What’s the Helminth?

The Helminth has four purposes depending on what orbiter segments you have installed:

1. If you saw a weird thing growing out of your Warframe's neck, the Helminth stabbing you permanently removes it... unless the warframe is Nidus or Nidus Prime.
   • This cyst is used to make a special type of Kubrow called a Helminth Charger, so if you want one of these, leave the cyst on at least one Warframe.
   • Note: To my knowledge, you cannot permanently remove the cyst from the Nidus or Nidus Prime warframes.
   • You will be locked out of the infirmary again until you equip a warframe with a cyst, Nidus, or Nidus Prime, or have the orbiter segment in the next section installed.
2. Once you complete the quest "Heart of Deimos" and reach rank 3 with the Entrati syndicate in the Necralisk, you can buy a new "Helminth Segment" for your Orbiter for 15,000 standing. This allows you to change out abilities on your warframe.
   • Most abilities become available when you Subsume (sacrifice) a non-Prime warframe to the Helminth. The ability chosen is not random, but is rather than ones on this list
   • Some abilities are general abilities your Helminth learns as it levels up. You level up your Helminth by subsuming warframes, replacing abilities, and feeding the Helminth resources.
   • Speaking of feeding resources, you need to do this in order to be able to override abilities. There are 6 different categories of resources; Sentient parts can also be used for any of the six categories.
3. At rank 5, the Entrati syndicate also sells a second Helminth segment named the "Helminth Invigoration Segment". Once installed, the game chooses random buffs for 3 warframes that you can install for a week; these can be for warframes you don't own yet. Once you've installed 10 of these, you can ignore the warframe restriction for the next invigoration you install and then the counter resets
4. Once you've finished the quest "Veilbreaker" you gain the "Helminth Archon Shard Segment". This allows you to install Archon Shards into your warframe. These are permanent buffs as long as the shard is installed. You can have 5 of these installed on a warframe at once. They come in three basic colors at two qualities... Normal are the common type, Tauforged are more rare but have higher stats.
   • There is yet another Orbiter segment, the "Helminth Coalescent Segment" that allows you to fuse the 3 basic colors of Archon Shards to make 3 new colors of shards with new stats on them. You can also fuse 3 normal quality shards to make a Tauforged shard of the same color.
   • You can only choose 1 buff for each installed shard from this list.

I know this is a lot of information to take in at once. Some of these only really affect late game warframes.