“You're not supposed to be in here! You're going to ruin the surprise!”
The following article/section contains spoilers. Please finish The Second Dream quest before proceeding.
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Some have walked these desolate worlds while you have slept. Some like me. I remember what you did. I remember the day.
The Tenno appeared at the Terminus, gleaming and victorious. Our cold and gold Emperors, breathless, bathed you in savior's silk. Then came the sound. Across all our worlds, all at once, the ceremonial Naga drums. A royal salute to the honored Tenno. Ten solemn beats to declare the suffering was over. I watched from a distance, with the rest of the low Guardians. With each beat terror began to crush my throat. The Tenno were not stoic and silent. They were waiting. They were poised. I tried to call out but only a strangled whisper escaped.
When the ninth beat rang a torrent of blood filled the stadium, loosed by Tenno blades. The drums, the Empire, fell silent forever.
Now I hunt, dividing your numbers. Watching from that dark place, cataloging your sins, I am the ghost of retribution. You may forget but you are not innocent.
I am your reckoning!
—Stalker
The Shadow Stalker is an ominous, vengeful figure that infrequently appears during missions, armed with the 
War and powerful abilities to hunt down the Tenno. He appears during and after The Second Dream quest. Visually, the Shadow Stalker takes the form of a modified 
Excalibur with his own original helmet, and donning the Sentient-imbued Pakal Armor Set.
As seen in the aforementioned quest, the Shadow Stalker was gifted with Sentient powers and equipment by Hunhow, allowing him to adapt to damage continuously as well as releasing new forms of power. This appears to have cost him some of his previous abilities such as 
Absorb and 
Smoke Screen.
He can only be fought if the Tenno has confronted him during The Second Dream; if the Tenno in question has not, they will be confronted with the pre-Second Dream Stalker instead. If Jade Shadows is completed, the Stalker will appear as Protector Stalker, having reverted to his original appearance, with his mask and 
Hate imbued with 
Jade's energies.
Spawning & Combat[]
During The Second Dream, the Shadow Stalker will spawn automatically during the mission "Protect the Moon". Afterwards, the Shadow Stalker will attack in the same manner as his traditional variant whenever the player's Death Mark activates in a mission.
The Shadow Stalker's spawning behavior is identical to his traditional counterpart. The Shadow Stalker can spawn in almost any player-accessible mission with enemies in it, except for Syndicate missions, Assassination missions, Archwing space missions, Landscapes, Sorties, and Albrecht's Laboratories missions. At least one squad member must be marked for death by the Stalker before he will have a chance of spawning.
Stalker and Shadow Stalker are considered the same entity for the purposes of Death Marks; the Mark itself reads "Stalker" in a player's profile regardless of whether the player has completed The Second Dream or not. The following formula is used to calculate if a version of Stalker will spawn:
Spawn Chance = 1.5% + (0.5% × P); P = Number of Squad members.
Shadow Stalker's arrival is heralded by the same flickering darkness and threatening HUD messages as his normal variant; the only difference is that the HUD message window will show Stalker wearing his Pakal armor. After three taunts, the tileset will enter lockdown (where possible), and Stalker will appear in a puff of black smoke before proceeding to attack the targeted player.
If the targeted Tenno is killed, the Stalker (Shadow or otherwise) will kneel and vanish into another cloud of smoke, proclaiming his victory and that justice was served. He may target other Tenno during his assault, trying to kill them one by one. Victory is claimed once all targets have entered bleedout at least one time. If his health drops below 10% before he manages to kill his target(s), he will kneel and flee, announcing his shock at his failure, teleporting away in another cloud of smoke.
If he is defeated (regardless of whether he fled or was killed), he always drops one Mod from his mod drop table, and has a chance to drop further loot, such as a blueprint for one of his weapons.
If Jade is present, Stalker will immediately despawn and drop his usual loot.
Tactics[]
Damage Adaptation[]
Imbued with Sentient powers, Shadow Stalker has the ability to adapt to damage from attacks: his health is gated such that upon its hit points falling below a fixed percentage, it will grant 95% resistance to the damage type it has received the most. The Stalker will adapt to damage once per health gate, with the percentage listed below:
- First gate: 25% Health lost
- Second gate: 45% Health lost
- Third gate: 65% Health lost
- Fourth gate: 80% Health lost
Subsequent adaptation will be done in descending order of damage proportion for each health gate. Consequently, Shadow Stalker can only adapt against a maximum of four damage types, and he will still receive full damage from any damage that exceeds their health gate before adapting.
