Kubrow

The Kubrow are a canine-like egg-laying species that originally served as companions and pets for the Orokin, and later as attack and guard animals for the Orokin elite. After the downfall of the Orokin, surviving Kubrow on Earth adapted and became feral with only the most aggressive and ferocious surviving. Recent DNA-altering technologies have been unearthed that can allow them to once again be domesticated to become loyal and protective companions to their new owner. This process however, leaves the domesticated animals riddled with degenerative defects that must be constantly repaired. Intelligent and highly social, domesticated Kubrow also require regular interaction by those they have imprinted upon to remain at peak efficiency.

For the Tenno, a Kubrow can be a powerful and loyal ally, however they are limited to melee attacks, and require constant care and maintenance.

Variants

 * -|Huras Kubrow =


 * -|Raksa Kubrow =


 * -|Sahasa Kubrow =


 * -|Sunika Kubrow =

Obtaining a Kubrow
First, a player must kill the Jackal on Venus in order to unlock the quest.

A player's first Kubrow pet can be acquired by doing the Howl of the Kubrow Quest line, which provides the necessary equipment and resources to get a Kubrow, foremost among them being the Incubator segment from where most shipboard interaction with Kubrows take place.

To breed a Kubrow, players must first have a functional Incubator, acquire a Kubrow Egg, and an Incubator Power Core. The first can be found by destroying Kubrow Dens on Earth, while the second has to be crafted in the Foundry; alternatively, both can be bought with at the Market. Additionally, a player must have an empty Stasis Pod before a Kubrow can be bred.

There are two options available when breeding a Kubrow. The first and most common is random breeding, where the Egg is left to incubate by itself, resulting in a Kubrow with a random type, gender and appearance. For better control of a Kubrow's characteristics, a player can choose to use Genetic Code Templates, which contain another Kubrow's genetic code - an "imprint" - that will be cloned unto the resulting Kubrow. Two Imprints are required in order to breed a Kubrow in this manner, and will be consumed upon use.

It takes 48 hours for a Kubrow to be incubated, from being an egg to becoming a conscious Kubrow pup. After this, a Kubrow needs to mature for another one to two daily log-ins before they can finally be chosen as a companion and taken into missions. While a still-maturing Kubrow cannot participate in missions, they can still be interacted with, and experience genetic degradation.

Attention: Currently only one Kubrow Egg can be in the player's inventory. If an Egg has already been collected the second Egg will be impossible to pick up and must be left behind. To continue collecting Kubrow Eggs, the first egg must be placed into the Kubrow Incubator (Requires an active Kubrow slot). Multiple Eggs can be in inventory if purchased through the market or through alerts if one is already present in your inventory.

Maintenance
Kubrow have two parameters that must be maintained in order to ensure that they perform to their best during missions, namely Genetic Stability and Loyalty, both which can be viewed in the Incubator.

Genetic Stability refers to the Kubrow's physical vitality, which affects its maximum health. A newly hatched Kubrow starts out with 100% Genetic Stability, giving it a +100% bonus to its maximum health; a Kubrow with 150 base health will have 300 health at 100% stability. At 0%, a Kubrow will have its base health with no bonus. Their Genetic Stability degrades by 10% every 24 hours, which reduces the amount of bonus health and even reduce their maximum health beyond its base if left alone for too long. The Kubrow will eventually die if its Genetic Stability drops to -100%. This degradation can be countered by using DNA Stabilizers available from the Market, which restores lost Genetic Stability by 40% per use. DNA Stabilizers can only be used once per day.

Loyalty refers to the Kubrow's affection toward the player, which affects its combat performance. Kubrow start out with 100% Loyalty, which provides a +100% bonus to its base attack damage. Loyalty decays by 20% on days the player does not log in, and decays by 40% when the Kubrow dies in combat. Loyalty does not decay if a Kubrow is killed after their owner has been killed as well. Lost Loyalty can be restored by using the Interact function on the Incubator, where the Tenno plays with their Kubrow to restore their bond, giving 20% Loyalty per interaction. While players can interact with their Kubrow as many times as they wish, Loyalty can only be restored up to 3 times every 24 hours.

If a player is expected to be away for long periods from the game, or wants to breed another Kubrow, they can place their currently active Kubrow in Stasis. This clears the Kubrow from the Incubator, and keeps them in a Stasis Pod (which can be bought for 10 each) that prevents genetic degradation and loyalty decay. While Kubrows can be brought in and out of Stasis at will, it takes 3 hours for a Kubrow kept out of stasis to become active.

