Warframe – Kuva Liches (Full Guide)

Kuva Liches, What Are They?

Note: Credit goes to Woonatic

A new enemy type design to hunt you down, Liches can’t be killed via normal means. And when left unchecked, they will continue to steal your stuff. This guide aims to help players understand how to deal with them.

Disclaimer: In order to have access to the kuva lich system, players must complete the quest line up to the war within. With that in mind, this guide may contain spoilers.

Requiem Mods

Before creating or hunting your very own Lich, it’s highly recommended that players seek out all 8 requiem mods to make life easier later on.

The 8 are:

These mods are Required to kill / convert a lich.

Requiem mods can be gotten through the new T5 relic, also known as requiem relics.

These relics have a 100% drop chance from Kuva flood missions, and a 30% from Kuva Siphon mission.

Requiem mods are a 11% chance each when in intact, and a 20% chance each when radiant. The best way to get all the mods is to hop into recruit chat to do Rad Share / Staggers.

Weapon Elemental Bonus

One last thing before creating a Lich. No matter what, Liches will always spawn with a weapon bonus. This weapon bonus will be with the weapon once you acquire it.

The type of elemental bonus is dictated by the Warframe you bring when creating a Lich.

Element – Warframe

• Impact – Baruuk, Gauss, Grendel, Rhino, Wukong, Zephyr
• Heat – Chroma, Ember, Inaros, Nezha, Vauban, Wisp
• Cold – Frost, Gara, Hildryn, Revenant, Titania, Trinity
• Electricity – Banshee, Excalibur, Limbo, Nova, Valkyr, Volt
• Toxin – Atlas, Ivara, Khora, Nekros, Nidus, Oberon, Saryn
• Magnetic – Harrow,, Hydroid, Mag, Mesa
• Radiation – Ash, Equinox, Garuda, Loki, Mirage, Nyx, Octavia

As for the damage percentage, sadly its random ranging from 20-60%. With currently no known way to affect it.

Lich Ephemeras

Kuva Liches have a chance to spawn with a 7 new vengeful ephemeras (% chance not yet known).

When it spawns with it, the Lich menu will show the effect but no actual text saying that it has a ephemera. To get it, simply kill / vanquish the Lich, and then it should be in your attachments.

The different ephemeras are based on the weapon elemental bonus that the Lich has:

Element – Ephemera

• Impact – Vengeful Shockwave Ephemera
• Heat – Vengeful Flame Ephemera
• Cold – Vengeful Chill Ephemera
• Electricity – Vengeful Charge Ephemera
• Toxin – Vengeful Toxin Ephemera
• Magnetic – Vengeful Pull Ephemera
• Radiation – Vengeful Trickster Ephemera

(The Example above is Vengeful Toxin Ephemera)

Nidus Example (Vengeful Toxin Ephemera).

Creating a Lich

Now that we have the elemental type you want, it’s time to create a Lich. To begin, players must find Grineer nodes above level 20. The best node in my opinion for this is Adaro in Sedna.

Progress through the mission node normally, if conditions are met your screen should flash a bit red midway through the mission.

(Unconfirmed) When this happens kill a bunch of enemies, similar to the spawn mechanics of a juggernaut.

If done correctly, a Kuva Guardian should start speaking and a Kuva Larvling icon should appear on your map. Kill the larvling, complete the mission objective and extract. And you have yourself your very own Kuva Lich.

Killing the Lich

The Lich can’t be killed by normal means, and needs to be dealt with using the Parazon.

This is where the requiem mods come in. Each Lich has a unique pass code in order to kill them. Using three requiem mods as the codes, an example could follow: XATA – RIS – KHRA or FASS – KHRA – LOHK

Each Lich you get will have a unique code, in total there is 336 combinations with the 8 mods.

So how about do you find the unique code with your Lich?

There are two solutions: Requiem MurMur or Brute Forcing.

Lich Menu

Before explaining the 2 methods, a few things would give better context to the situations.

In the ESC menu, a new icon will appear once you created your Lich.

This icon is a menu to show different stats and combinations for requiem mods.

Lich Abilities

These show the different abilities your specific Lich can activate, hover over them to see a full description of what they are.

Anger Level

This bar shows how angry a Lich is towards you, a higher bar mean a more likely chance the lich will confront you in one of his controlled territories.

Lich Rank

A Lich’s rank determines how many planets is in the Lich’s control. It also determines how tanky the Lich is, as well as what level the Lich territories are.

Liches will rank up if you attempt to kill them with the wrong Parazon combination. The maximum cap rank is 5. When the Liches rank up, their Anger level also resets.

