Soulframe Best Duelo Build

Welcome to our Duelo Build Guide for Soulframe.

Duelo is one of the Pacts (classes) available in Soulframe. It focuses mainly on single-target melee damage and agility, rewarding players for perfectly timing their blocks and dodges.

This Duelo Build is up to date with Soulframe Preludes 15. We will continue to update it as Soulframe evolves in the run-up to its full release.

Table of Contents:

• Duelo Overview
  • Arcanics
  • Playstyle
  • How to Unlock Duelo
• Best Virtues
• Best Equipment
  • Best Armour
  • Best Weapons
• Best Runes & Totems
• Combat Arts Upgrade Priority
  • Long Blade
• Duelo Upgrade Priority

Duelo Pact Overview

Duelo is one of the Pacts (classes) in Soulframe. It has an affinity with the Grace virtue, so Duelo players will typically benefit from investing in Grace.

Duelo plays into a melee duelist playstyle (although it also possesses a ranged pistol that can be fired on a cooldown). To get the most out of Duelo, you must reliably execute perfectly timed blocks and dodges to activate its various passive effects, such as spawning decoys to throw off enemies or triggering additional bleed damage.

Players who try to play Duelo in the same way as a more durable class like Tethren or Ode Tempest will quickly find out that this approach doesn’t adapt well to this somewhat squishy pact.

However, Duelo is still a strong pact in skilled hands and is the perfect fit for players who want to master Soulframe’s melee combat, because this Pact rewards a skilled, light-footed approach to combat, punishing those who are foolhardy or careless.

Duelo Arcanics

The Duelo Pact has the following Arcanics:

Duelo Playstyle

Duelo is far from the easiest class to play in Soulframe – its focus on the Grace virtue means you won’t have particularly high HP, and yet you still need to hold your own in melee.

The key to overcoming these difficulties is to make the best of Duelo’s Arcanics and passives, which means you must perform perfectly timed dodges.

Attacking after a perfectly timed dodge applies bleed to enemies, while dodging after a perfectly timed dodge briefly spawns decoys that distract enemies’ attention, allowing you to backstab them.

Perfectly timed blocks also help you mitigate enemy melee attacks without getting knocked over.

As you become more experienced and accustomed to the attack patterns of various enemies in Soulframe, you’ll get better at using Duelo’s agility and rapid attacks to overcome them with increasing ease.

How to Unlock Duelo in Soulframe

You will need to complete the following objectives before you can play as the Duelo Pact in Soulframe:

• Begin the quest titled The Wreck of Maestra Carmo by interacting with a ribbon at any shipwreck.
• Complete the quest by interacting with more shipwreck ribbons.
• Craft the Pact by visiting Tuvalkane in the Nightfold.

Duelo Build Best Virtues

The most important Virtue for the Duelo Pact is Grace, which will boost your damage with Grace-attuned weapons and increase the damage done by your clone summoned by the Duo Duelo arcanic.

You should also assign around 30% of your Virtue points to Courage, which will give you more HP and increase the damage of your Flintlock Arcanic. So, go for roughly a 70/30 split between Grace and Courage. A full Grace build is also viable if you prefer, but it will be very fragile.

Duelo Best Equipment

In this section, we will explain the best armour to wear as Duelo and the best weapons to equip.

Duelo Best Armour Setup

Currently, the armour system in Soulframe isn’t very complicated. There are three armour stats: Physical, Magic and Stability.

• Physical reduces the damage you take from physical attacks, such as ordinary weapon strikes and arrows.
• Magic reduces the damage you take from all magical attacks, such as lightning and fire spells.
• Stability improves your resistance to stagger effects, making it harder for enemies to stun you or knock you to the ground.

All three of these stats add up to give you a total armour rating, which is visible in the top-right of your character menu.

There are currently no armour pieces or sets that grant special effects, so you should keep crafting better armour until you have the highest possible rating in each armour stat.

Note that it is sometimes better to have a balanced armour distribution that is a little lower on your overall armour stat. For example, having 5 points in each armour stat for a total armour of 15 is better than having 18 points all in physical armour.

Duelo Best Weapons

We are using the Rapier weapon type for this Duelo Build. The rapid, lunging attacks of the Rapier fit very nicely with the Duelo’s agile playstyle.

The Navalha Rapier is unlocked at the same time as the Duelo class, when you complete the Wreck of Maestra Carmo quest. This weapon has great Grace scaling, making it a great fit for this build from the outset.

