Kuva Lich fights are more frustrating than I thought...

[(NSW)Smashbrolink]

I just recently managed to truly kill my first Lich [after it ranked up to lvl 4], and got a sniper out of it.

But tbh, it WAS NOT FUN.

It kinda started out fun; the prospect of a huge pay-day from all the crap it stole from me sounded sweet, and it was.

And the Lich itself, annoying BS like auto-grabbing and force-lightning aside, was a fair challenge.

But what wasn't fair, was the way I had to summon it.

For context, I'm still working on my weaponry & frames; I can just barely handle lvl 70-80 baddies thanks to Umbra being a soloist's best friend, but stuff above that absolutely SLAUGHTERS my shields/health if I'm not quick enough to hit the Op button to regen some health, which can quickly cost me lives.

Lives. Plural.

Now imagine the time I'm in for, when my Lich at rank 4 turns out to be as hard as lvl 100 foes, and on top of that, I have to go into missions with lvl 100+ enemies in it, and hunt down enough high-level Thralls to get the lich to spawn.

I use up several lives just hunting the THRALLS [one of which must have been glitched, because it was LEVEL ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-ONE, and I couldnt even inflict more than 100 damage at a time onto it! WTH, WARFRAME?!], leaving me very little left in terms of ammo and lives to face the Lich himself with, because everything else slaughters me so easily.

Oh, did I forget to mention he was only weak to Slash damage, had a massive shield, and my only decent Slash-based weapon is an imperfect Dread bow?

Needless to say, this felt like I was acting out David vs Goliath.

Without the sling.

To this moment, I'm still not sure how I managed to emerge victorious during my fourth time fighting him, but the stress literally made me physically ill.

Like, sick stomach and jittery hands/nerves ill.

I thought the win would cure that, but it hasn't.

And I sincerely pray for any poor souls that have to face any lich's beyond rank 4; that would be impossible for me.

At this point, I'm going to grab some food and read something to relax after all that, but before that, I want to leave behind my impression of this whole thing... [And if anyone is interested, please do share your own lich stories too, good or bad.]

I get that this is supposed to be endgame content, but having to slog through lvl 80-100+ mission content, to summon the lich, after we've done so much just to learn the right mod sequence, feels stressful and un-fun.

Can't we just get a summoning beacon once we've fought him or drove him off enough times?

Or a special mission where he's the only opponent, once we've collected enough murmurs to reveal all of the needed mods?

Anything would be better than slogging through high-level Bombards, heavy gunners, and those damned hookshot melee ladies that constantly latch onto and drag me through hallways of gunfire, just to find enough thralls to piss him off enough to show up...

Edited January 13, 2020 by (NSW)Smashbrolink

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

4 minutes ago, (NSW)Smashbrolink said:

I just recently managed to truly kill my first Lich [after it ranked up to lvl 4], and got a sniper out of it.

But tbh, it WAS NOT FUN.

It kinda started out fun; the prospect of a huge pay-day from all the crap it stole from me sounded sweet, and it was.

And the Lich itself, annoying bullS#&$ auto-grabbing and force-lightning aside, was a fair challenge.

But what wasn't fair, was the way I had to summon it.

For context, I'm still working on my weaponry & frames; I can just barely handle lvl 70-80 baddies thanks to Umbra being a soloist's best friend, but stuff above that absolutely SLAUGHTERS my shields/health if I'm not quick enough to hit the Op button to regen some health, which can quickly cost me lives.

Lives. Plural.

Now imagine the time I'm in for, when my Lich at rank 4 turns out to be as hard as lvl 100 foes, and on top of that, I have to go into missions with lvl 100+ enemies in it, and hunt down enough high-level Thralls to get the lich to spawn.

I use up several lives just hunting the THRALLS [one of which must have been glitched, because it was LEVEL ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-ONE, and I couldnt even inflict more than 100 damage at a time onto it! WTH, WARFRAME?!], leaving me very little left in terms of ammo and lives to face the Lich himself with, because everything else slaughters me so easily.

Oh, did I forget to mention he was only weak to Slash damage, had a massive shield, and my only decent Slash-based weapon is an imperfect Dread bow?

Needless to say, this felt like I was acting out David vs Goliath.

Without the sling.

To this moment, I'm still not sure how I managed to emerge victorious during my fourth time fighting him, but the stress literally made me physically ill.

Like, sick stomach and jittery hands/nerves ill.

