Warframe Kuva Lich Guide: How to Make them Experience Requiem

There are three enemies in Warframe I won’t easily forget. The Stalker, Corrupted Vor, and Vokk Hal’t. The first two are familiar names. The last was a little turd of a Kuva Lich that kept killing me over and over again because I didn’t have any damn requiems. More importantly, I got his Kuva Tonkor which has been a very useful tool in wiping out his fellow Liches and the Vengeful Flame ephemera which I put on as many things as I can. 

Liches are part of a system meant to emulate Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor’s Nemesis system but with a Warframe twist. It’s a shame that it’s not a particularly well-advertised system that might fly under the noses of new players and returners who are overwhelmed by all the new features added to the game. It’s well worth engaging with this system, as annoying as it can be at the start.

What you get for dealing with Kuva Liches

The main reason why you would want to make and kill a Lich is for their weapons. They are guaranteed to drop a beefed-up version of classic Grineer weapons or a brand-new one. There’s a full list below.

Image taken from the Warframe Wiki

These weapons are unique to Kuva Liches

Image taken from the Warframe Wiki

As you can see, each weapon is distinct from their non-Kuva counterparts by having some nice glowy bits and by having superior stats and characteristics. An extra perk from these weapons are the ability to level them up to 40, 10 higher than most weapons. This is done by polarising the weapon, increasing it by two levels each time. This works out to having more mod capacity which enables some amazing builds. 

The weapons can even be improved through the Valence Fusion mechanic which lets you combine identical weapons for higher stats making these powerful weapons even more broken. 

The Kuva Liches also come with a 20% chance to drop an Ephemra related to the element of the Warframe that killed them. Ephemra are hard to earn in general and are often time limited making this a useful option for getting one. The elemental themes from the Lich-specific Ephemra are also fantastic for Fashionframe. 

Making a Kuva Lich

When a Kuva Larvaling and you hate each other very much on a level 20+ Grineer mission, you stab it with your Parazon and create a Kuva Lich. 

Specifically, you need to murder enough Grinner to get the lights to flicker and, if you have Colour Correction on, have a yellow tint. That’s a sign that you need to murder as many Grineer as you can in the next minute. Once you kill enough of them, a Kuva Guardian will speak, signalling that your efforts were successful. 

A Kuva Larvaling will then appear on the map with a marker to tell you where to go. Once there, hurt it until it falls over. You’ll get a chance to see which weapon it will drop later. If you like what you’ll get, press the interact key to stab it, creating your very own Kuva Lich. 

The screen you’ll get once you down one

Dealing with the Kuva Lich

Finish the mission and you’ll get a transmission from your new friend introducing itself to you. This is where the fun begins. 

Some planets on the map will now have a red aura around them. This indicates that the Lich is active in that area and brings with it high level missions.

Clearing any content in those areas will lead to the Lich stealing part of the rewards which can be as miniscule as a handful of viral spores all the way to the fancy new Stance you finally got to drop. You’ll recover your loot once you kill the Lich which is some extra incentive. 

Killing the Lich will require you to figure out a combination of three “Requiems”, a kind of mod equipped in the Parazon. You’ll need to identify the correct three and the correct order to successfully kill it. Otherwise, it’ll escape and increase in level. 

The Kuva Lich’s Thralls will drop “Requiem Murmurs” if you mercy them, helping you narrow down the Requiems the Lich is vulnerable to. The Murmurs will not, however, tell you what order you need. That’s for you to find out. 

Requiems are unlocked like Prime equipment; by opening Relics, specifically Requiem Relics. There are two main ways to get them. The first is to kill Thralls which have a small chance to drop a Requiem Relic. The other is to complete Kuva missions which generally have a chance to drop a relic. Kuva Floods have a guaranteed drop. Once you have them, open them from Requiem Fissures at the Kuva Fortress. 

It’ll take a while but you’ll eventually get the Requiem sequence correct, scaring it off into Saturn Proxima, a Railjack zone where it will wait for a final showdown.

The Final Duel with the Lich

You can select a fight with the Lich on a specific node on Saturn Proxima. There, you'll play a standard Railjack mission that ends with you boarding the enemy Galleon. If you're playing a public match, the mission will be a boss rush as the team fights each player's lich one-by-one.

The mission itself is incredibly fun and a new challenge in Warframe.

What to do with the Lich

You brought the Lich into this world, you can take it out of it too. Do that, and you get the tasty loot and your stuff back. Alternatively, you can spare the Lich, forfeiting the rewards in exchange for its undying loyalty. The new Lich can serve on your Railjack Crew, which is a bonus. 

Final thoughts on Warframe’s Kuva Lich system

Taking on Liches can be a lot of fun and gives you some impact on the Origin System which can feel static. The loot is pretty good too. The trade-off is that it’s a fairly long process that forces you to do some boring stuff. 

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