The Zhuge Prime is a primed variant of the 
Zhuge Tenno automatic crossbow, with higher critical chance, fire rate, magazine size, and altered damage that favors 
Slash, but with less reserve ammo. To compensate for its decrease in total damage, status chance, and reload speed, the bolts fired by the Zhuge Prime explode shortly after impact, and reloads faster from an empty magazine. Zhuge Prime was released alongside 
Wukong Prime and 
Ninkondi Prime.
Characteristics[edit | edit source]
This weapon deals primarily 
Puncture damage.
Advantages:
- Second highest base damage of all fully automatic weapons, behind
Zhuge/ Panthera.
- Very high critical chance and 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.
- Bolts explode in a 2.6 meter radius after 0.6 seconds on impacting a surface or enemy.
- Explosion delay reduces likelihood of inflicting self-stagger.
- Reloads 1 second faster from a fully depleted magazine.
- Innate three polarities.
- Can benefit from Firestorm ( Primed) and Cautious Shot.
- Counts as a bow in regards to fire rate mods, doubling the fire rate bonus.
Disadvantages:
- Low Impact damage – less effective against shields.
- Very low base reload speed.
- Projectiles have travel time.
- Explosion inflicts self-stagger.
- Explosion has linear damage falloff from 100% to 70% from central impact.
- Explosion range cannot be increased with Amalgam Furax Body Count.
- Explosion delay allows enemies to move out of explosion range if not directly hit by one of the bolts.
Comparisons:
- Zhuge Prime, compared to Zhuge:
- Lower base damage (50.0 vs. 100.0)
- Higher critical chance (26% vs. 20%)
- Lower status chance (30% vs. 35%)
- Higher fire rate (5.5 rounds/sec vs. 4.17 rounds/sec)
- Larger magazine (30 rounds vs. 20 rounds)
- Smaller max ammo capacity (270 rounds vs. 540 rounds)
- Slower reload speed (3 s vs. 2.5 s)
- Different polarities ( vs. )
- Higher Mastery Rank required (14 vs. 10)
- Lower disposition (1.15 vs. 1.2)
Acquisition
Zhuge Prime's main and component blueprints are acquired from the following Void Relics.
| Blueprint |  Grip
|
 String
|
 Barrel
|
 Receiver
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meso P2 Uncommon Axi T4 Uncommon Axi Z1 Uncommon Lith L1 Uncommon (V) Neo G2 Uncommon (V) Axi A6 Uncommon (V) |
Lith N6 Common Meso A2 Common (V) Meso P3 Common (V) Meso R3 Common (V) Neo A3 Common (V) Axi P3 Common (V) |
Lith N5 Common Axi A11 Common Meso W1 Common (V) Neo I1 Common (V) Axi M1 Common (V) Axi T5 Common (V) |
Neo Z6 Rare Neo Z3 Rare (V) Neo Z5 Rare (V) |
Axi B3 Uncommon Axi D1 Uncommon (V) |
| Manufacturing Requirements | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 15,000 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
Time: 12 hrs |
Rush:  50
| |||||
 Market Price: N/A
|
 Blueprints Price:N/A
| ||||
Notes[edit | edit source]
- Can be used in bow-only Sortie missions.
- Reload time is reduced to 2 seconds when the magazine is empty.
- Despite being capable of using the Thunderbolt mod, it has no effect due to the weapon's innate explosion.
- Enemies killed with the initial bolt are ragdolled and launched forward, dealing the same damage to other enemies in their path. In such cases, the explosion will not arm until the slain enemy's corpse strikes a wall, the floor, or any other piece of level geometry. The bolt will then create its detonation field at the point where the corpse 'lands'.
- Punch Through affects the location of the bolt explosions. The weapon's explosions are applied at the final point of contact where the bolt ends rather than where the bolt penetrates an enemy or object.
Tips[edit | edit source]
Zhuge Prime Skins
Media[edit | edit source]
Patch History[edit | edit source]
Hotfix 27.2.2
Reduced the following AoE weapons Radial Damage Falloff from central impact that were all previously 90%:
- Zhuge Prime: 30%
- Self Damage Changes
We are getting rid of Self Damage and replacing it with something else: instead of Self Damage, it’s now ‘Stagger’. This change completely removes the chance of killing yourself, and instead now creates scenarios where you will interrupt yourself - or ‘Stagger’ - to varying degrees if you aren’t careful.
The degrees of Self-Interrupt start with a small stumble all the way to full knockdown depending on how close you are to the center of explosion. Any Mods referring to Self Damage will be converted to acknowledge Stagger.
With this Self-Interrupt system, we have added dozens of new recovery animations that harness a ninja-like recovery experience. By pressing ‘Jump’ at the correct time, you can execute a ninja-skill-based knockdown recovery to ALL in-game knockdowns. This ninja recovery window is indicated by a glowing FX on your Warframe.
In the original Dev Workshop, we said:
As a result of this overall systemic change, Weapons with Stagger will be getting approximately a 20% buff in Damage, with any weapons with AOE receiving a 50% Radial Damage Falloff from central impact.
This is no longer accurate after continued testing. What we are doing now is:
No damage buffs have been added, but any weapons with AOE are receiving ~20% increase in Radius. Additionally, AOE weapons are receiving a 90% Radial Damage Falloff from central impact. This means on the very outer section of the explosion Radius 10% of the Damage will be dealt. Tactics will be deadly - aim true, Tenno.
Why: Several players brought up the history of the Tonkor and we want to make sure we ship this change in a place that’s conservative in its starting point from a balance perspective. The complete removal of Self Damage does change the pace of destruction with some of the game’s most powerful weapons, so we want to make sure we can iterate upwardly instead of releasing a bonanza of explosions with no other choices.
- October 2019 Riven Disposition Change
- Zhuge: 1.25->1.15
- Introduced.
Last updated: Update 25.3
See Also[edit | edit source]
- Zhuge, the normal counterpart.
