Warframe’s next big update will be called The Old Blood, and it will see the launch of a whole host of features that developer Digital Extremes has been teasing for ages now. The package will set the stage for Empyrean with the introduction of the Kuva Lich, it’ll bring us a new Warframe in Grendel, and it’ll offer the next step of melee 3.0 alongside reworks for Ember and Vauban.
The big addition here is Grendel, who was teased back at TennoCon. If you’ve missed the details since then, he eats enemies and stores them in his stomach to power his abilities. He can buff allies with healing, or “violently puke out a bile-soaked enemy” from his gut, “turning the consumed into a toxic projectile.” You can get the full rundown of those abilities on the official site.
The Old Blood also brings us the Kuva Lich, landing a bit earlier than their planned addition in Empyrian. It’ll be a recurring enemy type that you’ll deal with throughout the system – every time you hunt the Kuva Lich down, it’ll evolve, grab some Tenno abilities, and come back in a new location with new power.
You’ll also find ‘phase two’ of the melee changes in The Old Blood. This will introduce heavy attacks for all melee weapons, mid-air attacks, juggles, and a more extensive combo flow, and it’ll bring back both manual blocking and the melee-only attack state. The full list of changes is too extensive to recount here, but the devs have put together a lengthy breakdown of the system on the forums.
Then there are the Ember and Vauban reworks, which are finally landing in this update. The developers fully detailed those changes earlier this month.
The Old Blood is scheduled to launch ‘soon’ – the devs say it could be as soon as next week, though that’s not yet a guarantee.