Using the Operator's Void Beam, 
Excalibur Umbra's 
Radial Howl, a rank 40 
Paracesis, 
Shedu's pulse on expending all ammo, or 
Xaku's 
Xata's Whisper and 
The Vast Untime will remove all their damage resistances. He can still regain his resistances, however the aforementioned abilities and weapons will always be able to remove them.
Power Cancellation[]
The Shadow Stalker has been seen cancelling out certain Warframe abilities, particularly self-buffs like Energized Munitions at the instant he is shot with a weapon.
General[]
Instead of his classic balanced weapon load-out of bow, knives and scythe, Shadow Stalker solely wields War instead, which deals more damage than his old Hate, and is additionally capable of staggering and putting players into the 'lifted' status on hit. He also has two energy orb attacks which he uses after performing a meditative stance within a glowing aura; his first attack is an explosive energy grenade lobbed to the ground, dealing high damage to players caught within its radius, while the second attack is a floating sphere of light that emits laser beams similar to those of a Battalyst while moving towards the player. Shadow Stalker also uses 
Rhino Charge to move around and knock targets off their feet, and he can cast sword beams similar to those from 
Exalted Blade, which can push back players if they hit.
Notes[]
- As of Update 18.5 (2016-03-04), the Stalker will no longer appear to attack players using a Warframe under Rank 10.
- Due to the lack of his
Dread bow and 
Despair throwing knives, Shadow Stalker is at a disadvantage at range and in wide-open areas where he cannot make the best use of War. - Weapons with heavy
Toxin damage, such as the 
Torid, do not bypass Shadow Stalker's shields. However, as Shadow Stalker uses Proto-Shields, toxin damage is still slightly more effective than most damage types. Bear this in mind when using a loadout or weapon focused for Toxin damage. - It has been noted that the Stalker does, though rarely, exhibit much higher intelligence, performing wall runs, dive rolls, tracking cloaked players, and even actively avoiding enemies and other Tenno. It is unknown if this is due to certain rooms being designed for his AI, or for other reasons.
- There is a Dev-only mode called Stalker Mode. In this mode, one of the Devs can assume control of the Stalker (or Shadow Stalker). They can do anything a Tenno can do, but they're limited to only the Stalker abilities and weapons.
- There is a delay of 30 to 280 seconds (~4 minutes) before the Shadow Stalker will spawn in a given mission.
Tips[]
- If marked, it is recommended to go into missions with at least two weapons with different elemental damage types in case of a surprise appearance, in order to counter Shadow Stalker's damage adaptation defense.
- Having Excalibur Umbra also helps, as his Radial Howl can simply remove these adaptations.
- Unlike his old incarnation, Shadow Stalker's War is one of the most powerful melee weapons in-game, and is capable of dealing massive damage to players in melee. Couple that with its ability to stagger upon hits, and engaging Shadow Stalker in melee can be difficult at best. If engaging in melee is required in case Shadow Stalker has adapted to the player's ranged attacks, using slide attacks and running slashes is recommended to limit the amount of time that Shadow Stalker can engage in melee.
- All three of Shadow Stalker's ranged attacks are rather slow and telegraphed. It is thus most advantageous to engage Shadow Stalker at range, while taking cover or evading once he begins to prepare his ranged attacks.
- Activating a laser trap on Orokin Void Defense missions at the right moment can instantly kill the Shadow Stalker.
- When farming for Stalker marks, run the assassination for the Hyena Pack on Psamathe, Neptune. As you can acquire a mark from each Hyena, you are effectively getting four chances at a mark per mission.
- Although War does do more damage than
Hate, the Shadow Stalker's melee attack animation is telegraphed. Without Dread or Despair, he is more susceptible to being killed. However, fragile Tenno must not underestimate him; fighting him close-range will still put you in serious danger. - If the player has even a basic Mote Amp equipped, fighting as the Operator against Shadow Stalker can be quite effective: As Shadow Stalker cannot adapt against Operator powers, players can use Void Mode to avoid taking damage from all of Shadow Stalker's attacks, and Void Beam to deal damage to the Shadow Stalker without triggering his adaptive damage resistance. Fighting as the Operator also renders the Warframe invulnerable, preventing Shadow Stalker from dealing any damage to it. It is not only possible, but practical to defeat Shadow Stalker using the Operator alone, which can be useful if the player is using low-leveled Warframes or weapons.
