Kuva Lich Improvement Concepts- Lich-Controlled Territory Assassination and Kuva Thrall Generals

[Cobalt313]

Ok, so I haven't browsed these forums in a while so I don't know if anyone's suggested something like this already, or even if DE already has plans to implement a system like this in the future, but nevertheless, I have had an idea, and I have come here to share it with all of you. Basically it's a probably inordinately complicated system to address complaints of people having to wait for RNG to make their Kuva Lich actually show up in missions, without exactly making it possible for you to confront them at will like just any other boss:

 

Kuva Lich Assassination -- or, "How to make encountering your Lich easier, but not *too* easy"

Ok calm your keyboards and curb your enthusiasm, just hear me out: this is not what it sounds like. Ok, maybe it is- Assassination missions on planets that fall under Kuva Lich control will be converted into "Lich-Controlled Territory: Assassination" missions- but there are a few special conditions to these missions you need to know before you say this renders random Lich encounters obsolete:

1. Each planet's Lich-Controlled Territory: Assassination mission will be locked until you sufficiently free that planet from your Lich's influence.

Whether that means clearing a minimum number of missions on that planet, reducing the number of tiles under Lich control to below a certain threshold, or simply clearing *all* other Lich territory tiles on that planet before you can attempt the assassination is up in the air, but the point is you won't just be able to simply beeline for these missions from the outset. You still gotta do some regular Thrall-hunting missions to earn the privilege just in case farming up your Requiem wasn't enough incentive.

2. Lich-Controlled Territory: Assassination missions may only be attempted once each, regardless of outcome.

Self-explanatory: win, lose, or abort; just like Arbitrations, you only get one shot at each LCT:A mission before it's considered cleared like other tiles you free from Lich control. I know this sounds like it sucks, but the main purpose for this is to ensure nobody can just abort and retry these missions to easily trial-and-error their way through the Lich's Requiem without having to actually farm for Murmurs anymore. This could cause issues with people dropping, disconnecting, or Host migrating, but ideally this should only affect the Host/the person who started the mission, as anyone else coming along for the ride shouldn't lose their own LCT:A tile that they didn't start for themselves.

3. Only one Lich-Controlled Territory: Assassination mission on a given player's Starmap will actually contain the Lich; the rest will have Kuva Thrall Generals. You won't know which until you try.

Ok so this part requires a bit more explanation: Every time a Lich gains or expands territory, one planet's Assassination tile out of all such tiles currently under Lich control will be randomly selected to host your Kuva Lich as a special Assassination target. All other Assassination tiles under Lich control will instead be populated with a new, special miniboss called a "Kuva Thrall General" that serves as the assassination target in your Lich's stead (more on these later).

To summarize, say your freshly-converted Kuva Lich gains control of their first planet. That planet's Assassination tile will come under their Influence and generate a Lich-Controlled Territory: Assassination mission. One planet, one LCT:A mission, 100% chance it will give you a free Lich encounter. If your Lich levels up and gains a new planet before you attempt it, now there are two LCT:A missions. There is now only a 50% chance your Lich is still hiding at the place it was before; they could still be there, or they could have moved to the one on the other planet and left their new General at their old place. You won't know until you try. No matter how many planets or Assassination tiles are currently under Lich control, only one of them will actually guarantee a fight with your Lich at any given time.

If your Lich is your Assassination target for the mission, you aren't specifically required to Vanquish or Convert them for it to count as mission success; failed Requiem attempts and downing your Lich three times without Mercy will count as mission completion too. Perhaps to combat the possibility of trolls speeding ahead of you and driving your Lich off before you can even reach them, let alone attempt Mercy, let's just say that downing a Lich three times during an LCT:A mission won't cause them to flee, but will at least enable extraction so you and your squad can flee if it turns out you weren't ready but you don't want to just abort mission entirely.

Now to address the elephant in the room: What the heck is a Kuva Thrall General?

 

Kuva Thrall Generals -- or, "I'm sorry Tenno, but your Lich is in another castle."

So we've established that Kuva Thrall Generals are the boss fight you get if you happen to choose a LCT:A mission other than the one where your Lich is actually hiding, but we haven't established much about what they really are. As you might expect, they are in short a bigger, beefier, and more dangerous sort of Kuva Thrall, imbued with a greater share of the Lich's own power and outfitted with better weapons and armor than that afforded by his fellow Thralls, but not quite so much as to match or surpass the Lich itself.

