The next season of Warframe's new daily and weekly challenges system, Nightwave, launched on all platforms after the closing keynote at TennoCon 2019. The Warframe-focused conference was held in London, Ontario, the city where developer Digital Extremes is headquartered.

Digital Extremes played the opening cinematic for Nightwave: Series 2, revealed its title ("The Emissary"), and announced that it would launch immediately on all platforms. It introduced the voice actor behind the enigmatic Nora Night, Sheryl Mebane, to announce the launch date from the TennoCon stage.

Warframe currently runs on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. All of its supported platforms got the new content at the same time.

Last season, Nightwave centred around the story of an escaped Grineer prisoner, "The Wolf of Saturn Six", who sought to wreak vengeance upon his captors and the Corpus who enabled them.

The Grineer and Corpus are two of the antagonist factions that make up the Warframe universe. Grineer are worker drones turned warriors whose population suffers from genetic decay due to continuous cloning. The Corpus are a merchant cult who worship profit above all else.

In addition to telling the story of the Wolf of Saturn Six, the previous Nightwave series also expanded the Warframe lore with new creature types referred to as "Amalgams", along with new loot called "Amalgam Mods".

Amalgam enemies were only really added to the game with an update that was released nearer to the end of the first season of Nightwave, but Digital Extremes used the event to lay the groundwork for their introduction.

With Nightwave: Series 2, the focus appears to be on Warframe's third antagonist faction, known as Infested. The Grineer do get a mention, and we can see Corpus in the opening cinematic.

In this instalment, Nora Night will be telling the remarkable story of Arlo, a Grineer child who appears to have survived the infestation. Digital Extremes promises that as the story unfolds, we will learn more about Arlo and his mission to soothe our deepest wounds.

Put in Nora Night's words:

Within our darkest recesses, there lives a beacon of hope.

Some call him a gift. Others a miracle. He emerged from that vile plague of horrors not just unsullied, but immaculate. In his blood, he bears the power to heal the sick, to revive the fallen, to cure the Grineer of their rot and disease.

This is his story.

Rewards

Lore and story are fine and well, but in the end Warframe is a game and we play it to get our hands on the loot. Sweet, sweet loot.

Nightwave: Series 2 introduces the following rewards:

Emissary [SPOILER] Collection (Tier 30) — Become like Arlo's devoted with this cosmetics collection.
Chitoid Sentinel Bundle (Tier 29) — Give any Sentinel a flair of Infestation with this pack.
Protosomid Shoulder Guard (Tier 28) — Loathsome tendrils squirm from these hefty shoulder guards.
[SPOILER] Forma (Tier 26) — Apply the [SPOILER] polarity to any warframe or weapon.
Spore Ephemera (Tier 19) — Leave a trail of filth with every footstep.

Changes

Digital Extremes announced several changes to the way Nightwave works, based on feedback from players during the last season:

Playing Catch-Up — Play Acts from previous weeks if you missed them.
De-grindification — Fewer Weekly and Elite Weekly Acts, with an increased amount of standing per Act. It is also looking to front-load Nightwave Creds as an earlier reward for participating in the series.
Act Changes — Lowered the time and wave requirements for some Acts that feature endless missions. Removed the "with friends" requirements from all Nightwave Acts.
New Acts — Including the most important one... petting your Kubrow or Kavat. Also added Acts for transmuting mods and K-Drive races.

Wukong Prime confirmed

In addition to the next Nightwave, Digital Extremes also released Wukong Prime after the TennoCon keynote. While many were expecting Atlas Prime, Digital Extremes has frequently released the Primed version of a warframe out of sequence from its original release date.

Primed warframes and gear are enhanced variants of the standard weapons, warframes, and items that were added to the game years ago.