- More advanced crafted Operator Amps can deal more damage to Shadow Stalker, especially the secondary fire modes. The Pencha Scaffold's beam in particular is highly effective, its high damage allowing it to defeat Shadow Stalker in 3 to 4 shots.
Trivia[]
Bugs[]
- When attacking a squad with multiple players, Shadow Stalker may not retreat in victory after downing his target.
- After dropping to 10% health or below, Shadow Stalker may not kneel. In this state he will continue to attack his target, though he will still announce his failure. He will disappear as normal once his failure message is finished.
- Occasionally when he is reduced to 10% health or below, instead of kneeling, he will throw a smoke bomb at his feet and disappear — Generally when he suffers majority of the damage from source other than the marked player.
- If Shadow Stalker loses all of his health, instead of dying he will enter bleed out mode, however he will not die after twenty seconds. In this state, he follows the animation of holding a pistol despite not having one.
- If the player is invisible while Shadow Stalker spawns, he may not spawn in the same room and will proceed to be unaware even when other enemies attack him.
- If the Shadow Stalker spawns during the last wave of a Defense or Interception the player may finish the mission objective and ignore him. Once completed the reward screen will not appear until the Shadow Stalker is defeated, but the player will be in the invulnerable state, making it trivial to defeat him.
- If the Shadow Stalker spawns for an ally and the host migrates the Shadow Stalker will remain in the mission but only in a downed position, making him invulnerable and unable to attack.
- Sometimes the Shadow Stalker spawns and doesn't attack the player.
Excalibur Umbra's 
Radial Howl does not work against Shadow Stalker. It is unknown if this is a bug.- Shadow Stalker's colors were red until Update 24 when they were changed to blue.
Media[]
The Shadow Stalker inside a cutscene.
Comparison between default colored Pakal Armor/Syandana and the ones used by the Shadow Stalker in-game.
From this perspective/In this scene the Shadow Stalker seems to miss the brighter red line running between the darker ones, and his shoulders aren't black either.
Stalker starting his judgement
Shadow Stalker using Slash Dash.
Close up of Shadow Stalker.
Shadow Stalker using the Exalted Wave attack.
Shadow Stalker striking a pose.
Looking down upon you.
Shadow Stalker using energy grenade attack. Note that he doesn't absorb damage during this attack, merely invulnerable to it.
Since the Old Blood update, Shadow Stalker can now apply the 'lifted' status to players.
Dueling the Shadow Stalker.
Patch History[]
Hotfix 36.0.5 (2024-07-20)
- Scans for the Shadow Stalker and Protector Stalker will now count as scans for his previously-unlocked variants, if not already fully scanned.
- Ex: Scans for the Protector Stalker will now also contribute scans for Stalker and Shadow Stalker, if they are not already fully scanned.
Update 36.0 (2024-06-18)
- Increased (Shadow) Stalker’s drop rate for Despair, Scimitar Engines Blueprint, Hate, War, and Broken War to 11.73% each.
- Dread’s drop chance has been reduced on both Stalker (64.8%) and Shadow Stalker (41.33%) to compensate.
- Note: The Drop Chance of rolling a reward from this Drop Table is unchanged (i.e. 50%).
Hotfix 35.5.6 (2024-04-10)
- Fixed being unable to complete Deep Archimedea missions due to Stalker spawning in.
- This was due to Stalker spawning on the other side of locked doors, preventing players from completing the mission. We’ve disabled Stalker spawning into (including Stalker Beacon) Albrecht’s Laboratories missions to prevent this and similar issues from reoccurring in Deep Archimedea and the base missions.
Update 31.6 (2022-06-09)
- Fixed Shadow Stalker’s Health/Shields overlay UI replacing the active bosses UI (e.g. Jackal).
Collapse Stalker
| |
|---|---|
| Acolytes | Angst • Malice • Mania • Misery • Torment • Violence |
| Bosses | |
| Stalker (Shadow / Protector) | |
