Ways: where the path forks

What it is

At the Aura Edge breakthrough your path forks into four Ways. Your Way gives you a node at Edge, Form and Sovereign. Each node is a passive plus a change to a technique you already know (the slash, guard, step, Intent, finishers, awakening or Dominion). A Way makes you different rather than simply stronger.

The same scene by day and by night: four rippling cloth standards on bronze poles, with red sword, blue shield, violet crescent and gold rallying crests The crossroads, just after the Edge breakthrough, by day and by night.

What it is
At a glance
How to get it
1. The crossroads
2. Already past Edge?
How to use it
The Way tab
Tips and counterplay

At a glance


When	At the Edge breakthrough. Already past Edge with no Way? Hold the breathing stance a few seconds
How	Strike a standard to lean toward its Way; strike it again to walk it
The Ways	Blade (offence), Bulwark (defence), Shadowstep (movement), Banner (together)
Nodes	One at Edge, Form and Sovereign. A first choice gives you every node you’ve reached at once
Changing	Burn a Crossroads Incense at a ley crossing
Kept	Through death
See it	The Way tab on the Aura page

How to get it

The crossroads

A couple of seconds after the Edge breakthrough, four cloth standards rise in an arc in front of you: the Blade (a sword on red), the Bulwark (a shield on blue), the Shadowstep (a crescent on violet) and the Banner (a rallying crest on gold). They stand for a minute. Walk more than a dozen blocks away, die or change world and they fade, but you can call them again (below).

Look at a standard: its name and three nodes show above your hotbar.
Strike it with your blade to lean toward it. It flares and the others dim. Striking another moves your lean.
Strike the leaned standard again within eight seconds to walk its Way. Your chat lists its nodes.

Take your time: the Way tab on the Aura page shows every node in full, even while the crossroads stands.

Through the player's own eyes: the four crested cloth standards in a row ahead, the blue shield standard under the crosshair, and above the hotbar the words Way of the Bulwark, Strike to lean toward it, and the names of its three nodes Looking at a standard names its Way and its three nodes.

Already past Edge?

If you’re at Edge or above with no Way, hold the breathing stance (sneak and stand still, blade in hand) for about three seconds after it settles and the crossroads rises round you. It needs open ground. A first choice is free whenever you make it, and gives you every node you’ve reached at once. It won’t rise during a stillness trial.

How to use it

Your nodes work on their own once reached. Each table lists the stage, the passive and the technique it changes.

Way of the Blade

Strike first, strike through, and finish what you start.

Stage	Node	Passive	Changes
Edge	Keen Edge	Clean hits build momentum a third faster	Aura Slash pierces: it cuts through a held guard, reaches ten foes instead of six, and cuts through another crescent, flying on at half strength
Form	Cascade	Finishers add two fifths more (a player’s cap still holds)	Finishers cascade: a finisher opens the nearest creature within five blocks whose stance is half worn or more (never a player or a boss)
Sovereign	Storm of Edges	Each finisher feeds your awakening two seconds instead of one, up to eight	While awakened, Aura Slash costs nothing and is ready again in a second

Wear a crowd down evenly with sweeps and arts, then finish one: the cascade carries on from foe to foe.

Left: a player's crescent of orange aura cutting through one husk and flying on to the husk behind it. Right: a finisher landing on a husk in a ring of light, and a sweep of aura carrying on to open a second husk beside it Keen Edge’s slash cutting through, and a Cascade.

Way of the Bulwark

Stand where you are, and let nothing through.

Stage	Node	Passive	Changes
Edge	Wide Guard	Your stance takes two fifths less wear, and hits knock a third less momentum off you	Aura Guard covers every side, its perfect moment lasts half again as long, a held guard throws a third of each caught blow back, and it turns shots back (for a little aura each)
Form	Living Wall	Aura armour takes a third of each blow instead of a quarter, and costs a fifth less	Intent challenges: creatures near you hunting your allies turn on you, and a creature that strikes your raised guard staggers
Sovereign	Unbroken	While awakened, nothing breaks your stance and foes deal you a fifth less (less against players); spent, you aren’t slowed	Dominion is a bastion: shots from outside are turned back at its edge, and creatures inside are slowed more

Hold the guard more than you normally would: it covers your back, pays you back for every blow and staggers what hits it.

A player standing in a Dominion's circle of runes with a ring of pale blue light at its rim, a skeleton beyond it, and three of its arrows turned back in flashes of light at the Dominion's edge A bastion: shots turned back at its edge.

