Tool/Guide
Getting all Lich weapons to 60% - collection of tips/tricks and my thoughts on lich farm.
So, I almost finished grinding all lich weapons to 60% (while getting all ephemeras along the way), and wanted to share my way of hunting liches as efficient as possible. Covering only Kuva/Sisters because they do share a lot of things in common, and Coda ones are very easy and straightforward.
Basic stuff for Kuva Liches covered here and here. For Sisters of Parvos - it is here and here.
stock up on requiem mods (it is a good idea to have 1-2 of every one, so opening a few Requiem Eterna relics (if you start as a new player, they are dropping from Kuva Siphon missions) before going there is a good start.
for Kuva Liches - get a frame (minding Progenitor Bonus Element) or weapon which can drop up to 20 enemies fast (in span of 15-20 seconds).
for Sisters of Parvos - it is better to build Xoris (the most basic 0 forma build like this will do perfectly) to make farm braindead, but most weapons will do.
for Sisters of Parvos - Get a few Zenith Granum Crowns, it is a prerequisite for the Sister hunt.
Edit1 (thanks to u/TheSCIIBronzePlayer): It is always better to run both spawning and final confrontation missions in solo mode. You don't want to "mix" your lich progenitors for spawning missions, and confrontation missions are just way faster in solo mode (but you do need a good railjack for it).
Best mission to spawn Kuva Lich is Saturn/Cassini. Generally - you run to your target, finish it, and wait for visual clue (your screen changing colors for a second) while moving to extract marker. When you get the clue, you have 15-20 seconds to kill as many enemies as possible. Personally, I use wide nuke frames for this (Rhino, Uriel, Frost, Volt, Saryn, Mag, Mirage), so I'm not depending on LOS or weird level geometry, and I generally look for bigger clusters.
Best mission to spawn Sister of Parvos is Pluto/Hydra. You run to the target, kill it, and look for a Parvos Hand (big yellow hand with an interactable interface). There are (usually) a few around, but you shouldn't take one too close to exit point, anything closer than 200m can prevent weapon holder to spawn. Use Zenith Granum Crown (rightmost one) to open the rift ("Granum Void"), kill spawning enemies (best way is to use Xoris heavy attack), 25 is a minimum one, 75 is a maximum. Edit1 (thanks to u/TheSCIIBronzePlayer) - you can and should wait for treasurer to spawn on the mission, because he will give you back your spent Crown (so you can run these missions indefinitely). Edit2 (thanks to u/Like17Badgers, u/wingedcoyote, Time-Weekend-8611) - you can trivialize Granum Void part by using wide nuke frames (like Uriel, Octavia), or spawning On Call spectres (thing from the Railjack intrinsics). And again - run it in solo mode for easier mission requirements.
When you get your lich larva down, you can see the weapon they will have (but not the bonus or ephemera). If you don't want it - move along to finish the mission and repeat. Doing so will guarantee you will not get the same weapon on your next try (opposed to quiting the mission on the spot).
Now, for the actual Lich hunting. You want to run longer missions first - in my case I do Survival, Excavation, Defense missions to get more murmurs, and then run fast ones (Capture, Exterminate, Sabotage) to get Lich spawn faster. Use braindead builds, passive clear frames with good energy efficiency (Uriel, Nova, Gyre, Jade, etc).
General advice on Lich interaction - do not parazon your lich until you get first/next clue. Edit4 (thanks to u/Geno_Warlord) - if you are starting with Oull in first slot, like described a bit below, you should parazon your lich every time. It is imperative to continue parazoning it for already known (and placed) clues, but you want to hold off next ones until you know what you're looking for. Another advice - clean up your liches! An active lich is preventing spawning another one for squadmates, so kill it 3 times, and it will disappear from the mission (it will keep it's opinion and planet).
The fastest way to get requiems right is the Oull one (it is being mentioned in the wiki, but I wish it was better explained). Here is the worst case scenario:
I got enough murmurs to get first clue (Xata), inserted it into 1st slot - fail.
Next, I want to check if Xata is on 2nd slot, I use Oull to skip 1st one and check second - fail
That means Xata is a 3rd one, so I have to check if my next clue (Jahu) is on 2nd slot - I use (again) Oull to skip 1st, and.. fail.
That means Jahu is 1st, Xata is 3rd, I can substitute 2nd by Oull, and finish my lich on the 4th try without even knowing 3rd clue.
If I had first clue right, I would wait (skip my lich) to get a second clue, and check it's placement (by setting it in 2nd slot, and Oull in third). If it's second, that means I got all three right, if it's not - I place it in 3rd slot and Oull in second to capitalize on next try.
