A Kuva Lich is a unique type of enemy that was introduced in The Old Blood update and is an enemy that you will face after having an encounter with a Kuva Larvling.
These enemies may be fought and either vanquished or converted based on your preference, which will allow you to obtain a Kuva Weapon or the Kuva Lich as an ally.
Hunting a Kuva Lich becomes doable once you have completed The War Within quest, unlocking the ability to hunt down targets that can be defeated to spawn them.
Preparing For Kuva Lich Hunts
Taking down a Kuva Lich requires that you have Requiem Mods as these need to be arranged in a specific order to successfully kill them.
As you do missions and defeat the Kuva Lich’s Thralls, you will be able to generate Murmurs, which will reveal what passphrase is needed. (This shows what requiem mods you need)
Requiem Mods are equipped on your Parazon, which was later introduced to the game and may now be equipped on all Warframes.
Having one of each Requiem Mod is a good way to ensure that you will be able to defeat a Kuva Lich otherwise, you will need to farm them until you get all the ones needed.
How To Hunt and Defeat Kuva Lich
Killing Kuva Larvling
Begin by doing a level 20 or above Grineer mission to begin the hunt for a Kuva Larvling which will eventually spawn in the mission as you are doing it.
The Kuva Lich symbol will appear and a Kuva Grineer enemy will begin to speak which will hint that a Kuva Larvling has spawned in the mission.
If you are alone in a solo mission or outperform your squad members in a party, you will often become chosen to hunt and kill the Larvling.
Head over to the waypoint that marks the Kuva Larvling and once you find it, you will need to defeat it to begin your hunt after the Kuva Lich, which is the former Kuva Larvling.
You will be able to see what Kuva Weapon the Kuva Lich will have once the Larvling is down, giving you the chance to decide if you want to accept it or not.
There will be an animation where the Larvling begins to respawn with strange power which is part of its transformation into the Kuva Lich which you will be facing later.
If you decide not to take on the Kuva Lich associated with the Kuva Larvling, you may leave the mission and repeat to get a different roll. (These often have a rotation)
After the mission, your screen will turn red and the Kuva Lich that you will be fighting will be displayed as well as send you a transmission.
From then on you will be able to view your Kuva Lich by checking their profile in the ESC menu, usually located next to the Nightwave button.
A Kuva Lich will be in control of certain areas, which will cause you to lose resources when doing missions in the areas.
Once a Kuva Lich has been defeated, you will be able to require all of the resources that were previously stolen from you.
Collecting Requiem Murmurs
Requiem Murmurs are needed for you to figure out which Requiem mods you will need to equip when you will fight your Kuva Lich.
Without Requiem Murmurs, you will most likely end up guessing both the Requiem mods as well as the combination you need, ending up in you dying and your Kuva Lich rival becoming stronger.
To get Requiem Murmurs you will need to head to the planet that has missions highlighted in red which represent the Kuva Lich’s influence.
The red highlights will show in the star chart and will exist for each mission that the Kuva Lich has dominance over.
Doing missions related to your Kuva Lich will allow you to find their thralls which you need to kill in order to get the Requiem Murmurs.
As you take on missions these missions, the Kuva Lich icon will appear on your map every now and then to show that there is a thrall nearby.
The thrall will have a bluish glow on it and can be any type of unit but a bit stronger so make sure that you are ready to take them on.
Attack the thrall until its health is reduced to a state where it is almost dead and perform a secret mercy (killing it with your Parazon) on it by pressing your use key/button.
This will play a short animation where your Warframe will kill them with their Parazon which also renders you unkillable during the animation.
After killing a thrall, a Requiem Murmur will appear and will increase by a little bit which will repeat until the bar if full.
Each time you kill a Thrall, the Requiem Murmur bar will always increase but you will need to kill several to fill it up.
Be careful while you hunt for Requiem Murmurs as the Kuva Lich may sometimes appear and attack you and you should avoid trying to kill it with your Parazon for now since you do not know which are the right Requiem mods.
Using the wrong Requiem mods will end up with you getting killed and will make the Kuva Lich rank up, making it stronger.
