Litch hunting efficiency.

[(XBOX)XGN DrFeelGood]

Is Litch hunting meant to last from 4 to 6 hours each or is there factors being left out?

[Amazerath]

Unfortunately, how long it takes depends a lot on your luck. Sometimes it's really fast and sometimes takes hours. However, you do have influence over thrall spawns. If you already know how this works you can ignore what's written below. If you don't know then you should read on.

 

Every time you kill a thrall your lich gets more enraged. This increases the chance the lich will show up during a mission. And since the lich gives you lots of murmurs when you attempt to kill it, you really want the lich to spawn as often as possible. That means you also want to kill as many thralls as possible and understanding thrall spawn mechanics can help with that.

A thrall will spawn after you killed a certain amount of standard enemies. If you kill enemies faster, the thrall will also spawn faster. However, since the game doesn't often spawn more then one thrall at a time, you should only kill enemies when there are no thralls around. As soon as a thrall spawns, you should stop killing and rush to take that thrall out. After that you can continue to kill enemies in order to spawn another one.

Wiki states you can get 15 thralls per mission. But if a lich shows up, the lich will create additional thralls if there are enemies nearby. So you should also avoid killing standard enemies close to the lich if possible. Liches will spawn up to 10 thralls. So you can get lots of thralls and murmur in a single mission if you're playing with a full squad and all the liches decide to show up.

Rushing missions (which is what most people tend to do) will potentially make the hunting process take longer. Sometimes you can't do anything about it when playing with randoms, but ideally you want to stay in a mission even after it's over in order to farm additional thralls. Just remember there's not much use in staying if all enemies are gone or if the thrall limit has been reached.

Playing with a full squad also makes things go a lot faster provided the team isn't just carelessly rushing missions and killing two or three thralls per run. Full squads get more enemy spawns, which affects thrall spawns. And more people also means higher chances to see liches.

Lastly, some advice on mission selection. If your lich is not angry, it's unlikely that it will show up. So I recommend picking shorter missions first (extermination and capture for example) in order to get him/her angry. Once the rage bar is at 25% or higher you can switch to longer missions if you want. The reason for this is because liches appear to like longer missions more then short ones (this has not been confirmed as far as I know). So you save nodes like Mobile Defense, Disruption and Survival for later.

[(PSN)Deadmennwalking]

12 minutes ago, Amazerath said:

Every time you kill a thrall your lich gets more enraged. This increases the chance the lich will show up during a mission. And since the lich gives you lots of murmurs when you attempt to kill it, you really want the lich to spawn as often as possible. That means you also want to kill as many thralls as possible and understanding thrall spawn mechanics can help with that.

Just a little clarification on this matter.

If for example, you use recruit chat to join a group doing murmur farming. You run their selected missions on their planet, whatever the mission type and kill thrall for murmur. It is possible to have a rank 1 lich, know all 3 mods and yet still have your lich level as indifferent. Why? Because you have not killed any thrall or taken back any mission nodes on your lich controlled planet.

So if you are concerned about your ability to kill your lich, run with a public group doing missions on their planet until you get to about 2.5 mods (rings). Then switch to either soloing your own planet or form your own group to run missions on your planet. Using this method may not be the "fastest" but it can be a relaxed, stress free, 2-3 hour lich hunt. You can also use this method to level up your existing kuva weapons as you are getting shared affinity from the other players in the squad.

On PS4 the recruit chat has numerous hosting or lf murmur farm posts. So finding or forming a group is a fairly quick process.

Have fun and may RNG be forever in your favor.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

Depends how strong your gear is. Optimally geared players can do lich's in about an hour.

[SordidDreams]

3 hours ago, Amazerath said:

Playing with a full squad also makes things go a lot faster provided the team isn't just carelessly rushing missions and killing two or three thralls per run. Full squads get more enemy spawns, which affects thrall spawns. And more people also means higher chances to see liches.

This is true, however there is a pitfall the game never explains and few people know about (judging by the lack of complaints about it): If you run thrall missions with a squad on nodes that your lich doesn't own, you still get murmurs but your lich doesn't gain any anger and can't spawn in those missions. When the mission vote comes up, if the mission has your lich's name in it, your lich owns it and it's okay to run it. If it just says "kuva lich territory" or somesuch without a name, your lich doesn't own it and running the mission will hinder your overall progress.

42 minutes ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

Depends how strong your gear is. Optimally geared players can do lich's in about an hour.

Not consistently, only if they get lucky with their slot machine guesses.

Edited December 12, 2019 by SordidDreams

[Amazerath]

@SordidDreams

Yes, that's an important detail I forgot to add.

Many Warframe players (possibly the majority) will quit their squads after a single mission and do the next mission with a different one. That ensures they will always stay pick the correct nodes. I think that is mostly why there's not a lot of complaining. But regardless, this is a very silly aspect of the system that needs to be fixed.

