Sword Skills System
How Sword Skills work in Echoes of Aincrad — the pre-set attack motions, the SP cost, post-motion recovery, and the proficiency tree that unlocks all 60 skills across the six weapon classes.
Sword Skills are the signature mechanic of Sword Art Online — pre-set attack motions the system executes for you. You don't free-swing a Sword Skill; you ready it, and the game drives your avatar through a choreographed strike that hits far harder than a normal attack. Mastering when to commit one — and surviving the recovery afterwards — is the whole of Aincrad's combat.
How Sword Skills work
Ready, trigger, commit
A Sword Skill starts with a brief pre-motion — you hold the input and the weapon glows as it locks in. Release and the system takes over, carrying your avatar through the full motion automatically. You can't cancel mid-skill, so picking the right moment matters more than raw reflexes.
Post-motion is the cost
After a skill lands there's a recovery window — the “post-motion” — where you're frozen and exposed. The bigger the skill, the longer the freeze. This is the central risk/reward: whiff a heavy skill into a boss combo and the counter can end your run. It's also the most-requested change on the forums — players want combos to chain faster.
SP is the resource
Every skill spends SP (skill points), built through normal combat and spent on specials. Costs run from light pokes to expensive finishers, so you're constantly choosing between several cheap skills or banking for one big hit.
Proficiency unlocks the tree
Each weapon class has ten Sword Skills, one per proficiency rank. Train a weapon by using it and its proficiency rises, unlocking the next skill in that class's tree. Switching weapon classes means starting a fresh tree — a reason to commit to a main early.
Attack types
Every skill's description names the kind of damage it deals. Across the 60 skills in the catalog, three types recur:
Sword Strike (Slash)
25 skillsClean slashing damage — the bread-and-butter cutting motions that make up most of every class's early tree.
Crush Attack
19 skillsBlunt, impact-heavy strikes that lean on stagger and knockback. Maces and the heavier two-handers favour these.
Severing Attack
15 skillsDeep cutting strikes built around raw damage on a single committed hit — the payoff motions you bait an opening for.
Using them well
- →Open with a cheap, fast skill to confirm the hit, then commit a heavy one in the stun.
- →Watch the post-motion: never throw a big skill unless the enemy is staggered or mid-recovery.
- →Parry first, skill second — a parried enemy gives you the safe window a Sword Skill needs.
- →Pick one weapon class and push its proficiency; a full tree beats dabbling across several.
Ready to browse them? See every special in the Sword Skills catalog — grouped by class with full damage scaling — or read up on the six weapon types to pick which tree to main.