Warframe: Epitaph Prime Build Guide (2024)

Sevagoth Prime Access has brought a gilded variant of the Epitaph in Warframe's Lotus Eaters update. Most players know this weapon as a status primer, but it can double as a powerful arm cannon against Acolytes and similar tough bosses. The AoE shots can be aggressively scaled to deal with trash adds, while the charged mode can one-tap most bosses in the game.

But to get the Epitatph to this state, you'll need to create a strong build for it. In this guide, we go over how to get your hands on the Epitaph, explain how it works, and showcase three powerful builds that excel in Steel Path content and beyond.

How To Get The Epitaph

The Epitaph is an uncommon reward from Void Storm missions in Railjack content. Void Storms are a variant of Void Relic missions on the Star Chart, requiring you to collect Reactant and defeat Corrupted enemies during a Railjack mission. Every Relic you crack open has a small chance of dropping an Epitaph part as a bonus reward. Epitaph parts can drop in the Earth Proxima, Venus Proxima, and Saturn Proxima.

Epitaph Crafting Costs

How To Get The Epitaph Prime

Like most Prime items, the Epitaph Prime's components drop from Void Relics. You'll need to earn Void Relics that contain Epitaph Prime components and crack the relics open during a Void Fissure mission. The blueprint is common, the barrel is uncommon, and the receiver is rare.

Epitaph Prime Crafting Costs

Epitaph Prime Relics

• Axi O6 - Epitaph Prime Blueprint (Common, 25.33% Intact)
• Lith W4 - Epitaph Prime Barrel (Uncommon, 20% Radiant)
• Neo E4 - Epitaph Prime Receiver (Rare, 10% Radiant)

Epitaph Stats

Epitaph

The Epitaph is effectively two weapons in one. Tapping the trigger will launch explosive projectiles from the arm cannon, inflicting guaranteed Cold procs. This mode has an absurdly high status chance (50% at base) and covers an eight-meter radius by default. The AoE coverage is ideal for priming targets with status ailments, which pairs nicely with Condition Overload weapons.

Holding the trigger will perform a charged shot, firing a metal slab at the target. This mode trades status chance for critical stats and inflicts a guaranteed Impact proc. Since it deals high base damage and scales with critical stats, the charged shot is an ideal candidate for the Hemorrhage mod. Impact procs have a chance of inflicting Slash bleed on the target, and since the Epitaph has a low fire rate stat, it doubles Hemorrhage's chance to proc, making this an excellent Slash bleed weapon.

Epitaph Prime

While the Epitaph Prime received few upgrades over its base variant, the improvements it did receive were rather significant.

• Critical Chance went up by 2% in both modes.
• Critical Damage went up by 0.2x in both modes.
• The fire rate was improved from 1.5 to 1.75.
• The blast radius of quick shots was increased from 8 meters to 10 meters.

The single largest upgrade here is the blast radius size. A two-meter increase doesn't sound like much, but when you throw on Primed Fulmination, you're looking at a blast radius of over 14 meters—roughly the same as the Kuva Ogris. Beyond that, the slight critical buffs make Hemorrhage procs deal far more damage in ideal conditions. The critical damage buff also gives the quick shot mode a sizable damage boost if you leverage additive critical modifiers like Arcane Avenger.

One odd quirk worth mentioning is the buff to the gun's fire rate. You must pair Lethal Torrent with Creeping Bullseye to achieve Hemorrhage's 70% proc chance. If you use another critical chance mod, the Epitaph Prime will fire just over 2.5 rounds per second, halving your chance of inflicting Slash. This only affects charged shot builds; quick shot builds should welcome the fire rate buff.

Epitaph Builds

We'll be looking at three builds for the Epitaph and its Prime variant. The first build is a zero Forma build tuned for spamming the quick shot mode. The second build focuses on status application against crowds, while the third focuses on charged shots. The standard Epitaph and its Prime variant have the same polarities, so both builds require the same number of Forma.

Low Investment Status Primer (0 Forma)

This starter build focuses on buffing the quick shot mode as much as possible. We scale our damage primarily through Hornet Strike and Cascadia Flare. The Arcane gives us a minor base damage buff every time we inflict Heat status, stacking up to +480%. This stacks additionally with Hornet Strike for a 700% damage bonus. Technically, stacking multiple additive sources like this is ineffective, but Galvanized Shot doesn't work on AoE attacks; this is your best alternative.

Galvanized Diffusion and Lethal Torrent scale our multishot through the roof and (Primed) Fulmination to scale our AoE size. If you don't have the Primed variant, use the normal mod. For status effect, we need Heat and a good primer element like Viral. We run Frostbite and R2 Pistol Pestilence to make Viral and Scorch for Heat. Feel free to adjust the first two mods to create any elemental combo you like.

With all these mods, your quick shot mode will cover a massive 14m radius and inflict tons of useful status debuffs. The gun should have more than enough damage to crush Star Chart content and unarmored Steel Path foes. For tougher Grineer and Corrupted forces, some form of armor strip will be needed.

Endgame Status Primer (3 Forma)

The endgame variant is the same as our starter build with two changes: we've added (Primed) Heated Charge and a Pistol Ammo Mutation mod. Heated Charge biases the Epitaph towards Heat procs and greatly increases your damage. The ammo mutation mod is a quality-of-life improvement and nothing more. We use an unranked one since it doesn't drain any mod capacity, but feel free to use any Exilus mod.

Damage scaling remains the same as before. We run Hornet Strike since Galvanized Shot doesn't work on AoE weapons, Cascadia Flare to gain some damage from Heat procs, and scale our multishot through Galvanized Diffusion and Lethal Torrent. Throw on your favorite elemental combo alongside Primed Heated Charge and Scorch for a strong status primer. If you don't own Primed Fulmination, use standard Fulmination or a bane mod in its place.

Endgame Charged Shot Build (3 Forma)

We have tuned this build mostly around the Hemorrhage mod, which allows Impact procs to inflict Slash bleed. Every charged shot is guaranteed to inflict Impact status, so we just need to scale our Slash damage and Hemorrhage's proc chance. The latter is easy: equip Lethal Torrent and Creeping Bullseye. This gets your fire rate to 2.46, just under the 2.5 breakpoint.

Scaling your bleed damage can be done through a few methods:

• Base damage.
• Critical damage.
• Bane modifiers.
• Damage multipliers like Viral procs.
• Headshots.

Base damage is easy enough to scale. Secondary Deadhead gives you a ton of base damage from precision kills and scales your headshot damage. Galvanized Shot also gives you a ton of base damage if the target is debuffed with multiple status ailments. It doesn't buff our AoE damage, but Galvanized Shot does work with charged shots.

Adding A Bane Mod

Bane modifiers double-dip with Slash procs and are best-in-slot for this type of build. You can easily fit one into the build by removing a Galvanized Shot, moving the Lethal Torrent to the empty socket, and adding a Primed bane mod to the polarized slot.

We don't like juggling bane mods, so we aren't using one for this specific build.

Charged shots have excellent critical stats, so we scale our critical stats with Creeping Bullseye and Primed Target Cracker. Multishot is scaled with Galvanized Diffusion and Lethal Torrent, per usual. For our elemental combo, we use Viral by adding Frostbite and Pistol Pestilence to the build. Fire a few AoE shots to debuff your targets, then use the charged shot to deal millions of damage. If they somehow survive the initial hit, the Slash bleed will finish them.