A better progress model for liches

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

Kuva Liches are too separated from normal content, too RNG based, and their rewards too inconsistent.

So, a suggestion for a new progress model:

- Thralls appear in all content, no matter what you're doing. If it's low level you get less murmers.

- So can level 1 Liches, who have the same health as currently, but don't require the parazon and just appear to die.

- The Kuva weapon drops the first time you defeat them, but with a 25% damage bonus and a max rank of 30.

- The lich appears to be defeated, but thralls keep spawning, and some random time later they turn up as level 2 and start taunting you (which now makes most of their voice lines make sense).

- When you defeat them the 2nd time the weapon bonus increases to 35% and the max rank to 32 (with at least 1 forma)

- and so on, 3rd and 4th kills increase the weapon some more, getting you to 50% and rank 38 (with 4 forma)

- finally, the level 5 Lich requires the parazon and the key, and boosts the weapon to 60% bonus and max rank 40 (with 5 forma).

This would make the weapons feel like much more of a reward, make progress against liches feel concrete, and fix the die-to-progress mechanic that feels so off.

To really make this work (and I realise this is probably a lot more dev time) we need multiple liches - one per Grineer world whose thralls spawn on any node in that world. This would let the downtime between lich fights be a lot longer (say you beat your Earth lich and they appear dead and gone for a week that sucks if they're your only lich, but not so much if they're just one of many you're working on).

Stretching out the Liches gives them a lot more individuality - when you finally vanquish one it's after weeks of them being a recurring problem in everything you do, rather than a particular game type you grind as quick as possible to ditch yet another low roll Kraken.

In addition, with multiple liches:

- Cracking data vaults or finding sabotage caches should grant murmers.

- Murmers apply to the local world's lich, whether they're active or not.

- Every Grineer mission would always have a chance of spawning either thralls (when you have an active or dormant lich) or larvellings (when you don't).

- No two Liches should have the same weapon at the same time, and the rule that a new lich can't have the same weapon as the last one should stay.

- Level 5 Liches would replace galleon/asteroid captains at their world's Proxima, or (for everywhere else) replace the local boss fight node. You would always be able to choose to start a fight with the level 5 Lich, once you are ready.

- If we get all of this I'd make the final fight harder: guesses wouldn't tell you which one was right and wouldn't grant murmers, you'd need all 3 known just to make an attempt.

[(PSN)adrian80]

Liches and thralls should definitely be integrated to other missions.

The first time I saw the area of influence (red cloud) on the map, I thought ”Cool, this will spice up things”. Then I realized I had to select the specific mission type... 🤨