Railjack Guide
Railjack is Warframe's capital-ship sandbox: pilot a warship through open space, board enemy vessels mid-fight, and command a crew that can be entirely AI. Here's how to unlock it, rank your Intrinsics, and run it solo without being the host everyone dreads.
What Railjack Actually Is
Railjack is Warframe's space-combat game mode, built around a large warship — *your* Railjack — that you and up to three squadmates crew together. You fly it through the Proxima regions (open zones of space that orbit familiar planets), shredding enemy fighter swarms, deleting heavily-armored crewships, and boarding enemy capital ships and bases to finish objectives on foot.
The magic is the seamless transitions: one moment you're in the pilot seat weaving through flak, the next you've launched out of an Archwing slingshot into an enemy crewship to blow its reactor from the inside, then you're back aboard patching a hull breach with your Omni tool. It debuted in the Empyrean update and was heavily streamlined in a later Corpus rework, which added the Command Intrinsic and the personal Plexus mod board — the two systems that make modern solo Railjack genuinely comfortable.
Why Bother With Railjack
Railjack sat in a rough spot for years, but the rework turned it into a real reward engine. It's not just a novelty flight sim — several progression systems route straight through it.
| Reason | What you get out of it |
|---|---|
| Affinity / leveling | Missions pour shared affinity across your whole loadout, so it's a solid way to rank weapons and frames while doing something other than Hydron. |
| Resources | Titanium, Asterite, and Grineer/Corpus Proxima drops feed Railjack upgrades and a surprising number of later Foundry recipes. |
| Sisters of Parvos | The Corpus lich hunt is Railjack-gated — you confront and board the Sister's capital ship to finish her. See the Kuva & Liches guide. |
| Void Storms | The Railjack flavor of Void Fissures: crack relics and bank extra Void Traces while you fly. Free prime parts on top of the mission. |
| Quests & story | Rising Tide, Call of the Tempestarii, and later story beats all put you in the pilot seat. |
| Mastery & variety | Intrinsics, components, and a combat sandbox that plays like nothing else in the game. |
Void Storm rewards stack with the mission's own loot — check the crack-or-sell math on your drops before you dissolve them.
Two of those are worth planning around: Void Storms turn Railjack into a relic farm — run the numbers on your haul with Relic value: crack or sell and which relics pay best per run. And once you're cracking primes, the ducat value tool and set-vs-parts calculator tell you what to keep for Baro and what to flip.
Unlocking Railjack: The Rising Tide Quest
There are two ways into the mode. You can crew on someone else's ship immediately — just join a public Railjack squad, and you'll earn Intrinsics and rewards without owning anything. But to build *your own* Railjack, you run the Rising Tide quest.
- Finish The War Within
Rising Tide is gated behind the cinematic quest The War Within (which follows The Second Dream in the story). If you're not there yet, push through the main story quests first — see the Quests guide for the order.
- Get access to a Dry Dock
Rising Tide is built at a Dry Dock. You can't build the ship from your orbiter — but a Dry Dock isn't clan-only: build one in a Clan Dojo, or use the public Dry Dock found in several of the larger Relays (such as Saturn and Pluto).
- Gather and build the six wreckage components
The quest sends you around the star chart to gather resources, then build the ship's six salvaged sections one at a time at the Dry Dock.
- Wait out the build timers
Each component and the final assembly carry real-time Foundry-style timers that add up to multiple days. Start the builds as early as you can and let them cook while you play other content.
- Launch from the Dry Dock
Once the Railjack is assembled it's parked in your Dry Dock. From there (or from the Proxima regions in Navigation) you can start missions and begin ranking Intrinsics.
Intrinsics: The Five Schools
Intrinsics are Railjack's personal skill trees — five schools, each ranked 1 to 10. You earn Intrinsic points automatically from mission affinity, then spend them where you want. Higher ranks are transformative, not incremental: they unlock new maneuvers, faster repairs, and — critically — your AI crew.
| School | What it governs | Why it matters solo |
|---|---|---|
| Tactical | The tactical map, teleporting to crew/objectives, and Omni recall back to the ship | Snap instantly back to the pilot seat or to a hull breach instead of running the length of the ship |
| Piloting | Boost, vector bursts, and drift dodges for tight, fast repositioning | A nimble ship you can actually juke flak with and reposition fast |
| Gunnery | Turret handling — heat management, aim zoom, an aim-snap onto the lead indicator, and the Archwing slingshot | Kill fighters faster, land Forward Artillery shots on crewships, and slingshot aboard them to board |
| Engineering | Ship hull health, faster Omni repairs, forge output, and hazard suppression | Survive fires and breaches when nobody's babysitting the hull |
| Command | Hire and direct up to 3 AI crew, plus the On Call Crew summon | The single most important school for solo play — your crew flies and fights for you |
Command Crew: The Solo Player's Secret Weapon
If you take one thing from this page: rank Command and hire AI crew. A well-built crew turns a four-person ship into a one-person ship. They pilot, they gun, they repair breaches and fires, and they defend against boarders — all while you focus on whatever you enjoy.