Misc

Misc stats will be shown like resistances / immunities to elements, weapons, etc.

Parazon

The parazon section can be found towards the right of the Lich menu, this includes:

Currently equipped combination

Combination equipped currently on your parazon.

Failed Assassination Attempts

Times when you confronted and attempted to kill your Lich with the wrong Combinations. (The game test the combinations from left to right, so if your first parazon mod is wrong, it will immidiately consider it as a fail even if your second and third ones are correct).

Known Mods needed

Requiem Mods that are confirmed to be part of the killing phrase of your Lich

Influence Nodes

After the creation of your Lich, one of your planets will be infected by your Lich’s influence. Displayed by a red glow entirely around the node.

As well as an icon displayed on the node when hovering over it.

Any mission completed on the planets where your Lich has influence in will cause them to steal certain items, the higher your Lich’s rank the more items they will steal. (Once you vanquish / convert your Lich, Most stolen items will be given back).

Influenced nodes will have a new mission type: Your Lich controlled version.

In these missions expect a few things:

• Enemies will be higher level ( Level depending on your Lich’s Rank)
• Lich Thralls will spawn consistently
• Your Lich has a chance to confront you personally
• No matter the location it will always be Grineer

Lich confrontations

Occasionally in the controlled nodes, your Lich may spawn and try to fight you. Depending on what strategy you’re going for it maybe good or bad.

Kuva Liches will spawn with 3 health bars and 1 shield bar, Each health bar can only be unlocked after figuring out one of the requiem mods in the code. After you deplete one bar He’ll go into this down state, if you attempt to parazon finish him with the wrong code, he will insta-kill you and rank up. If you parazon finish him with the right code it’ll unlock the next bar of health.

Requiem MurMur

Now that you get the context for everything, how does Requiem MurMur work?

Requiem MurMur is a system that allows you to slowly decrypt what mods are in your Lich’s kill phrase.

To begin with it simply start your Lich controlled missions.

Occasionally you’ll see this icon. It indicates the enemy as one of your Lich’s Thralls. And he’ll have a faint blue glow around him.

Bring him down to 0 health and he’ll go into this state. In this state, you’ll be able to perform a Parazon finisher on him.

And after you do, this will pop up on your screen showing a circle with white progress, keep killing thralls, once it’s filled up at the end of the mission the game will tell you one of it’s kill codes.

Note: Requiem MurMur takes a long time to fill up so be patient, teaming up with squad members might be a good solution but finding all the kill phrases to a Lich takes 2.5+ hours of gameplay.

Finally killing the Lich

Once you know 3 of the kill phrases, it becomes a game of trail and error,
The game doesn’t tell you which phrase comes first, second or third, which is where the parazon menu in the Lich menu comes into play.

Because it logs your history of parazon mods, you can try each of the known kill phrases in each slot, if it’s wrong when you try to kill the lich it’ll be slashed out.

But if it’s the correct mod in the correct location it’ll be bright yellow.

From there you’ll be able to figure out the combination and decide their fate.

Vanquishing them will give you their weapon, with all associated bonus.
Converting them allows them to appear in missions occasionally to aid you.

Brute Force

So how about do you go Brute-forcing the combination to the Lich?

Well if you think about it, all 3 of the combination codes will be different. It will never be something like XATA – XATA – XATA .

This in turn posses a interesting situation, as if you attempt to kill the Lich with a random code, It will check the first requiem mod first, therefore you will have a 1 in 8 chance of guessing the first mod correctly, 12.5%. If it’s incorrect, then it becomes a 1 in 7 chance for guessing the first mod, because you know the mods you tried isn’t it.

Not to mention that once you guess the first code, it can’t be repeated in the second and third. Thus the second code will have a 1 in 7 chance of being guessed, 14.29%. and the third 1 in 6, 16.67%.

Guessing all 3 at once is near impossible (1 in 336), But usually by the time i get 1 requiem Murmur, Probability states i would have cracked the first mod, Requiem MurMur have equal chances to be 1st, 2nd or 3rd. Therefore it’ll be 66.67% for it to be 2nd or 3rd mod, in turn shortening the chances in your favor.

Using this method will make your Lich rank up all the way to 5, but for this strategy it’s good. When it hits rank 5, i won’t level up anymore, which means it’s anger level won’t reset. Hence, you can spam different combinations at a faster rate.

The only problem with this method is that it relies on RNG if you get really unlucky you can get the 7 in 8 chance to get the first mod all wrong (happen to me once).

But i’ve killed 6 Liches so far and converted 2, requiem MurMur took me 3hrs+ per Lich. Brute force takes 1.5-2.5 hrs depending on RNG.