Level 40 Weapons and a Ton of Forma

A long time ago, a weapon called the Paracesis came out. The blueprint for this cool sword was a reward for listening to Ballas while he whined about Natah. However, the Paracesis wasn’t a normal weapon. Not at all. As well as having great stats, the Paracesis had an unusual gimmick. If you stuck up to five extra forma into the Paracesis, it would level up all the way to level 40.

This was a somewhat interesting gimmick. It worked nicely on the one, single sword. The Paracesis is specially designed to cut through Sentients, and is a tool and a reminder in the same way the Broken War and the Skiajati are.

The sword was unique. At first.

We now have lots of level 40-reaching weapons.

When Kuva Liches first came out, something new about their weapons was quickly discovered. For some reason, all the new Kuva weapons had the same gimmick as the Paracesis. These weapons all hit max rank at level 40 instead of level 30. While a handful of weapons sharing a gimmick isn’t that bad, the Kuva Liches came out with 13 new weapons. To get them to max rank, you need 65 Forma.

Of course, bored veterans like me went to great lengths to squeeze as much mastery out of these weapons as possible. Each Forma gave 200 mastery, and every level 40 weapon gave an extra 1000 standing. While that doesn’t seem like much, there was a rush to get to Mastery Rank 30 and that extra 1000 mastery per weapon helped greatly.

There are now three extra Kuva weapons, the Hek, Zarr and Grattler, and they all need 5 Forma too. However, since we’ve had a lot of new weapons since then, Mastery Rank 30 is more easily obtainable.

Sisters of Parvos make it far worse.

However, the 5-forma weapon gimmick didn’t stop there. The Sisters of Parvos also brought new weapons that need Forma. Between the weapons that Perrin Sequence sell, to the weapons ripped from the cold, dead hands of former queenpins, the forma requirement has shot up drastically. We have another 12 weapons all requiring 5 Forma each.

This leaves us at a grand total of 27 weapons that require 5 Forma to meet maximum rank. That is equal to 135 Forma. Considering you can only build one Forma a day, it’ll take FOREVER to get enough Forma to master all these weapons. This is all on top of having to level up each of these weapons, starting from unranked. While farming for affinity is easier these days, it is still part of a huge grind that takes a long time.

Not all the weapons are deserving of so many Forma.

Okay, sure, people use Forma on their weapons all the time. My beloved Ignis has 6 forma in it. However, forma for these weapons are all optional. If you like a weapon, you’ll invest in formas and catalysts and reactors. But not all Tenet or Kuva weapons are amazing. After all, unless you really like the Kuva Seer, there’s no good reason to forma it past level 30, there are plenty of other weapons that do better jobs.

While these extra levels are kinda optional, they have some downsides. Not only will non-polarized weapons show as incomplete on your profile and in your codex. But on top of that, you can’t put Focus Lenses on Kuva and Tenet weapons! Focus lenses can only be applied to weapons that are max rank, and level 30-38 Kuva and Tenet weapons do not count as max rank.

These weapons went from a small gimmick to a massive forma time sink.

Thing is, the idea of having a weapon that goes to level 40 is cool. After all, the Paracesis is a part of the New War. But Kuva and Tenet weapons turn an interesting gimmick into a chore. There’s no real reason why I need to shove 5 Forma into a Kuva Grattler when the Imperator Vandal and the Mausolon are so much better. Heck, we already HAVE a Kuva Ayanga, a wholly unique Archwing gun with 40 levels. And the developers will most likely keep on adding more of these weapons. After all, they make money from selling Forma.

But, alas, that extra 1000 mastery per weapon is very tempting. And I’d be a liar if I didn’t say that I’ve fully maxed out quite a few of these weapons…