What is worth spending platinum on in the Marketplace? What is worth paying other players platinum for? I know that this is subjective and based on how much Platinum and your time in game is worth to you personally, but I feel that there is some consensus: First and foremost, additional warframe slots - Warframes are difficult to assemble, forge and level, and so they are most worth the effort to retain with real money or starter money. Additional Weapon Slots - some weapons are more difficult to acquire than warframes! Orokin Catalysts and Reactors - there is an opportunity every week at least to get one, but you might not want to wait for a month just to upgrade 4 items, or might simply miss the alert. Oxium - Oxium drops in quantities of 1-3 from a somewhat uncommon Oxium Osprey, and is required in quantities of 75-300 for recipes. It may not be worth your time to farm 113 ospreys at 2 drops each across 21 missions at (I'm guessing) 5 ospreys per mission, to make the Zephyr warframe components, when you can buy 300 for 30 plat. Do you disagree with any of the above? What else would you add? Many warframe and weapon bundles include potatoes and slots. A slot and potato are an added 40 plat in value for a Warframe, and 26 plat for a weapon. Are any so difficult to assemble that that added incentive makes the total purchase cost worthwhile? Are there any non-market items that are always worth the plat in your opinion, like corrupted mods, prime weapon parts from Tower 4 20 minute survival, etc?
Prime part market is its own topic honestly. If you play in group it's much easier to farm for Prime parts and do Vault runs. Alone it can be tedious and time-consuming and sometimes you just want that certain part/mod without the grind. Then it becomes a question of how well you know the Prime/mod market and the prices, and how much you are willing to spend on that hard to get mod/part. I recommend checking this page before accepting any shady deals. There will always be some haggling involved so be prepared for it with people outside of the clan. And people will try to scam you sometimes. Count on that. Slots, Catalysts and Reactors are almost always worth the plat. Never buy Formas with Plat. This may be still be unclear for some people. You can get several Formas from Void runs. Oxium is a bit tricky as you can get very lucky if Corpus conquers Grineer mobile defense node. This leads to abundant Oxium Osprey spawns on the Grineer tileset, making Oxium farming much more bearable. Anybody who remember Zephyr, Kappa and Corpus Mobile Defense knows what I'm talking about.
Are there ever sales in the marketplace where items cost less platinum? I'm tempted to pick up the Loki for 75 but if prices occasionally drop I can be patient...
I seriously doubt Loki prime would go much lower than 75. I waited two months for mine and I had to pay ~50 plat just for the Helm (the hardest part to find *if IRC*). Of the "stealthframes", he is the only Prime version... which is helping to ensure his higher value. That being said there are two things I think we can all agree that are essential for platinum use: more weapon slots more warframe slots The amount varies depending on personal tastes, but I would recommend a minimum of ~12 weapon slots and 4 warframe slots. You can get all that for a little more than 150 plat. That gives you room for 3 fully upgraded warframes and one extra for testing/mastery ranking stuff. I say 12 weapon slots because that gives you a bit more flexibility in terms of what you need and allows for different loadouts (~3 for each warframe + 3 extra for random stuff). Most will likely want more, but if you don't want to spend a lot of money, you can get by reasonably well with that. As far as potatos go, if you are on a budget, I recommend focusing potato use on weapons you are damn sure are worth it (warfarmes worth using potatos on are a mostly subjective conversation). Off the top of my head: Boltor Prime -or- Attica Boar Prime -or- Phage Soma Penta Latron Prime AkBolto AkMagnus or AkVasto Angstrum Despair Dragon Nikana Scindo Prime There are of course others that could be added to the list, but the above are all 100% worthy of potatos. Also, if you are tight on platinum, I really can't recommend Kubrows. They are a pain in the ass to farm on your own. The easiest way to get them worth a damn is with a moderate and periodic injection of platinum for eggs and the rarer mods.
The best I think you can hope for is a 20-75% off platinum coupon as a daily login reward. I've never heard of item discounts but I am pretty new.
every now and then they will put weapons up for sale. usually with some patch that buffs them. buying plat wise...yeah if you get a 50% or higher buy it.
there is also a very rare 90% off plat. got it one time. bought the 100 package for 10.01 on the barrel head.