Kuva Lich Improvements: Fighting Back

[Rhaken]

TL;DR: Spawn Thralls in any mission in Lich-controlled nodes. Lich doesn't instakill you if you have even a single Requiem mod in the right place. Thralls drop Stash Beacons that can help you recover your stuff. TED talk.

Many Tenno have expressed their dissatisfaction over various aspects of the Kuva Lich system, such as the intense grind and their tendency to steal all your stuff. I think both can be addressed simultaneously.

The grind for Kuva Liches is intense... and most likely intentional. It's meant to be content that takes a long time to get through, so that your own unique personal villain doesn't live for a grand total of 24 hours and is never heard from again. We're meant to take our time learning our Lich's kill phrase while they rampage through the system, as opposed to rushing right through to clear them as fast as possible.

Here's the problem: as it currently stands, the Lich system incentivizes the opposite. They spread their influence too fast and steal too much important stuff far too frequently. It encourages a rush strategy where anyone with the spare time on their hands feels compelled to dive face-first into Lich-controlled nodes to farm Murmurs and get their stuff back. In my case, for example, I patently refuse to create a new Lich before I've done my daily sortie. It isn't worth the hassle of potentially losing my precious Endo.

Let me be clear, I think that larvling spawning is perfect the way it is. You kind of have to go out of your way to create a Lich, so the hassle is entirely on you. The problems lie elsewhere.

As it currently stands, Kuva Liches aren't a meaningful enemy with a meaningful path to victory. They're a hassle. You have to grind out Requiem mods (which I believe is fine), grind out Thralls for murmurs (almost fine) and get repeatedly murdered by your Lich before you figure out the kill phrase (not fine). Meanwhile, the Lich keeps stealing your stuff and you have no way to get any of it back unless you figure out the kill-phrase (absolutely not fine).

I propose a series of changes designed to extend our options to fight Kuva Liches, as well as a way to recover stolen loot without having to rush to kill the Lich. The goal is to turn Kuva Liches into a meaningful enemy that you can take on at your own pace and not feel punished for it.

Let's address Thralls first. It's good that they exist, and it's good that they don't provide a lot of progress.. because then Liches would have the average life expectancy of a mayfly in a forest fire. That part I agree with. As it stands, a dedicated group can farm out murmurs fast enough to blaze through more than one Lich per day, and I believe this is also fine. They are, after all, a dedicated group. Their investment in time and organization pays off in speed of returns.

Here's the unpleasant part. Thralls only spawn in Lich-controlled nodes, in a specific mission on that node. You have to go out of your way to get murmurs in missions that don't reward you with a whole lot else. Players with a limited amount of gaming time per day feel cheated because they can't make meaningful progress on their Lich without sacrificing something else, such as their daily sortie.

So how do we fix this? Add Thrall spawns to any mission in a Lich-controlled node. It's fine if they have a lower spawn rate than in the actual special Lich mission. This simply provides players with an alternative: do we assemble a dedicated group and blaze through our Liches as fast as possible in the special missions, or do we passively acquire murmurs at a lower rate while, for example, doing a fissure, or syndicate mission or sortie? Additionally, the thrall should spawn at a level appropriate to its Lich's rank.

Now onto Lich fights, also known as "getting thoroughly Bane'd". The current all-or-nothing approach to Lich fights feels kinda bad. Either you get your kill-phrase exactly right, or you die and gain diddly squat. There's no element of skill to killing or being killed, just RNG. Your reward for trying is your Lich getting stronger, which provides a ton of that "higher level mission" stuff we keep going on about... for no discernible reward. The whole point of sorties is that you get a chance at something valuable after just 3 missions.

So let's improve upon that. Failing any stage of the kill phrase still gets you killed... unless you have even a single other Requiem mod in the right place further up the chain. Say you have Vome-Khra-Fass and the kill-phrase is Fass-Khra-Ris. Your Lich spawns, you duke it out and weaken it enough for the first face-stab. Because you got the first one wrong, the Lich fights it off... but since you have Khra in the correct spot, your Warframe counters/escapes the instakill and survives. This impresses your Lich (and there are already voice lines that can be used to convey this), and it retreats and doesn't gain a rank this time. Next time this happens, it does rank up.

Doing this would help reduce that disappointing feeling of getting your spine snapped after slapping your Lich around for over a minute, and would have the added bonus of letting you know you got part of the sequence right - thereby providing new information and legitimately bringing you one step closer to victory by narrowing down the kill-phrase regardless of your stage of progression. This should be reflected in your Lich's Requiem attempts by a special UI indicator, letting you know that you got either the second or third Requiem right.

Now onto the big one. The most infuriating part about facing Liches as they currently exist: rampant kleptomania. They steal anything on any planet where they have even the slightest bit of influence, and you're not getting it back until you kill 600 Thralls and die to Lich several times, spending several hours doing that when you could be making meaningful progress on virtually anything else. Except you can't, because the Lich is stealing your stuff. All of this put together makes Liches outright detrimental to everything we do unless we have multiple spare hours per day that we can dedicate to Lich hunting. I've gone through ways to alleviate some of the grind and reduce the trial and error. I have an idea that should help to reduce Lich-induced frustration and take away the craving to spend all day in Lich nodes.

As you hunt down Thralls - whether in Lich-controlled missions or any other mission - you have a small chance to receive a Stash Beacon. Drop chance should scale with the size of your Lich's influence sphere. A Lich that has its grimy fingers all over the system should have many thralls capable of accessing its stash. You take 4 Stash Beacons and a Stash Locator Blueprint - available from Thralls with a low chance or available from getting your eyeless face slapped by your Lich at a decent chance - and make a Stash Locator. Equipping this Locator in your gear wheel will light up a particular node within your Lich's influence. Running and successfully completing this mission with the Locator equipped will allow you to recover a part of the loot the Lich stole from you, with guaranteed recovery of important loot like relics, prime parts, rare mods and ephemeras. As a bonus, it'll also provide 10 Thralls' worth of murmurs and really infuriate the Lich into coming after you. How dare you steal your own stuff back? You monster.

And there you have my two (thousand) cents on how to improve the Kuva Lich experience. Some of these changes should be relatively simple to implement once the major bugs are ironed out, and have the potential to turn Lich hunting into a well-integrated and fun part of Warframe's gameplay. I think it's fine that each Lich takes a ton of work to defeat, as long as we have the tools to make meaningful progress and aren't punished at every turn for even having a Lich.

[ResidentOrb21]

For my lich when I was trying to kill it every time it would spawn in it would kill me because I had either no parazon mods or they werent in the right order, mostly I didn't have the mods. And every time it killed me it would take over a new planets nodes. Making it harder for me to do kuva floods to help get requiem relics because the lich just had control of almost all my planets. And would take my relic. I feel like they should limit how many planets it can take over until you clear one. instead of when u clear 1 planet they have taken  3 more because you killed the thralls.