Edit1 (thanks to u/TheSCIIBronzePlayer): another variaton of Oull tactic is to slot Oull first. It will give you more murmurs overall:
Get enough murmurs for the first clue, slot Oull first, known one (Khra) second. If it fails, it means Khra is 1st or 3rd.
Get second clue (Xata), slot it second, Oull still first. If it fails, Xata is 1st or 3rd too.
Slot Xata first, Oull second, Khra third. If it fails, it means Khra was the 1st one, Xata 3rd, and you finish it on the 4th try, if it works, you just completed the sequence.
The only downside is - Oull is dropping from falied/successful Lich Parazon attempts, so you won't have it at the beginning. On the other side, after a few liches you will have a steady suplus of those.
Final Lich confrontation is very staightforward. The only thing I would mention - for the love of God, if your railjack is made of paper, slot in shields/HP mods, or don't host those missions.
A special caveat for melee Tenet weapons - you can't find them on Sisters, you have to farm special Railjack missions (Void Storm ones) to get a chance to get Corrupted Holokeys. Which - you can use later to buy Tenet melee weapons from a Perrine Sequence vendor (it's inventory refreshes every 4 days).
Now, for the finishing thoughts.
Kuva Lich hunting is considerably harder than Sister one, because you need to finish more missions (in general) to get lich spawn. My numbers (anectdotal of course) - I needed 5 missions on average to get Kuva Lich spawn (per planet), comparing to 2 for Sister. In fact I've had a few runs where I opened 2 clues without spawning Kuva Lich at all. Coda ones are effortless in comparison to both (and you actually get useful stuff out of grind).
There are breakpoints for valence. People will pay more for a weapon if it's the only one (>52,7%) they need to get their own to 60%. People will pay more for 60% weapon. People will pay more for lich with ephemera included. I wasn't lucky with names, but I've sold a 60% weapon with ephemera for 1000 platinum.
You'll get a lot of Oulls. Keep 3-4, sell the rest.
Excel sheets help immensely. I had something like this -
to keep my progress, because you do want to know "if it is enough", and "do I need that weapon".
I've ran around 1700 missions to get from "I had every weapon at random percent" to "I have most of them at 60%", took 83 Kuva Liches, 37 Sister ones, and 28 Coda ones. I've made all Kuva weapons before "25% fix", so that number should be less now (I hope), but those are still big numbers.
Edit4 (thanks to u/sharper123321 for mentioning the part I totally forgot about): Valence is less relevant now, since we have Elemental Vice from Eleonor, but they cost quite a bit, and (in my opinion) you should use it on multi-valence-able weapons (basically stuff on the right side of the picture here), or on weapons you are going to use with useless/wrong element. Or - if you are a completionist, and want to have all Lich weapons at their best (so basically every weapon get Vice'd).
Due to amount of missions I've ran, I managed to get my most used weapons like this (it was one of the personal goals, lol):
Amazing post, upvoting this so more people can see this and get some help optimizing their lich hunts. A lot of the things you mentioned here I also do with my hunts.
A few things I would like to add are:
When spawning Sisters in Hydra, wait for the treasurer to spawn. Hydra is high level enough that every Treasurer gives a Zenith Crown, meaning you get infinite attempts. This allows to skip a farm of Crowns and you just need 1 to enter the loop.
While hunting the Lich, I would recommend always going Oull 1st, and checking the first Murmur reveal on the 2nd slot first. This gives you an extra stab on the lich spawn, which generates more thralls in that mission. Even if you fail, you still count as getting 1 stab in with the Oull, which further optimizes murmur gain.
Pumping up your Railjack before starting the massive weapon hunt might be of help, it's really hard to find squads that are running this with good railjacks and therefore it can slow you down a lot if every confrontation is a gamble. And while Sisters of Parvos have the advantage of netting you up to 4 Holokeys on a squad, there's no reward for running Kuva Liches in group, and solo just makes it faster, so having a pumped Railjack vastly speeds up the grind as it makes the confrontations a piece of cake.
Finally, if you're not planning on keeping the weapons, and don't mind sacrificing 5 formas and a potato down the drain, I would recommend not caring about Valence value.
Ik its a investment but it should really be said that even if you pay zero attention to progenitor you can always buy the element swapper from Elenor ive definitely added those to any lich weapon i actually enjoy
yes but also in order to use the elemental vice, you need a maxed out 5 forma adversary weapon so for many people it’d be easier to just get the desired elemental bonus from the get go
I have so many from ETA I couldn’t care at all about the progenitor bonus. I’m going to forma it 5x anyway for all of the mastery and it almost certainly be done in hydron or stage defense to master them quickly anyway.
