How to Figure Out a Lich's Requiem Combination Efficiently

Discussion

1. That Lich: Getting Ready Efficiently

Go get your first 8 Requiem mods. Steel yourself: this is the most painful part of the whole process. Once you have the first 8, replacing the ones you use isn't that bad.

If you hate the whole kuva extractor thing, you can do the kuva flood missions without doing the kuva extractor and you'll still get the relics. In public games people will usually want to do the extractors and they don't take very long (and the other people might be there for the kuva, not the relics!), so don't be a jerk! But you can solo the missions quickly or, if the group can't find the extractor, let them know that they can just go to the end instead of searching all over for it if they only want the relic.

Waiting for the Rescue fissure is probably the fastest way to open a bunch of relics.

Spawn your lich by doing a grineer mission over 20. Spy missions seem buggy (at least they were a few days ago). Exterminate is good. Adaro is popular. Your screen will flash like Stalker is attacking, you'll get a transmission, and then you'll get a marked enemy to go kill.

2. Lich Please: Lich-killing Basics

To kill a lich, you need to have the right three Requiem mods in your parazon in the right order.

The lich controls the parts of your map with the red blobs on them. If you do the lich missions on them, you'll run into the liches themselves and Thralls.

Thralls are marked with a red icon. They'll spawn periodically throughout these missions. Kill them, then use the Mercy finisher on them to get Murmurs. Once you get enough Murmurs to fill up the meter, when you extract it will reveal one of the three Requiem mods (although it doesn't tell you which slot it goes into). Every Thrall you kill increases the Anger of your lich, making it more likely to spawn into a mission (this carries over between missions).

When the lich appears, you'll see it has three health sections. After you damage it enough to empty the first health section, the lich will kneel down and begin regenerating health. If it refills the bar, it will get back up. While it's down, you can use a Mercy finisher on them - if you have the right Requiem mod in the first slot of your parazon, you will destroy the first health bar and repeat the process with the next (after the third, you will defeat the lich); if you don't have the right Requiem mod, the lich will kill you and leave.

3. Cut a Lich: How to Figure Out a Lich's Requiem Combination Efficiently

You should always try to kill your lich every time it appears!

The two slowest ways to kill your lich are:

Trial and error without Murmurs.

This will take up to 19 tries, and without killing Thralls (which would give you Murmurs) the lich will spawn very rarely.

2. Ignoring the lich while farming the Murmurs from Thralls, then using trial and error to guess the correct order of the mods.

This will take a lot of time to kill all the Thralls, especially now that the third reveal takes much longer than the first two. Once you've revealed all three of the mods, it will take you up to 4 tries to figure out the correct order of the mods.

Almost no one seems to be trying 1, but a lot of people seem to be trying 2! Don't do this! Yes, the lich will probably kill you, but it's worth it!

You should use the lich to narrow down the possibilities while you farm murmurs. Also, if you're playing with other people and ignoring your lich, you're screwing the other players over because only one lich can be spawned in at a time. The recent change makes it even more disadvantageous: the third murmur reveal takes longer than the first two (so you have more time and it's even better if you can guess it before getting to the third reveal) and you're not getting the extra murmurs from fighting the lich.

Instead, you want to be gathering murmurs and also gathering information every time the lich spawns. The way to do this is:

Start with 3 random Requiem mods in your parazon. You don't really have a choice - you don't know anything yet.
As you farm thralls, the lich will invade. Fight the lich every time it invades. After you fight the lich, change the Requiem mods in your parazon.
If you got lucky and the first mod was correct, now you know the first mod (don't change it!), and you also get to see if the second mod was right too.

If you were wrong, change out the first mod: you know it isn't that one.

This should be straightforward - it's just what you would do if you were trying to figure out the combination through trial and error.

4. When you learn one of the three mods from the murmurs, there are two possibilities:

If you've already tried the revealed mod in the slot you're working on, put it in the next slot, and continue trying new mods in the slot you're working on.

If you haven't tried the revealed mod in the slot you're working on yet, put it in that slot. Next time you run into the lich, you'll either find out it's correct and start working on the next slot, or you'll find out it was wrong, in which case you should move it up to the next slot.

If you do this, you will often be able to kill the lich before the final Requiem mod is revealed from Murmurs, and even if you haven't figured it out and do get to the third Murmur reveal, you will always know something about the order of the mods.

Archived post. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast.

Worst case scenario is you already know it's in the first slot from an earlier lucky guess. You didn't learn anything new, so just keep doing what you were doing.

Not true anymore! Now you get a free Requiem result any time you get a successful guess, making the stabby stabby luck game even more clearly the way to go

More replies

This all seems like it should be obvious, but considering the number of people who don't kill their liches, it clearly isn't to everyone.

More replies

"Lich please" I hope that turns into a meme or whatever its called lol

If you hate the whole kuva extractor thing, you can do the kuva flood missions without doing the kuva extractor and you'll still get the relics.

Incoming patch in eleven minutes

Your screen will flash like Stalker is attacking, you'll get a transmission, and then you'll get a marked enemy to go kill.

Important edit: your screen will flash and you have to kill enough enemies in time, similar to the Juggernaut system in infested missions. Otherwise the larvling doesn't spawn.

More replies

Ok, I crushed the statistics to compare the 2 strategies. I compared a no kill strategy unless you have a requiem mod you can try for its position, and a kill always strategy and use knowledge when you can.

It depends mostly on the frequency at which you encounter your lich and the speed at which you gather murmures from thralls. I used these numbers:

7 thralls per mission
5 more thralls when you encounter your lich
10 murmures when you fail your attempt against your lich
4 missions without meeting your lich to make her angry
encounter your lich 2/3 missions after she's angry

With this, the no kill strategy distribute tries as follows: 2/3 chances for 15 missions 1/6 chances for 16 missions 1/6 chances for 21 missions

For the kill always strategy, the distribution is as follows: 0.3% for 1 try, 5 missions 4.8% for 2 tries, 10 missions 22.1% for 3 tries, 15 missions 2/3 chances for 4 tries, 20 missions 6% for 5 tries, 25 missions

In practice, when doing random tries, the first blind try gives you nothing most of the time. The chances are too dim, you're too close to get the first requiem to try, and you would basically just lose the time to wait for her to show again. I think you should always have a first known requiem before killing her the first time. But then you'll certainly have the second requiem by your second encounter, which will bring you that much closer from the third.

Obviously what's debatable are my hypothesis for the numbers. They feel coherent with my experience on average. I play alone though. In group you might encounter more thralls because the others liches will spawn them. But as the

Good post, I'd just like to add to that that any mod you've confirmed to not be in the first slot has a statistically higher chance to be in one of the other 2 slots than mods you haven't tested yet so you should put it in the second slot while testing the first one.

I'm still not convinced killing the lich is the way to go. Because when you're killed, the lich anger depletes and you then are less likely to face her. No one brute forced the odds of seeing a lich relative to its anger yet though.

But if the odds of seeing the lich are higher when she is not killed, then facing your lich without killing her repeatedly means you'll have many thralls around her to get the next murmure.

An important question is when you guess a mod without murmures, what's the fate of your current murmures count? Are they consumed for this requiem and you start for the next at 0 murmure or will they simply give you the next requiem?

In the second case then indeed you should brute force, if only for the bonus murmures. In the first case I'm not sure, I feel like unlocking the first two requiem before testing them would be more efficient, because they are unlocked fast, and then the tries will give you the order AND give murmures if they fail.

But most of this depends on the odds of seeing the lich when she's angry. I have questionable experiences with this.

More replies