An Adorable Mess of Mutated Infectious Tissue

Helminth Chargers are weird. They’re Kubrows but they’re not Kubrows. They are weirdly cute, infested monstrosities made by squeezing a pink and grey zit on your Warframe onto a Kubrow egg and then incubating said egg. They shouldn’t exist, but they do. But what do these weird mutant dog-like beings actually do?

To be honest, I’m not sure. The two breeds of Kavats we have both have a use – one gives huge crit buffs and the other gives random buffs at entirely the wrong times. The other breeds of Kubrow all do various things, even if those various things aren’t useful. Helminth Chargers have two precepts, one which knocks down an enemy with a long, sticky tongue, and one that makes them charge at an enemy. Out of all the Kubrow types, the Helminth Charger doesn’t seem that… useful.

There is something that does make the Helminth Charger both useful and amusing though. The Strain mod set for Helminth Chargers is pretty fun and silly. If you equip any of the Strain mods and have a Helminth Charger, then your Charger will slowly inflate then poop out a couple of cysts which will then spawn maggots. After that, the Charger will slowly deflate again, until it’s ready to poop out some more cysts.

The actual use of this set, I don’t really know what it is, aside from the two Charger mods, Strain Fever and Strain Eruption, giving the Charger more damage and creating corrosive procs on enemies. I suppose the Warframe mod, Strain Consume, is a weird way of healing you, but there are easier ways to be healed. Strain Infection sounds good on paper, giving extra critical damage on melee weapons, but… surely keeping your combo going is easier than relying on an infested dog dropping out maggot-filled lumps from its rear end?

It does LOOK cool though. Seriously, the weird limbs and butt tentacles sound weird on paper but are worth it. If strange infestation isn’t your cup of tea, you can always use the deluxe skin from the Nidus Phryke Collection. Your Helminth Charger looks less like a weird alien mess and more of a demonic mess, doubly so if you use the armour that comes with it. My problem with this skin is that it doesn’t colour right though. Sure, it’s supposed to be skeletal, but dark colours are hard to work with.

There’s also the current prime Kubrow skin, but that costs too much.

Or you can just make your weird infested dog look exactly like a weird, infested dog made out of a Grineer’s body. That works. It’s not even hard to do. The Helminth Charger Degenerate Skin is available in the market for 10,000 credits. And it works so much better than the skins for Kubrows and Kavats that make them look like enemy units as well because Infested Chargers are everywhere in Infested missions, but Hyekkas, Drahks and feral Kubrows aren’t that common in general so you can’t really make the most of it.

Of course, people will go around shooting at your Helminth Charger, but that’s fine, my Charger absolutely adores the attention.

Sure, the Helminth Charger has very limited uses, but it’s fun, I guess?