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Warframe’sSeven Crimes of Kullervo update has added a melee-themed Warframe to the roster. Named Kullervo, this DPS-centric character can release a flurry of homing daggers to melt through armored targets at any difficulty level, including Steel Path. Fans of melee weapons or Slash procs will feel right at home using this Warframe.
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Getting your hands on Kullervo will be tricky but well worth it, as a good build allows Kullervo to melt Steel Path enemies with minimal effort. This guide will showcase how you can get your hands on Kullervo, how his abilities work, and cover two powerful builds that can handle virtually all content in Warframe.
Updated July 12, 2025, by Charles Burgar:Kullervo has received some buffs since his original launch. He’s received more HP, better healing from Recompense, and can now scale to endless Steel Path thanks to some Overguard changes. We’ve updated this guide to mention these buffs, and we’ve adjusted our endgame build to take advantage of these changes.
How To Craft Kullervo
Kullervo’s Hold Unique Game Variant
From June 21 to July 5, Duviri will host a special game type called “Kullervo’s Hold” that guarantees a Kullervo boss encounter during your run.This mode requires five Pathos Clamps to enter.When this event ends, you’ll find this boss fight as a potential side objective on Kullervo’s Hold during the Anger, Fear, and Sorrow Spirals.
Kullervo’s components are purchased from Acrithis in the Plains of Duviri or the Dormizone.Purchasing his components requires a unique currency calledKullervo’s Bane.you may obtain this currency by defeating Kullervo in eitherDuviri or Lone Story runs. This fight can only be initiated during the Anger, Fear, and Sorrow Spirals. Visit Kullervo’s Hold at any point during your run and speak with the warden.They will set up the fight with Kullervo for you. Once defeated, you’ll obtain 4-6 Kullervo’s Bane at the end of your run—increased to 6-8 Kullervo’s Bane on Steel Path difficulty.
In total, you’ll need42 Kullervo’s Baneto purchase every component blueprint. The resources required to craft Kullervo are all obtained from the Plains of Duviri, including the Ueymag resource found in Titan’s Rest and adjacent regions.
Passive
Passive:Kullervo boasts +75% heavy attack efficiency and +100% heavy attack wind-up speed on all melee weapons.
Kullervo has an affinity for heavy attacks.This passive causes your melee heavy attacks to wind up twice as quickly and consume only 25% of your combo count.You can further increase this heavy attack efficiency through certain melee mods, although you cannot exceed 90% heavy attack efficiency. Heavy attack wind-up speed can be further increased through the use of Killing Wind and Amalgam Organ Shatter.
Wrathful Advance
Wrathful Advance:(Tap) Kullervo charges a heavy attack and teleports to his target and strikes. His rage-filled focus temporarily increases his melee critical chance. (Hold) Teleport to any marked location.
Affects critical buff duration
Affects targeting range
Affects cast Energy cost
Affects critical buff magnitude
Wrathful Advance is effectively two abilities in one, changing functionality based on if you tap or hold the ability input. Here’s what this skill does:
Tapping this ability is simply a way to move while performing a melee heavy attack.This heavy attack triggers any properties on your weapon, such as the Caustacyst’s sludge projectile or a Gunblade’s projectile attack. This attack does inherit your heavy wind-up speed modifiersexcepton Glaives. It’s unclear if this behavior with Glaives is a bug.
Holding the ability gives you Ash’s Teleport skill without an object requirement, teleporting you to your cursor. This does have a range limit that’s adjustable through Ability Range mods. Once cast, you’ll have to wait a couple of seconds before you can teleport again.
Using either input will grant a critical chance buff to your melee weapons for a short duration, affected by Ability Duration mods. This is treated as anadditivebuff, similar to Harrow’s Covenant or Arcane Avenger. Unlike those two sources,this critical buffisaffected by Ability Strength. With 150% Strength, Kullervo’s melee attacks always red crit while this buff is active.
Recompense
Recompense:Kullervo surrounds himself with daggers. Each dagger that strikes an enemy restores his health, but each dagger that misses an enemy strikes Kullervo, dealing a bit of damage. When Kullervo has max health, he receives Overguard from struck enemies.
500 Slash per dagger
HP Gained: 325 per hit
HP Lost: 35 per self-inflicted hit
Affects targeting radius
Affects damage, healing effects, and Overguard generation
Kullervo creates ten daggers that fan out of his body in a circle, homing in on targets within Recompense’s targeting radius.If any daggers fail to target an enemy within three seconds, Kullervo is damaged for each dagger remaining.This effect cannot kill you, but it can trigger on-hit effects like Arcanes.
Targets hit by Recompense will receive 500 Slash damage with a guaranteed Slash proc.Each target hit restores a portion of Kullervo’s HP. If your HP is full, you’ll receive Overguard instead for the same amount.This amount caps out at 10,000 Overguard, affected by Power Strength. Speccing forStrengthandRangeis recommended to scale the Overguard value as high as possible.
Overguard behaves as a second health bar that absorbs all incoming damage. As with HP, Overguard does not passively regenerate. However, it does feature a sort of shield-gating mechanic where you become immune for a brief period when your Overguard breaks, allowing you to safely recast this skill or trigger another invulnerability effect like Rolling Guard.
