Kuva Liches Could Have Been the Best Companions – The Problems with Converted Liches

The other day, I was attacked by my active Kuva Lich, one with an Ephemera and a 56% status weapon, i.e. an insanely good Lich to have. Unfortunately, this Lich in particular was immune to Corrosive and had a Toxin-based Kuva Bramma, so every shot it did would grenade a wide area with damage that ignored shields. Being a Toxin Kuva Lich, it also had two radiation-based abilities copied straight from an Oberon’s evil twin, meaning that fighting the Lich with a squad meant everyone would die. And on top of all of that, the asshole didn’t spawn for 8 missions once I’d figured out the Parazon “password”.

When the Kuva Lich DID appear, I was woefully under prepared. I’d failed to check what his weaknesses and resistances were before heading into my next mission (because they can and do change when a Lich levels up) and was still using stuff the Lich was strong against. And since the Lich had a Kuva Bramma with toxin damage, he had no problem hurting me, while I was doing piddling damage to him. Even with 100% crit chance on both my Amprex and my Plague Kripath, I was doing about 60 damage per attack. Luckily, I had Ancient Healer Specters with me and I was playing Oberon, meaning I could cancel out the Lich’s evil Hallowed Ground and Smite with my own Smite and Hallowed Ground, while also having Phoenix Renewal as a backup.

Okay, he still killed me once, but that was because he spawned in the smallest corridor ever, alongside a multitude of Bombards and Heavy Gunners. Once I had my Ancient Healer Specter up, it was just a long, slow grind of wearing the Lich down.

What does this have to do with the title of this article? A lot. Because, as I struggled to break down the Lich’s first bar of health, surrounded by Grineer, I got a friendly visitor! A converted Lich, going by the name Tetes Sodd, arrived to help me! She provided a brief distraction while I cleared out all the Grineer (half of whom had turned into Thralls). Tetes Sodd shot a few things, body-slammed a Grineer and then… left.

She was utterly useless, then claimed her job had been done and then buggered off, leaving me and my Ancient Specter alone to fight the Lich.

This perfectly showcases just how bad converted Kuva Liches are. Even with them lasting 2 minutes now and apparently being able to use their abilities, they are absolutely useless. At best, a converted Lich is a tanky distraction for a brief period of time that’s not even really worth having even if you’re doing hour-long missions. Converted Liches have a long list of problems, such as:

• They don’t last very long.
• They can’t be summoned at will.
• Their appearance is rather random and rarely when you actually need help (I think dying and reviving is party of what causes them to spawn, weirdly).
• Their abilities don’t hurt enemies the way they originally hurt you.
• They still barely use abilities.
• Their guns don’t kill anything.
• They get easily distracted and focus on maybe one or two enemies at a time.
• They’re only slightly more effective than a Limbo Specter – at least a Limbo Specter has melee and a primary it will try to use.
• They spawn at low levels – the aforementioned Tetes Sodd spawned in at level 50, when surrounding enemies were level 90+.
• They basically don’t exist outside of the 2 minutes where they “help” you and the Lich history screen in the Codex.
• Sometimes they can get irradiated by an active Lich and then down your whole team.

Actually, that last one may have just been for me. Before Tetes Sodd’s appearance, I had a converted Lich spawn in against a fight with my previous Lich, one with a Nukor. Said active Lich caused a radiation proc on my converted Lich, who then proced radiation on my team mate, who then proceeded to nuke me as I was about to stab the active Lich. Fun times indeed.

All of these other problems are fixable though. You can make a Lich last for an entire mission once it spawns. You could make a Lich beacon which will summon one of your converted Liches, the same way you summon specters. You could scale up their abilities and guns so they can kill more than one enemy, or make them switch targets more regularly, or be able to give them basic orders (or rather, suggestions) the way you can command Venari. And you can pump up their levels to always match the level of the enemies you are currently fighting.

Heck, it would be cool to also have a place for converted Liches to go. Or somewhere where you can hire them or something. Because apparently they still do Lich-y things once you convert them. I’ve heard female Liches comment how the Queens would kill them if they found out they’d been converted, and male Liches seem rather friendly about it all. Sometimes.

We should have a whole sub-system for converted Liches though, because frankly, as they are, they’re anti-rewards. There’s no reason to convert a Lich unless it either has an amusing name or it has an Ephemera and you want to trade the Lich to someone else. And now, with the ability to merge Kuva Weapons together for a better stat, even more Liches will be vanquished, most likely including traded Ephemera Liches.

So not only do we need a system that makes converted Liches better, we need a reason to actually spare a Lich in the first place. These bastards have great personalities (namely male Liches) and interesting lore behind them, yet once we have their weapons, they basically don’t matter any more.