The Zhuge is a Tenno automatic crossbow. It boasts impressive damage that is complemented by its very high status chance, limited by its projectile nature and very slow fire rate.
This weapon can be sold for 
7,500
Characteristics[]
This weapon deals primarily 
Puncture damage.
Advantages:
- Tied with
Panthera/ Panthera Prime for the highest base damage of all fully automatic weapons.
- High critical chance.
- Very high status chance.
- High base accuracy.
- Very ammo efficient.
- High ammo reserve for its magazine size.
- Uses rifle ammo pickups instead of the scarcer sniper ammo pickups.
- Silent.
- On kill, bodies will follow the bolt that killed them, damaging anyone in their path and pinning the corpse to walls.
- Innate polarity.
- Can use the bow-exclusive Thunderbolt mod.
- Counts as a bow in regards to fire rate mods, doubling the fire rate bonus.
Disadvantages:
- Low Impact damage – less effective against shields.
- Low reload speed.
- Projectiles have travel time.
- Third lowest fire rate of all fully automatic weapons, after Attica/ Panthera Prime and Panthera.
Comparisons:
- Zhuge (Normal Attack), compared to Zhuge Prime (Arrow Impact):
- Higher base damage per projectile (100 vs. 50)
- Higher total damage (100 vs. 50)
- Lower base critical chance (20.00% vs. 26.00%)
- Higher base status chance (35.00% vs. 30.00%)
- Higher average damage per tap (120 vs. 63)
- Higher burst DPS (500.4 vs. 346.5)
- Higher sustained DPS (328.94 vs. 223.54)
- Lower fire rate (4.17 vs. 5.5)
- Smaller magazine (20 vs. 30)
- Larger max ammo capacity (540 vs. 270)
- Faster reload time (2.5 vs. 3)
- Less polarities ( vs. )
- Lower Mastery Rank required (10 vs. 14)
- Higher disposition (●●●●○ (1.20x) vs. ●●●●○ (1.15x))
Acquisition[]
The Zhuge's blueprint can be purchased from the Market.
| Manufacturing Requirements | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 20,000 |
 2,800 |
 900 |
 2 |
 2 |
Time: 12 hrs |
Rush:  30
| |||||
 Market Price: 125
|
 Blueprints Price: 20,000
| ||||
Notes[]
- Can be used on bow-only Sortie missions.
Tips[]
- While possessing an Auto trigger, the Zhuge is best used when fired in bursts to better aim shots and manage its small magazine. On the other hand, its automatic fire combined with its native knockback makes it good when strafing against multiple enemies, or shooting a single tough enemy multiple times.
- Thunderbolt synergizes well with the Zhuge due to the weapon's magazine size and automatic trigger, giving it a very high chance of triggering explosions within a shorter amount of time than conventional bows. This makes the Zhuge more proficient at crowd-control than single-shot bows like the Dread, with its full-auto fire allowing one to strafe an area with explosive bolts to deal damage against multiple enemies.
Trivia[]
- The Zhuge was originally introduced in Warframe China as a timed-exclusive item, alongside the Ninkondi and Spira.
- The Zhuge is named after the Chinese word for the repeating crossbow, Zhūgé nǔ (諸葛弩), literally meaning "the Zhuge [Liang] crossbow", in turn named after its purported inventor Zhuge Liang. Zhuge Liang was a Chinese chancellor that lived during the Three Kingdoms Period of China, and is considered one of the greatest strategists of the era.
- The Zhuge is the fourth crossbow introduced in the game, after the Attica and Ballistica/ Rakta Ballistica.
Media[]
Zhuge in Codex.
Tenno Reinforcements - Zhuge
Warframe Zhuge, Packing Even More Hard Wood - 5 Forma thequickdraw
Warframe Zhuge
Warframe Test Drive Zhuge 3 Forma
ZHUGE - Crossbow Supremacy 5 forma - Warframe
Warframe - All Tenno Primaries - Weapon Animations & Sounds (2012 - 2019)
Warframe - All Tenno Weapon Reloads in 3 minutes (2012 - 2019)
Zhuge Skins
Patch History[]
Update 25.8 (2019-10-01)
- October 2019 Riven Disposition Change
- Zhuge: 1.25->1.15
Hotfix 22.12.3 (2018-02-12)
- Changed the Zhuge’s critical chance to the intended 20%.
Update 22.12 (2018-02-09)
- Mastery Rank increased from 0 to 10.
Update 18.6 (2016-03-16)
- Introduced.
Last updated: Hotfix 22.12.3 (2018-02-12)
See also[]
- Zhuge Prime, the primed counterpart.
