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. - 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, but allows enemies to move out of explosion range if not directly hit by one of the bolts.
- 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.
- Can benefit from Firestorm ( Primed) and Cautious Shot.
- Counts as a bow in regards to fire rate mods, doubling the fire rate bonus.
- Innate three polarities.
Advantages over other Primary weapons (excluding modular weapons):
- Second highest base damage of all fully automatic weapons, behind Zhuge/ Panthera.
- High base accuracy.
- Silent.
- Arrow Impact (wiki attack index 1)
- Above average crit chance (26.00%)
- Above average fire rate (5.50 attacks/sec)
- Above average status chance (30.00%)
- Arrow Explosion (wiki attack index 2)
- High fire rate (5.50 attacks/sec)
- Above average status chance (30.00%)
Disadvantages over other Primary weapons (excluding modular weapons):
- Projectiles have travel time.
- Explosion inflicts self-stagger.
- Explosion has a headshot multiplier of 1x and cannot trigger headshot conditions.
- Explosion has linear Damage Falloff from 100% to 70% from central impact.
- Arrow Impact (wiki attack index 1)
- Low reload speed (3.00 s)
- Below average total damage (50)
- Below average disposition (●●●●○ (1.15x))
- Arrow Explosion (wiki attack index 2)
- Below average active falloff slope (8.7m/%)
- Very low maximum falloff distance (2.6 m)
- Low reload speed (3.00 s)
- Very low total damage (40)
- Below average disposition (●●●●○ (1.15x))
- Low crit multiplier (2.00x)
See WARFRAME Wiki:Stat Comparison/Percentiles for more details.
Comparisons:
- Zhuge Prime (Arrow Impact), compared to Zhuge (Normal Attack):
- Lower base damage per projectile (50.00 vs. 100.00)
- 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 (5.50 attacks/sec vs. 4.17 attacks/sec)
- Larger magazine (30 vs. 20)
- Smaller max ammo capacity (270 vs. 540)
- Smaller ammo pickup count (60 vs. 80)
- Slower reload time (3.00 s vs. 2.50 s)
- Lesser projectile speed (80.0 m/s vs. 90.0 m/s)
- More polarities ( vs. )
- Higher Mastery Rank required (14 vs. 10)
- Lower disposition (●●●●○ (1.15x) vs. ●●●●○ (1.20x))
- Bolts explode on impact by default.
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 E3 Common (V) Neo I1 Common (V)
|
Axi B3 Uncommon (V) Axi D1 Uncommon (V) Meso W2 Uncommon (V) Neo N14 Uncommon (V)
|
Neo Z3 Rare (V) Neo Z5 Rare (V) Neo Z6 Rare (V) Neo Z7 Rare (V) Neo Z9 Rare (V)
|
Axi A6 Uncommon (V) Axi T4 Uncommon (V) Axi T9 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) Lith S13 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 Hour(s) |
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.
Trivia[]
- The Zhuge Prime, alongside Afuris Prime, Akbolto Prime, Aksomati Prime, Akstiletto Prime, Ballistica Prime, Cernos Prime, Dual Kamas Prime, Dual Keres Prime, Fang Prime, Gunsen Prime and Paris Prime are the only Prime weapons that do not require Orokin Cells as crafting ingredients.
Zhuge Prime Skins
Media[]
.png "Zhuge Prime- (1).png (889 KB)")
.png "Zhuge Prime- (2).png (789 KB)")
Patch History[]
Update 32.2 (2022-11-30)
- Fixed Zhuge Prime's bolts not exploding on kill until after the body had disappeared.
Update 32.0 (2022-09-07)
- Ammo Changes
We understand the power fantasy of these weapons is very popular for some, so our first approach was to keep them powerful, but limit how often they can be used by making changes to ammo pick-up.
Ammo Pickup Overrides
The following weapons now have ammo pickup overrides, meaning they gain less from picking up ammo. This mostly applies to AoE weapons, in hopes that players will become more deliberate with their aim to make the most of their Ammo pools. The following lists the specific ammo pick up overrides per weapon category.
Primary Weapon Ammo Pick Up Overrides
60 Ammo per Pick Up:
- Zhuge Prime
- Headshot Damage Changes
During playtesting, the ammo changes alone weren’t enough to significantly change things for AoE weapons. So instead of tightening these values to be overly restrictive, we chose to address other factors that make these weapons so strong, such as headshot damage.
Our approach here is two-fold, to reduce the impact of headshots for AOE weapons, but to also make precision headshots pack a larger punch overall.
- Radial damage no longer gains extra headshot damage or triggers headshot conditions.
- This is primarily targeted at the Ignis Wraith - as a “flamethrower” weapon, it’s hard to imagine a blanket of elements being precise enough to target weak points specifically. Explosive projectiles themselves can still land headshots, so there is still a reason to aim with most weapons for maximum damage.
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.
