Virtues

Players may specialise their Envoy to a varying degree across the three Virtues:

Courage • Spirit • Grace

These are some of Soulframe's key player Stats. Virtues will increase the Envoy's maximum Life by varying amounts, improve specific Pact Arcanics, hone the Attunement of equipment, and more; depending on the specific Virtue.

Envoys begin with 16 Virtue Points, and a further Virtue Point is allocated for each Envoy Rank the player character achieves - alongside various other means.

The distribution of an Envoy's Virtue Points may be configured in the Arsenal at the cost of a

Virtue Lith

. Note that this only rebalances intrinsic points earnt through Mastery - it does not impact the Virtue points provided by other means.

"From Mora came strength, bravery, resolve."
Courage grants greater Life to survive the boldness of battle. Build a Warrior's arsenal attuned with the symbol.

• Courage will impact the Attunement scaling of most large melee weapons; including Heavy Weapons, Long Blades, Polearms and Shields.
  • With the addition of Rapiers such as Navalha in Preludes 14, this is no longer the case across the board, as Rapiers require Grace.

• Courage will grant the Envoy 12 Life per point allocated.

• Courage empowers the first Arcanic of all Pacts.

"By Iridis we knew empathy, imagination, arcanics."
Spirit quickens the Magicks of your Pact. Prevail beyond the fray. Favour Arcanics and shamantic garb with the symbol.

• Spirit will impact the Attunement scaling of all Magick weapons.

• Spirit will grant the Envoy 3 Life per point allocated.

• Spirit empowers the second Arcanic of all Pacts.

• Spirit reduces the cooldown of all Pact Arcanics by 1.5% per point of Spirit over 2.

"Saphene bestowed cunning, agility, insight."
Grace increases the lethality of ambushes and mortal strikes. Attack from the shadows, aim for the head. Seek armaments of precision and stealth graced by the symbol.

• Grace will impact the Attunement scaling of more dextrous weapons; including Short Blades, Flyblades, Bows and Rapiers.
  • In addition to Attunement damage from Pips, adds 0.3 points of Damage per point of Grace the Envoy possesses, equivalent to 0.6 invisible Grace Pips, on weapons that have a natural Grace attunement (i.e. not from a Joinery).
    • This will not exceed the 5 Pip limit, so technically has no effect on 5-Pip Grace weapons.
    • Spirit currently has a cap of 5.6 Pips (with the .6 being invisible). This is likely a bug, intended to be the Grace Pip cap.

• Grace will grant the Envoy 6 Life per point allocated.

• Grace empowers the third Arcanic of all Pacts.

• Grace decreases the Envoy's detectability during stealth.

• Headshots scale with Grace, applying a [1.2 + 0.03 x Grace] damage multiplier to projectiles and magick.

Grace provides a Lethality Multiplier which multiplies the damage of specific actions by [1 + 0.02 x Grace].

• Standing Finishers - but not Ground Finishers - will benefit from this multiplier.

• Stealth hits (i.e. any attack against an unaware enemy) will benefit from this multiplier.
  • Stealth Finishers will therefore benefit from this multiplier twice. For example, with 25 Grace, a 300% base damage finisher would become 675% (300% x 1.5 x 1.5) against an unaware enemy.

• Ripostes and Spectre Strikes do not benefit from this multiplier.

Other than increasing their Envoy Rank, players may increase their Virtues through various means:

• Equipping certain Talismans, which provide a varying number of points to specific Virtues
• Investing into the Virtue Passives of their Pact Arts Tree (max +6 per Virtue)
• Making specific choices during certain Fables to obtain a permanent (swappable by replaying the Fable) +1 bonus to a chosen Virtue:
  • The Shewolf Snared
  • The Waste Bear

Temporary Virtue buffs may be applied, such as

Virtue Elixirs

,

, or the Orison of the Paragon.

• Spirit currently has a cap of 5.6 Pips (with the .6 being invisible). This is likely a bug.

Weapons have a Virtue Requirement which must be met in order for them to gain bonus damage from aligned Virtues. A weapon's strength will scale with its aligned Virtues up to its specific Attune Cap.

Attunement strength is based on the number of Attunement Pips on a weapon's Attunement stat. As a general rule, each Attunement Pip adds 1/2 a point of Damage per point in that Virtue.

All weapons with natural Grace Attunement, such as the

Thistle

or

Vetch

, possess an additional 0.6 invisible Grace Pips, adding 0.3 Damage per point of Grace. Using a Joinery to add Grace Attunement to a weapon will not grant the extra 0.6 Pips, nor will it allow a weapon to bypass the 5 Pip limit.

The formula to calculate your Virtue Attunement Bonus is below:

• Attunement Bonus = Courage Value * ( Courage Pips / 2 ) + Spirit Value * ( Spirit Pips / 2 ) + Grace Value * ( Grace Pips / 2 )
  
  
  • This bonus is only added to the weapon if the Virtue Requirement is met.
  • Each weapon has a cap on how much bonus damage it can receive from Attunement.

A weapon may be given an additional Attunement Pips by Reforging it with a Joinery. This increases the scaling from that specific Virtue, but you must still meet the weapon's Virtue Requirement to gain any benefit from the additional Virtue. Attempting to reforge again will replace the previous bonus.

Attunement is capped at 5 Pips for each individual Virtue, represented by a golden border around the pip. Additional pips from Joineries may not exceed this cap.

In addition to this, a weapon can only gain bonus damage from Attunement equal to 1.5 times (150%) its base damage (i.e. a weapon dealing 50 damage can only gain 75 bonus damage from Attunement).

• Most Common (1 star) weapons are capped at 1 times (100%). Vasp-IV, Rivt-II, and Clivers are exempt from this, despite being Common.

Base damage is the 'Attack' stat shown at Rank 0 in either the Crafting menu or Wares of Zenith.

• Base damage can also be calculated for a weapon by taking its Attack value and and subtracting the value in the parenthesis before it (i.e. a weapon with "Attack (+61) 109" has a base damage of 48, and thus can gain 72 bonus damage from Attunement).
  • Keep in mind that, for weapons, the value in the parenthesis is not only Attunement, but also bonus damage from levelling.

Armour gains bonus defenses on top of its base stats, should its Virtue Requirement be met.

The amount gained depends on the number of Virtue Pips shown for each type of defense, and how many points the Envoy has in the corresponding Virtue.

Each Virtue Pip adds 0.12 defense per point of the corresponding Virtue, added all together, and then truncated.

Using

Mendicant King's Suit of Rancor

as an example:

Requirement: 20 Courage

For an Envoy with 20 Courage and 2 Spirit, they have met the Courage requirement and thus the bonus defenses will be applied. For Physical:

1. Physical has 3 Courage pips, so multiply by 20 points and the 0.12 multiplier: (3 * 20 * 0.12) = 7.2
2. Physical has 1 Spirit pip, so multiply by 2 points and the 0.12 multiplier: (1 * 2 * 0.12) = 0.24
3. Add both values together: 7.2 + 0.24 = 7.44
4. The game then rounds down to a whole number, providing a value of 7 bonus Physical defense.

The same can be done for Magick and Stability.

In total, the example Envoy would receive 13 Physical (6 base + 7 bonus) , 5 Magick (3 base + 2 bonus) and 6 Stability (4 base + 2 bonus) from this cuirass.

• From Preludes 13 to Preludes 14.5, the distribution of an Envoy's Virtues was determined by their equipped Virtue Prism. With the release of Virtue Liths, Prisms were removed from the game entirely.

• Prior to Preludes 13, Virtues were allocated manually by spending Virtue Points. One Virtue Point was allocated for each level, or Envoy Rank, the player character had. Points invested in Virtues increased the Envoy's maximum Life by +10, and they also improved a variety of Pact Arcanics in specific ways rather than each scaling one particular Arcanic:
  • Courage primarily affected the potency of Pact Arcanics.
  • Spirit primarily affected the duration of Pact Arcanics.
  • Grace primarily affected the range of Pact Arcanics.

• Before Preludes 13, there was a Virtue setup named Champion of Alca, given to Envoys who spread their points evenly across the three Virtues. This name no longer appears since the addition of Virtue Prisms.
  • With return to manual Virtue configuration in Preludes 14.5, this ratio is now titled 'The Paragon'.

• Until Preludes 13, equipping specific Pacts would provide a passive base increase to their aligned Virtue. This was removed to offer more build flexibility for players, and give them the option to play their chosen Pact with their chosen Virtue alignment.