by ninjase — last updated a month ago
Mutation is endless. The ravening plague-bearer returns in a long-unseen form, seething with a primal strain of the Infestation.
ITEM RANK
3060 / 60
APPLY CONDITIONALS
This is a general use [Nidus] build for boosting critical chance (particularly on primary weapons), high range larva for grouping, high range link so you can be somewhat mobile and parasitic link for status immunity. Virulence spam is used for stack gain, energy gain, crit chance boost and even low level DPS. This build is best used in more stationary situations with high enemy density (e.g. Solo survival) since you need to gain stacks and constantly link enemies.
If you want to be extra mobile and have both passive and arcane persistence for maximum comfortable immortality, use this: https://overframe.gg/build/232438/
UPDATE DEC 2025
The new arcane, Arcane persistence now limits damage taken to 500 per second if your armor is above 700. [Nidus] has a high base armor of 525 and can hit 700 with a single Tauforged Azure archon shard (gives +225 armor) or a single armor mod. With [Parasitic Vitality] and [Abundant Mutation] you can hit close to 20,000 health at 300 mutation stacks, meaning you could potential stand still for over 30s before healing. Arcane Grace scales healing off max health meaning you can simply outheal any damage you take if your max health exceeds 8334.
UPDATE APRIL 2024
The new augment [Parasitic Vitality] now replaces [Vitality], giving an equivalent amount of health after approximately 13 stacks of mutation. At rank 30, 100 stacks and 200 strength, you gain approximately +800% health giving 5850 health. If you slot [Abundant Mutation] for a meme only (since it is usually very hard to achieve 300 stacks outside of solo survival), you can hit +2400% health giving 16,250 health.
Duration
Lower duration is fine for larva since you can cast it sooner again in case you don't manage to kill all enemies, and 3 still has a reasonable uptime of 40+ seconds. Larva is better with slightly lower duration so it can be spammed more often, unless you are running [Larva Burst]. If you decide to run [Larva Burst], you can switch [Transient Fortitude] out for [Primed Continuity] to hit 150% duration.
Efficiency
Lowest efficiency is fine for [Nidus] since 1 and 2 only cost 62 and 39, 3 and 4 cost no energy and 1 even refunds energy, gaining tons energy when efficiency is low and you hit many enemies. Additionally, rage/hunter adrenaline allows for easy energy regen in case you miss virulence or somehow run out of energy and desperately need to cast larva/virulence. However, you can always maintain your energy with careful management of the 2 +1 combo, only casting virulence when there are at least 5 enemies within the larva (Each enemy refunds 15.5 energy, so hitting 5 enemies refunds 78 energy. You only need to hit 12 enemies to fill the total capacity of your energy pool from 0 energy without [Primed Flow]. If you run [Primed Flow], you need to hit approximately 33 enemies to refill the whole pool from zero).
Range
Range is essential for larva to pull as many enemies as possible from across the map. Range also helps maggot explosions and maximising the link distance on mobile missions. High range is slightly detrimental to virulence since you need to wait for it to end before casting again, but you can aim into walls if possible to shorten this and spam virulence. Once you hit max stacks, you only need to use virulence every 10s or so to refresh [Teeming Virulence] and any lost stacks.
Strength
Strength really only scales the damage of 1 and the crit chance boost of [Teeming Virulence]. For casual tanking, only 180% strength breakpoint is required to hit 90% damage reduction. Note the crit buff of Teeming Virulence applies additively to crit chance mods like point strike and critical delay/deceleration, and
and only applies to primary weapons.
Flexible Options
Augment slot (very flexible as no one augment is mandatory):
Stretch (- slot): If you don't care about such high range,
Exilus slot is completely flexible:
Aura slot is completely flexible and up to what you own:
Helminth
[Nidus] has a reasonably synergistic kit so is best run without helminth.
If you really want to subsume something, you will probably subsume into 4 or 3
Options that synergize well with high strength/ or high range (although you may need more duration to sustain):
You can even subsume ensnare over larva for an alternate style of play. Multiple ensnares can be cast at once, and while the mechanics are much slower/gradual compared to larva, and don't group them as tight, the crowd control offered by ensnare is slightly superior to larva due to it's spammability. Furthermore, you are able to headshot enemies easier and electric procs can even headshot easier compared to when enemies ragdoll in larva.
Here is a fun meme option using Reave to oneshot/nuke enemies within larva : https://overframe.gg/build/221813/nidus-prime/viral-reaver-nidus-one-shot-reave-steel-path/
Arcanes
Any arcane that triggers "on damaged" is ideal for nidus due to the inherent lack of shields:
Archon Shards
2 Amber Cast Speed
1 TAUFORGED Azure Armor Shard to hit 700 armor for arcane persistence
2 Flex e.g. parkour velocity for mobility
Obviously you can use anything you enjoy, but there are a few weapons that fit nidus thematically as well as synergizes with Nidus abilities.
Bubonico : Infested arm-cannon shotgun with regenerating ammo that looks cool and feels cool. The secondary fire lobs three balls of innate viral damage with very high status chance. If you mod the weapon with electric and shoot alt-fire into a Larva ball full of enemies, all enemies will be 'primed' with viral status and electric status which will chain electric damage within the ball. Any enemies that don't die immediately can be finished off with the primary fire that has higher crit, higher damage, raw corrosive damage and slash procs from hunter munitions. Paired with teeming virulence and arcane avenger, Bubonico's primary fire crit chance hits approximately 180%.
Anti-grineer build: https://overframe.gg/build/210444/bubonico/bubonico-grineer/
Anti-corpus build: https://overframe.gg/build/217932/
[Zymos]: Infested pistol that releases homing spores on headshots. Linking an enemy with parasitic link stuns them and makes them immune to knockdown and direct damage, meaning you can spam [Zymos] into a stationary target and let it release multiple homing spores to nuke nearby enemies.
Insane crits and hemorrhage build: https://overframe.gg/build/218337/
[Caustacyst] : Infested scythe with innate corrosive damage with a heavy attack gimmick that releases a relatively narrow wave of corrosive sludge which can stun enemies. Perfect for heavy spamming into a Larva ball. Furthermore, scythe heavy attacks have forced slash procs meaning it can actually kill heavily armored units in addition to a gimmick. Paired with arcane avenger and sacrificial mods [Caustacyst]'s relatively low base crit chance of 9% becomes a more reasonable 103.5% on heavy attack.
Caustacyst Heavy Spam build: https://overframe.gg/build/218031/
Dual Ichor (influence): https://overframe.gg/build/572811/
Other cool infested primary weapons that can benefit from teeming virulence/avenger:
Other good infested secondary weapons include:
