Soulframe Best Tethren Build

Welcome to our Tethren Build Guide for Soulframe. In this guide, we’ll explain how you can create a powerful Tehren build that deals high damage. The build is good for both solo and co-op play.

Tethren is one of the Pacts (classes) available in Soulframe. It focuses on melee damage and endurance, and is attuned with the Courage virtue.

This Tethren Build is up to date with Soulframe Preludes 11. We will continue to update it as Soulframe evolves in the run-up to its full release.

Table of Contents:

• Tethren Overview
  • Arcanics
  • Playstyle
  • How to Unlock Tethren
• Best Virtues
• Best Equipment
  • Best Armour
  • Best Weapons
• Best Runes & Totems
• Combat Arts Upgrade Priority
  • Polearm
• Tethren Upgrade Priority
  • Alternative Setup

Tethren Pact Overview

Chief of the Solist Warriors, was she, wreathed in flame and fury. Claim the pact of the Fey champion, Tethren. Raise your sword to sun, howl the Felling song. Have Courage, Envoy. For a warrior’s heart is both weapon and armour. And a human heart can crack.

Tethren is one of the three possible starting Pacts in Soulframe, and is attuned to Courage.

This Pact leans heavily into a melee playstyle, granting you melee damage buffs, the ability to taunt enemies and gain damage resistance, and the Clash Arcanic, which staggers nearby enemies.

Tethren is a decent choice for beginners to Soulframe, since it allows you to heal yourself every time you defeat an enemy. This healing amount is initially small, but it can be upgraded later on, and augmented by the Sympathy Art, which allows you to heal yourself when you Smite an enemy. We’ll explain these mechanics in more detail later in the guide.

Arcanics

The Tethren Pact has the following Arcanics:

Tethren Playstyle

All three of Tethren’s Arcanics synergise heavily with melee combat, so using a melee weapon is advisable. Ensure your melee weapon is attuned to Courage; otherwise, you will have low damage output.

When playing solo, use Fellust in combination with Call of the Ancients for a burst of maximum damage. This also works when playing in a group, but you might also wish to use Call of the Ancients to taunt enemies, effectively becoming a tank for your group.

Clash works in a variety of situations with more challenging odds, particularly when you are outnumbered by high-level enemies or fighting a boss that staggers you often.

How to Unlock Tethren in Soulframe

Tethren is one of three Pacts available at the start of the game.

If you chose a different option as your starting Pact, you can unlock Tethren later by completing the following steps:

• Increase Faction Standing to Rank 3
• Purchase Sacred Shimmer for 3,000 Faction Standing
• Change your Faction to Kith of Kings
• Get to Rank 2 of Kith of Kings
• Purchase Tethren for 100 Faction Standing
• Craft the Tethren Pact by visiting your Blacksmith in Nightfold

For tips on gaining Faction Standing as quickly as possible, check our Faction Progression Loop Guide.

Tethren Build Best Virtues

The most important Virtue for the Tethren Pact is Courage, which will boost your HP and the damage of your Courage-attuned weapons.

You should put all of your points into Courage, because this will give you the maximum possible melee damage. There’s little use in investing in either Spirit or Grace for this Tethren build.

Tethren Best Equipment

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

Tethren 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.

Tethren Best Weapons

I highly recommend Duhk Halic, a Courage-attuned Polearm. This weapon has a very high damage ceiling, excellent reach and can cleave multiple enemies with its heavy attack.

The downside of Duhk Halic is its slow attack speed, but it’s quite easy to learn to manage this, since the high attack reach allows you to initiate your attacks from a relatively safe distance – something which you should get in the habit of doing with any Polearm, since their long reach is their primary advantage.

If you don’t like the Polearm, you can swap it out for any other Courage-attuned weapon. A Long Blade like Igni Mora is a popular choice, and Short Blades are also great at dealing sustained DPS thanks to their rapid, high-damage attacks.

Reforge your Polearm (or other chosen melee weapon) with Verite: Blessed by Mora, which will grant extra damage, increased perfect throw damage and reduced stability cost when parrying an attack.