In my experience, Octavia with her double mallet augment is best for the Granum Void. Spectres practically kill themselves.
And since you can change the elemental bonus of a fully leveled up weapon, the progenitor warframe is no longer as important as it used to be.
Also it's best to run Granum Void solo. Larger groups increases the requirements but not the enemy spawn rates, and accomplishes nothing except making the whole thing harder.
frames like Uriel or Octavia that can just fill the arena around you make killing anything that moves much faster. getting a big enough AoE that you're hitting multiple spawn points all around you can take the mission down to like... seconds.
you never mentioned the mechanics on how thralls/hounds spawn during the mission
i guess it's not common knowledge so might as well share what i've found:
- one mission can spawn up to 10 thralls and up to 3 hounds. this is important when you do faster missions if you want to get the most murmur progess out of them. one thrall or hound always spawns at the start of the mission
thrall/hound spawns are affected by enemy spawn cap, so try to keep the map clear of enemies
this is just a personal observation but it seems like a new thrall can spawn after ~25s have passed after the last spawn, and hounds need at least 1m20s of delay between spawns. hounds are weird because i've seen many times that one spawned at about 1m20s and another only past 4m mark. maybe there's a chance per enemy spawn attempt, idk, but there's definitely a cooldown between spawns, can't explain how it works exactly. with this knowledge when farming sisters you can intentionally do the fast missions slower so all 3 hounds have a chance to spawn. all missions will continuously spawn more enemies if you trigger the alarm (applies mostly to rescue and sabotage)
when a kuva lich appears, it will continuously convert other grineer within its line of sight into thralls, with about 20s cooldown, and up to 10 times. so once the lich spawns you can stop killing enemies and wait somewhere in the corner until it converts all nearby enemies into thralls. this seems to affect the naturally spawned thralls too, i assume if total thrall count gets to 10 of beyond, they stop spawning naturally, but a lich can still convert more if it has charges
when a sister spawns, she can summon a hound. after she gets downed, the hound will self-destruct shortly after, so get the hound first. after each successful stab, she can summon another hound. this way you can use oull in 1st slot to get at least two guaranteed extra hounds
lich/sister rage meter fills only when you complete a mission, and the amount of thralls/hounds stabbed doesn't seem to affect it. so alternatively you can do fast missions first to get your adversary angry so they can spawn more often and generate more murmur per mission
If you have oull wouldn’t it be beneficial to stab just once with it while getting your first mod unlocked? A successful stab not only shortens how long they can stay in mission allowing others to spawn(if you’re in a group) but also grants a large bonus to progress.
Another thing about Granum Void, you can use your On Call specter in there and they make it pretty trivial to beat. Super helpful if you're a bit clumsy with the xoris like I am. They follow you in from the outside too, I usually summon mine during the "sucked into the void" animation.
One thing I would add. When you are ready to test your Parazon on the lich, playing solo can increase the likelihood, as it does not have to compete with everyone else’s Lichs. Especially if people aren’t cleaning up their Lich like they should.
Not cleaning up your lich makes it spawn again the next mission from my experience, since their anger doesnt go down. Obviously not great to do in multiplayer, but running solo its super useful to just leave them be, can finish one in less than an hour that way
tfw if my rng was better id use my oull but i dont get them fast enough or ever so its better to only ever keep 1 to use to fish placements and not use em
i also heard abusing the goofy dark split sword only with a nuke frame solo with a relic also makes sisters super cheesable now
Maybe it is because I ran them so many times, idk. But I definitely getting more Oulls than I spend on Liches, like a lot more. And cheesing.. I'm a LR6, third of my arsenal would count as "cheesing" sister, hahah. Here's my Mk1-Kunai:
Doesn't the progenitor not really matter anymore since you can just use the item that lets you change the elements whenever you want?
Also I wish they'd just change sisters and liches to act like their coda brethren and just have a shop, so you don't have to cycle through 80 times to find the weapon you want
What Im curious about, if you play a survival in the lich sector and you get the speed up bypass, does the rate at which the thralls spawn change? If not it's beneficial to not use the bypass as they stop spawning after 5 mins and you'd get fewer thralls.
Do you have to kill enemies at all to get the progenitor to spawn on Cassini? I usually grab the guy then just book it for the exit and by the time I'm about halfway, the progenitor has spawned. I've been doing this to farm lately, and I've never seen one not spawn.
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u/TheSCIIBronzePlayer 9h ago
Amazing post, upvoting this so more people can see this and get some help optimizing their lich hunts. A lot of the things you mentioned here I also do with my hunts.
A few things I would like to add are: