Kuva Lich

"We Maggots live… not long. We hope more life… work… kill… maybe Queens notice… Maybe… they share… the Old Blood. We are maggots. But eventually even maggots can fly."

- Introduction to Kuva Liches

The Kuva Lich is a unique boss system, taking the form of a Grineer that is spiked with Kuva, who will hunt players down and invade the Star Chart using their influence to steal loot and increase enemy levels in controlled territories. A given Kuva Lich has a unique name, randomly assigned elemental resistances, and equipment. They are difficult to kill, with the Tenno who created a Lich being the only one who can put down said Lich for good, and players will need to modify their Parazon accordingly to do it.

Creation And Behavior


After the completion of The War Within quest, the player may encounter a Kuva Larvling in a regular level 20+ mission vs. Grineer - this does not include Sorties, Void Fissures, Quests and Dark Sectors. The spawning of a Kuva Larvling in a mission is announced to the player by the level's lighting flickering yellow, along with a Kuva Guardian announcing their presence, with its location being marked by a red waypoint. This doesn't necessarily happen at the start of the mission.

By choosing to kill the Kuva Larvling, the player causes a Kuva Lich to arise in the Origin System, thus becoming the Progenitor of that Kuva Lich, and the Warframe used for this is recognized as the Progenitor Warframe​. In a squad only the last player that damaged the Larvling may take the Mercy kill. If no one takes the mercy action the larvling will despawn after 15 seconds. This does not interrupt the normal course of the mission. Upon return to the Orbiter, the player will receive communications from the newly created Kuva Lich.

A Kuva Lich will increasingly establish Influence across a set of nodes in the system, by commanding Kuva Thralls, which will appear during missions. The Lich will gain Influence each time it ranks up, and a node will lose its influence after the player defeats the Lich Controlled Territory mission there. Clearing Influence from every node on the Star Chart will cause the lich to rank up. Influence serves to diminish the player's rewards for completing missions in the affected nodes, as a part of the reward will be claimed by the Kuva Lich through Reward Tax (this includes Credits, Resources, Blueprints, Void Relics, Ayatan Treasures, and Mods). As the number of nodes under Influence increases, the Reward Tax will also increase. Everything the player loses through Reward Tax will only be reclaimed after they have defeated the Kuva Lich.

Abilities
Kuva Liches have four unique abilities, three of them are variants of existing Warframe abilities and one is a movement ability. The abilities that they spawn depends on the element associated with the Progenitor Warframe that killed them.

Strategy


To fight your Kuva Lich, you must draw them out. You do this by doing missions in nodes that the Lich has influence, and by destroying their Thralls. Your Lich will also have specific resistances, and immunities, that are unique to you.

You will know a Lich is after you when an icon appears in your Navigation and Menu screens. The icon will appear beside the Nightwave button and will allow you to check details about your Lich, including Lich Level, Requiem Mod Attempts, and more.

Kuva Influence will be shown as a red cloud on your Navigation. It will start on one planet, and when you click in to view it, you will see which nodes the cloud is spreading over Nodes. These nodes will give you the option to run the standard node mission, the Kuva Lich version, or any active special version, such as Nightmares or Invasions. Kuva Lich can have Influence over nodes under other faction's control, making the thrall mission becomes like occupied or crossfire mission.

Only one Kuva Lich can be after you at one time, so you need to kill them outright to get a new one. To kill a Lich, you need to use your Parazon with Requiem mods. The Requiem Mods form a sort of puzzle and must be in the correct order to deliver the killing blow. Your squad can weaken the Lich, but only you may kill it.

To figure out the combination, you will need to kill the Lich's Thralls. Any mission under a Lich's influence will spawn Thralls. Thralls will periodically spawn as the Tenno cell advance through the mission map (or on Defense and Interception missions, several times per wave). There is a limit to the number of Thralls that will spawn in a given mission, approximately 15. Thralls are several levels higher than other enemies in the map, are immune to most forms of crowd control, and can use a teleport dodge move. Upon reaching 0% health Thralls will stumble and become vulnerable to a Secret Mercy Finisher (this is optional, and a Thrall will still die of its wounds without using a Finisher. Mercy kills have a 5% chance to drop a Requiem Relic). Upon the Thrall's death, all players in the mission are rewarded a Requiem Murmur. A multitude of Requiem Murmurs will update the Lich's status screen, revealing part of the Requiem Mod combination that will prove fatal to your Lich; the first two required Mods need 30 Murmurs each to reveal, while the third requires 70. Note that Murmurs will only reveal the Requiem Mods required to kill the Lich, not the order you need to put them. You will need to figure the order by trial-and-error.