Reforge your Rapier with  Verite: Twice Blessed by Saphene, or Gildaur: Thrice Blessed by Saphene, which will improve the weapon’s Grace attunement, granting you significantly better damage.

Duelo Best Sidearm

Sidearms are small secondary weapons in Soulframe. They can be equipped in your Sidearm weapon slot, allowing you to swap to that weapon at any time.

I recommend using a Flyblade, which will give you a reliable ranged option that isn’t dependent on a cooldown like the Duelo’s Flintlock arcanic.

Skílter is a great option to use as a Flyblade for the Duelo. It comes with decent scaling in both Grace and Courage. It can be obtained from a variety of sources, including the Gruul Seeker Ruthos and Sinecure Gruulseeker bosses, or sarcophagi in the Crypt of the Circade.

Obtaining Thrice-Blessed Joineries

Thrice-Blessed Joineries are rare upgrade materials required to get the maximum possible attunement scaling on your weapon. They have a small chance to drop from most world bosses, or to be found in treasure chests or crypt sarcophagi. You can also buy them from your Faction Favours shop, but this requires rank 4 or 5 with your faction and a whole heap of faction favour to buy one.

Don’t worry if you don’t have Thrice Blessed Joineries yet – they are quite rare, and the build still works fine without perfect optimisation, so just use the once- or twice-blessed version until you find some.

Also, note that  Verite currently won’t drop in the Thrice-blessed tier, with Twice-blessed being the best version on offer for this joinery.

Duelo Best Runes & Totems

For your Rapier weapon, I recommend slotting the following Runes and Totems:

Please note that Totems can drop in any Virtue alignment, so feel free to use, for example, a Hare Harms totem that is attuned to something other than Courage, changing the slot accordingly. The most important thing is that you have most of the same totems and that they are slotted in the slot that matches their colour.

Also keep in mind that Runes have a low drop rate, so you might need to defeat the named bosses several times before you obtain the rune.

You can learn more about these upgrades in our Runes & Totems Guide.

Sidearm Setup:

The Runes and Totems on your sidearm are less important because we use the Rapier most of the time.

You can use the same setup for your Totems, and just replace the rune with one that is compatible with Flyblades.

Combat Arts Upgrade Priority

As you use the weapons mentioned above, you will gain XP towards upgrading the Combat Arts for those weapon types.

In this section, we have some advice for levelling up your Combat Arts for this Duelo Build.

Long Blade

The Rapier falls into the Long Blade category. As such, we recommend upgrading your Long Blade Combat Arts in this order:

1. Smitten
2. Riposte
3. Vaunt
4. Unyielding
5. Swift Parry
6. Helm Gong
7. Momentum
8. Headlong
9. Spectre Strike
10. Smitten 2
11. Vaunt 2
12. Smitten 3
13. Vaunt 3

This setup invests in parry and riposte early on – to perform a parry, you need to block an enemy attack just before it hits you; you can then retaliate for extra damage. This playstyle is an important aspect of Long Blades, so I strongly recommend practising it if you’re not already confident with it. Unyielding is especially important, because it means you won’t need to worry about getting knocked over when blocking heavy attacks.

After that, we boosted the weapon’s heavy attacks (follow up your parries with heavy attacks when you have the time and space) and Smite chance.

Duelo Upgrade Priority

We recommend upgrading your Duelo Pact Arts in the following order:

1. Chamariz
2. Olho Por Olho
3. Rooted
4. Wingspan
5. Stalwart
6. Forestall
7. Saphene’s Gift
8. Mora’s Pride
9. Iridis’ Favour
10. Rooted 2
11. Stalwart 2
12. Saphene’s Gift 2
13. Mora’s Pride 2
14. Chamariz 2
15. Olho Por Olho 2
16. Saphene’s Gift 3
17. Mora’s Pride 3
18. Chamariz 3

The purpose of this setup is to maximise your Grace and Courage virtues, increasing your damage output and HP.

We then want to use the Rooted and Stalwart perks to attain a decent amount of stagger and knockback resistance, making melee combat a little more forgiving.

The third priority is to use the Chamariz and Olho por Olho perks to enhance the Duelo’s passives, increasing the effectiveness of your decoys and bleed, activated when you perform a perfect dodge. (Remember that you also need to attack or dodge after performing the perfect dodge; otherwise, nothing will happen).

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