Sworn Master Strategy Guide: Ultimate Tips, Builds & Strategies

An Oath to Reclaim Camelot

The air in Camelot is thick with corruption. The once-gleaming banners of the Round Table now hang tattered, symbols of a kingdom betrayed from within. King Arthur, the legendary unifier, has fallen to a creeping darkness, and his loyal knights have become twisted parodies of their noble selves. This is the world of SWORN, a land steeped in Arthurian legend but viewed through a grim, comic-book lens inspired by the distinctive art of Mike Mignola. You are not just a warrior; you are a Soulforged, bound by a sacred oath to purge this evil and reclaim the fallen kingdom.

SWORN is a cooperative action rogue-like for one to four players, thrusting you into a relentless cycle of combat and progression. The core gameplay loop is a dance familiar to fans of the genre: you will fight through treacherous biomes, you will face impossible odds, and you will inevitably fall in battle. But death is not the end. It is a chance to return to the last bastion of hope, grow stronger, and swear your oath anew.

This guide is your sacred text, your own Merlin whispering secrets in your ear. It is designed for both the fresh-faced squire taking their first tentative steps out of the hub and the seasoned knight looking to conquer the highest difficulties. We will journey from the fundamentals of survival to the intricate art of build-crafting, co-op strategy, and ultimate mastery over the blighted realm of Camelot.

Chapter 1: Your First Steps into Darkness (Beginner’s Fundamentals)

The Cycle of Glory and Death

Your quest to purge Camelot is structured into a series of attempts, or “runs.” Each run challenges you to advance through a sequence of combat arenas known as “chambers”. After clearing a chamber of all foes, you will be presented with a choice of rewards—typically a powerful blessing from a Fae Lord—that enhances your abilities for the remainder of that specific run. These boons are temporary; upon death, they are lost, and you must begin the cycle again. This loop of fighting, dying, and restarting is the heart of the rogue-like experience. Every failure is a lesson, teaching you enemy attack patterns and providing you with permanent resources to ensure your next attempt is stronger than the last.

Welcome to the Beacon of Avalore (The Hub)

When a run ends, you will reawaken in the Beacon of Avalore, your sanctuary and the central hub for all permanent progression. This is where the fruits of your perilous journeys are realized, transforming a mere squire into a champion capable of challenging Arthur himself. The name itself—a beacon of light tied to the mythical isle of Avalon—frames this space as the narrative and mechanical anchor of your quest. Get to know its key denizens:

The Source: This is the nexus of your permanent power. Here, you will spend currencies like Moonstones and Grail Water, earned during your runs, to unlock and upgrade passive skills across five distinct trees that benefit all characters.
Nimue: The legendary lady of the lake serves as your armorer. Visit her to spend resources on permanent, incremental upgrades for each specific weapon in the game.
Guinevere: Unlocked as you progress, Guinevere presides over the Potion Lab. This feature, added in the 1.0 release, allows you to brew and equip powerful potions before a run, giving you a crucial edge in combat.
Merlin: The legendary wizard offers his aid, likely connected to the lore and the unlocking of the powerful skill trees you will invest in at The Source.

Combat 101: The Dance of Blades and Sorcery

Success in SWORN is determined by your mastery of its fluid, action-oriented combat. Every encounter is a deadly dance where you must weave together offense and defense. Your core abilities are:

Light Attack: Your primary, rapid-fire attack.
Heavy Attack: A slower, more powerful strike.
Spell: A unique magical ability that often consumes mana.
Dash: A quick burst of movement that grants a brief window of invincibility, allowing you to dodge through attacks.

The fundamental rhythm of combat is learning to dodge and attack. Enemies will signal their intentions with clear visual cues, such as red lines and shapes on the ground indicating the area of effect for an upcoming strike. Your goal is to time your dash to pass through these attacks unharmed and then immediately retaliate during the enemy’s recovery. The battlefields are also littered with environmental traps, such as arrow launchers, which can be turned against your foes with clever positioning.

Chapter 2: The Soulforged Champions of Avalore

SWORN features four distinct playable characters, known as the Soulforged. While you begin with the versatile Vigilante, you will quickly unlock the others by meeting specific in-game requirements. Each character offers a unique approach to combat, with their own set of four weapons and four spells to unlock and master. Choosing the right champion for your preferred playstyle is the first step toward victory.

