Oath: Bladeharper

“ Your presence here... We both know what it means. If you believe yourself ready, this is where you shall pledge yourself to the Blade. ”

― The Blade Within

Description

Oath: Bladeharper is one of the 17 obtainable Oaths in Deepwoken. It's known for the user's ability to gain extreme proficiency with its slash-based attacks, and the ability to massively buff its offensive means by landing consecutive hits or sacrificing health.

“ Within your mind, many futures present themselves before you. Only your own must stand supreme. ”

― The Blade Within

The Bladeharper Oath is a result of the player conducting a Reflection Ritual at the Sky Statues scattered around the Luminants. The user makes a Vow with their own weapon, to spend the rest of their future with their own blade, out of the many futures presented to them during the Reflection Ritual.

Obtainment

The Oath requires 25 AGL or STR, plus either 75 points in Medium Weapon or a total of 90 points spread across any Weapon stats. The weapon equipped by a player must also not be Fists, else the interaction will not start the Oath quest.
Interact with one of the numerous Sky Statues located throughout both Luminants. This will transport you to Blade Within.
Defeat Mind's Reflection (a 1:1 copy of yourself, including weapon, Talents and mantras) to obtain the Oath.
1. It will use all mantras you have, not just the ones you have equipped and also Bladeharper mantras you haven't unlocked(Ex, at the first he can use palmstrike and at the last he can use decimate). It's best to get rid of unwanted mantras via Deep Shrines if you're not ready.
2. It seems to not have the same mantra modifiers that you may have. For example: Frostdraw's Warden Blades can become bigger using stratus stones but the mirror will have the original size and possibly the original level (not tested).
3. The mirror starts out with 1 life in the first encounter, increasing by 1 for each encounter (1 + 2 + 3). When the mirror loses a life and still has lives, it vents then teleports back within the center of the Blade Within to return to neutral. This makes 6 in total to obtain and fully progress the oath. NOTE: Losing to your Bladeharper NPC DOES result in losing a life.

For a more in-depth walkthrough, consider watching this video.

Bladeharper can be reobtained if you Oathbreak it.

Progression

The Oath can be progressed through interaction with the different other Sky Statues and defeating Mind's Reflection again with each, up to three times, granting the player up to 2 mantras and corresponding Talents.

Obtaining the Oath grants Lithe Step and Palm Strike.
The second Sky Statue yields Soaring Storm and Untouchable.
The final Sky statue will give Reveal, Float Like A Butterfly, and Decimate.

Effects

Upon obtaining this Oath, two snake bracelets will wrap around your arms.

Abilities

Passives

True Strength
- By proccing Untouchable or Reveal, enter the True Strength state.
  - If procced from Untouchable, it lasts 15 seconds. If procced from Reveal, the set duration is removed, but you passively Wither your own health bar instead (lowers your maximum HP).
- Lowers Lithe Step's cooldown from 3s to 1s.
- Grants access to Float like a Butterfly.
- Removes the proc condition on Soaring Storm and increases its damage.
- Empowers your Bladeharper Mantras. True Strength's affects are listed under each Mantra.
- Grants a Speed Boost. This Speed Boost can be used to proc Talents (e.g. Speed Demon or Cheap Shot) and lasts for the entire duration of True Strength.

Talents

Lithe Step - When Sprinting, roll-cancel and instantly vanish and surge with unmatched speed
- Makes the player briefly invisible, similar to Rush of Ancients.
- Lithe Step will not provide immunity frames to your dodge, but grants a noticeable speed boost during it.
- Lithe Step has a 3 second cooldown. This cooldown is reduced to 1 second while in True Strength.
Obtainment: Obtained along with the Oath, after the first Mind Reflection fight.

Soaring Storm - Empower your uppercuts with the way of the blade, after Lithe Stepping, flourishing, or landing an Oath ability.
- Deals a total of 24 Oath & Slash damage (hits 6 times with each hit dealing 4 damage).
- Proc condition is removed and damage is increased if in True Strength.
- Deals 6.5 Oath & Slash damage per tick in True Strength, dealing 39 damage total.
- Applies to all forms of uppercuts, including Mantras such as Rising Flame, Round Spark Skyshatter Kick, or certain weapon criticals such as the Wraithclaw.
- Obtainment: Obtained after the second Mind Reflection fight.

Untouchable - By landing consecutive hits on your opponent without taking any damage, reveal your True Strength for a short duration.
- Upon proccing Untouchable, enter the True Strength state for 15 seconds where your uppercuts, air attack, and Oath mantras are empowered.
- To proc the Talent you must build up 10 Untouchable stacks by landing your attacks.
  - Weapon attacks build up 2 stacks each, resulting in 5 hits for Untouchable to proc. You gain stacks for every hit on a multihitting critical, allowing you to instantly enter True Strength with some weapon criticals.
  - Non weapon attacks (like Burn, Mantras, Eruptions, etc.) build up 1 stack each. Bleed does not build up stacks however.
Obtainment: Obtained after the second Mind Reflection fight along with Soaring Storm.

Float Like a Butterfly - While having True Strength active, cancel your air dash to enter a frenzy of slashes.
- It has a cooldown of 5 seconds.
- Deals a total of 28 Oath & Slash damage (hits 4 times with each hit dealing 7 damage).
- Only accessible when True Strength is active.
- It is movestackeable with any Mantra that can be casted mid-air.
- Obtainment: Obtained after the third and final Mind Reflection fight.

