Warframe Kuva Survival guide

Kuva Survival missions are an exciting spin on a classic Warframe challenge. While they can be difficult at first, they are well worth it for players who are just arriving in the end game.

The aim of the mission is the same: To survive as long as possible, but while you do that, you can farm a vital resource, Kuva. You need Kuva to re-roll your Riven mods and chase the best possible stats for your weapon builds.

How to play Kuva Survival missions

To get access to Kuva Survival missions, you must play through the story until you complete The War Within. This grants you a new node on the star chart, a moving fortress where you can take part in new varieties of many mission types, including Kuva Survival. The Kuva Survival mission can be found on the Taveuni node, although you will need to unlock all the adjacent nodes to access it.

Kuva Survival basics gameplay mechanics

You need to activate the life support capsules as in any other survival mission, but there’s a twist this time. You can use a Kuva Catalyst to change the purpose of the life support capsule into a Kuva Harvester.

To get the Kuva Catalyst, track down and kill the enemy Eximus unit marked with a red waypoint on the map. The waypoint will match the one that populates on the closest target in Elimination missions. It will drop the catalyst, so pick it up and bring it to any life support capsule that has spawned but has yet to be activated.

Do not interact with the capsule. Instead, stand beside it while holding the Catalyst for a couple of seconds. The Catalyst will disappear, and the capsule will turn red, denoting that it’s now a Kuva Harvester. Kuva Harvester will replenish the life support level by just 10 percent and have a one-minute timer and 4,000 health. You must defend it during this time, ensuring enemy units cannot stack up and destroy it. Successfully defending it for the full minute will yield 200 Kuva, and you can then move on to the next capsule and repeat the process. If you are running a resource booster, that will be doubled to 400 Kuva.

Hints and tips

It’s important to stick together as a group during this mission. Because players in this tend to have just arrived in the late-game, the weapons and Warframes used can often be too weak or not optimal for the activity.

While, in an ideal world, you can use every life support capsule as a Kuva Harvester, you can also interact with them as normal to get 30 percent life support back if you are running low. A new capsule will spawn every two minutes, so factor that into your decisions about what to do with each one.

The most important thing is to be able to live, so bring a tanky Warframe if you need to. Nidus is a great option, thanks to his incredible crowd control options. Revenant is also worth investing in because he can tank pretty much anything in the game while turning enemies into his slaves and making them fight against their own allies.

The typical defense Warframes are excellent options, with Frost and Gara proving extremely useful. Due to the layout of the Kuva Fortress tileset, it’s a good idea to run a low Ability Range build to ensure your defensive measures do not get in the way of other players.

Because you are only getting a 10 percent boost to life support levels from the Kuva Harvesters instead of the 30 percent you would from normal life support capsules, a farming Frame can also be useful. Nekros with Desecrate, Khora with Pilfering Strangledome, and Hydroid with Pilfering Swarm can all force additional personal life support modules to drop that will grant small amounts of life support. These can build up and be enough to keep you going. It also has the additional benefit of potentially duplicating the Kuva Catalyst, causing two to drop from the designated Eximus unit.

For weapons, you want to be able to deal with tough single targets and take out groups before they can stack up and kill the Harvester. Armor strip is a must, as you will be taking on Grineer, so ensure you are modded for Corrosive or Heat to deal with armor. I like to bring an Acceltra to deal with the mobs and a Laetum to deal with absolutely anything else.

For the Nightwave challenge, where you want to survive for twenty minutes, all the above tips apply; just ensure you control your life support levels. You can die and be revived as many times as you like, but if you run out of life support, then it will force you to extract, ending the mission.