When a Requiem Murmur bar is full, you will find out one of the Requiem mods that you need to equip your Parazon with when fighting your Kuva Lich.
You will need to fill up three Requiem Murmur bars to be able to figure out all of the Requiem mods that you need to have in your Parazon.
After you have all the Requiem mods uncovered, you may now equip these and try to figure out the order of how they should be arranged.
Fighting The Kuva Lich
Equip your Parazon with Requiem mods based on the three that have been revealed by farming Requiem Murmurs.
The order will be unknown until you fight the Kuva Lich so be sure to check their page if you have tried any orders in the past so you do not repeat them.
Head into another mission where they have influence just as you would when hunting for Requiem Murmurs.
While in the mission, the Kuva Lich will appear which you will know when you see its health bar appear as it will begin speaking to you.
Attack it with either weapons or abilities but beware of getting too close as it may grab you and throw you which will allow you to take more damage while you are down.
Once you take down one of its shields and a health bar, it will kneel to the ground just like the thralls do and you will then be allowed attack it with your Parazon.
If you are lucky and the arrangement of your Requiem mods is correct, the attack will be successful and its health will be reduced by one bar.
For each correct Requiem mod in the right place with the arrangement of the three, you will successfully deal damage to the Kuva Lich.
In the event that the arrangement is incorrect, the Kuva Lich will do a finisher to you, instantly killing you without a bleedout.
If the Kuva Lich kills you via doing a finisher, it will leave the mission and rank up, becoming stronger the next time you meet.
Each time you attempt to use your Parazon on the Kuva Lich and fail, your current arrangement of Requiem mods will be shown for you to check later on.
Take the time to rearrange your Requiem mods if the arrangement is incorrect ant the hunt fails so you can try again.
After one bar has been removed, repeat the process until the Kuva Lich loses all three of its health bars which will then bring you to the choice of what to do with it after.
You will be given a choice to choose whether to convert or vanquish the Kuva Lich.
Converting the Kuva Lich will add it to your collection of Kuva Lich’s that may appear during missions to aid you.
Vanquishing the Kuva Lich will grant you their weapon permanently, already crafted and retrievable from your foundry.
Kuva Lich Progenitors
Each Kuva Lich will have a weapon that has an innate element, and this can be forced by defeating a Kuva Larvling with a specific Warframe.
The following are the Kuva Lich Progenitors and the elements that are provided:
Element | Progenitor Warframe |
Cold | Frost, Gara, Hildryn, Revenant, Styanax, Titania, Trinity |
| Electricity | Banshee, Caliban, Excalibur, Gyre, Limbo, Nova, Valkyr, Volt |
Heat | Chroma, Ember, Inaros, Kullervo, Nezha, Protea, Vauban, Wisp |
| Impact | Baruuk, Gauss, Grendel, Rhino, Sevagoth, Wukong, Zephyr |
Magnetic | Citrine, Harrow, Hydroid, Lavos, Mag, Mesa, Xaku, Yareli |
| Radiation | Ash, Equinox, Garuda, Loki, Mirage, Nyx, Octavia, Qorvex, Voruna |
Toxin | Atlas, Dagath, Ivara, Khora, Nekros, Nidus, Oberon, Saryn |
Tips
- It is best to have all of the Requiem mods so that you will be prepared for any Kuva Lich or else if you are missing pieces, your efforts may go to waste and you will take a longer time to finish the hunt.
- To increase the chances of success, its better to get all of the Requiem Murmurs so you don’t need to keep guessing between a lot of different Requiem Mods.
- If a Kuva Lich gets too strong, you can form a team so they can help you take it out while you stay back until you are ready to use your Parazon to kill it.
- Always check their profile to see weaknesses, the weapons they have and more.
- To get the Kuva Larvling easily, a solo run is recommended so you wont be competing with other squad members.
Verdict
Finding a Kuva Larvling is easy as all you need to do is go through missions, which is often done on Sedna as Grineer enemies there have higher levels.
It is possible to find Kuva Larvlings on missions where there are lower-level enemies if they are level 20 or above.
The Kuva Lich that spawns will often have random stats for their weapon, which has made it a habit of players to farm them to later use Valence Transfer to get the best stats.
