Kuva, Tenet and Coda Weapons Explained (2026)

Researched September 19, 2026, current through Update 43.5. Every mechanic here is confirmed by two sources (the official wiki, DE patch notes, the game files); numbers we could not confirm twice are left out, not guessed.

What decides your weapon: the Larvling / Candidate preview and how to reroll it

• A Kuva Lich starts life as a Larvling: during a Grineer mission, killing enough enemies triggers a brief on-screen warning, and a short window opens in which killing more enemies forces a Larvling to spawn in place of a normal enemy.
• A Sister of Parvos starts the same way as a Candidate, spawning in a Corpus Ship mission after you complete that tileset's Granum Void.
• Once the Larvling/Candidate is downed, standing within roughly 3 meters of it shows its name and an icon of the exact Kuva or Tenet weapon it will produce, this is a full, certain preview, not a hint.
• If you don't want that weapon, do not finish it. Left alone, a downed Larvling/Candidate dies on its own after about 30 seconds without creating a Lich or Sister, and no weapon is created.
• Leaving it alone, or even aborting the mission outright, does not remove that weapon from the pool, the same weapon can appear again on a later Larvling, so 'rerolling' just means finding a new Larvling and checking its preview again. There is no limit to how many you can scout.
• The Warframe equipped at the moment of the finishing Parazon stab (the Mercy) becomes the Lich's or Sister's Progenitor, which sets both its bonus damage element and its ability kit, so the practical order is: decide the element you want first, then hunt Larvlings until one shows the weapon you want, then swap to your chosen Progenitor Warframe before the finishing stab.
• Only the player who lands the finishing stab sets the Progenitor in squad play; the Larvling's/Candidate's own gender determines the resulting Lich's or Sister's gender and personality type, not the element.

The Progenitor table: which Warframe gives which bonus element

• The Warframe you use for the finishing Mercy stab sets the Kuva/Tenet weapon's bonus damage element from one of 7 types: Impact, Heat, Cold, Electricity, Toxin, Magnetic, or Radiation.
• Prime and Umbra versions of a Warframe share the same element as their base frame (e.g. Volt and Volt Prime both give Electricity).
• Technocyte Coda enemies are the exception: they are explicitly exempt from the Progenitor system, so your equipped Warframe does not set a Coda weapon's element, see the Coda section below.
• This table includes every Warframe confirmed as a progenitor as of Update 43.x, including frames released in 2026 (Temple, Sirius & Orion, Oraxia, Nokko, Koumei, Follie, Uriel) that postdate most older guides, cross-checked directly against the wiki's live table plus an independent third-party progenitor tool, since some older guide sites have not been updated with the newest frames yet.

The bonus percentage: exact range and how it's rolled

• Every Kuva, Tenet, and Coda weapon carries a Valence Bonus of the progenitor element ranging from 25% to 60% of the weapon's base damage.
• As of Update 42.0 ('The Shadowgrapher', March 2026), this roll is fully uniform random across the 25-60% range. Before that patch it was weighted toward lower results, older guides quoting a 'usually low' bonus, or a different floor such as 5%, reflect the pre-Update-42.0 behavior and are out of date.
• The roll is not affected by the Lich's/Sister's level (1 through 5) or by mission difficulty, it is a flat random roll made at the moment the weapon is generated (on vanquish for Kuva/Tenet-from-Sister, or at the moment a listing appears in Ergo Glast's or Eleanor's rotating stock for Ergo-Glast/Coda purchases).

Valence Fusion: raising the percentage and choosing the element

• Valence Fusion combines two copies of the same weapon (same weapon name, e.g. two Kuva Nukors) into one, keeping the recipient weapon's Forma, Catalyst, and mod configuration, the donor weapon's own Forma/Catalyst investment does not carry over and the donor weapon is consumed.
• The formula for the new bonus is: Final Bonus = minimum of (1.1 x the higher of the two weapons' bonus percentages) and 60%, with the multiplication result rounded down to one decimal place.
• Example: fusing a 40% weapon with a 25% weapon uses the higher value (40%): 40 x 1.1 = 44%.
• Starting from the 25% minimum, it takes up to 9 sequential fusions to reach the 60% cap; a weapon already at roughly 52.8% or higher reaches the cap in a single fusion.
• If the two weapons being fused have different bonus elements, the player is given an explicit choice of which element survives in the fused weapon, you are never forced to keep whichever element happens to fuse first or second.
• Kuva, Tenet, and Coda weapons all use this same Valence Fusion system; Coda weapons can also be fused directly through Eleanor's shop interface.