Reveal - Pour your heart out, and reveal your true strength.
- Toggle On and Off the True Strength state.
- While in Reveal's True Strength state, you passively build up Wither (reduced max HP) on yourself.
- If you go below 10% HP, Reveal will automatically turn off.
- This takes about 2.5 SECONDS TO ACTIVATE. Use it wisely, or not at all.
- Oddly enough, this procs things that require you to take damage like Agitating Spark and Prediction despite Reveal not actually dealing damage. Your current HP does not need to get replaced with Wither for this to take effect, and other sources of Wither application/True Strength do not do this.
Obtainment: Obtained after the final Mind Reflection fight along with Float Like a Butterfly

Mantras

Combat Mantras

Palm Strike - Slice your opponent with your palm.
- You are slowed down when using this mantra.
- Deals 31 Oath & Blunt damage.
- If True Strength is active, you'll uppercut your foe, ascending both you and your target in the air, dealing the base damage a second time and proccing a flurry of slashes which deal 16 damage total (4 slashes that deal 4 damage each).
  - Deals a total of 78 Oath & Physical damage in True Strength (31 base hit + 31 uppercut + (4 * 4 slashes)). The base hit and uppercut deal Oath & Blunt, while the slashes deal Oath & Slash.
- Obtainment: Obtained with the Oath, after the first Mind Reflection fight along with Lithe Step.
  Without True Strength
  With True Strength

Decimate - Cut through your opponent.
- Deals 18.67 Oath & Slash damage twice (37.34 total damage).
- If True Strength is active, this attack will extend to nearby enemies. Once you teleport to a new enemy, hit them with a significantly weakened Decimate and proc a flurry of slashes. The weakened decimate deals 0.1 damage and the slashes deal 12 damage total (3 slashes that deal 4 damage each).
  - Deals a total of 49.74 Oath & Slash damage in True Strength (18.67 * 2 base hits + 0.1 teleport + (4 * 3 slashes)).
- Direct hits autogrip players if low enough or knocked.
- Obtainment: Obtained after the final Mind Reflection fight along with Reveal and Float Like a Butterfly
  Without True Strength
  With True Strength

Note: Attacks with multiple damage typings will be resisted by whatever resistance is higher (e.g. if you had 35% Blunt resistance and 30% Wind resistance, you'd resist 35% of Rising Wind's damage). In this case, all of Bladeharper's attacks deal Oath and Physical damage. This means they will be resisted by your Physical resistance unless you're using Oathless and you have less than 20% Physical resistance.

Strategy

The mirror is an NPC and so it does not come up with tactics and plans before the fight, it simply uses abilities periodically and swings its sword.

Before even fighting the mirror, it is best for you to have some sort of mobility, because the Statues can be quite difficult to get to. (Except for the one behind Lord Regent's palace). Strong Leap and some agility could work.

It is recommended to have mantras for this fight and a high Attunement level as it allows you to use your mantras more often then it will, but do not spam, as it can parry or dodge some moves. Stay calm and use your Ether wisely in order to overwhelm the mirror. If you have played the game for a while then it should take probably a little longer to have the mirror killed.

When fighting the mirror keep in mind that it has all of your Talents and such, but there are times when it can do something that you haven't seen before. The mirror gains the next progression of the Oath whilst fighting it; For example on the second fight they will possess only Soaring Storm and Untouchable when fighting so plan accordingly.

The mirror parries quite often along with dodging your moves at times, but it does not vent unless it loses a life. It also has a tendency to stay just outside of your range (and in turn you will stay just outside of your mirror's), so use this opportunity to hit it with mantras, another way to abuse this is by staying away, taking that time to heal and get back into fighting.

If you still have difficulty fighting it then try switching to a weaker weapon, though this is not recommended as this can slow down your ability to kill the mirror and causes you to rely mostly on your mantras. But on the other hand, this causes the mirror to also be weaker as it also deals less damage but if you are hit too much then it is just better for you to distance yourself and wait for the mirror to make a mistake and fight back.

Finally the most important piece of advice, stay calm, as you would with any and every enemy in the game. Good luck in your fights.

Trivia

The statue in the center of the Blade Within will be the weapon you had equipped when you were teleported.
The Oath bracelets were formerly called "Snakerings" (as viewed from the Dye Packet UI), which was later changed to "Bladeharper Serpents," then changed again to "Bladeharper Cosmetic".
Its obtainment method is inspired by the way in which Ichigo Kurosaki, the protagonist of BLEACH, obtained his "Bankai" ability.
This Oath may be related to Isshin: both are elegant blade-wielding combatants with a snake motif.
The slashing effects closely resemble the "Cleave" and "Dismantle" abilities of Ryomen Sukuna from Jujutsu Kaisen.
Originally, Decimate could not be used on Fist weapons of any kind. This was theorized to be due to Melonbeard's disliking to the Fist weapon class, which he is very open about.
- When asked about this, Melonbeard said "No Sukuna build"
- As a carryover from this, you still cannot enter the Blade Within while wielding a fist weapon. With that being said, the Oath and all of its abilities function like normal with this weapon type.
Strangely, the mirror self can use Tacet Drop Kick even if you don't have the Mantra or the Murmur, but they won't use weapon Mantras.
The mirror self's moveset doesn't change if you die and go back to fight it again. Additionally it seems to reuse the AI from Maestro Evengarde Rest.
Bladeharper's icon is off-center.