The Kuva Tonkor is the Kuva variant of the 
Tonkor grenade launcher, sporting increased critical chance, status chance, reserve ammo, reload speed, damage and a wider spread of damage types, as well as removing the minimum arming distance thus making the grenades explode on impact and even at closer ranges - which can stagger its wielder.
Kuva Tonkor is obtained by vanquishing a Kuva Lich who generated with one equipped. After the Lich is vanquished it will be in the player's Foundry ready to claim.
While the weapon itself is not tradeable, a converted Kuva Lich generated with the weapon can be traded to another player. The trade is performed inside a Clan Dojo's Crimson Branch room, and the recipient must not have any active Lich. Once traded, the recipient must fight and vanquish the Lich to claim its weapon.
Update 32.3 (2023-02-15)
- Fixed a Tonkor grenade appearing in the player's hand for the duration of the mission if they happen to roll and reload at just the right time.
- This fixes the issue while using both the Tonkor and Kuva Tonkor.
Update 32.2 (2022-11-30)
- Reduced the flare size of the Kuva Tonkor’s explosion.
Update 32.0 (2022-09-07)
- Ammo Changes
We understand the power fantasy of these weapons is very popular for some, so our first approach was to keep them powerful, but limit how often they can be used by making changes to ammo pick-up.
Ammo Pickup Overrides
The following weapons now have ammo pickup overrides, meaning they gain less from picking up ammo. This mostly applies to AoE weapons, in hopes that players will become more deliberate with their aim to make the most of their Ammo pools. The following lists the specific ammo pick up overrides per weapon category.
Primary Weapon Ammo Pick Up Overrides
3 Ammo per Pick Up:
- Kuva Tonkor
Many weapons have also had their maximum ammo capacity adjusted.
Primary Weapons:
- Kuva Tonkor: From 60 to
1130 (developers made a mistake in patch notes)
- Headshot Damage Changes
During playtesting, the ammo changes alone weren’t enough to significantly change things for AoE weapons. So instead of tightening these values to be overly restrictive, we chose to address other factors that make these weapons so strong, such as headshot damage.
Our approach here is two-fold, to reduce the impact of headshots for AOE weapons, but to also make precision headshots pack a larger punch overall.
- Radial damage no longer gains extra headshot damage or triggers headshot conditions.
- This is primarily targeted at the Ignis Wraith - as a “flamethrower” weapon, it’s hard to imagine a blanket of elements being precise enough to target weak points specifically. Explosive projectiles themselves can still land headshots, so there is still a reason to aim with most weapons for maximum damage.
- (Undocumented) Max Ammo increased from 11 to 30.
Update 29.10 (2021-03-19)
- Removed Kuva Tonkor’s arming distance from projectiles.
Hotfix 27.3.8 (2020-04-02)
- Fixed the Kuva Tonkor requiring an Orokin Catalyst to unlock its Exilus Slot instead of an Exilus Adapter.
Hotfix 27.2.2 (2020-03-06)
Reduced the following AoE weapons Radial Damage Falloff from central impact that were all previously 90%:
- Kuva Tonkor: 70%
Update 27.2 (2020-03-05)
- Self Damage Changes
We are getting rid of Self Damage and replacing it with something else: instead of Self Damage, it’s now ‘Stagger’. This change completely removes the chance of killing yourself, and instead now creates scenarios where you will interrupt yourself - or ‘Stagger’ - to varying degrees if you aren’t careful.
The degrees of Self-Interrupt start with a small stumble all the way to full knockdown depending on how close you are to the center of explosion. Any Mods referring to Self Damage will be converted to acknowledge Stagger.
With this Self-Interrupt system, we have added dozens of new recovery animations that harness a ninja-like recovery experience. By pressing ‘Jump’ at the correct time, you can execute a ninja-skill-based knockdown recovery to ALL in-game knockdowns. This ninja recovery window is indicated by a glowing FX on your Warframe.
In the original Dev Workshop, we said:
As a result of this overall systemic change, Weapons with Stagger will be getting approximately a 20% buff in Damage, with any weapons with AOE receiving a 50% Radial Damage Falloff from central impact.
This is no longer accurate after continued testing. What we are doing now is:
No damage buffs have been added, but any weapons with AOE are receiving ~20% increase in Radius. Additionally, AOE weapons are receiving a 90% Radial Damage Falloff from central impact. This means on the very outer section of the explosion Radius 10% of the Damage will be dealt. Tactics will be deadly - aim true, Tenno.
Why: Several players brought up the history of the Tonkor and we want to make sure we ship this change in a place that’s conservative in its starting point from a balance perspective. The complete removal of Self Damage does change the pace of destruction with some of the game’s most powerful weapons, so we want to make sure we can iterate upwardly instead of releasing a bonanza of explosions with no other choices.
Hotfix 26.0.7 (2019-11-14)
- Explosion damage changed from 674 Blast to 176 Puncture, 270 Slash, and 228 Blast (undocumented).
- Fixed Kuva Lich weapons that do damage on both impact and explosion (Kuva Ogris, Kuva Ayanga, etc) doing significantly less overall damage than expected. This was due to the Elemental bonus only being applied to the "on impact" of the projectile itself and not the explosion.
Hotfix 26.0.4 (2019-11-05)
- Reload speed changed from 1.7 to 1.5
Update 26.0 (2019-10-31)
- Introduced.