Fiddling with a Chroma Secura Lecta credit farm build

Posted on Saturday March 08th, 2025 with tags post, warframe, video games

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I happened across this video a couple weeks ago, about a Chroma and Secura Lecta build that, from the thumbnail, looks like it can net you an absurd amount of credits:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3niECXMkTC0

This video goes very in-depths of how the mechanics behind the build. I highly, highly recommend watching it so you better understand how this all works. I'm going to assume for the rest of this post that you've watched it and I don't need to explain everything over.

I love me a very silly build, and I did need credits - my usual go-to of farming Sentient Anomalies in Void Proxima was getting tiring - so I dusted off my Chroma Prime (who I hadn't touched in actual years beyond a very poor attempt at a Profit Taker build) and with the the video and accompanying text guide I got him ready to go. (also, hello fellow solo player!!)

The video does warn, and I want to reiterate, that this method can have very widely variable results. Loyal / Prosperous Retriever could pop off a lot, or it could decide not to. Enemies could spawn more or less often, even on the same tiles. There is also a ✨ secret bonus variable ✨ that I'll get to in a second (well, several seconds). You just have to keep in mind that, each time you do this, your results will vary, sometimes drastically, no matter how much you try to be consistent each run.

(From one of my first runs. I was worried at first because it was only showing the 616k mission credits while I was checking before I left, but the boosted credits were added after the mission. I'm not sure why it's like that.)

My first few runs went fairly well. I had to make some tweaks (including actually putting mods in my Secura Lecta, you know, the key weapon of the build) but I managed to get a respectable amount of credits each test run.

While fiddling with mods, something clicked: this video and guide are nearly a year old (as of this post, in March 2025). A lot has happened since then. Quite a few new weapon mods. Beast companions have their own built-in melee weapon now, with its own mod slots. Smeeta's Charm resource and credit boosts got separated out into the Retriever mods that can be put on any beast companion.

So! I made some... adjustments.

As with all Warframe builds - if you don't have a mod, it's perfectly fine to use the next best thing until you get the mod you need. Don't stress too much about not having the right mods, or not having them ranked up all the way. I don't even have a lot of my own mods max ranked, honestly. It's expensive! Just do what you can with what you have and keep making little improvements and you'll get there before you know it.

I am famously bad with numbers. They scramble really easily in my head and it makes any sort of number-monitoring or number-work difficult. Thus, I haven't done any sort of Simulacrum testing with any of this. If any of you folks want to, I'd love to see the results!

Companions

Since Smeeta's Charm credit boost got popped out into Loyal Retriever and Prosperous Retriever, we can now use pretty much any beast companion, as long as they have one of those slotted in for the potential credit boost. I already have a Huras Kubrow built up to use with Kullervo, so I went with her.

(Ir Halak's main gig is helping Kullervo do funny melee numbers. Could this be optimized to better fit the Chroma credit farm use case? Probably, yeah. But this works well enough for now.)

There are really only a few mods here that help directly with the rest of the build - most of the rest are either utility or keeping the kubrow upright for longer (though, most of the mods will continue to function if they go down, and they can't outright die anymore - so how you prioritize companion survivability is up to you, really).

• Prosperous Retriever is our big mod. At max rank, it as an 18% chance to double Credit pickups. If you don't have one of these, you can pick it up from The Business in Fortuna under "Trade Tags".
  • Loyal Retriever will also work just fine if you don't have Prosperous Retriever yet, it just has a slightly lower chance to double (but it can also double resources, so there's that). Folks who had a Smeeta Kavat prior to Update 37 in October 2024 were given a copy of this mod for free; if you don't have one, you can pick one up from Master Teasonai in Cetus for tags.
• Synth Deconstruct and Restorative Bond work together: Synth Deconstruct makes it so enemies damaged by the companion have a higher chance to drop a health orb on death, and Restorative Bond makes the health orbs restore more health and also reduce companion recovery time when they're downed. These also synergize with Arcane Blessing on Chroma, which increases max health with each health orb pickup.
• Mecha Recharge is a secret tool that will help us later (in like 30 seconds when we talk about the beast claws mods)
• Animal Instinct and Fetch are utility: Animal Instinct for the loot and enemy radar and Fetch for the increased pickup range. You can probably drop Animal Instinct if you want, but I'd keep Fetch.
• Stalk, Pack Leader and Link Vitality / Link Fiber are part of the aforementioned Kullervo companion build. They don't really do much here except help keep her alive - if you think something else would be a better fit in these slots, go for it.
• You could also use a completely different kubrow if you want to. The mods above (minus Stalk of course, that's a Huras Kubrow mod) should all work on Predasites as well. Helminth Chargers, despite being essentially infested kubrows, are their own special thing and not technically considered kubrows, so kubrow-specific mods will not work on them (which includes the Mecha set).