The 5-Forma route to rank 40 and the extra Mastery it gives

• A normal weapon caps at Rank 30. Kuva, Tenet, and Coda weapons can be pushed past that: each Forma applied raises the weapon's maximum rank by 2, so 5 Forma raises the cap to Rank 40 (applying more than 5 Forma does not raise the cap further, it just gives more polarity slots to work with).
• Each rank gained grants 100 Mastery Rank points, the same rate as any weapon. A weapon capped at Rank 30 therefore gives 3,000 Mastery points; a Kuva/Tenet/Coda weapon taken to Rank 40 via 5 Forma gives 4,000 Mastery points total, 1,000 more than a normal weapon.
• Applying a Forma resets the weapon's rank to 0, so reaching Rank 40 means leveling the weapon back up from scratch after each of the 5 Forma applications, this is the time cost behind the '5-Forma to 40' grind players talk about.
• Weapons awarded directly by vanquishing a Lich or Sister bypass the normal Mastery Rank requirement to equip them; weapons bought from Ergo Glast or Eleanor still enforce their listed Mastery Rank requirement (Tenet melee/speargun are MR 14-16; Coda weapons are MR 17).

Ephemeras

• A Kuva Lich (and by the same system, a Sister of Parvos) has a flat 20% chance to be created holding an Ephemera cosmetic that visually matches its progenitor element.
• The Ephemera is guaranteed to the player at the final confrontation if the Lich/Sister has one, regardless of if you Convert or Vanquish it.
• There is no confirmed, reliably-sourced way to see in advance whether a given Lich/Sister is carrying an Ephemera before you reach the final fight, treat any 'tell' you hear about (a taunt line, a visual glow) as unverified community folklore, not a confirmed mechanic.

Converting versus Vanquishing

• Vanquishing (killing the Lich/Sister at the final confrontation) permanently ends it and immediately awards its weapon, 'Ready to Claim' in the Foundry, named after the defeated Lich, plus its Ephemera if it has one, and (the first time only) the Old Blood emblem.
• Converting spares the Lich/Sister instead of killing it. Converting does NOT award its weapon. The Ephemera, if any, is still awarded either way.
• A Converted Lich/Sister becomes an ally: it can randomly appear to help when you self-revive from bleedout in missions, and at Command Intrinsic Rank 8 it can crew your Railjack in a Defender role.
• The weapon a Converted Lich/Sister would have produced is only obtained if that Lich/Sister is later traded to another player who then vanquishes it themselves (see Trading below), converting your own Lich forfeits that weapon for you.

Trading: what moves between players and what doesn't

• The finished Kuva/Tenet/Coda weapon, once claimed from the Foundry, cannot be traded to another player.
• A Converted (still-living) Lich or Sister CAN be traded, once, using the Clan Dojo's Crimson Branch room. The recipient must have no active Lich/Sister of their own. Trade tokens can be inspected (right-click) to preview the stats before accepting.
• If the recipient then converts the Lich/Sister they received, it becomes untradeable again, the one-time trade has been used.
• Requiem Mods are tradeable between players at any charge state, from fully charged (rank 0) down to fully depleted/Defiled (rank 3), for a Credits-only trade tax of 8,000 Credits, no Platinum changes hands for the mod trade itself.
• Requiem Relics follow the normal relic trading rules and carry no Lich-specific restriction.