Character	Unlock Condition	Playstyle Archetype	Core Strengths	Core Weaknesses
Vigilante	Unlocked by Default	Agile All-Rounder	Speed, versatility, strong mix of melee and ranged options.	Low defensive stats, can be fragile if cornered.
Monk	Clear 15 chambers as Vigilante + 20 Fairy Embers	Hybrid Controller	Versatile elemental attacks, party-wide defensive spells.	Can feel less specialized than other classes.
Rook	(Unlock conditions vary)	Heavy Tank	High health and damage, powerful crowd control.	Very slow movement and attack speed.
Spectre	(Unlock conditions vary)	Arcane Assassin	Extremely high magic damage, excellent mobility spells.	Very low health, a true “glass cannon.”

A crucial principle for success on higher difficulties is specialization. While it may be tempting to spread your in-run upgrades across all your abilities, the game’s damage calculations heavily favor a focused approach. Because many damage buffs apply multiplicatively, stacking them all onto a single attack type—be it your Light Attack, Heavy Attack, or Spell—will yield exponentially greater results than a hybrid build. Pick one core damage source for your run and funnel every Fae blessing and upgrade into it.

The Vigilante: The Swift Blade of Justice

As the starting character, the Vigilante is a perfectly balanced warrior, designed to teach you the fundamentals of combat. He is fast, agile, and boasts an arsenal that blends close-quarters combat with safe, ranged pressure. His weapons include a swift short sword, a precise bow, a sweeping bo staff, and the unique, boomerang-like Chakrams. His spells, like Blade Rush, are excellent for repositioning and initiating attacks, making him a slippery and adaptable threat on the battlefield.

The Rook: The Unbreakable Wall

If your philosophy is “the best defense is an overwhelming offense,” the Rook is your champion. He is the quintessential tank, moving slowly but boasting the highest health pool and wielding massive weapons like the Great Hammer and powerful Gauntlets. His attacks are slow but deal devastating damage. His spells complement this playstyle perfectly; Bull Rush allows him to charge into the fray, while Counter is a defensive parry that negates an incoming attack and unleashes a powerful counter-strike. Many in the community consider Counter one of the most powerful spells in the game, turning a defensive necessity into a core part of your damage output.

The Monk: The Sage of Balance

The Monk is a master of versatility and battlefield control, blending martial prowess with potent elemental magic. Her unique weapons, including a lightning-infused Mace and a magical Tome that fires pages at foes, allow for a hybrid playstyle that can adapt to any situation.¹⁴ Her true strength lies in her spells. Storm Call can strike enemies from a distance with continuous shock damage, while Arcane Shield is a game-changer in co-op, providing a temporary shield to all allies that explodes when broken.

The Spectre: The Arcane Assassin

For those who prefer to obliterate their enemies with overwhelming power, the Spectre is the ultimate glass cannon. Fragile but deadly, he can be played as a devastating ranged mage or a lightning-fast melee assassin. His weapons include ethereal Arcane Blades, a life-stealing Scythe, and vicious Claws for close-range combat. His spell list is a toolkit of destruction: Mystic Beam melts foes from afar, he can transform into a living fireball, and his “Blind” spell is a masterpiece of utility, allowing him to teleport across the battlefield and leave an explosion in his wake.

Chapter 3: The Art of War in a Fallen Kingdom (Advanced Combat)

Beyond the Basics: Advanced Techniques

Once you have mastered the fundamental rhythm of combat, you can begin to incorporate more advanced techniques to elevate your play.

Animation Canceling: Many attack animations can be cut short by executing a dash. This allows you to immediately reposition after an attack lands, avoiding retaliation and increasing your overall speed and safety.
Enemy Prioritization: A chaotic chamber can quickly become overwhelming. Learn to identify and eliminate the most dangerous threats first. Typically, this means focusing on ranged enemies who can attack you from off-screen, or enemies that summon additional minions.
Offensive Traps: Do not just avoid environmental hazards; use them. Kiting a large group of enemies into the path of a triggered arrow trap or a floor spike can clear a significant portion of a room without you needing to land a single blow.

Know Your Enemy: A Bestiary of the Corrupted

Camelot is teeming with a variety of monstrous foes, from grenade-lobbing toads to hyper-aggressive elite mosquitos. While a comprehensive list of every enemy’s specific elemental weakness is a project for the community to uncover, the most important “weakness” to exploit is universal: their attack patterns. Every enemy has a set of telegraphed moves. Your primary goal is to learn these patterns through observation. Once you know what an enemy is about to do, you know how to avoid it and when the perfect moment to strike back will be.

Confronting the Corrupted Knights (Boss Guide)

Your journey will be blocked by Arthur’s most powerful servants—his corrupted Knights of the Round Table. These boss encounters are major skill checks that require you to apply all that you have learned.

Gawain: This hulking knight telegraphs his powerful axe swings clearly. The main threat comes from the waves of spikes that erupt from the ground wherever his axe strikes; create distance as soon as you see this attack begin. He will also leap into the air, marking his landing spot with a large red circle. Finally, he will occasionally summon lesser minions to complicate the fight.
Lady Bedivere: This fight is a true test of your awareness. The arena is surrounded by water from which Bedivere will summon “water sharks” that patrol the outer edge, forcing you to stay mobile. She will also summon other creatures onto the main platform and assail you with ranged attacks. The key to this fight is constant movement and managing multiple threats at once.
The Questing Beast (Mini-boss): This mythical creature combines mobility with area denial. It will leap at you and unleash a cone of fireballs, spin its tail in a wide circle, and spit projectiles that create damaging pools on the ground. It can also summon snakes to harass you while you focus on the main beast.

In cooperative play, the sheer number of spell effects can make tracking the boss difficult. A useful strategy is to rely on audio cues for major attacks or designate one player to act as a “shot-caller,” announcing incoming boss abilities to the team.

Chapter 4: Wielding the Power of the Fae (Build-Crafting)

An Audience with the Fae Lords

The core of SWORN‘s immense replayability and strategic depth lies in its blessing system. After clearing most combat chambers, you will be offered a choice of boons from the Fae Lords, powerful entities from myth and legend. With over 200 unique blessings to discover, these choices are what will define your build during each run. Each blessing enhances a specific ability slot (Light Attack, Heavy Attack, Spell, Dash, etc.), imbuing it with new properties, status effects, or raw power.

To help you make informed decisions on the fly, here is a quick-reference table of the major Fae Lords and the build archetypes they support.

Fae Lord	Domain / Theme	Example Blessing Effect
Beira	Ice / Crowd Control	Your attacks inflict Chill, slowing enemies, which can build up to Freeze them solid.
Gogmagog	Stagger / Stun	Your attacks build Stagger, leading to a powerful Stun that incapacitates foes.
Lugh	Critical Hits / Luck	Grants a chance for your attacks to deal critical damage.
Mab	Poison / Lifesteal	Your attacks inflict Venom (poison) and can enable healing on hit (Leech).
Babd	Backstab / Stealth	Enables Backstab for bonus damage and can grant temporary invisibility.
Oberon	Fury / Speed	Successive hits build Fury, increasing your damage and attack speed.
Titania	Ignite / Low-Health	Your attacks can Ignite for a burst of fire damage; some boons are stronger at low health.
Cliona	Weakness / Defense	Your attacks apply Weak, causing enemies to deal less damage.

The Power of Two: Mastering Duo Blessings

The most powerful blessings in the game are Duo Blessings. These rare and potent boons require you to have obtained specific prerequisite blessings from two different Fae Lords, combining their powers in unique ways. Actively building towards a specific Duo Blessing is a hallmark of advanced play. Some of the most impactful Duos to look for include:

Shatter (Beira + Gogmagog): Hitting a Frozen enemy with an attack that inflicts Stagger will shatter the ice for massive damage.
Critical Opening (Gogmagog + Lugh): Massively increases your critical hit chance against Stunned enemies.
Bone Collector (Badb + Gogmagog): A universally powerful blessing. Every kill permanently increases your damage by 1% for the rest of the run, up to a 100% bonus.

The Complete Fae Blessings Codex (Spreadsheet)

For the truly dedicated knights who wish to master the art of theory-crafting, a simple list will not suffice. The community has compiled extensive data on every blessing in the game, and to make this information accessible, a comprehensive spreadsheet is the ultimate tool.

This resource, which can be found through community channels, allows players to filter and sort all available blessings. You can plan your builds with precision, identify the exact prerequisites needed for that game-breaking Duo Blessing, and turn your runs from a game of chance into a calculated assault on Camelot. This tool is indispensable for tackling the highest difficulties and unlocking the true potential of every character.

Chapter 5: Forging a Worthy Champion (Meta-Progression & Economy)

While the Fae blessings provide temporary power, your true, lasting strength is forged at the Beacon of Avalore. This is the meta-progression system, where you invest resources earned from every run into permanent upgrades that make you stronger for all future attempts.

The Beacon of Avalore’s Skill Trees

At The Source in the hub, you can spend Grail Water and Moonstones to unlock nodes in five distinct skill trees. The path you take through these trees will significantly impact your power curve.