Way of the Shadowstep

Be where the blow isn’t, and strike where the eye isn’t.

Stage	Node	Passive	Changes
Edge	Slip	Blows and arts from behind wear stance half again as fast	A perfect guard against a blow slips you behind the striker, facing its back
Form	Afterimage	For two seconds after an Aura Step every blow counts as from behind	Aura Step leaves an afterimage that strikes foes beside it a moment later (a little over half a blow each)
Sovereign	Thousand Shadows	A finisher from behind readies your Aura Step at once	While awakened, Aura Step costs nothing, is ready again in a second, and its afterimage strikes twice

Play it as a loop: step through a pack, strike from behind, break the stance, finish from behind, and step again.

Left: a player who has just slipped round a husk's blow to stand at its back, a violet arc on the ground tracing the way they went and a flash where the blow met their guard. Right: a violet afterimage of the player left standing between two husks, striking them as the player stands clear A slip behind its striker, and an afterimage striking where the swordsman stepped from.

No one fights alone while your banner stands.

Stage	Node	Passive	Changes
Edge	Battle Cry	A third of the momentum you build is built by allied swordsmen near you too	Finishers rally: you and allies near you (pets too) take a sixth less from foes for five seconds; allied swordsmen build momentum and share half the aura it gave back
Form	Rallying Presence	A quarter of the aura you gather flows to allied swordsmen near you	Intent steadies: while it presses on a foe, you and allies in its reach take a tenth less
Sovereign	Shelter	Allied swordsmen near you lose a third less momentum to hits, and your awakening holds their momentum at its second tier	Dominion shelters: you and allies inside take a fifth less, allied swordsmen gather aura there, and their momentum doesn’t ebb

“Near” is twelve blocks. Alone, the Banner is the quietest Way; with friends, it’s the strongest.

A rallying cry, and a sheltering Dominion.

A Way’s part

Each Way also lends you a part for techniques of your own: the Blade Pierce, the Bulwark Ward, the Shadowstep Afterimage and the Banner Rally. No scroll or duelist carries Ward or Rally; only a Sword Master’s first clear teaches them for good (Ward from Rime or Dawn, Rally from Verdant). Leave the Way and a technique written with its part rests until you walk the Way again, unless you have learned that part for good.

Who counts as an ally

The Banner (and Living Wall’s challenge) only reaches allies: your scoreboard teammates, or, with no teams, players who couldn’t harm each other. Players who could fight, or who are duelling each other, are never allies. Your pets, and your team’s, share in cries, presence and shelter.

Changing your Way

Changing costs three things at once:

A Crossroads Incense: two Aura Shards (a fallen knight’s), an amethyst shard and blaze powder, crafted together.
A place of power: hold it in use for two seconds at the heart of a ley crossing. Anywhere else it won’t catch, and isn’t used up.
Settling: your old Way goes dark and the crossroads rises to choose again. The new Way’s Edge node is yours at once, its Form node wakes after 120 experience and its Sovereign node after 240, earned by fighting as usual.

You can walk any Way again later, at the same price.

Left: a player burning a Crossroads Incense at a ley crossing, a ring of their Way's red drawn on the ground round them inside the crossing's pale circle. Right: the incense burned and their Way gone, a pale column of light rising over them A Crossroads Incense burning at a ley crossing, and the Way burned away.

The Way tab

The Aura page (the Aura badge on the Cord screen, K) has a Way tab. It shows a tree with a column per Way and a row per stage. Your nodes are framed in gold when in force, half lit while waking after a change, and outlined while still upcoming; other Ways’ nodes are dark. Click or hover a node to read it in full.

The Aura page's Way tab: Your Way: Way of the Banner and its creed, then four columns of emblems (a sword, a shield, a crescent and a pennant) over three rows, Edge, Form and Sovereign, the Banner's column framed in gold and lit, and under it Shelter, Sovereign, in force, with its passive and what it changes The Way tab of a Sovereign walking the Way of the Banner.

Tips and counterplay

The Blade’s finishers against a player stay under every finisher’s cap, and Cascade never opens a player.
The Shadowstep’s strikes from behind never wear more of a player’s stance than one blow may (a third).
The Bulwark’s throw-back and the Blade’s piercing slash are aura off the blade, so a player’s spell defences meet them. The Bulwark’s stagger and the bastion’s extra slow touch creatures only.
Steadying from all sources together never takes off more than three tenths of anything, and less against players.
The Banner never helps an enemy.

Server owners can switch Ways off, change how much a new Way asks before it settles, and tune the Banner’s reach and shares.