Kuva Lich Improvement Concept- Thrall Hit Squads

[Cobalt313]

I don't know if DE already has plans akin to this in the future or not; this is just something minor I personally wouldn't mind seeing added to spice up Kuva Liches as opposed to some major fix proposed to address complaints by the community at large. 

Lich Thrall Hit Squads -- or, "How To Make A Kuva Lich's Influence More Apparent Beyond Controlled Territory."

For all the grandstanding, threats, and trash talk Kuva Liches love to fill our Orbiter's comms with, they currently don't seem to pose us much of a real threat when we're not going out of our way to pester them on their alleged turf. Sure they steal our rewards if we do missions on planets they've claimed, but if you can avoid doing that or if the planet they own doesn't have any rewards you would be particularly afraid of losing, then suddenly all the threats they throw at you every time you return to your orbiter just seem empty. And then when you do decide its high time you lodged a formal complaint about their tax policies via magic space knife, you first need to grind out a bunch of Lich-Controlled Territory missions to farm Requiem Murmurs, which not only takes a long time but must be done to the exclusion of grinding for anything else of value, which can get a little tedious if not boring for how long it actually takes.

Thankfully there is a way one can address both of these issues: a simple way to both make Kuva Liches feel like a more omnipresent threat that is seriously and honestly out to get you, and to allow one to make at least some slow progress toward learning their Requiem when one does not feel like putting their nose to the grindstone exclusively for that purpose. Put simply: give Liches a chance to send Thrall Hit Squads to attack you during missions outside their own territory.

Naturally we wouldn't want to send too many Thralls at once outside of an actual Lich-Controlled Territory mission, maybe start with 3-5 Thralls to a team, and if that doesn't feel like a worthwhile threat, just throw in some additional normal Grineer units of similar level. The frequency of these invasions would probably be tied to your Lich's current anger level- the angrier the Lich the higher chance of sending an invasion squad after you- and of course the strength of the units in the invasion force would increase with the Lich's own level as normal. If you want to get extra fancy, perhaps at higher levels the hit squad could include some kind of unique specialist units that are worth more Murmurs when Mercied, like a Kuva Thrall Squadron Commander that cannot be Mercied until you defeat all the other Thralls in its squadron first, or inversely a Kuva Thrall Field Medic with the ability to resurrect downed Thralls if it gets to them before you Mercy them in time.

Basically, I kinda wanted this to be a way you could have a chance to make *some* progress toward your Lich's Requiem while doing things other than putting your nose to the grindstone with Lich-Controlled Territory nodes, and of course give a little bite to your Lich's constant barking every time you enter your Orbiter. Between the low spawn chance (with or without Anger modifiers) and relatively low Murmur yield per hit squad, hopefully an addition like this would not be enough to offset the benefits of taking on Lich-Controlled Territory nodes directly, especially not if you haven't already made any effort to confront your Lich and raised their level in the process.

TL;DR: Active Kuva Liches could have a small chance of sending Thrall hit squads after you to invade non-Lich-Controlled Territory missions, sorta like Syndicate Eximus squads. This would both give you an occasional spot of free progress toward your Requiem that won't eclipse the benefits of direct grinding for Murmurs, and would also make Liches and their forces look and feel more like an active, ever-present threat that isn't simply waiting around for you to come attack them. Squads would start out with ~3-5 Thralls, possibly accompanied by a number of non-Thrall units of similar level, and may spawn with a frequency proportional to your Lich's current anger level. Higher-level Liches may send more Thralls per invasion squad, or perhaps may include specialist Thralls that yield more Murmurs when Mercied but have unique abilities to support their team and/or require all other Thralls in the squad be defeated first before they are made vulnerable.

[Lukarith]

Yes. This would be irritatiting enough to remind players they should take on their lich, while also allowing them to work on their lich with out actively farming the missions. I do thing that these enemies should be much harder than the normal thralls, like 15+ above what you liches current thrall scaling would be. 

And players should then have the percentage of their mission rewards stolen that they would have from Lich territory if the thralls show up...maybe even allow the lich to level up if a certain number of Tenno death occur due to the thrall attacks.

[Cobalt313]

1 hour ago, Lukarith said:

Yes. This would be irritatiting enough to remind players they should take on their lich, while also allowing them to work on their lich with out actively farming the missions. I do thing that these enemies should be much harder than the normal thralls, like 15+ above what you liches current thrall scaling would be. 

And players should then have the percentage of their mission rewards stolen that they would have from Lich territory if the thralls show up...maybe even allow the lich to level up if a certain number of Tenno death occur due to the thrall attacks.

Making the Hit Squad Thralls harder than the normal makes some sense- making them Eximus could be an easy shortcut to that end that also lines up with what players already expect from Syndicate hit squads, but I suppose just a no-frills level adjustment and/or a "-Hit Squadron" template addition could work as well.

