In Warframe, its always talked about how dangerous the sentients were. Every action of very faction is as a result of the sentient war.
The Grineer were originally created as a means of creating cheap soldiers to fight the sentients, the corpus are descendants of the survivors of the sentient.
The infested are even a failed result of trying to create something that can biologically adapt to the sentients. Even the Ostron had to rely on Gara and their tower to protect them from it.
Even this game as we know it wouldn’t exist without the threat of the sentients, because the Warframes were the Orokins final solution to their ever-evolving problem which was the sentients.
As a player after hearing so much about the pain and issues they caused and how their horrible weapons changed humanity as we know it you start to understand that they are very much the boogie men of Warframe, and the faction that everyone else fears.
Although as a player no one would blame you if you started to wonder what exactly were the Sentients? what do they look like? What weapons did they use, and will I be able to use those weapons?
Something About Shedu..
And low and behold the game answered our questions in the form of the Sentient Assault Rifle Arm-Cannon known as the Shedu. The Shedu is a mastery 13 rifle Arm canon that represents the Sentients fury.
Its searing rounds are heat beams that create electricity explosions upon impacting an enemy or surface.
Like the sentients it is made to last as it has self regenerating ammo, and upon reaching 0 ammo it releases an impact explosion in a short radius that not only is a guaranteed stagger, but also removes the resistances that its fellow sentients have built up.
The Sentients were built for a very specific purpose, to do the will of the Orokin and adapt to whatever adversities that they come across, and when dealing with the enemies of the Orokin it is no surprise that the sentients created a very effective killing machine.
How and Where To Get Shedu?
Like the reveal of the Sentients the Shedu is a weapon that is supposed to be acquired much later in the game.
The weapons blueprint is given at the end of the Erra quest but can also be purchased from Cephalon Simaris for 100,000 standing. There are multiple ways to get the parts for the Shedu.
The first one is by farming the Symbolist enemies that are found in the sentient anomalies when playing rail jack.
Specifically, the Symbolist’s appear during the Veil Proxima during Empyrean missions, and don’t worry about missing them because the minute that the ship spawns in the zone the game flashes the sentient symbol that lets you know that they are present.
Although several things should be noted. The first is that if you were going to farm this you should be warded as each part has a 1 percent chance of dropping from each symbolist enemy.
That means that if the sweet mistress known as RNG was kind you would expect it after about 210 kills, but because this is Warframe and RNG can be a fickle mistress you should expect to kill a lot more enemies before it drops and that’s approximately going to be anywhere from 600 to about 1000 enemies.
Now as determined as you might be you might say to yourself “I will just spend a whole day trying to farm it, that shouldn’t be so bad right?”
Well you would think so, but that’s assuming you’re lucky to get a 1% drop for each individual part, and nothing stops you from getting multiple copies of the same parts.
So in my opinion, if you are going to farm it, you might need to dedicate more than one day so you don’t burn yourself out.
On the other hand, the Symbolist enemies spawned more frequently in Operation Scarlet Spear and Operation Orphix Venom, if you are lucky enough to be interested in this weapon while those were going on then the chances of getting the Shedu from drops because a lot higher and you could easily farm it.
Finally, the simplest but most expensive method trading it between other players.
The Shedu is one of those weapons that can be traded for its individual parts between players.
If you have friends that are incredibly nice, or you have extra plat on your hands, you could easily trade the for the Shedu and acquire it without having to pull your hair out and sell your soul for some RNG.
Another way to do it is if you get multiple copies of the same parts, you could always sell those copies for plat and buy the part that you want.
In summary, there is no easy way to get it, one way is time consuming and annoying, the other one will cost you about 70 to 80 plat looking at the current market price the choice is up to you.
Shedu Characteristics
Ok, let’s take a look at main characteristics of Shedu:
1) Primary fire
If I called the Shedu an example of the Sentients twin pronged fury I would not be lying. Despite its looks, the Shedu is a rifle that looks like a Cannon, that feels like a shotgun despite its magazine size.
Due to the fact that it belongs to the rifle class of weapons in Warframe, it uses rifle mods. Its primary file has this unique attribute that allows it to apply its damage in two equally devasting parts.
The first part is its scorching primary fire which does heat damage. A unique aspect of this weapon is that fact that normally even high status weapons would either do one or all of the standard damage types known as Impact, Slash and finally puncture, then they would apply what ever elemental damage type that they come with.
But like the sentients the Shedu knows what the enemy and players alike expect, and then adapts to it. Instead of doing the basic damage types then applying its elemental damage, it has a primary fire of just heat damage as a guaranteed proc. This is good for multiple reasons.
The first is that it has quite a good accuracy for the type of weapon that it is with very little spread for its range, the second is that because of its high critical chance frankly criminally high crit multiplier and high-status chance, the spectrum of builds that you could go with is insane.
The best part is that the weapon itself doesn’t need any mods that have to do with ammo because it is self-recharging with a delay of 1 second and when you run out it release the previously mention guaranteed explosion that staggers enemies in a close vicinity.
Although these rounds do have quite the travel time as they aren’t hit scan so you might have to equip a mod that increases that.
2) Radial attack
The second prong of the Sentients fury is the Radial attack also known as the electrical area of effect that is emitted by the rounds of the Shedu upon coming into contact with an object, this can be enemy or terrain.
These explosions themselves are devastating as they explode in a 6.6-meter radius and serve as a form of additional crowd control, and as a way of applying a different status effect.
As well as not having the standard damage types of Slash, Impact, and Puncture, the primary fire is unique in the fact that it shares the same crit multiplier, crit chance, and also status chance with its primary fire which is pretty much unheard of when it comes to weapons in Warframe, but then again what did we expect from the Sentient’s fury.
