Zymos is an Infested pistol that releases explosive spores. On headshots, the spores burrow into the target, stunning and dealing continuous damage before exploding to release 6 additional spores that seek nearby enemies.
Contents
Characteristics[]
This weapon deals primarily 
Puncture damage.
Advantages:
- High
Puncture and good Impact damage – effective against armor and shields. - Above average critical multiplier.
- Very high status chance.
- Shots have a guaranteed Impact proc.
- Shots explode in a 3.3 meter radius upon impact with a surface or enemy, inflicting Toxin damage.
- Innate Toxin damage – effective against Flesh and bypasses Shielded and Proto Shields.
- Headshots stun targets for 1 second and deals continuous damage before exploding for 953 Toxin damage and knocking down the initial target, then scattering 6 spores that home-in on nearby enemies within 20 meters, dealing 23 damage on contact with a guaranteed chance to proc Impact on targets over 7m away from the initial target in addition to 333 Toxin damage in a radius each.
- Initial hit and explosion apply status separately.
- Explosion does not need direct line of sight to deal damage and will penetrate walls.
- Can benefit from Fulmination ( Primed).
- Innate
- Innate and polarities.
Disadvantages:
- No Slash damage – less effective against health.
- Explosion has innate Toxin damage – less effective against Machinery, Robotics, and Fossilized.
- Very low critical chance.
- Very low fire rate.
- Very slow reload speed.
- All projectiles have travel time.
- Explosions inflict self-stagger.
- Explosion has linear damage falloff from 100% to 70% from central impact.
- Headshot explosion delay allows enemies to move out of the explosion range.
- Extremely low ammo capacity; requires just 3 reloads to fully deplete all ammo reserves.
Acquisition[]
Zymos is acquired by reaching Rank 1 - Stranger with the Entrati. Father sells the main blueprint for 
2,000 and component blueprints for 1,000; a total of 4,000 is needed for all parts. The main blueprint is also offered as a rank-up reward.
| Manufacturing Requirements | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 20,000 |
 1 |
 1 |
Time: 12 hrs | ||
Rush:  35
| |||||
 Market Price: 190
|
 Blueprints Price: 2,000
| ||||
Barrel •  1,000
| |||||
20,000 |
 20 |
 5 |
 8 |
 4 |
Time: 12 hrs |
| Rush: 25
| |||||
| Receiver • 1,000
| |||||
20,000 |
 20 |
5 |
 8 |
 5 |
Time: 12 hrs |
| Rush: 25
| |||||
Notes[]
- One barrel blueprint is required to reach Rank 1 - Clearance: Agnesis with the Necraloid.
- Initial 953 Toxin damage explosion will almost always be affected by headshot and headcrit bonuses, receiving double damage in addition to double critical multiplier.
- Secondary projectiles from the initial explosion are affected differently by mods and buffing effects.
- Damage from mods like Hornet Strike and Magnum Force apply to the 23 contact damage, but do not apply to the 333 Toxin explosion.
- Spores randomly select targets within 20m of the host target. This range is not affected by Fulmination.
- Spore contact damage has a guaranteed chance to proc Impact on secondary targets more than 7m away from the host target, but has 0% natural status chance to proc modded elements.
- Spores randomly select targets within 20m of the host target. This range is not affected by
- Elemental mods apply normally.
- Faction Damage applies normally.
- Multishot increases the number of initial projectiles, but not the 6 spores that are released from each explosion.
- Critical Chance and Critical Damage bonuses are applied twice.
- Flat Critical Chance Bonuses are applied twice. Once multiplied by modded critical chance, and again added last.
- Critical Chance = ((5% × (1 + Modded Crit Chance)) + Flat Crit Chance) × (1 + Modded Crit Chance) + Flat Crit Chance
- Critical Damage = 2.3 × (1 + Modded Crit Damage)2
- For example, with Cat's Eye, Pistol Gambit and Target Cracker, the secondary projectiles have:
- Shooting the initial projectile through Volt's Electric Shield or Mutalist Quanta's Orbs will not affect the secondary projectiles.
- Damage from mods like
Tips[]
- Trick Mag in the Exilus slot will make up for the low maximum ammo. A fully-ranked Secondary Merciless may also be considered to increase the Zymos's ammo reserves as not only does it free up the Exilus slot for other mods, but it also increases reload speed.
- The low fire rate, lack of Slash damage, and forced Impact procs on both the main projectile and homing spores make Hemorrhage a viable option, especially if the Zymos has been modded to deal Viral damage.
- Due to the nature of critical scaling, Critical mods are optimal despite the 5% base crit chance, and flat Critical Chance bonuses from Harrow's Covenant, Adarza Kavat's Cat's Eye, and Arcane Avenger are further multiplied by modded critical chance.
- Nidus and Xaku can use Parasitic Link and Gaze respectively to turn a single enemy into an invulnerable spore "fountain" as both abilities keep their victims upright for their durations. Xaku in particular can prolong Gaze's duration via The Vast Untime on top of Gaze reducing the defenses of any enemy in its range.
Bugs[]
- In multiplayer, poor to moderate network conditions can cause spores to never appear, despite landing headshots. Spore explosions also never occur regardless of network conditions.
Trivia[]
- The Zymos was first seen and wielded by the Zealot Proselytizer in the third episode of Nightwave: Series 2 – The Emissary.
- Upon performing a headshot on a non-Infested enemy, the enemy's head with swell up with an audible inflating noise before the spores explode. The inflation is subtle compared to the more drastic effects of the Nukor, and quickly reset upon the explosion.
Media[]
Zymos wielded by Ember and Keratinos wielded by Excalibur
Zymos Review - Head Bursting Spore Gun (Warframe)
See Also[]
- Keratinos, the melee counterpart to this weapon.
Patch History[]
Hotfix 30.5.3 (2021-07-09)
- Fixed Chat Links for the Zymos lacking build/acquisition hints.
Hotfix 29.2.2 (2020-10-06)
- Fixed missing Blueprint locations for the Zymos when viewing in the Market.
Update 29.1 (2020-09-17)
- Fixed Zymos seeking swarms not being able to critically hit.
- Fixed Zymos not spitting out the homing spore projectiles after the headshot explosion triggers for Clients.
Hotfix 29.0.8 (2020-09-10)
- Decreased projectile spread of Multishot projectiles
- Increased projectile speed from 59 to 79
- Decreasing spread from Multishot and increasing the projectile speed makes landing headshots with all the projectiles a bit easier.
Hotfix 29.0.6 (2020-09-01)
- Clip size increased from 9 to 17.
- Ammo pool increased from 27 to 51.
Update 29.0 (2020-08-25)
- Introduced.