If a Lich is sufficiently enraged, there is a chance they will appear in the mission for combat. It is entirely possible that a Lich will appear long before the player has deduced all three Requiem mods; because of this, killing or even fighting your Lich is not required for mission success (for example, waves in Defense missions will end even if the Lich is still active). A Lich has a shield bar and three health bars. Depleting a Lich's health bar to 5% will cause them to stumble, giving the player a chance to use their Parazon for a finisher attack. If the Requiem mods are in the correct sequence, the Lich's health bar will be destroyed, otherwise, the Lich will instead perform a finisher on the player. A Lich's finisher attack will instantly kill any Tenno, bypassing Bleedout entirely (even if other players are present), cause the Lich to despawn, and give the Lich a rank up.

When you finally find the right combination of Requiem Mods, you will have two choices: you can Vanquish the Kuva Lich, or decide to Convert it.


 * Vanquishing it will get you a Kuva Weapon named for the defeated Lich. (e.g. "Ulogg Stakk Kuva Quartakk"). This weapon will be "Ready to Claim" in your Foundry.
 * Converting it will turn it to your side, and it can appear in fights beside you.
 * Whichever choice you make, you also reclaim all "stolen" drops that they were responsible for. If your Lich has an Ephemera equipped, you are also guaranteed to get it. The Requiem mods used will lose a charge upon a successful kill/convert.

Kuva Weapons
These weapons are carried by a player's Lich and can be acquired once the Lich is killed. If the player has enough weapon slots and meets the required Mastery Rank, they can claim these weapons from their Foundry. The weapons vary in attributes, dependent on the Lich the player has slain. Each type of weapon will provide Mastery Points once, similar to Prime variants of weapons. These weapons have a max rank of 40. To obtain the maximum rank, the player must polarize the weapon five times, with each Forma increasing the maximum possible rank by 2 (in a similar manner as the ). So far, we know the weapon's base damage is based on the Kuva Lich's percentage of elemental damage. A list of Kuva Lich weapons are as follows (with a brief outline of how they differ to the base variant):

All Kuva weapons deal innate elemental damage, in addition to physical damage. The amount of this damage is random, ranging from 15-85%, while the type of element is determined by the Progenitor Warframe, as per the table below:

Tips

 * When a Kuva Lich invades a mission, enemies near it will start turning to thralls. This can be used to "farm" Requiem Murmur fragments, although not indefinitely.
 * If your Kuva Lich is controlling only one planet and you clear all mission nodes they influence, the Lich will simply move onto another planet.

Trivia

 * As confirmed on Prime Time #267, the first Lich that rose in the public build was called "Budigg Fugg".
 * The idea of Kuva Liches dates back to Devstream 88 when they were previously known as the "Kingpin" system.
 * Originally, your Warframe's color palette, choice of skin, and even whether it was a Prime/Umbra variant or not would affect your Lich's look and color scheme. In the current build however only your Warframe's chosen helmet is attached on the Lich's right shoulder, though it also takes into account Deluxe and TennoGen helmets as well.
 * With 8 unique Requiem mods, there are 336 possible permutations that can be created using three of those mods.
 * Thus, there is a % chance of figuring out the right combination on the first attempt.
 * If the first mod in the sequence is known, there is a 2% chance of a successful attempt.
 * If two mods in the sequence are known, there is a 17% chance of a successful attempt.
 * If all mods are known without knowing the exact sequence, there is a 17% chance of a successful attempt.

Bugs

 * It seems that right now if you decide to kill your Kuva Lich, it may still be recruited and come to your help in missions.
 * After you have revealed all three requiems for a given Lich, obtaining more murmurs will make it seem like you are unlocking a fourth one. This is a visual bug only, and this "fourth requiem" is reset at the end of every Lich mission, meaning it is never obtainable.
 * There is a discrepancy between the stats you see in your Kuva weapon's equip menu (and codex entry) stats and its upgrade menu stats. What this may be is the upgrade menu reflects the actual stats of your Kuva weapon and the equip menu reflects generic Kuva weapon stats for that specific Kuva weapon, before the Kuva Lich modifier is applied.
 * Kuva Liches may sometimes appear to have Excalibur's helmet attached to their shoulder, regardless of what Warframe is its progenitor.