will begin to consume energy once they are all digested.
Handling
As a warframe, Grendel is extremely tanky – he can take a lot of incoming fire without going down due to a massive health pool, although his shields will be breaking all the time.
Grendel’s shields are so small that they will be constantly shattering, but his health starts at 350 unranked at max level and that can be easily modded to 3,045 hit points using Umbral mods. This alone makes Grendel extremely difficult to kill.
Adding in that every enemy in his belly reduces damage and increases his armor and he is a recipe for face tanking Corpus lasers and Grineer bullets – especially because he can just eat some of the foes shooting at him and use Nourish to return his health.
Using a maxed Stretch mod can also greatly improve Grendel’s play because it will allow his Feast ability to reach a great distance. This greatly increases the number of enemies he can put in his stomach and then use for Nourish or Regurgitate – or, of course, to turn into the Pulverize meatball and bowl through the mission.
Against armored enemies, Feast suddenly becomes the great equalizer. Since it becomes possible to swallow them, digest them for a bit, and then puke them back out again with their armor heavily stripped. This effectively makes short work out of otherwise heavily armored enemies.
Furthermore, it also means that big enemies such as Ballistas, Bombards, and Ancients don’t threaten Grendel much: he can just Feast on them and then use their additional armor while he destroys their friends.
The biggest mixed-reception for Grendel is Pulverize. As an ultimate, it doesn’t seem to cause as much damage as it should and it can be a bit difficult to control in tight corridors and maps littered with bumps and raised surfaces – in fact, it’s extremely easy to get caught up on imperfections in the geometry of the map and a massive struggle to go up inclines and stairs.
Another problem is that Feast is required to get Pulverize going and, if modded to make Feast as effective as possible, this can mean maps with few enemy spawns will quickly become barren. Grendel may eat a room full of enemies but then must roll a distance to find some to bounce to death.
As a result, although Pulverize is Grendel’s ultimate, it feels a lot more like a situational mechanic.
However, given a target-rich environment and a lot of room to roll in, Pulverize can suddenly become a hilarious romp through the flesh fields, smushing some enemies and knocking others aside like bowling pins.
Conclusion
Grendel, the great devourer, feels like a mixed bag of frustration and fun. He is very difficult to assemble with challenging missions that will put even the most veteran Warframe players to the test – and when playing him, there’s a lot of things to consider about his ability kit.
Players of Grendel must strike a balance between consuming foes with Feast and using them to fuel his other abilities. The energy drain around consumed enemies means that he can go dry very quickly, as a result, it becomes necessary to use eaten foes quickly or barf them out.
Because Pulverize doesn’t agree readily with most maps, it can make his ultimate feel far less ultimate than it should be. However, it also fits into the rest of his kit, which means that you can’t expect to be keeping eaten enemies very long – which also possibly means turning into and out of the meatball often when it’s in use.
Overall, Grendel’s ability to essentially assassinate single heavy enemies makes him excellent for team support – especially because he can turn them into a projectile vomit with Regurgitate or Nourish nosh on them for a team buff.
Get your stomachs ready, Tenno. With Grendel we can expect to eat our way through the enemy.
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