Steel Essence is a special resource that can only appear in the steal path mode. Steel essence is described as “Tokens of Teshin’s Esteem” earned from Incursion Alerts or Acolytes on The Steel Path.
Can be exchanged for items that prove your warrior capabilities. To access the steel path mode you have to first clear every planet node in the star chart, then when you talk to teshin he will give you the steel path mode which is the same as the standard level.
But enemies are tougher with their level increased by 100, and they gain an additional +150% (to a total of 250%, or 2.5x) bonus to health, Armor, and shields.
At some point during the steel path mission, an Acolyte will spawn with a guaranteed steel essence drop of 2, and when you clear all the nodes on a planet you get 25 steel essence.
Steel Essence Farming Locations
Currently, the best farming location for Steel Essence is Disruption missions and survival missions.
These missions let you kill as many enemies as you want, without having to worry about enemies that stop spawning in defense or capture or exterminate.
So, it allows you to farm undisturbed until the acolyte spawns so you can kill them and either extract or continue to farm more.
Enemies That Drop Steel Essence
The Acolytes above are the enemies that Drop Steel Essence, they spawn periodically in every mission and always drop 2 steel essence, however, this can be affected by things like boosters and the smeeta kavat and other drop rate warframe abilities like Nekros.
Guide to Farming Steel Essence
The best way to farm steel essence is to go into an endless mission where you don’t have to defend an objective that you can easily do.
This leaves you with 2 options disruption and Survival, the survival mode is preferable, but if you have a good Khora you can easily do disruption.
While doing these missions an acolyte is going to spawn and you aim to kill them, they will drop the steel essence and leave and you can either choose to continue till another acolyte spawns, or extract from the mission.
If you haven’t completed all the nodes in the steel path mode by completing an entire planet you will get 25 steel essence, you also have the option of doing the 5 daily incursion missions that give you 5 steel essence each.
To kill the Acolytes easily you have several options you could strip their armor with weapons like the epitaph, Stropha, or Vastilok.
You could cc them with warframe abilities like Khora, and Nekros also offers the option of getting a chance of additional drops with his desecrate, but because he is squihy you are going to need alternate ways to survive.