On Acolytes and How Wrong They Are
The Acolytes have just fled again, after a week of, er, ‘terrorizing’ poor, needy Tenno. The appearance of the Acolytes always beings excitement, fear and anticipation to many Tenno for a variety of reasons, but really, the whole thing just makes no sense.
Alright, firstly, the only real reason people like the Acolytes is because they drop super rare mods that only one is available elsewhere. Blood Rush is available in the A Rotation of rewards in Lua Spy missions. Everything else is locked behind a bunch of mini-bosses that only come once every six months. The drop rates aren’t great either. Sure, every mini-boss will drop a mod when you defeat them and make them run away like pussies, but the chances of getting the good mods – mainly Argon Scope and Maiming Strike – are INSANELY low. Like, 4% low. I got insanely lucky this time round, but previously, I failed to only get one rare mod out of five (a Maiming Strike) in previous Acolyte events.
Which would be fine but Acolytes are weird.
Basically, the Acolytes spend most of their time hiding. They’re actually on a mission somewhere on the star chart, but we don’t know that until someone stumbles across them while doing missions. It’s almost any mission as well, apart from the Void, Lua, the Orokin Derelict and the Kuva Fortress. Most of the time it seems to be any mission between Mars and Pluto. I assume some poor newbie randomly stumbles across them, gets their ass kicked but in the process accidentally informs the entire Tenno population that an Acolyte is located in that specific mission.
So then everyone rushes to that particular mission node, does the objective and then runs around looking for the Acolyte. If it’s a Defense mission, great, the Acolyte spawns immediately. Other missions though require running around and seeing if an Acolyte spawns. The way they work is that an Acolyte is hidden in a room somewhere in the mission, and entering or going near that room triggers them to attack. But in missions like Survival and Spy, where there are many multiple paths, the Acolyte can sometimes hide in very weird places.
Once you find them, they spawn in the same way Stalker and Shadow Stalker do. You get a flash of red light, they throw a mediocre threat at you, then they appear. Then you fight them and they lose some health then they bugger off. You only ever find one Acolyte at a time, and once they’re gone, you need to go and find them again.
It’s weird though. It’s almost a backwards Stalker thing. They don’t stalk us, we stalk them. And just like the Stalker, they are totally inefficient at what they do.
Acolytes aren’t that dangerous. The most threatening one is Malice, simply because he’s basically a Frost with an Opticor. And Opticors most of the time are insanely powerful, even unmodded, so that’s the only reason why Malice is dangerous. Alright, they ARE dangerous to low level, pre-Second Dream folks who are just trying to complete missions and unlock junctions, but to everyone who can do a Sortie, they’re a piece of cake. They do make a very nice change of pace from fighting normal Stalker, but they aren’t that big of a challenge. It’s not like Razorbacks or Formorians, who are somewhat like boss fights either. These guys just throw the odd Warframe ability at you then try and hit you.
On top of that though, they don’t even make much sense. Looks-wise, they are just random Warframes wearing white, black and red (that stereotypical edgy look) with Stalker helmets on and some very random choice in weapons. Like, why is Violence (the one who drops Maiming Strike) using the Destreza and a single Venka gauntlet, then never attack you with that Venka Gauntlet. Why does Malice have an Opticor anyway, that’s a Corpus weapon and these guys are the very least Orokin. They don’t even use abilities that match their Warframes.
Actually, that brings us nicely as to what the fuck the Acolytes are. We get that they are the Stalker’s allies. They originally appeared in Operation Shadow Debt, helping the Stalker trying to kill Alad V. Every other time, they’ve appeared for a week, randomly appearing in missions then getting wiped out. You’d assume they were related to the Tenno and their Warframes in some way, but like Stalker, they claim they’re not. No one actually knows. All we know is that they hate us and they serve the Stalker.
Why even serve the Stalker though? The Stalker has been wholly ineffective at doing anything. And after the Second Dream, he’s off serving Hunhow and doing Sentient things, so he has little reason to want his Acolytes. They don’t even seem to interact with one another. They just pop by every so often and get steamrolled by some guy with a Hek.
And then there’s Misery. I’ve never even seen Misery. I have full codex scans for all of them apart from Misery, who ONLY appeared in the initial, original event and had a chance to drop all the mods. Misery though is just a Nekros with Nekros-like powers.
The problem is that these guys are totally ineffectual at what they do. Sure they make the lights flicker, but they don’t even have the slight scare factor that Stalker and Shadow Stalker have.
But they have insanely good loot. Even if you don’t get Maiming Strike or Argon Scope, things like Weeping Wounds, Bladed Rounds and Blood Rush have some value. Even if you have to wait 3-4 months to sell them.
Assuming you get them, of course.