Beast Claws

Claw weapons were added with Update 37 in October 2024, giving beast companions their own melee weapon that you can mod, instead of having to shove all of the damage mods onto the very limited main companion space. This greatly opened up companion builds - they can rival actual built frames for damage output now, instead of just being an Extra Guy running around and dying a lot.

(I may have spent an hour and a half farming for Flame Gland in the middle of writing this post because, somehow, I did not have a copy already. Oops.)

My goal here was to synergize with the rest of the build, so I decided to lean into Status Chance with the same damage types we'll be using on Secura Lecta: Gas, Electric, and Magnetic. Slash is just kinda there as a bonus, though I have a concern that slash procs might mess with the death animations that are critical to this build working (though, Secura Lecta also has slash, and that's fine? But it's also a much lower percentage of total damage there. Who knows). Something to monitor for, I suppose.

• Balanced Posture just kind of has the companion doing whatever it wants, with a bonus stagger when it runs near enemies. I don't have any strong leanings toward any of the other Posture mods, but if you're running Synth Deconstruct, you might want to avoid Elusive Posture, as that'll make your companion avoid attacking, and so Synth Deconstruct won't be able to work.
• Mecha Overdrive - it's finally time to talk about the Mecha Set, one of the main reasons I'm using a kubrow here. This set's bonus is what we're after really, the mod perks are extras (though, Mecha Overdrive's status duration is very nice): the kubrow will mark an enemy every X seconds for Y second duration; killing that enemy will spread all their status effects to enemies within Z meter range. This is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds.
  • I am only using two mods from the set - 45 seconds, 6 seconds, and 15 meters - because anything more than that can wipe out multiple tiles and we kind of need enemies to pile up for this. Even two can be kind of overkill, but the breather is welcome, thanks to that ✨ secret bonus variable ✨ from earlier. If you want to drop one, probably go for Mecha Recharge on the companion.
• Cull the Weak improves companion damage when you are running a status build - +60% melee damage per status type affecting the target and non-crits deal +240% damage.
• Flame Gland and Venom Teeth give us Status Chance and combine to make Gas damage.
• Maul increases overall damage (this includes status damage).
• Immunity Resistance increases Status Damage.
• Shock Collar adds Status Chance and Electricity damage, which stays as plain Electricity because there's no other elemental mods for it to combine with.
• Magnetic Claws adds Magnetic damage and Status Duration, both very useful - but, wait, why Magnetic if we're going after Grineer...?

Secura Lecta

Hey, you remember what the author of the main guide said about Melee Vortex? How magnetic damage is incompatible with electricity (because magnetic is electric + cold), but if DE added a standalone magnetic melee mod, it'd probably be the best choice of arcane? Guess what came out with 1999 :3

(I do have Primed Reach but I keep forgetting to forma so it'll fit. Just trust me that I did it after this screenshot was taken.)

Most of the mods here are the same. I've only really changed three things:

• Dropped Tek Gravity, since we aren't running a kavat. Replaced that with Magnetic Rush, which adds magnetic damage and increases attack speed.
• Swapped to Melee Vortex arcane - on killing an enemy with a magnetic proc, there's a chance to pull nearby enemies.
• Swapped Weeping Wounds (status chance increase with combo multiplier) for Galvanized Elementalist (more status damage; on melee kill, +30% status chance for 20s, stacking up to 4 times).
  • I'm still testing between these two to figure out which one works better. Honestly, they both feel pretty good. Someone with more time and number-affinity than me can probably do the math and figure out for certain, that'd be super cool to know.

Now if only I could get in the habit of remembering to do Tennokai so Discipline's Merit isn't just kinda hanging out up there...

You're going to be using Secura Lecta to get most of your kills, but it's a good idea to bring along a backup weapon to deal with spicy Eximus or Acolytes. If you have Laetum, that'll work fine here. Otherwise, bring something with Corrosive damage to help burn through armor.

Chroma

(As you can see, I have other builds on this guy, which makes dealing with polarities very fun)

Chroma's build didn't really change much from the guide. We aren't using a kavat, so we don't need to use the Tek mod, which frees up a slot for us. I've currently filled that slot with Precision Intensify - this doesn't affect Effigy's credit boost, but it does help it stay alive a bit longer. Ideally, you'll stick Effigy somewhere it won't get hit to begin with, but that isn't always possible with the tiles you're dealt. I feel like there's a mod that will fit much better here, but I haven't quite found it yet.