In the event that a player wishes to permanently remove a Kubrow from their possession, for example due to lack of available Stasis Slots to keep Kubrow in, they can choose to consign the chosen Kubrow to the Lotus for 25,000.

Mods
Currently, most Kubrow Mods are dropped by Feral Kubrows or given after hatching. A few mods are:
 * Bite: Increases Critical chance and Critical damage
 * Fast Deflection: Increases Shield regeneration rate.
 * Link Armor: Shares owner's Armor with their Kubrow.
 * Link Health: Shares owner's maximum Health with their Kubrow.
 * Link Shields: Shares owner's maximum Shields with their Kubrow.
 * Loyal Companion: Increases the duration of the Kubrow's bleedout phase.
 * Maul: Increases the Kubrow's melee damage.
 * Pack Leader: Heals the Kubrow by a percent of damage done by its master's melee strikes.
 * Scavenge: Allows the Kubrow to unlock lockers.

Comparison to Sentinels
The following comparison assumes that the player possesses all available mods for both Sentinels and Kubrow.

Advantages:
 * Much better survivability.
 * Much larger maximum hit points.
 * Much larger maximum shields.
 * High armor rating.
 * Capable of self regeneration.
 * Takes AoE damage almost separately to the owner.
 * Immune to Orokin laser traps.
 * High single-target attack power.
 * High damage.
 * Base damage of 120.
 * Attacks enemies independently, even those the player cannot attack due to intervening obstacles.
 * Can be revived if downed.
 * Variant-specific abilities are used more extensively, such as Raksa Kubrow's Protect over Sentinel's Guardian and Huras Kubrow's Stalk over Shade Sentinel's Ghost.

Disadvantages:
 * Expensive maintenance, requiring daily upkeep to maintain peak performance.
 * Highly dependent on the player's equipped Warframe stats and mods for toughness.
 * Effectiveness restricted by terrain.
 * Short range melee-only attacks prevent it from attacking flying enemies, and reduces its effectiveness against ranged enemies.
 * Difficult to acquire, requiring numerous rare resources to create.
 * Type of Kubrow acquired is random without using Genetic Code Template imprints.
 * If killed after being downed, will not be resurrected if player uses a Revive.
 * However if the player is killed and uses a revive while the Kubrow is bleeding out, both Kubrow and Player will be revived.
 * Melee only deals damage and cannot be upgraded with elemental mods.
 * Slow at attacking and switching targets, making them less effective against groups of enemies.
 * Slow attack speed makes its DPS lower than that of a fully modded sentinel weapon.
 * Suffers damage from Environmental Hazards such as fire, as they normally touch the floor like players and their ground-borne enemies.
 * Loyalty decay can restrict effective daily usage.
 * Higher threat level.

Bugs

 * Apparently, Kubrows that zip-line along with their masters appear to be floating below the cable while being frozen in mid-air.

Trivia

 * The name of each breed of Kubrow is derived from Sanskrit, which is usually relevant to the breed's specialty;
 * Huras (हुरस्) translates to "stealthily",
 * Raksa (रक्षा) can translate to "protection",
 * Sahasa (साहस) can translate to "courage", and
 * Sunika (सूनिक) can translate to "hunter".
 * It can be assumed that Kubrow pets are hatched from genetically modified feral Kubrow eggs.
 * Though we never see the genetic manipulation of the egg, it would be impossible to simply have a modern feral Kurbow egg hatch into variants of Orokin Kubrows without some sort of genetic template to reverse the evolution.
 * An Orokin Kubrow contained in a stasis cell found in the Clan Dojo's Orokin Lab could explain where the genetic templates were produced from.
 * This could also explain the reasoning behind the DNA degradation.
 * Many of the first batch of Kubrows who matured after Update 14's release were inadvertently killed permanently due to a bug during the quest to obtain their collar. In the notes for the hotfix which fixed the bug, DERebecca posted, "501 of the first cloned Kubrow have been lost, but never forgotten. 20/07/2014." Those who lost a Kubrow from the bug received; the Kubrow Start Kit and a full set of Kubrow Mods, a new Kubrow Egg, a Kubrow Incubator, Kubrow Food, a Kubrow Stasis Slot, a Kubrow blank Trait Print, and 10 x Kubrow Mods.
 * Ordis has a particular distaste for Kubrows, frequently expressing it before correcting himself.