- Unlock crew slots with Command
The first rank of Command lets you hire and field a crew member, with more slots and better competence as you climb — the second slot opens a couple of ranks in and the third a couple after that, up to three active AI crew.
- Recruit from Ticker in Fortuna
Ticker (down in Fortuna, on Venus) sells rotating crew members for resources and Solaris debt-bonds. Each recruit has competency points spread across combat, gunnery, piloting, engineering, repair, and endurance.
- Assign roles that fit their stats
Every crew member takes a role — Pilot, Gunner, Defender, or Engineer. Match the role to their high stats: a Gunner wants Gunnery + Combat, an Engineer wants Repair + Endurance.
- Build the classic solo trio
Two Gunners to shred the fighter swarm and one Engineer to keep the ship alive is the reliable default. Swap one Gunner for a Pilot if you'd rather leave the seat and board.
Building a Solo-Ready Railjack
Your ship's power comes from two places: the components bolted onto the hull (Reactor, Shield, Engines, and armaments) and the Plexus — your personal mod board that you carry onto *any* Railjack, including loaners. Components come from three houses — Zetki (highest raw stats, but with drawbacks like turret overheat), Vidar (balanced, strong bonus perks), and Lavan (durable, great handling) — in ascending MK I–III tiers.
- Reactor first. It sets your Plexus capacity — how many and how strong your mods can be — and scales your Battle abilities. A high-capacity reactor is the single biggest upgrade you can chase.
- Turrets (armaments) next. Grab MK III guns from a house you like; Zetki hits hardest but overheats, while Vidar and Lavan trade some damage for handling and uptime.
- Forward Artillery is your crewship deleter. The nose cannon (
Tunguska) one-shots crewships that would otherwise take forever to chew down — slot the Forward Artillery mod so it keeps one-shotting the tankier crewships in the Veil. - Plexus loadout. Max turret damage (e.g. Hyperstrike), add a survivability mod for hull health, and slot one Battle ability that clears fighter swarms — the crowd-clumping Tether and the homing-missile Seeker Volley are the long-standing favorites.
- Engines and Shields are lower priority. Handling and shield recharge are nice, but they come after a solid reactor, guns, and Forward Artillery.
A Solo Mission Game Plan
With a crew aboard and Forward Artillery ready, a solo Railjack mission has a clean rhythm. The loop is: thin the swarm, delete the crewships, do the objective, extract.
- Let the swarm come to your turrets
Fighters cluster when they chase you. Let your Gunners and turrets work, and drop a Battle ability like Tether to bunch and delete a pack at once.
- Delete crewships with Forward Artillery
Line up the nose cannon and one-shot each crewship. Alternatively, board it via Archwing or the slingshot and blow its reactor from inside — either removes the biggest threat to your hull.
- Board the objective on foot
Most missions require you to enter an enemy capital ship or base — destroy radiators, hack a console, or defend a point. This is normal Warframe combat; bring a frame and weapons you trust.
- Patch and recall as needed
If the ship takes a breach or fire while you're away, your Engineer usually handles it — but Tactical's Omni recall snaps you home instantly if things get spicy.
- Finish and extract
Once the objective completes, mop up any stragglers and leave. Void Storm runs also crack your equipped relic here — pick your reward before you go.
Where Railjack Fits In Your Endgame
Once your ship runs itself, Railjack becomes a tool rather than a chore. Use Void Storms as a relic farm and price your haul with crack-or-sell and relic farming per run. Hunt Sisters of Parvos through the Kuva & Liches guide. And when you want to see exactly where a Proxima drop or resource comes from, the 3D star chart drop map plots it for you.
For the rest of the endgame web — Steel Path, Duviri (which has its own Intrinsics to compare), Arcanes, and Archon Shards — the sibling guides pick up where this one leaves off. And if you'd rather watch a build come together, the creators directory and the videos below are the best next click.
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