[TWW] Kuva siphon farming: observed operations and suggestions - UPDATED

[CxLL]

[ Disclaimer: This text contains spoilers about The War Within story quest. ]

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By the end of the very hour after completing The War Within quest, players are finding themselves tenno-deep in this strange screaming vapour floating throughout Grineer architecture. An important resource, it seems.
For some, the new currency in trading – riven mods have a chance at receiving better stats upon being cycled, and the better the stats, the better the price.
For others though, it’s just another layer of rng, as it’s been stated so many times already. There are items that require this resource in order to be built. Not a large amount, no, but still, there are blueprints that require it, with a chance of more arriving in the future. Which, in a direct manner, does tend to eat at a completionist’s nerves. Just standing there, in the foundry. Unbuilt.

But back to the dynamics of obtaining it.
As many have already found out, farming kuva requires a special utilization of transference, mainly, allowing the Operator to enter the battlefield in person and interact with the environment. New game dynamics are more than appreciated. Not only does it fully refresh the usual burnout-inducing shoot/hit/eviscerate until all two hundred are dead, but it is infinitely fun! I am sure I’m not speaking for myself alone when I say that more Operator assignments are the bright future to look forward to. Although that is a different topic.
Kuva farming in itself currently suffers a lot of nuisances.

> Issues:
- Players cannot predict the siphon’s spawn and the game does not even indicate what we could look for. Farming for a resource should not be based on lucky coincidences.
- Often when the siphon does spawn, it does so in a rather annoying manner – it distracts from the objective. Especially difficult to deal with in capture missions, where there is no squad to split between the two focus targets.
- The siphon can also spawn very near extraction and be announced at the very start of the mission. Reaching it wastes time, and the event itself is indeed timed.
- Another issue, one that tends to happen with a larger ping between squad members, is the kuva siphon spawning before all players enter the mission.
- Reported as well is the fact that enemy-rich missions might make cloud catching impossible, as the Operator keeps getting attacked and with their low health pool, they keep returning to their warframe. That combined with lag where operator abilities simply refuse to work is pretty difficult to digest, seeing how squad might have attempted ten or more runs in order to even encounter a siphon.

- There are some issues with the location of the siphon. Sometimes it's too near the cloud spawn space, sometimes it's near water flows which disables operator mode, sometimes it's straightforward outside of the map. Idea for preventing this would be manual placement of the siphon within designated map tiles.


> Necessary dynamic mending:
Make the kuva siphon delay its spawn until the mission objective is completed.


> QoL suggestions:
- Dedicated kuva siphon alerts THANK YOU!
- Locking down a room in which the siphon is
- Somehow prevent capture target from fleeing at least if the kuva siphon is siphoning
- Highlight nodes on which the siphon has a chance to spawn (a custom icon or colour as nightmare missions and invasion missions have) THANK YOU!
- Allow the Codex to state where we can expect the siphon to spawn
- Add more ways of obtaining kuva (idea: puzzle rooms that only the tenno can finish)
- Make kuva a Kuva Fortress rare resource or more commonly obtainable through caches.

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In any case, one thing is clear - Update 19.1.0 has resolved the majority of the problems around kuva farming.
Thread topic can be considered resolved despite the minor issues detected after the update. If it doesn't get closed, I will update with any potential issues encountered while running the kuva "alerts".

Edited November 26, 2016 by cxll
Edited, after U 19.1.0

[Glitch]

Adding onto this, here's a small mockup of what a Kuva Siphon alert could look like:

Alongside what cxll has already said, here are a few other small QoL tweaks that could aid in the Kuva obtaining:

-Lotus acknowledging the Siphon in some way upon entrance of a mission, akin to Simaris saying there's a target. 

-Planets that have the potential to have siphons having an indicator alongside the rest of the resources in the navigation menu. 

 

The next few are less of QoL, but more of ideas on how to expand the ways to gain Kuva. 

 

-Maybe having extractors finding small piles of Kuva, sort of how rare resources are found by them. 

-Kuva being a reward from the Kuva Fortress Spy mission, at a similar ratio to Nitain on Lua Spy missions.

-A rare chance at getting a blueprint for a small personal Kuva Siphon, usable as a gear, like a Stalker/G3/Harvester beacon.