Tethren Best Sidearm

Sidearms are small weapons in the Short Blade or Flyblade category. They can be equipped in your Sidearm weapon slot, allowing you to swap to that weapon at any time.

The Sidearm is of low importance for Tethren. I tend to opt for a Courage-Attuned Flyblade, which offers a rapid-fire ranged attack that can lock onto an enemy without the need for aiming, but the damage on these attacks is quite weak. You can opt for a melee-focused Short Blade Sidearm instead, but this tends to feel quite redundant next to your more powerful primary weapon.

You should Reforge your Sidearm with either Verite: Blessed by Mora for maximum damage, or Gildaur: Blessed by Mora for slightly less damage but with added Life Steal.

Tethren Best Runes & Totems

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

The Runes and Totems on your sidearm are much less important because there’s no reason to use it most of the time. But you can go with a similar setup if you have the spare Runes and Totems.

Please note that Runes have a low drop rate, so you might need to defeat the Discharged Nimrod boss several times before you obtain the Everflame rune.

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

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 Tethren.

Polearm

For the Polearm, we recommend upgrading your Combat Arts in this order:

1. Helm Gong
2. Headlong
3. Spectre Strike
4. Smite
5. Final Blow
6. Riposte
7. Unyielding
8. Vaunt
9. Smite Rank 2
10. Smite Rank 3
11. Vaunt Rank 2
12. Vaunt Rank 3

The most important Polearm Art for this build is Headlong, which allows you to charge your heavy attacks more quickly. Smite is also important, as it will allow you to gain bonus damage and synergise with the Sympathy Pact Art (see below) to absorb HP from enemies.

Unyielding is also notable, while not a high-priority unlock, it does allow you to parry enemy heavy attacks, increasing the number of ripostes you can pull off.

Tethren Upgrade Priority

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

1. Conqueror
2. Rooted
3. Wingspan
4. Sympathy
5. Voided
6. Last Stand
7. Akin
8. Saphene’s Gift
9. Iridis’ Favour
10. Mora’s Pride
11. Akin Rank 2
12. Conqueror Rank 2
13. Mora’s Pride Rank 2
14. Mora’s Pride Rank 3
15. Mora’s Pride Rank 4
16. Sympathy Rank 2
17. Voided Rank 2
18. Conqueror Rank 3

This is the standard setup that I recommend using for Tethren.

Our first important unlock is Conqueror, which gives you a small amount of healing whenever you slay an enemy. One point in Rooted is usually sufficient to avoid being staggered too easily, but you can put more points here if you struggle with enemy stuns a lot.

Next, we go for Sympathy and Voided, which enhance your Smite attacks with extra damage and HP absorption. Activate Smite by tapping your Spirit Vision key when an enemy is glowing.

Akin is a very useful Art that reduces the cooldown of your Arcanic abilities, which is a must-have for all Pacts in Soulframe.

Next up, we are maximising our Courage Virtue by fully unlocking Mora’s Pride. This will maximise your melee damage output.

The remaining points are quite flexible and can be safely reassigned if you like. For me, they fit best into additional upgrades for Sympathy, Voided and Conqueror, to increase Smite damage and make HP sustain easier.

Alternative Risk-Reward Setup

If you’ve grown fully accustomed to the Tethren Pact and want to try a more challenging playstyle that can get more damage out of the class, you can redistribute some of your Art Points to fully unlock the Last Stand Art.

This grants you a strong attack speed bonus when you are at low HP, further boosting your DPS potential. This is a risky playstyle and is not advisable for beginners, but it is stronger than the primary setup mentioned above when in the hands of a sufficiently skilled player.

Freeing up the points to fully unlock Last Stand can be a little tricky. It makes sense to remove all but one of the points from Conqueror, since you want as little passive healing as possible for staying at Low HP. In a similar vein, you may want to remove all points from Sympathy, too. I don’t recommend removing any points from Mora’s Pride, as this will reduce your weapon’s damage output.

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