Some Generals may even sport additional defenses and gimmicks to their fights that make them more than mere bullet sponges; anything from:

 -Specific weak points on their body you must target to deal full damage, if even any; 

-Ambulas-esque piecemeal armor that must be shot off to expose that body region to damage 

-A retinue of Thrall bodyguards that grant regenerating health, shields, or outright invulnerability to their General for as long as they are alive, and must be dispatched first to allow their General to be  harmed and slain normally.

Or they could just be glorified bullet sponges in the vein of Galleon captains, with the gimmicks only appearing at higher Lich levels if even at all.

More important than how you fight Kuva Thrall Generals, however, is what you get as a reward for defeating them. Mercy-killing a Thrall General will award you the same amount of Kuva and Requiem Murmurs as would a failed Requiem attempt on the Kuva Lich itself, as well as awarding a guaranteed Kuva Relic, if not a direct chance for a single random Requiem Mod or other such additional reward.

You will also receive a unique hint toward your Lich's Requiem, in the form of an addition to your Requiem Attempts list containing a single random Requiem mod in a single random Parazon mod slot that does not correctly match your Lich's Requiem sequence, as if you had tried and failed to execute your Lich with only that mod equipped in only that slot. Naturally this information could be a game-changing boon or completely useless depending on how much of your Requiem is already revealed, but it does provide a more interesting hint toward your correct Requiem sequence than Murmurs alone, without directly rendering Murmur accumulation itself obsolete.

TL;DR: Kuva Thrall Generals are boss-level Thralls that you fight instead of your Lich an all but the one right Lich-Controlled Assassination mission, which may or may not have one unique gimmick to their fight other than "shoot them a lot more times". Defeating them awards you similar awards to a failed Requiem Mercy attempt: free Kuva, lots of Murmurs, and a random hint of what isn't the right Requiem sequence for your Lich, without the downsides of failing an attempt on the Lich themselves. And also maybe some other nice crap as consolation.

 

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Optional/Bonus -- Possible Railjack Integration: Thrall General Interrogation and Kuva Lich Sightings.

This would definitely have to wait until Railjack is fully off the ground- bugs worked out, all planets' Proximas mapped out, etc- and could work either in place of or in addition to the "one guaranteed Lich Assassination" thing above; what's important is how this would involve the Kuva Thrall Generals themselves.

Basically, if you defeat your Thrall General and go in for a Mercy finisher after you've unlocked/completed your Railjack, instead of going straight for the kill, you will be presented with a choice between "Execute" or "Interrogate", in a manner akin to your choice to "Convert" or "Vanquish a defeated Lich. Choose the former, you go through the Mercy finisher as normal and get the usual rewards alongside the "Wrong Requiem" hint. Choose the latter, and you will instead capture the General like a VIP target, forfeiting the Requiem hint and possibly the Murmurs and Kuva reward in the process. In exchange, however, when you return to your Orbiter, you will receive a message from Cephalon Cy exclaiming that the captured General's interrogation was a success, and while he refused to reveal your Lich's hideout, he did reveal an upcoming event on the Lich's itinerary that would leave him out in the open. The catch is that the coordinates lead to space and you have a small window of opportunity in which to act before the Lich disappears again.

Your Railjack map will then be updated with a time-limited mission alert for a "Kuva Lich Sighting"; a random mission tile in the Proxima of a planet currently under your Lich's control, marked with a special Grineer Skirmish mission where your Lich will be guaranteed to spawn aboard one of the objective stations, if not be the assassination target aboard a Grineer Galleon. Naturally, this mission may only be attempted once, same as LCT:A missions, and may possibly only offer a limited timeframe within the mission itself to engage if not defeat the Lich before they flee and the mission is failed.

It's a bit of a shaky system, sure, and might fly too close to making encountering your Lich too easy, but at least it would be somewhat in line with what we saw in the initial Railjack/Lich teaser, as well as reward players for going through the effort of building and unlocking their own Railjack.

TL;DR: If you have a Railjack (and the mode itself is more complete than it is at time of posting), you could choose to either execute Thrall Generals for the usual rewards, or capture and interrogate them to forfeit some rewards in exchange for another guaranteed chance at fighting your Lich. In a Railjack mission. With a time limit.



And that's the long and short of it. I have some other Kuva Lich-related ideas I'd like to share here at some point, maybe compile them into a megathread once they're all out together, but this one is the biggest/most serious of the lot. I tried to cover my bases as much as I could as far as potential for bugs and trolls ruining things went, and I apologize in advance if I overlooked something anyway. So what do you all think?