[(XBOX)Tucker D Dawg]

2 hours ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

Depends how strong your gear is. Optimally geared players can do lich's in about an hour.

You keep posting an hour. Is that actually your average or a best case? For me I'm averaging about 2 hours:

He generally wont spawn until the 3rd mission - trying to maximize thralls on those first three mean result in an average of about 8-10 minutes including loading times etc. So that's 30min pissed away already.  Worse if starting node is Lua, better if its some grineer based planet.

 

Then he spawns, I farm the murmers, and get my first mod hint (possibly more info as well from the stab) - that's another 8 minutes.

Then its another 2-3 missions until he spawns - so that's another 15-20 minutes.

So I'm at an hour by the time I get my second stab attempt. It picks up steam from there where I can keep him mad and have a larger pool of optimal nodes to farm. But I don't see how you are getting an average of an hour.

 

[-CdG-Zilchy]

1 hour ago, (XB1)Tucker D Dawg said:

You keep posting an hour. Is that actually your average or a best case? For me I'm averaging about 2 hours:

He generally wont spawn until the 3rd mission - trying to maximize thralls on those first three mean result in an average of about 8-10 minutes including loading times etc. So that's 30min pissed away already.  Worse if starting node is Lua, better if its some grineer based planet.

 

Then he spawns, I farm the murmers, and get my first mod hint (possibly more info as well from the stab) - that's another 8 minutes.

Then its another 2-3 missions until he spawns - so that's another 15-20 minutes.

So I'm at an hour by the time I get my second stab attempt. It picks up steam from there where I can keep him mad and have a larger pool of optimal nodes to farm. But I don't see how you are getting an average of an hour.

 

It's about my average and there's also a few tricks to make it significantly faster. I don't bother maximising my thralls early on.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

3 hours ago, SordidDreams said:

Not consistently, only if they get lucky with their slot machine guesses.

Consistently it's about 60-70 minutes. Very rare it takes much longer than that.

[IamLoco]

10 hours ago, (XB1)XGN DrFeelGood said:

Is Litch hunting meant to last from 4 to 6 hours each or is there factors being left out?

4 to 6 h seems way too long.

I´m on my 19th or 20th lich now and it usually takes 1-3 hours of power farming.

The first planet can be a problem if you´re left with long missions and didn´t get a chance to kill or level up your lich, The more he spreads to other planets, the more efficient options you get.

If you want to go fast, only play Capture and Exterminate missions. Rescue is also usually quick, but then you will have to take care of the dude while hunting down the thralls.

Keep in mind that many exterminate lich missions are "hidden" behind wrong mission types. You need to click on them and see what they actually are. 

If you keep playing Capture / Exterminate and go with your fastest clearing frame - and if you are not extremely unlucky - you can kill your lich in 1-3 h easily. Play in groups, it helps speeding up exterminate and hunting thralls. Having some people assisting you with a lvl 5 lich is usually also pretty handy.

[SordidDreams]

2 hours ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

Consistently it's about 60-70 minutes. Very rare it takes much longer than that.

I have a hard time believing that given my own empirical experience. It's possible I'm doing something wrong, but unless there's some secret trick to its besides "run missions, stab thralls, stab lich if/when he shows up", I kinda doubt it. 60 minutes is how long it takes when I get lucky with guesses, which by definition is a rare occurrence.

Edited December 12, 2019 by SordidDreams

[-CdG-Zilchy]

1 hour ago, SordidDreams said:

I have a hard time believing that given my own empirical experience. It's possible I'm doing something wrong, but unless there's some secret trick to its besides "run missions, stab thralls, stab lich if/when he shows up", I kinda doubt it. 60 minutes is how long it takes when I get lucky with guesses, which by definition is a rare occurrence.

The absolute longest I've ever taken to kill a lich was 2 hrs 40 mins and that was because I was experimenting with keeping my lich at level 1, counting how many thralls each murmur takes etc. I cannot fathom how people take so long to kill their lich. I rush them to level 5 quick as I can, farm thralls on missions that are ideal and ignore the rest. And then there's a few other little things you can do to speed up the process on top of that. Now all I need is to stop getting duplicate weapons, I'm literally just farming them for the ephemeras.

[akots]

Reasonable average is around 2 hours for a stress-free and relaxed hunting running half or a third of the missions solo in a quiet and easy way. If really going after it efficiently, 80-90 minutes is very much achievable. It should not take longer than 3 hours under the worst possible circumstances.

It is possible to run murmur hunting with friends on via recruitment chat without promoting your lich. You can switch to active hunting at around half progress towards the third rune. It won't take much longer, maybe will add about 20 minutes overall. However, you may still end up with your lich being at level 4 in the end. Or you can kill at at level 2 or 3 with some luck if that is what you are aiming for.