I thought the win would cure that, but it hasn't.

And I sincerely pray for any poor souls that have to face any lich's beyond rank 4; that would be impossible for me.

At this point, I'm going to grab some food and read something to relax after all that, but before that, I want to leave behind my impression of this whole thing...

I get that this is supposed to be endgame content, but having to slog through lvl 80-100+ mission content, to summon the lich, after we've done so much just to learn the right mod sequence, feels stressful and un-fun.

Can't we just get a summoning beacon once we've fought him or drove him off enough times?

Or a special mission where he's the only opponent, once we've collected enough murmurs to reveal all of the needed mods?

Anything would be better than slogging through high-level Bombards and heavy gunners, just to find enough thralls to piss him off enough to show up...

Well b I'm currently dealing with a level 4 lich and her and her minions are BEAST! Lol! I'm running healing return and adaptation to help deal with the damage and I really recommend healing return over life strike for Excal users. I'm not the biggest fan of the relic hunt and think the murmurs per thrall should be greater but I like the match game associated with the liches. She's a pain...but I REALLY want those damn Stubbas! Lol!

[844448]

On PC, I'm doing fine with Vauban or Nyx with keyboard + mouse. Also, lots of combination of abilities + gun play, not just shooting with pressing 4 occasionally

[TARINunit9]

21 minutes ago, (NSW)Smashbrolink said:

For context, I'm still working on my weaponry & frames; I can just barely handle lvl 70-80 baddies thanks to Umbra being a soloist's best friend, but stuff above that absolutely SLAUGHTERS my shields/health if I'm not quick enough to hit the Op button to regen some health, which can quickly cost me lives.

Yeah, the game gives new players Sorties and Liches at the same time because they're at the same level of difficulty. If you're not able to tank level 80 Grineer and kill the same in one or two shots, you need to go back to the grindstone and grind out some more grindpoints, until you are strong enough. Stock up on healing items or Focus powers, or Primed mods if you can buy any

22 minutes ago, (NSW)Smashbrolink said:

Oh, did I forget to mention he was only weak to Slash damage, had a massive shield, and my only decent Slash-based weapon is an imperfect Dread bow?

He's also weak to Corrosive. The weakness system is so poorly implemented that you should just ignore it and just bring Corrosive against any Lich that isn't immune to Corrosive. See, Liches are actually just giant Heavy Gunners, which means they're weak to these elements (and theoretically these elements too but slightly less so compared to the first link) and all of those weaknesses are MORE potent than the "weaknesses" listed on their profiles. Like I said, really badly implemented

I hope that helps you out if you ever decide to do a second Lich

[(NSW)Smashbrolink]

1 hour ago, TARINunit9 said:

Yeah, the game gives new players Sorties and Liches at the same time because they're at the same level of difficulty. If you're not able to tank level 80 Grineer and kill the same in one or two shots, you need to go back to the grindstone and grind out some more grindpoints, until you are strong enough. Stock up on healing items or Focus powers, or Primed mods if you can buy any.

I don't think I did a good job explaining that bit...

It's not that I can't kill them in at least 4 or so hits [h.gunners and bombards aside], it's that the rest of the pack takes those few precious seconds I'm using to kill those few guys, to hit me from every single angle that I can't see at that moment, much less block from.

In sorties this isn't much of an issue outside of a few Assassination missions, because I can avoid many of the enemies and just run the objective, but with Lich hunting, be it thralls or the Lich himself, I also have to contend with the rest sneaking up on me.

That's with Primed mods, btw; I realized their essential nature early on and I've got a few of the essential ones already.

At some point tomorrow I'll take a pic of my Umbra, but for now, just know that I'm not exactly new.

I'm on the cusp of end-game, but not enough to avoid some stark problems here and there.

Thinking of trading in my Arca Plasmor for an Amprex or Ignis Wraith; hopefully that will give my DPS a boost...

Edited January 13, 2020 by (NSW)Smashbrolink

[TARINunit9]

1 minute ago, (NSW)Smashbrolink said:

It's not that I can't kill them in at least 4 or so hits [h.gunners and bombards aside], it's that the rest of the pack takes those few precious seconds I'm using to kill those few guys, to hit me from every single angle that I can't see at that moment, much less block from.

