The Cernos Prime is the Prime variant of the Cernos. Aside from increased damage, the Cernos Prime is unique in that it fires three arrows per shot in a horizontal spread, and has an Alternate Fire mode that shoots vertically, and deals bonus damage on headshots. It was released alongside
Valkyr Prime and
Venka Prime.
Characteristics[]
- This weapon deals primarily
Impact damage.
- Deals 50% bonus damage on headshots.
- Charged shots have innate 1 meter punch through.
- Innate multishot of 3 arrows.
- Alternate Fire can toggle a horizontal or vertical spread shot.
- On kill, bodies will follow the arrow that killed them, damaging enemies in their path and pinning the corpse to walls.
- Can use the bow-exclusive
Thunderbolt mod.
- Fire rate mods apply double their bonuses.
- Innate two
polarities.
Advantages:
- Fourth highest base damage of all bows, behind
Daikyu ,
Lenz and
Kuva Bramma.
- Pinpoint accuracy when aiming (RMB ).
- Silent.
- Uncharged Horizontal/Vertical Shot
- Very high crit chance
- Very high reload speed
- Above average status chance
- Charged Horizontal/Vertical Shot
- Third highest average number of procs per shot behind
Kuva Hek
- High crit chance
- Very high reload speed
- Third highest average number of procs per shot behind
Disadvantages:
- Draws from the rare sniper ammo pool.
- Very wide spread.
- Uncharged Horizontal/Vertical Shot
- Very low magazine
- Very low effective fire rate
- Very low average number of procs per shot
- Very low average number of crits per shot
- Very low max ammo
- Very low multishot
- Charged Horizontal/Vertical Shot
- Very low magazine
- Very low effective fire rate
- Below average average number of procs per shot
- Low average number of crits per shot
- Low max ammo
- Low multishot
Comparisons:
- Cernos Prime (Charged Horizontal/Vertical Shot), compared to Cernos (Charged Shot):
- Lower base damage per projectile (184 vs. 380)
- Higher total damage (552 vs. 380)
- Lower base critical chance (35.00% vs. 36.00%)
- Higher base status chance (30.00% vs. 18.00%)
- Higher average damage per tap (745.2 vs. 516.8)
- Higher burst DPS (1146.46 vs. 861.33)
- Higher sustained DPS (648 vs. 469.81)
- Higher multishot (3 vs. 1)
- Slower reload time (0.65 vs. 0.6)
- More polarities (
vs.
)
- Higher Mastery Rank required (12 vs. 6)
- Lower disposition (●●●●○ (1.25x) vs. ●●●●○ (1.30x))
- Cernos Prime (Charged Horizontal/Vertical Shot), compared to Rakta Cernos (Charged Shot):
- Lower base damage per projectile (184 vs. 470)
- Higher total damage (552 vs. 470)
- Higher base status chance (30.00% vs. 15.00%)
- Higher average damage per tap (745.2 vs. 634.5)
- Higher burst DPS (1146.46 vs. 1057.5)
- Lower sustained DPS (648 vs. 746.47)
- Higher multishot (3 vs. 1)
- Slower reload time (0.65 vs. 0.6)
- Less polarities (
vs.
)
- No innate Blight effect
Acquisition[]
String | Lower Limb | Upper Limb | ![]() |
Grip |
---|---|---|---|---|
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Manufacturing Requirements | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() 15,000 |
![]() 1 |
![]() 1 |
![]() 1 |
![]() 1 |
Time: 12 Hour(s) |
Rush: ![]() | |||||
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Vaultings[]
- On September 11th, 2018, it was announced that Cernos Prime, along with
Valkyr Prime and
Venka Prime, would enter the Prime Vault and be retired from the reward tables on September 25th, 2018. Any preexisting components or fully-built weapons will remain as is.
- Cernos Prime's relics were permanently unvaulted as of Update 29.10 (2021-03-19), being only obtainable through Abandoned Derelict Caches in Corpus Railjack missions.
Notes[]
- The +50% bonus damage on headshots is multiplicative to other sources of +bonus damage on headshot such as
Primary Deadhead and
Prowl.
- The Cernos Prime's shots fire multiple arrows in a fanning spread. The number of arrows is affected by multishot mods, similar to shotguns.
- Alternate Fire toggles a Horizontal Spread or Vertical Spread fire.
Heavy Caliber will decrease accuracy by a small amount, making each arrow fire slightly off from its normal trajectory.
- As of Hotfix 19.11.2 (2017-02-17) this was increased dramatically, making the weapon act more like a wildly-spreading shotgun than a fan of arrows.
