Warframe: A Complete Guide To The Grimoire (2024)

Warframe's Whispers in the Walls update introduced a new weapon type to the sandbox. The Grimoire is Warframe's first spellbook, a secondary weapon that has infinite ammo and can use powerful utility Tome mods to vastly buff your Warframe's ability stats. If you want to increase your Ability Strength, Efficiency, or Energy regeneration by using a weapon, the Grimoire is the perfect secondary weapon.

While this weapon has amazing utility, its damage stats leave something to be desired. For those looking to demolish rooms of enemies with this weapon, it'll require a min-maxed endgame build and some external loadout assistance. This guide will cover how to get the Gimoire, how its unique Tome mods works, and showcase some builds that push the Grimoire to its limits.

How To Obtain The Grimoire

The Grimoire is obtained by completing the "Whispers in the Walls" quest. Unlike most quest weapons, the Grimoire is pre-built and fully leveled when you receive it. The weapon also comes with a pre-installed Orokin Catalyst. However, the unique Tome mods that the Grimoire can equip (explained later) are not given to you at the end of the quest. They must be obtained from Deimos' Mirror Defense game mode.

Grimoire Stats And Features

The Grimoire is a secondary weapon that's categorized as a Tome, a new weapon category that focuses on utility. This weapon fires slow-moving projectiles that explode on contact, although the AoE radius is a measly one meter. It also features infinite ammo with a bottomless magazine, so you never have to reload.

While using this weapon, the Grimoire will slowly accumulate energy for its alt-fire mode. Projectile direct impacts will further build charge. When your meter is fully charged, press the alt-fire key to release a plasma orb, shocking nearby targets with guaranteed Electricity status. It can also inflict modded elemental status procs and trigger the Grimoire's unique Invocation Tome mods.

Due to the weapon's low fire rate and pure Electricity base damage, it's ill-advised to mod the Grimoire as a dedicated DPS weapon. Instead, it should be treated as a utility weapon like a speargun or the Xoris. Its alt-fire builds charge passively when holstered, so you can trigger equipped Invocations without much hassle.

Tome Mods

Easily the Grimoire's best feature is its unique Tome mods. Tome mods offer utility effects that buff your Warframe's stats, Energy economy, or weapon performance. These mods can be earned from Deimos' Mirror Defense node called Muino. Each mod has a 5% drop chance from Rotation C. Tome mods are also tradable between players.

Essential Tome Mod Bundle

All eight Tome mods may also be acquired by purchasing the "Essential Tome Mod Bundle" from the in-game market. This bundle costs 140 Platinum.

Tome mods are divided into two categories:

• Canticle Mods: Grants Affinity-wide utility effects upon killing a foe. Sits in the Exilus slot.
• Invocation Mods: Grants Warframe buffs upon damaging a foe with your alt-fire. Uses a core mod slot.

Only one Canticle and one Invocation may be installed per build. Since the Canticle mods fit in your Exilus slot, the only major opportunity cost comes from using an Invocation mod in place of a more traditional damage mod.

All Tome Mod Effects

As of Update 35, there are eight Tome mods you can equip on the Grimoire. Each effect is listed below.

Grimoire Builds

We'll be looking at three builds for the Grimoire to help maximize its damage and utility. While you can use this weapon with no investment, the true power of the Grimoire won't be revealed until you invest a few Forma into it and acquire Tome mods.

Riven Mods

The Grimoire has a 1/5 Riven Disposition as of Update 35, so Riven mods for this weapon are highly ineffective. If you do end up with a Grimoire Riven, keep an eye out for Multishot, Fire Rate, Projectile Speed, and Elemental Damage modifiers.

Starter Build (0 Forma)

• Forma: 0

Since the Grimoire comes with two base polarities, we can fit most of our essential damage mods without any Forma. This setup is focused on making the Grimoire a decent backup weapon for Star Chart content. It can handle the Sanctum game modes fairly well if you don't mind the slow fire rate.

We start by scaling the weapon's core damage stats. Hornet Strike for base damage, Barrel Diffusion for multishot, and Lethal Torrent for even more multishot and some fire rate. Anemic Agility is also used to further boost the weapon's fire rate, something it desperately needs. We also gain some bonus fire rate from one of our elemental mods.

For elemental damage, we use Frostbite and Pistol Pestilence (R1) to force Viral onto the weapon. Since most of the Indifferent enemies are weak to Radiation, we use the Accelerated Isotope mod to gain Radiation damage without needing a second elemental mod. The final socket should be used for another elemental mod, either Jolt or Scorch.

This setup will give you a healthy variety of damage types to kill the Murmur enemies on Deimos. Radiation is great against Indifferent, while Electricity makes short work of the Necramech enemies. Viral's status effect will further ramp up your damage, making this a solid status primer when necessary.

Utility Endgame Build (3 Forma)

• Forma: 3 (3V)

This configuration focuses strictly on utility, opting to maximize the Grimoire's fire rate to ramp up its alt-fire meter as quickly as possible. We use Amalgam Barrel Diffusion for multishot and to increase our character's roll speed. Lethal Torrent further buffs our multishot while adding fire rate to the build, something we further increase through Anemic Agility and Accelerated Isotope.

The real standout here is Vome Invocation, a Tome mod that gives your Warframe Ability Strength whenever your alt-fire damages a target. This alt-fire isn't affected by fire rate, but this build's high fire arte and multishot values make it quite easy to charge your alt-fire. You can use any Invocation mod here, not just the Vome variant.

While you're damaging targets with the Grimoire, you might as well spread some status ailments. We use three elemental 60/60 mods to maximize our status chance. The elements themselves are down to preference and the content you're running. Finally, we use Secondary Dexterity to scale our base damage through melee attacks and Lethal Momentum to boost the weapon's projectile speed.

DPS Endgame Build (5 Forma)

• Forma: 5 (4V, –)

If you want the Grimoire to become a good DPS weapon, you have your work cut out for you. It is possible to make this a decent secondary workhorse, but you'll need to rely on external sources of armor strip for this weapon to scale in Steel Path. It also scales greatly with Warframe Arcanes, something we'll cover in a second.

Scaling damage on this weapon is easy enough. Secondary Dexterity is our recommendation since it's easy to trigger, requiring melee kills. You can run Cascadia Flare instead if you replace Viral with an element that merges with Electricity (notably Corrosive), but then you miss out on Viral's multiplicative damage debuff. Multishot is scaled with Galvanized Diffusion and Lethal Torrent.

This weapon's critical stats are good enough to mod into, so we use Primed Pistol Gambit and Primed Target Cracker to buff the critical chance and damage, respectively. This leaves you with 57.4% critical chance. That's not great, but if you pair this weapon with Arcane Avenger, it will always crit. You can easily proc this Arcane by using Combat Discipline in your Warframe's Aura slot. Just be sure you have a way to heal yourself.

Since you're using Arcane Avenger to scale its crit, you might as well scale its fire rate with Arcanes as well. Arcane Velocity will buff the Grimoire's fire rate by 120% if you have dealt critical damage recently, something you'll always be doing. Throw on your favorite Invocation and Canticle mods to finish the build. It won't overtake any meta secondaries, but this build allows the Grimoire to stand on its own without sacrificing its unique Tome mods.