Additionally, Overguard makes you immune to knockdowns and status effects, allowing you to forgo Primed Sure Footed and other crowd control counters in your build. Unfortunately, DR sources such as Adaptation and Armor donotwork with Overguard. Since your Overguard bar is your main source of survivability as Kullervo, using Adaptation or other DR mods is discouraged.
Collective Curse
Collective Curse:Kullervo sends forth a curse that binds enemies. When a cursed enemy takes damage from him, every other cursed enemy also suffers a portion of that damage.
50% (caps at 100%)
Affects curse duration
Affects the curse’s travel distance
Affects the damage redirection magnitude
Kullervo releases a wave of energy that continuously expands as it travels, similar to Harrow’s Condemn. Any targets cursed by this wave will be tethered to one another for the ability’s duration.When a tethered enemy takes damage, all tethered enemies receive a portion of that damage.This includes direct damage, status effects, and other damage-over-time effects. Status effects themselves arenotshared between tethered targets, however.
Building Collective Curse forRangeandStrengthis highly recommended, as this will greatly enhance its ability to debuff targets. While range doesnotaffect the curse’s angle expansion, it does affect how far the curse projectile travels, making it incredibly easy to tag an entire room of enemies from a distance. As for Ability Strength, aim for 200% to gain the full 100% damage redirection bonus on targets.
Storm Of Ukko
Storm of Ukko:The Void answers Kullervo’s invocation with a storm of daggers that rain down upon his enemies.
2,500 Slash per second
Affects storm duration
Affects storm radius
Affects the storm’s damage over time
Kullervo creates a storm of Void daggers above his location, dealing constant Slash damage to any enemies caught inside. This storm inflicts guaranteed Slash procs, capping out at 12 Slash ticks to targets caught in the storm. While the ability showcases physical daggers raining from the sky,these projectiles are purely cosmetic.Any foe caught in the storm will receive the same damage over time.
The Slash-focused nature of this ultimate ability makes it great for countering armored targets in endgame content.This ability pairs exceptionally well with Collective Curse,as it causes your damage to exponentially increase with each target caught in the storm. Get enough targets in one storm, and you may melt Steel Path enemies at any level. Build the Storm of Ukko forStrengthandRangeto get the most out of it.
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Kullervo Builds
We’ll be looking at two builds for Kullervo in this guide, showcasing a zero Forma build and a more min-maxed configuration. Both setups focus on increasing hisStrengthandRangestats to ensure that Collective Curse and Storm of Ukko can damage as many targets as possible. When set up properly, this Warframe can kill armored Steel Path enemies in an instant.
Bear in mind thatKullervo has no shields, so it’s impossible to shield-gate with this Warframe. Fortunately, Overguard features a similar mechanic when it is broken. Recast Recompense whenever possible to ensure Kullervo has Overguard to tank incoming damage.
For your Focus school, we recommend eitherZenurikorNaramon.Zenurik is recommended for ability-centric playstyles, as this lets you chain Collective Curse and Storm of Ukko much more frequently. If you plan on using a melee weapon over Kullervo’s abilities, Naramon will ensure that your melee combo never decays to zero.
Archon Shards
Kullervo can greatly benefit from a fewArchon Shardsin any build. Consider usingAbility Strength (Crimson), Ability Duration (Crimson), or Energy Max (Azure) Archon Shards.
No Investment Build (0 Forma, No Subsume)
This build uses no Forma and no subsume abilities, focusing on increasing Kullervo’sRangeandEfficiencystats while also slightly boosting hisStrength.We start by usingFleeting ExpertiseandEnergy Siphonto assist with Kullervo’s Energy economy. We can’t rely on Rage since we use Overguard, so we focus on raw efficiency instead.
Range is needed to ensure that Storm of Ukko tags as many tethered enemies as possible, so we useOverextendedandStretchto increase our effective range. This does reduce our Ability Strength, so we useIntensify, Transient Fortitude,andAugur Secretsto increase our damage. you may upgrade to an Umbral Intensify with an added Forma.
As for Ability Duration, we usePrimed ContinuityandAugur Messageto get it close to 100%. This will make your third and fourth abilities last more than long enough for most content. While far from required, we highly recommend usingMolt Augmentedand anyon-hit Arcanesto get the most out of Kullervo’s kit. Molt Augmented is especially useful since it lets you hit 200% Ability Strength, maximizing the damage redirection stat from Collective Curse.
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Endgame Build (3 Forma, Nourish Subsume)
Adaptation currently does not work with Overguard. Use Rolling Guard until this gets fixed.
This endgame configuration is a slight modification of our no investment setup, opting for more survivability by squeezing inRolling Guard.This will help ensure that you have a safe opportunity to recast Recompense when your Overguard breaks. If you dislike Rolling Guard, feel free to drop it for another Ability Strength mod. Bear in mind that doing so will cost another Forma.
To help boost Kullervo’s Strength, we upgrade our Intensify toUmbral Intensifyand swap out Augur Secrets forPower Driftin our Exilus Slot. This gives us a mod socket for something else, which we use for Rolling Guard. As before,Molt Augmentedandon-hit Arcaneswork great here.
Kullervo’s main weaknesses are a lack of damage against extremely high-level Steel Path targets and inconsistent Energy sustain, both of which are solved by usingGrendel’s Nourish abilityover Kullervo’s first ability. Nourish will increase your Energy gains from all sources while imbuing your weapons with Viral damage. Pair these Viral procs with Collective Curse to instantly kill anything caught in the Storm of Ukko, armored or otherwise.