- The arrows seem to be spread in a formation where some arrows are lower than the others, rather than being wider spread than others, this might make it difficult to get headshots with multiple arrows.
- Although Heavy Caliber dramatically affects the Horizontal mode, firing the Cernos Prime in Vertical mode will shoot the arrows in a horizontal formation with great accuracy
Trivia[]
- The Cernos Prime, alongside
Akstiletto Prime,
Dual Kamas Prime,
Fang Prime,
Paris Prime, and
Zhuge Prime are the only Prime weapons that do not require Orokin Cells as crafting ingredients.
Tips[]
- Cernos Prime is capable of orange crits with
Point Strike and
Argon Scope averaging approximately 1015 orange crit damage with a single arrow.
- The horizontal arrow spread is effective against groups of enemies, while the vertical spread is effective against a single target.
- While capable of reaching 100% status making every arrow proc, often the Cernos Prime's power comes with modding for
Hunter Munitions, which is not affected by status chance. Building for
Viral with
Malignant Force and
Rime Rounds is sufficient for the arrows to proc Viral often enough to increase the damage from
Slash procs brought on by Hunter Munitions to finish them off.
Media[]
Cernos Prime Skins
Patch History[]
Update 30.9 (2021-11-11)
- Fixed the Cernos Prime Vertical Spread shot doing 2x damage of Horizontal Spread shot.
Update 28.0 (2020-06-11)
- Reduced the hit FX of the Cernos Prime.
Hotfix 27.2.1 (2020-03-05)
- Increased Cernos Prime 10% Status Chance per projectile to 30% Status Chance per projectile.
Update 27.2 (2020-03-05)
- Greater than 100% Status having meaning
Shotguns have a unique Role here based on a very patch-work history with how they interact with Status Chance. A Shotgun that shoots 99% Status Chance would give you 35% (roughly) status per pellet. 100% Status Gives you 100% Status per pellet. This huge jump in performance happens with just a 1% gain - why? Well, to answer that we have to look at our choice to make what the UI conveys reality. It would feel broken to shoot a Shotgun with 100% Status and not see a perfect spread of Effects. In reality, to make Status consistent we have to treat Shotguns as a special case.
Shotguns as a special case means we have buffed the Status Chance of all Shotguns by x3 or greater. The UI now behaves to show the reality that you are determining Status Chance per pellet.
Update 25.7 (2019-08-29)
- Normalized quick shots to have the same critical chance/damage and status chance as charged shots.
- While reviewing Bow stats the team has also refreshed all their FX (including the Lenz)!
- Quick Shot increased from 60 to 92
- Charged Shot increased from 120 to 184
- Flight Speed increased from 85 to 95
- Tightened the spread of the vertical fire mode and made the top arrow land on the reticle instead of the middle
- Fixed Cernos Prime equipped with Heavy Caliber causing Vertical Spread mode to function as a Horizontal Spread.
Hotfix 25.3.3 (2019-07-16)
- Fixed an issue with Cernos Prime arrows fired by Mirage's Hall of Mirrors clones always hitting the floor.
Hotfix 25.0.7 (2019-05-30)
- Fixed the Cernos (Prime) Energy color persisting as default on the strings.
Update 23.9 (2018-09-25)
- Cernos Prime has entered the Prime Vault.
Update 22.16 (2018-03-15)
- Fixed Cernos Prime’s vertical spread not using equipped arrow Skins.
Hotfix 22.13.3 (2018-02-21)
- Cernos Prime Alt Fire is now silent as intended.
Hotfix 22.13.1 (2018-02-15)
- Fixed numerous projectile weapons (Cernos Prime, etc) having incorrect Status Chance calculations.
Update 22.12 (2018-02-09)
- Mastery Rank increased from 8 to 12.
- Charge speed increased from 1s to 0.5s.
- Status chance increased from 10% to 30%.
- Reload speed increased from 1s to 0.7s (in note put 0.65).
- Added Secondary Fire Mode toggle that shoots a vertical spread of 3 arrows.
- Added innate +50% damage to headshots.
Hotfix 19.0.7 (2016-11-22)
- Released via Valkyr Prime Access.
Hotfix 19.0.2 (2016-11-12)
- Removed an unreleased Relic from the wild.
Update 19.0 (2016-11-11)
- Parts and Relics loaded to the build.
Last updated: Update 23.9 (2018-09-25)
See also[]
Cernos, the normal counterpart.
Rakta Cernos, the Red Veil custom counterpart.
Mutalist Cernos, the Infested counterpart.