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[]
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.
- Initial hit and explosion apply status separately.
- Explosion does not need direct line of sight to deal damage and will penetrate walls.
- Reloads 50% 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 (Arrow Impact), compared to Zhuge (Normal Attack):
- Lower base damage per projectile (50 vs. 100)
- Lower total damage (50 vs. 100)
- Higher base critical chance (26.00% vs. 20.00%)
- Lower base status chance (30.00% vs. 35.00%)
- Lower average damage per tap (63 vs. 120)
- Lower burst DPS (346.5 vs. 500.4)
- Lower sustained DPS (223.54 vs. 328.94)
- Higher fire rate (5.5 vs. 4.17)
- Larger magazine (30 vs. 20)
- Smaller max ammo capacity (270 vs. 540)
- Slower reload time (3 vs. 2.5)
- More polarities ( vs. )
- Higher Mastery Rank required (14 vs. 10)
- Lower disposition (●●●●○ (1.15x) vs. ●●●●○ (1.20x))
Acquisition[]
 String
|
 Receiver
|
 Barrel
|
 Blueprint
|
 Grip
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Axi A11 Common (V) Axi M1 Common (V) Axi T5 Common (V) Lith G3 Common (V) Lith N5 Common (V) Meso W1 Common (V) Neo I1 Common (V)
|
Axi B3 Uncommon (V) Axi D1 Uncommon (V) Neo N14 Uncommon (V)
|
Neo Z3 Rare (V) Neo Z5 Rare (V) Neo Z6 Rare (V) Neo Z7 Rare (V)
|
Axi A6 Uncommon (V) Axi T4 Uncommon (V) Axi Z1 Uncommon (V) Lith L1 Uncommon (V) Lith T5 Uncommon (V) Meso P2 Uncommon (V) Neo G2 Uncommon (V)
|
Axi P3 Common (V) Lith N6 Common (V) Meso A2 Common (V) Meso P3 Common (V) Meso R3 Common (V) Meso T4 Common (V) Neo A3 Common (V)
|
| Manufacturing Requirements | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 15,000 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
Time: 12 hrs |
Rush:  50
| |||||
 Market Price: N/A
|
 Blueprints Price:N/A
| ||||
Vaultings[]
- On May 11th, 2021, it was announced that Zhuge Prime, along with Wukong Prime and Ninkondi Prime, would enter the Prime Vault and be retired from the reward tables on May 25th, 2021. Any preexisting components or fully-built items will remain as is.
Notes[]
- 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.
Zhuge Prime Skins
Media[]
Patch History[]
Hotfix 27.2.2 (2020-03-06)
Reduced the following AoE weapons Radial Damage Falloff from central impact that were all previously 90%:
- Zhuge Prime: 30%
Update 27.2 (2020-03-05)
- 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.
Update 25.8 (2019-10-01)
- October 2019 Riven Disposition Change
- Zhuge: 1.25->1.15
Update 25.3 (2019-07-06)
- Introduced.
Last updated: Update 25.3 (2019-07-06)
See Also[]
- Zhuge, the normal counterpart.