Life Tree: This tree is all about survivability. It offers increased health, more potent healing, and even extra lives (think “Death Defiance” from Hades). For new players, this should be your absolute first priority. More survivability means more time to learn the game’s mechanics.
War Tree: This tree focuses on your offensive and defensive capabilities. Its most crucial upgrade is an additional charge for your dash, a massive boost to both mobility and survivability that is essential for all levels of play.
Treasure Tree: As you become more proficient, your success will depend on finding the right blessings. This tree helps you manipulate that randomness by granting additional reroll dice, allowing you to discard undesirable blessing choices and hunt for the ones your build needs.
Wealth Tree: This tree is focused on the in-run economy. Upgrades here will let you start a run with more gold and receive discounts at shops, giving you a head start on acquiring powerful items and blessings.
Devotion Tree: This is generally considered a lower-priority tree, offering more specialized, late-game bonuses. One notable upgrade, “Chaos,” enhances the damage of status effects like Venom and Bleed, making it valuable for specific builds.

This progression system is deliberately paced. It first provides a shield (Life Tree) for new players, then a better sword (War Tree and weapon unlocks), and finally, the tools to control fate itself (Treasure Tree).

An Economy of Souls and Steel (Currency Management)

You will collect several types of currency on your quest. Knowing what each one does is vital for efficient progression.

Gold: An in-run currency used at shops to purchase temporary blessings, health, or other boons. It is lost upon death.
Fairy Embers & Crystal Shards: Permanent currencies used primarily to unlock new weapons and spells for each of the four characters.
Grail Water & Moonstones: The primary permanent currencies used to purchase upgrades in the five skill trees at The Source.

Nimue’s Forge & The Sword in the Stone (Weapon Crafting)

Crafting in SWORN is a system of upgrading and augmenting your existing arsenal.

Nimue’s Upgrades: At the Beacon of Avalore, you can visit Nimue to spend resources on permanent, incremental stat boosts for each of your unlocked weapons. These are small but consistent power gains.
Sword in the Stone (Anvils): During a run, you may encounter a “Sword in the Stone” event. This offers a choice of three powerful, run-defining augments for your weapons and spells. These “Anvil” upgrades are often the key to unlocking a build’s full potential, such as the “Dual Core” and “Rapid Fire” augments that turn the Monk’s Crystal Turrets into an overwhelming force.

Chapter 6: United Against Tyranny: A Co-op Masterclass

The Power of Four

While SWORN is a fully-featured solo experience, it is designed from the ground up as a 4-player cooperative adventure. All rewards, from Gold to Fae blessings, are shared equally among the party, even if a player is downed during combat. This encourages teamwork and ensures that everyone progresses together.

Dream Team Compositions

Synergy is the key to success in co-op. A well-balanced team can cover each other’s weaknesses and amplify their strengths. Consider these classic compositions:

The Wall and the Cannon: A Rook player can draw enemy aggression and group them together, while a Spectre player unleashes devastating area-of-effect spells from a safe distance.
The Guardian Angels: A Monk player using Arcane Shield can provide party-wide defensive buffs, dramatically increasing the survivability of fragile damage-dealers like the Spectre or Vigilante.

Co-op Blessing Strategy

Coordination extends to your blessing choices. Instead of four players all building independently, you can create powerful synergies across the team. For example, one player can dedicate their build to applying the “Weak” status effect from Cliona’s blessings. The other three players can then choose blessings from other Fae that gain massive bonuses when attacking Weakened enemies. Always prioritize “Round Table Blessings” when they appear, as these provide powerful buffs to the entire party.

Communication is Key

Effective communication is your sharpest weapon. Call out the locations of high-priority targets, coordinate the use of ultimate abilities to burst down bosses, and discuss which chamber reward will benefit the team most. In the chaos of a four-player boss fight, clear communication can mean the difference between victory and defeat.

Chapter 7: The Spoils of War: DLC and The Future of Camelot

Current DLC Content

As of the 1.0 release, all available downloadable content for SWORN is cosmetic. There are individual cosmetic packs for the Vigilante, Rook, Monk, and Spectre, which allow you to change their appearance. These packs do not affect gameplay and are a way to support the developers while personalizing your favorite knight.

The Road Ahead

The developers at Windwalk Games have confirmed that the 1.0 launch is just the beginning for SWORN. Plans for post-launch content are in the works, promising more adventures in the fallen kingdom. Additionally, a version for the Nintendo Switch is planned for a future release date, bringing the co-op action to even more players.

Conclusion: Your Legend Begins

The path to liberating Camelot is paved with glorious death and hard-won wisdom. Mastery of SWORN is a journey of a thousand runs, each one a lesson in combat, a puzzle of build-crafting, and a story of perseverance. With the knowledge in this guide, you are now equipped to take up your arms, swear your oath, and forge your own legend.

Now, go forth, Soulforged. Share your greatest triumphs, your most broken builds, and your legendary co-op stories in the comments below. Camelot awaits.

Disclaimer: This is an unofficial fan work, all trademarks and copyrights for Sworn belong to the developer Windwalk Games.

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