Tenet melee from Ergo Glast: a different acquisition path with the same bonus system underneath

• Most Tenet weapons (11 of 16: primaries and secondaries) are only obtained the Sister-of-Parvos way, same candidate preview, progenitor, and 25-60% roll as Kuva.
• Four Tenet melee weapons (Tenet Agendus, Tenet Exec, Tenet Grigori, Tenet Livia) plus one Tenet speargun (Tenet Ferrox) are instead sold directly by Ergo Glast of the Perrin Sequence, found in the Perrin Sequence room of any Relay, independent of your standing with that syndicate.
• Ergo Glast charges 40 Corrupted Holokeys per weapon (a resource dropped by Void Storm missions and by vanquishing Sisters of Parvos).
• His stock rotates every 4 days at 00:00 UTC, and only one copy of each currently-listed weapon can be bought per rotation.
• The key difference from the Sister system: these are pre-rolled listings. Each weapon on his shelf already has a randomly assigned bonus element and percentage baked in for that rotation, you are buying whatever is currently listed, not choosing your own Progenitor Warframe or getting a fresh roll per purchase. If you want a different element/percentage, you wait for the next 4-day rotation.
• Valence Fusion, the 5-Forma-to-40 mastery bonus, and standard trading-of-the-crafted-weapon restrictions all still apply the same as Sister-obtained Tenet weapons.

Coda weapons: the Technocyte Coda of 1999

• Coda weapons come from the Technocyte Coda, an adversary tied to the Höllvania open-world hub (the '1999' setting). A Technocyte Coda is created via the Mixtape hacking minigame performed on Techrot-infested enemies.
• Defeating a Technocyte Coda drops Live Heartcells rather than awarding a weapon directly.
• Live Heartcells are spent with Eleanor at the Höllvania Mall, 10 Heartcells per weapon.
• Technocyte Coda are explicitly exempt from the Progenitor Warframe system: which Warframe you're wearing does not set a Coda weapon's element.
• Instead, like Ergo Glast's shelf, Eleanor's shop itself rotates every 4 days at 00:00 UTC between two alternating stock lists ('Batch A' and 'Batch B'), and each weapon listed already carries its own pre-rolled random bonus element and percentage for that rotation; only one of each can be purchased per rotation.
• The bonus range is the same 25-60% used by Kuva and Tenet, and Coda weapons use the same Valence Fusion formula and 5-Forma-to-rank-40 mastery bonus.
• Some summaries describe Coda's percentage roll as weighted toward lower values rather than the uniform-random roll confirmed for Kuva post-Update 42.0, this specific point could not be confirmed with two independent current sources and is flagged as uncertain below.

Full current weapon lists

• 21 Kuva weapons, 16 Tenet weapons, and 14 Coda weapons exist as of Update 43.x; all three lists were cross-checked against warframe.today's own weapon database and against the current wiki and found to match exactly, with nothing missing or extra.

What to do, in order

1. Pick the bonus element you want and note which Warframe(s) are its Progenitor (see the table above).
2. Play Grineer missions (or Corpus Ship missions with a completed Granum Void, for a Sister) until a Larvling/Candidate spawns.
3. Down it, stand within about 3 meters, and read the weapon name/icon it shows.
4. If it's not the weapon you want, leave it alone and let it expire (about 30 seconds), then find another one, the weapon isn't removed from the pool.
5. Once you see the weapon you want, switch to your chosen Progenitor Warframe before landing the finishing Parazon stab.
6. Hunt and weaken the resulting Lich/Sister with the correct Requiem Mod combination, then choose Vanquish at the final confrontation to receive the weapon (Convert only if you specifically want an ally/crew member or plan to trade it away).
7. Once claimed, check its rolled percentage; if you want it higher, farm/trade for a second copy of the same weapon and use Valence Fusion.
8. If you plan to keep the weapon long-term, apply 5 Forma over time to reach Rank 40 for the extra 1,000 Mastery points.

What players get wrong

Glossary

Related

• Weapon systems: every way a weapon gets upgraded
• How to hunt a Lich, a Sister or the Coda
• Best Kuva, Tenet and Coda weapons
• Kuva farming guide
• Incarnon Weapons Explained
• Warframe Weapon Variants Explained
• Weapon Upgrades Explained
• Kitguns, Zaws and Amps Explained
• Riven mods explained