Lavos, the Alchemist Snake Warframe

Getting a new Warframe is always nice, but normally, I’m late with new Warframe reviews. Being someone who grinds most things out the old-fashioned way, I tend not to buy new frames with Platinum. The only exceptions are genuinely tedious grinds, like the Arbitration farm and horrible missions for Grendel. Lavos on the other hand at least has multiple paths of obtaining him, and, amazing, I lucked out. I somehow managed to farm a new frame in a single hour.

Purely by chance.

An easier yet temporary farm

The new Warframe can be farmed in two main ways. The first is to buy all his parts from Father, using Phasic Cells. These are the currency of the Orphix Venom event. However, all of Lavos’s parts drop as rewards from Orphix Venom itself. This means that you can get some drops for free and buy the ones you’re missing out on. Alternatively, if you have shitty luck, you might have to buy all of them.

Frankly, leaning towards the latter. While I lucked out and got all four components within only a handful of runs… well, the same doesn’t apply to everything else. I’ve not managed to get any of the new shotgun parts, nor the new Necramech mods. All I’ve received are fucktons of shitty relics. Relics I already have tons of.

However, the bigger question is about after the event. Orphix Venom is how you get Lavos now. But how will you get him after the event ends? Most likely the whole Orphix survival variant will be added to some node elsewhere. I hope.

Lavos himself is interesting

Lavos’s gimmick is that he’s an alchemist. Who carries around two snakes, one of which is an Orokin master of alchemy and transmutation that is now bound to Lavos. The idea is that Lavos has the ability to combine elements onto his abilities, changing what damage they do. Each of his four abilities has a base element, and if he holds down the 1-4 keys, he instead can imbue one ability with another element.

For example, Lavos’s first ability does Toxin damage by default. But if he holds down 2 (which is Cold), he can then change that first ability’s damage into Viral. Which is cool.

His abilities are also quite interesting. We have a healing ability, a pretty speedy dash that spews potions everywhere, a drone that turns health and ammo into orbs that do both… and… I’m not really sure how to describe it. Catalyze feels like a cross between Volt’s Discharge and Saryn’s Miasma, but deals heat damage plus an imbued element. Either way, it looks cool and seems to do alright damage.

Cool-downs feel weird

What really makes Lavos stand out though is that all his abilities have cool-downs. Lavos isn’t the first Warframe to not have energy costs. That title belongs to Hildryn. But he IS the first to have cool-downs instead of having some other cost instead. Each of Lavos’s abilities have a cool-down after being activated. They’re really strict cool-downs as well! The only way you can reduce cool-downs is by hitting enemies with Transmutation Probe, which itself has a 10 second cool-down.

Thing is, I can’t see why he needs the gimmick of not needing energy, aside from maybe his first ability, Ophidian Bite. And that’s only because it heals pretty quickly. Then again, Trinity’s Bless has basically no cool-down either. I suppose maybe they thought the combining elements thing was just too powerful.

He’s ugly as sin

Really, Lavos’s biggest downside is that he’s really, really ugly. It’s not even the snake thing. Heck, the pet snakes are cool as heck. But Lavos himself is so big and bulky that the cool snakes and cool vials are kinda… out of view. Instead, Lavos has super heavy armoured plating and a washed out colour scheme.

The Leverian entry for Lavos though hand-waves his ugliness. Apparently Lavos was a heavy brute and a jailer before he became an alchemist. That being said, Lavos does have a bit of an Entrati feel about him as well. I think it’s the snakes.

Either way, definitely a cool frame, with potential to do cool stuff. Really though, the whole combining elements thing seems like something Chroma should have had as his rework…