Exactly. That is normal for this game. Four shots to kill a Lancer is way too slow, because the other five Lancers will surround and kill you

Welcome to Grindframe. You've reached the point where skill is no longer a factor, and it's all a gear check

2 minutes ago, (NSW)Smashbrolink said:

Thinking of trading in my Arca Plasmor for an Amprex or Ignis Wraith; hopefully that will give my DPS a boost...

Arca Plasmor is actually just as good as the Amprex, once you can kill Lancers and Troopers in one shot

[Miser_able]

Nidus is a lich hunters best friend. I solo lvl 5 liches with him. 

[Smilomaniac]

It’s occasionally easy to forget that if you don’t play it with others you don’t get into all the meta and optimal builds.

You’re kind of supposed to do these things with a pleb build and without potatoes.

[(PSN)Shaun-T-Wilson]

I think op playstyle isnt suited for lich hunting, liches are end game bosses in a coop game. Op may want to change tactics, ivara good for thrall hunting and is able to solo most missions herself and frames like reverent are very good at solo'ng liches. But best tactic is grouping up on thrall and lichs, high lv enemies die quicker if your in a team.

[Mr.Fluffins]

If you have the time, I would suggest for you to farm and craft Revenant, he is really good for Lich hunting due to his mesmer skin (which also works against the Lich grab attacks), plus his 1 can help with crowd control on high level enemies to draw fire away from you. His 4 deals decent damage even to high level enemies.

You can also try Valkyr (even the non-prime version). She is much easier to get, can tank anything while using hysteria, and again, deals decent damage. You have to be mindful of the increasing energy drain though.

[IamLoco]

Excalibur Umbra isn´t the best choice for lich hunting.

As suggested, you could try frames like Nidus (hard to get at the beginning) or a revenant.

I used Mesa Prime for all my liches. Her 2 and 3 are excellent defenses and her 4 shreds even lvl 5 liches in no time once you´ve modded her Regulators well with a corrosive crit setup and ideally 2x maxed out Arcane Velocities.

Edited January 13, 2020 by IamLoco

[Fallen77]

It just feels like you engaged content you don't have the gear for.

Sorry, but back in my day, if you wanted to do a high level dungeon in WOW, you'd have to farm up to that level, otherwise of course you'd have a bad time.

I'm not saying kuva lichs are a perfectly fun and oiled out system, there's certainly a lot to talk about there, but you can't give a proper feedback if you're going in there underleveled.

"Annoying BS like autograbing" : he only grabs you if you make contact with him, just don't go near him, and don't stand around we he uses his mobility ability.

Also, just so you know, going solo is often a slower farm than going public matchmaking. For kuva lichs or for most standard ressource/XP grind, you'll progress much faster by going with people, there are exceptions of course, but you get the idea :

More people, more ennemy spawn, more kill/minute, more XP, more ressources, more endo, more credits, better mods quicker => you can have an easier time against lichs (also you'd be getting murmurs faster too) sooner. And NOW, you'll be able to experience trully what people are complaining about 😄 

[(XBOX)TheRosenBones]

Don’t be afraid to run around with buddies! Murmur farms are about every other request for group I see here on Xbox. Even for vets, a magnetic Litch with mag’s bullet attractor will down me within seconds if I don’t drop everything and spam healing plates. Sometimes it’s not enough, and does more damage than I have health. 
 

Or. You know. Randoms shot me on accident. Besides the point. It also opens you up to finishing unveiling the correct requiems before your Litch level gets too high. Just ask around for farming and see if you can tag along to kill some thralls. 

[Anthraxicus]

It seems Liches are too hard to deal with for beginners who don't have maxed out gear, but also nowhere near endgame for veterans. 

My (two) Liches melted in seconds against my Nezha, so the whole process are neither challenging or fun. Having to go out of my way to farm thralls in a useless mission I don't even wanna do is a pain.

[(XBOX)Lmacncheese]

Atleast ur not on console where if u get grabbed ur basically dead

[(PSN)robotwars7]

6 hours ago, (NSW)Smashbrolink said:

; I can just barely handle lvl 70-80 baddies thanks to Umbra being a soloist's best friend,

not gonna lie, even as an MR28 with all the gear and mods, it can be a struggle fighting Liches once they hit rank 4, and a real slog at rank 5. the first 3 ranks are really easy though if you have the gear, but once my Lich passes Rank 3 I go public, because then at least I'm likely to run into other people who can help take the Lich down. I like to solo too, it's how I normally play, but I think you're MUCH better off letting randoms in than going it alone.

it does also sound like maybe you need some better gear before you can start seriously hunting Liches. take some time to go after more weapons and frames, and once your arsenal is a little wider, try again. as for their grab attack, it's only really an issue when meleeing, and it's very telegraphed. bets thing to do is only perform one combo, then back off. you're less likely to get grabbed that way.