Mission reward theft I'm not so sure about, but with the point you made of "being irritating enough to remind players they should take on their Lich" I suppose it wouldn't be too bad, especially if the number or percentage, or perhaps rarity of rewards stolen still wasn't as high as one would expect from within Lich-Controlled Territory. I feel like if players knew these guys appearing would mean they'd lose what they came to the mission for in the first place, most would just immediately abort the second their screen started flickering.


Letting the lich level up from Tenno deaths actually gives me an idea, though: let's call it "Notoriety". Basically, in addition to their level and their Anger, a Lich below max level would also have a "Notoriety" meter that increments by one each time they successfully kill the Tenno that spawned them, or each time one of their Hit Squad units manages to successfully perform a "Trophy Execution" on a downed Tenno, basically bringing back proof that they were able to take them down. Do this enough times to fill the meter, and the Lich will gain a level and the meter will reset, but the maximum number of Notoriety points needed for the Lich to advance to the next level will also increase. This could allow the Lich to escalate in threat through means other than the player's own failed Requiem attempts that instills some level of urgency without necessarily being too punishing or too hard to avoid if the player means to keep their Lich at low level as long as possible. Thanks for the idea!

[Lukarith]

13 hours ago, Cobalt313 said:

Letting the lich level up from Tenno deaths actually gives me an idea, though: let's call it "Notoriety". Basically, in addition to their level and their Anger, a Lich below max level would also have a "Notoriety" meter that increments by one each time they successfully kill the Tenno that spawned them, or each time one of their Hit Squad units manages to successfully perform a "Trophy Execution" on a downed Tenno, basically bringing back proof that they were able to take them down. Do this enough times to fill the meter, and the Lich will gain a level and the meter will reset, but the maximum number of Notoriety points needed for the Lich to advance to the next level will also increase. This could allow the Lich to escalate in threat through means other than the player's own failed Requiem attempts that instills some level of urgency without necessarily being too punishing or too hard to avoid if the player means to keep their Lich at low level as long as possible. Thanks for the idea!

Ooh. I really like that. Plus it would it give [DE] a chance to make put sweet Enemy to Warframe finisher animations (which would probably also make sense for Stalker to have).

Would Notoriety cap out once the lich is maxed rank, or would it stack to five Lichs another teir of challenge?....Not that it is required, as most of my Sortie and Arbitration builds still struggle to solo max rank lichs.

[Cobalt313]

5 hours ago, Lukarith said:

Ooh. I really like that. Plus it would it give [DE] a chance to make put sweet Enemy to Warframe finisher animations (which would probably also make sense for Stalker to have).

Would Notoriety cap out once the lich is maxed rank, or would it stack to five Lichs another teir of challenge?....Not that it is required, as most of my Sortie and Arbitration builds still struggle to solo max rank lichs.

I feel like either the Lich would no longer accumulate Notoriety after they hit level 5 or maxing out Notoriety at rank 5 would only award some kind of "joke" achievement or perhaps give the Lich a cosmetic alteration of some kind, like a trophy item they wear to commemorate their repeated victories against your Warframe in addition to the helmet on their shoulder.

[xZeromusx]

I like the hit squad idea. As for the Kuva Lich's levels, I actually had the idea to lengthen out their leveling over ranks 0 to 30, just like a warframe seeing as they are based on warframes, and essentially stretch the current ranks out so that the levels don't jump in difficulty so drastically and players have more chances to try combinations. I think a similar progression of level increases as the lich ranks up could work for a hit squad as well.

[Cobalt313]

22 minutes ago, xZeromusx said:

I like the hit squad idea. As for the Kuva Lich's levels, I actually had the idea to lengthen out their leveling over ranks 0 to 30, just like a warframe seeing as they are based on warframes, and essentially stretch the current ranks out so that the levels don't jump in difficulty so drastically and players have more chances to try combinations. I think a similar progression of level increases as the lich ranks up could work for a hit squad as well.

I could see something like that- maybe still keep the main ranks of 1-5 as major thresholds, but let the Lich themselves accumulate small increments of power as they rise in Notoriety so it's not quite as drastic a jump once they finally get the full benefit of ranking up.

As for the "trying combinations" thing, I actually had an idea within my Lich-Controlled Territory: Assassination thread that basically allowed players to earn "wrong" Requiem mods/positions to help them deduce their Lich's Requiem without raising its level or needing to max out on Murmurs, though I was also thinking such hints could be a reward for new Lich-Controlled Territory Capture, Spy, or Rescue missions where you gather intel about your Lich's strengths and weaknesses from trusted lieutenants, private logs, and insubordinate Grineer troops, respectively.