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 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 proper maintenance.

Variants

 * -|Huras Kubrow =


 * -|Raksa Kubrow =


 * -|Sahasa Kubrow =


 * -|Sunika Kubrow =


 * -|Chesa Kubrow =

Acquisition
To acquire a Kubrow for the first time, a player must complete the first part of the Howl of the Kubrow Quest, which provides the segment required to repair the Incubator equipment within the Liset's Orbiter compartment. The quest also provides other resources and equipment required for incubation, such as the Incubator Power Core blueprint and guides the player through the breeding process for the first time.

With the exception of the quest mission to acquire a Collar for their new Kubrow, the breeding process in the quest that guides the player through is the same as the breeding process for additional Kubrows later on. In total, the player must have a working Incubator segment, a Kubrow Egg, and an Incubator Power Core. Additionally, the player cannot have an existing Kubrow active (i.e., out of stasis and available to take on missions), and there must be a free Stasis Pod available for use.

Incubation
Once the player is able to meet the necessary requirements to begin incubation, the player is offered a choice between a Random incubation or the use of Genetic Code Templates.

Random
As the name implies, a Random incubation offers no guarantees on the resulting Kubrow's Variant, height, gender, color, or fur pattern.

Genetic Code Template
An incubation utilizing Genetic Code Templates offers a much higher probability of the traits imprinted on the Template to be present in the resulting Kubrow, however, this is still not guaranteed, and certain Kubrow traits are not even imprinted on the Template in the first place. See the Genetic Code Template article for more information about the transferal of traits from one Kubrow to another when starting this type of incubation.

Regardless of the type of incubation, once the process is started, it will require 48 hours to complete, independent of server reset cycles. This stage may, however, be rushed for.

Maturation
When the incubation process completes, either naturally or by rushing, the player will be able to name their new Kubrow. Once named, the Kubrow will begin to experience daily Genetic Stability and Loyalty degradation, even as a pup. It will also require an additional two daily server resets to occur before it will reach maturity, at which point the player can take it out on missions.

Interestingly, since the maturation of a Kubrow pup is dependent on the server reset cycle and not a set amount of hours, depending on when the Kubrow is named, it can take as little as 24 hours (if it was named immediately before the first server reset) or as long as 48 hours (if named immediately after the server reset) to reach maturity.

The Kubrow's Variant will impact its utility in-game, so it is typically a good idea to be familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the Kubrow's variant before taking it along on a mission.

Inventory Limitations
As of Update 16.3, players are limited to a maximum of one Kubrow Egg in their inventory at any time. The only exceptions to this rule are when a Kubrow Egg is offered as a mission reward during an Alert or when the egg is purchased for through the Market. If the egg is offered as a reward or purchased, the player will receive the egg regardless of whether or not they already have one in their inventory. However, the player will still be prevented from picking up additional eggs until all eggs in their inventory are used.

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 (Health)
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 reduces their maximum health beyond its base if left alone for too long. The Kubrow will eventually die if its Genetic Stability drops to 0%.

This degradation can be countered by using DNA Stabilizers available from the Market costing for a packet of 6, which restores lost Genetic Stability by 40% per use.

Loyalty (Affection)
Loyalty refers to the Kubrow's affection toward the player, and affects its combat performance. Each Kubrow starts out with 100% Loyalty, which provides a +100% bonus to the Kubrow's base attack damage. Loyalty decays by 20% on days the player has not interacted with the incubator, and decays by 40% when the Kubrow dies in combat. Loyalty does not decay if a Kubrow is killed after its 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. This restores 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 per a 24-hour server cycle.

Stasis
To begin, all Kubrows will first need a Stasis Pod to grow and mature inside before being taken along with in missions.

If a player expects to be away for long periods from the game, or simply wants to breed another Kubrow, they may place their currently active Kubrow in Stasis as players may only have one active Kubrow at a time. This clears the Kubrow from the Incubator, storing it in a Stasis Pod (which can be bought for each) and 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. If the incubator upgrade segment is installed this time is reduced to 30 minutes, also you're able to rush this time with credits.

In the event that a player wishes to permanently remove a Kubrow from their possession, for example, due to the lack of vacant Stasis Slots, the Kubrow can be consigned to the Lotus for. However, a Kubrow in Stasis cannot be consigned and therefore must first be revived from Stasis. When consigning a Kubrow to the Lotus it is possible to lose a Stasis slot.

Mods
Currently, most Kubrow Mods are dropped by Feral Kubrows or granted after a Kubrow has hatched. 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.
 * Shelter: Creates a shield around its master while they revive fallen allies.

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 a Sentinel's Guardian or a Huras Kubrow's Stalk over the 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 airborne 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, it will not be resurrected even if the player uses a Revive.
 * However, if the player is killed and uses a revive while the Kubrow is bleeding out, both the Kubrow and player will be revived.
 * Melee attacks 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."
 * 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.
 * A Kubrow can become Mind Controlled from a Radiation Proc'ed Nyx, The controlled Kubrow will exclusively attack its owner and no other allies, The Mind Control also ends when the radiation proc ends.
 * Ordis has a particular distaste for Kubrows, frequently expressing it before correcting himself.
 * A wizened Kubrow floats inside a tube in the Orokin Lab.