[(PSN)chubbslawson]

Loki makes them pretty easy 

[(XBOX)Hyperion Rexx]

54 minutes ago, (PS4)chubbslawson said:

Loki makes them pretty easy 

Yep, it's a doddle with loki or any invis frame.  Nyx is also great. 

Agree the system needs a fair number of changes though to be considered "fun" 

[Anthraxicus]

40 minutes ago, (XB1)Hyperion Rexx said:

Yep, it's a doddle with loki or any invis frame.  Nyx is also great. 

Agree the system needs a fair number of changes though to be considered "fun" 

Just don't expect anything. There will be some minor adjustments within the next 6 months (maybe), but not anything fundamentally different that will make it fun.

Remember, DE is working on a bunch of different new stuff that will be released half baked, just like everything else, and then they will move on to the next big update. 

PoE, Fortuna, Old Blood, Empyrean etc. will all have the same fate.

 

 

Edited January 13, 2020 by Anthraxicus

[Alvengerz]

Lich system needs an overhaul, not a rework. I feel like 90% of what we do in Old blood update is to hunt lich thralls. It's not a kuva lich hunt, but trash mob hunt. It's not challenging, but just a nuisance, boring stuff. good thing DE already updated it so we can ditch the kuva larvlings on missions whenever we meet one.

[BDMblue]

I do believe lich content needed to be locked behind a solo test. It’s unfair to put a player with out equipment up against 1.

for now though you should try to not solo it? 

[ILOHARTA]

I carefully avoided the Lich mess since the very beginning (being successful at it), but now that all are whining about how tough those fights are... I'm kinda curious, will offer my sword randomly to unfortunate souls who created a lich.

[Wolfdoggie]

Can always just cheese them with Stealth and they can't do anything, like anything else in this game.

[LazyKnight]

The only Lich that is a major pain to deal with for everyone is a lich with a toxin tonkor. The only way to not be 1-hit killed is to make sure you are always up close to him so his rounds do not explode. If you ended up with this lich it might be worth either getting help killing it or ignoring it totally.

If you have a lich with any other weapon it should be doable by either using stealth or pick a warframe like Inaros that has enough health to endure the lich's attacks. Just make sure you have some way to heal such as magus repair or life-strike on your melee weapon. 

 

Edited January 13, 2020 by LazyKnight

[Sentinel-14]

The system is a good bit frustrating, but I guess it's supposed to be endgame content and therefore not easy. At least it's optional, sort of. You don't have to create a lich if you don't want to, which means you'll never have to fight one. The downside is that once you do create one you can't opt out of it until you kill/convert it.

The fact that the lich can spawn before you know your mod order, or before you even Have mods, is unpleasant. There's no indicator that you can just leave the lich alone after you stun it 3 times and it'll despawn, so the only obvious thing to do is try to kill it. But with no mods that's a guaranteed loss, and a guaranteed rank-up for it. And this opacity I believe was intentional to incentivize the player to hunt the lich as it repeatedly defeats and taunts them. It almost feels like DE created something they actually wanted us to actively hate, but in my opinion there are enough things to hate in this game already that they didn't need to pile on more.

I get that this, like everything else, is supposed to be a grind. But the amount of progress you get per murmur is just appalling and needs to be tripled it at least. Or maybe I only feel that way because I want to kill this thing and be done with it.

I have no need to move up in MR further than I currently am (MR18) so the kuva weapons and their associated MR gains don't mean much to me, except maybe the Kuva Ayanga.
Further, I am not a huge fan of the thieving. I forgot about it, but once it happened I recall DE talking about it in a devstream, so I can't say I didn't know. I get that the idea is to incentivize you to hunt and kill your lich in order to reclaim the loot (and probably some of your pride) but it's kind of annoying. I don't want to fight her. Now that I have tried this system I want nothing to do with it at all, but I'm stuck with it until I can kill this wench.

Since I don't need the MR and I don't like not being able to 'opt out', my plan is to kill my lich and not make another one. This whole system just isn't my cup of coffee.

Edited January 13, 2020 by Sentinel-14