I've been slacking with my weekly Archon Shards, so my Chroma only has a Tauforged Violet (Equilibrium effect) and Tauforged Amber (energy orb effectiveness) right now. Since I also have a Strength build on this Chroma, I am not planning to entirely focus my shards on the credit farming build, but I think it'll benefit from whatever shards I do end up putting in.

Operator

Magus Anomaly can help a lot with pulling enemies into the pile, but that's the only real advice I have here.

So how effective is it compared to the original build?

I took this modified build to the recommended Steel Path node of Titan on Saturn, with a credit booster and a credit blessing. I got pretty lucky - I got a good tile; the T-shaped tile with the stairs in the middle. I set myself up at the top of the stairs next to the junction with another tile, and enemies came fairly consistently, mostly from both directions down the stairs.

Compared to the original build, I found that enemies were dying much more quickly, and I didn't have to dance around to stay alive quite as much. My kubrow also didn't get knocked down anywhere near as often, and I do feel like her extra damage and status effects were making an impact. Reducing the Mecha set down to two mods was definitely the right choice; 15 meters is more than enough range for the status effect spread.

After my 20 minute run, here's how I did for credits:

(I'll finally be able to afford the Orbiter captura scene...)

I do have some recommendations, or observations, or... whatever you want to call them:

• Magus Anomaly can be used to reposition the primary Ensnared enemy, which is useful if, say, Effigy gets upset and punts it across the room.
  • When it pulls, it also staggers enemies briefly, which can be quite useful.
• Magus Anomaly also has a slightly larger range than Ensnare at higher ranks. I found it useful to proc Magus Anomaly and then use Ensnare where possible (especially if all the nearby enemies just died and the fresh ones are just out of reach).
• Melee Vortex is very good at keeping enemies in a cluster when they start dying, but it can get a little out of hand; it can pull the entire clump of enemies around wildly as more of them die and proc the arcane. The hallway I was in helped with this - they couldn't go very far away from Effigy no matter how wild they started boogying.
• Tennokai is very useful, that extra damage slap comes in handy for getting enemies to start dying.

You still haven't told us about the ✨ secret bonus variable ✨ though

I could draw this out and make it super suspenseful, keep yall on the edge of your chairs... but nah.

It's your computer. Specifically, your CPU.

Look, I know my Ryzen 5 2600 isn't the coolest kid on the block by any measure, especially these days - but I have never run into a slowdown anywhere like this in all of my time playing. And I know I'm not the only one out there on less than stellar hardware.

It's the game having to slow down and think really hard about all the different damage ticks, all the different status procs, all of that. Everything just kind of stops - no pickups, no enemies attacking, no nothing - until it catches up, usually around a second. I'm fairly certain that math is on the CPU to work out. Which I know (and have known for a long time) is the current bottleneck of my system in particular. It's not so bad when I don't have anything else running and fighting the game for the brainpower, but I usually have a Youtube video playing, and I've been running ArchiveTeam Warrior in the background, which both take up CPU time. (I really want to know how this build fares on, say, Switch.)

I expect that this can impact the credit output just through sheer force of slowing everything down. If your computer has to take a second or two every so often to sit down and have a good think, that's time you can't really do anything but keep hitting melee and waiting for it to un-stick itself. I mentioned earlier that the Mecha set was nice for this because it gives you a breather - not just you, but your computer, to catch up.

There is a framerate hit when you're doing this, but it's not too terrible, and it's largely something you can accomodate for by lowering your graphics settings. It's largely from the floating gas cloud effects. Decreased framerate can affect your credit output though - the original video details this.

The extra fun part of this? If you have a friend with a stronger computer (hi Umbra!) and you run with them as the host, you don't get the slowdowns anywhere near as badly. I honestly think the only slowdowns I got while I was testing here were the gas cloud framerate drops.

But this build isn't exactly meant to run in a group - it's geared towards solo play. Your friend isn't going to get the bonus credits you're making - credit boosters aren't shared across the squad, and I don't believe Secura Lecta and Prosperous Retriever are either.

I have not tested this, but in theory, you could have your friend bring a stealth frame, an Elusive Posture companion with Prosperous Retriever and their own boosters, and just kind of... have them stand off in the corner and help pick off Eximus units and Acolytes before they become a problem?

Or - and I have no idea how well this would work in practice - you could both bring this build. Whatever happens, I have a feeling it'd be very funny.