Advantages of Shedu
Like so many other signature weapons from the factions of Warframe, the Shedu is quite the fitting representation of its faction.
The first being its adaptability, now this isn’t a specific weapon advantage, but because it is a sentient weapon it has the strange quirk of taking on the appearance of your Warframe when the use certain abilities like Rhino’s iron skin, certain ephemeras, or even niduses parasitic link.
Now seriously though an advantage would be its durability with its self reloading magazine meaning that it is pretty much built for endurance runs as you never have to worry about picking a Warframe or companion or a mod that helps with ammo management.
Another positive of this passive is that as mentioned before when the magazine hits 0 it releases an area of effect that always staggers enemies.
Meaning that if you get surrounded unexpectedly or you decide to go close to enemies and you run out of ammo currently in your magazine the area of effect with always ensure you have time to not only reload but also get to cover safely.
The other advantage is its primary fire doing heat damage as this leaves you with a plethora of options when it comes to elemental builds combinations like radiation or gas effective against corpus and robots, then its explosions deal electricity damage that when combined with the same elements will give different effects thereby stacking the element effects in ways that other weapons cannot provide.
This weapon also has quite a high critical chance and critical multiplier meaning that if you don’t want to go with the standard status build and would rather prefer a crit or slash build, you also have that option as both those stats provide you with enough flexibility to go either or.
The best advantage of the Shedu doesn’t come from the weapon itself, but its synergy with two specific Warframes and that is Volt and Toxin Chroma.
When using either warframes if you use Volts 2nd ability and Chroma’s 2nd ability you get increased reload speed, and currently there is a bug on the Shedu that when you have these buffs active and the Shedu equipped your magazine never empties
Now while this wouldn’t normally be an advantage volt and chroma are two very powerful warframes that could be run in a multitude of missions, and its usage on Volt also increases its fire rate – which therefore removes one of its glaring negatives and letting you run the mod Critical delay because fire rate isn’t an issue anymore.
Disadvantages of Shedu
In the Shedu’s defence the disadvantages of the weapon are what make it unique, while for other weapons these disadvantages can be detrimental, in the case of Shedu they can easily be fixed with a mod or a specific Warframe.
While its projectile flight speed can be slow, this can be fixed with the projectile flight speed mod at the cost of an Exilus mod slot.
Although these slots are normally conserved for mods that either give you a mod that changes nonrifle ammo to rifle ammo or a mod that increases magazine size which you won’t really need on the Shedu, so it is not like your losing anything much .
The first would be its slow fire rate, without any mods this does make the Shedu feel like your firing a very accurate and long range shotgun, but with Warframes like volt, toxic chroma, or the best option because of his crit chance and damage boost Harrow.
The Shedu can easily be given the fire rate it deserves. The last disadvantage is the one that is the most deserved, and that’s the criminally small magazine size of the Shedu.
Because of its magazine size of 7 it makes it hard to commit to extended fights as you will quickly run out of bullets and have to wait a second for it to reload, while this might provide the player with some time due to the area of effect
At high level mission enemies can kill you in less than a second, and a lot of enemies can become immune to crowd control leaving you in a very bad spot with nothing to do but wait till it recharges.
Best Shedu Builds
Now let’s check the best Shedu builds:
1) Standard All-Rounder Shedu build (2 forma)
This is quite an straightforward build for the Shedu as it takes advantage of its high base crit chance and status, the elements for this build are viral and heat for the primary and then viral and electricity for the secondary.
I recommend these elements as they are one of the strongest elements in the game right now as viral increases the amount of damage enemies take from all sources while heat reduces their armour.
Then for the radial viral does the same, but electricity chain cc’s the enemies providing you with a lot of variety for minimal cost.
It should be said this build could do a lot more damage if we were fighting an enemy like the infested we could just have malignant force and infected clip as the primary fire would do gas damage while the explosion would do corrosive to deal with the tougher enemies.
Another reason why you might want to commit to a more forma heavy build is the fact that the projectile flight speed would still be slow.
2) Endgame All-Rounder Shedu Build (5 forma)
This build is the higher end version of the Standard all rounder build, it still has the same key mods, but this time it add heavy calibre as that increases your damage at the cost of accuracy, but because of the spread on the Shedu it barely affects it to the point that it is noticeable.
The galvanized chamber and Aptitude make it an even better endurance weapon and then we still commit to the crits with point strike, it should be noted you can fit this for critical delay if you don’t mind the slow fire rate.
Although a change from this build is the fact that we do switch out the cold mod so we can only run one element at a time, this can be changed if you run the other elemental mod instead of vigilante armaments be warned as depending on the element this might cost you extra forma.
Now the benefit of doing this would be more damage, but less projectiles fired, and when fighting against a group of enemies more projectiles fired means more individual area of effect blasts.
3) Raw damage / Low Status Shedu Build (6 forma)
This build relies on the Shedu’s base heat primary fire meaning that it has minimal status, because you don’t have any other damage type to Contend with on the Shedu you can easily run this without having to worry about proccing the right element.
Although at 6 forma it is quite an investment, but the mods are quite cheap and easy to come by so you won’t be hard pressed to go for this build.
For a more endgame version I would recommend going for galvanized chamber instead of split chamber.
4) Crit Volt Build (6 forma)
This build takes advantage of the Volt 2nd ability exploit and runs with it, the negatives are you only have 1 element which is the base element.
But this can be changed by removing vigilante armaments and putting the element mod in that slot, you would be able to run most elements except for Cold but that should be a none issue.
I would recommend having a friend that can strip armour as this build will struggle against heavily armoured units.