Soulframe Virtues System Guide (Complete): Courage, Spirit & Grace Explained

Version note: This guide reflects Soulframe Open Preludes Alpha — Preludes 16, which opened to all PC players for free on November 6, 2026. Preludes 17: "Verse of the Veilands" is expected later in November 2026 and will bring major changes — rideable Omen Wolf mounts, the Veilands region-progression system, fishing, and a new Pact — so some numbers here may shift when it lands. Any value marked [to verify] is community-sourced or volatile and should be re-checked in-game before publishing.

Virtues are the beating heart of Soulframe's build system. Where Warframe uses Mods, Soulframe uses Virtues — three attributes that decide how hard your weapons hit, how effective your abilities are, and how much health you have. If you only learn one system in Soulframe, learn this one.

What Are Virtues?

Your Envoy has three Virtues, plus one derived stat:

• Courage — strength, bravery, resolve. Scales melee damage and survivability.
• Spirit — empathy, imagination, arcanics. Scales magick damage and ability cooldowns.
• Grace — cunning, agility, insight. Scales critical hits, stability, and stealth.
• Life — your health pool. Life is derived: it grows as your Virtues grow, and Courage contributes by far the most to it.

Virtues power two core mechanics: Arcanic scaling (each of a Pact's three abilities is tied to one Virtue) and Attunement (how weapons and armor scale off your Virtue values).

The Three Virtues in Detail

Courage

• The "warrior" Virtue. Every point makes you tankier and beefs up heavy melee.
• Empowers the first Arcanic of every Pact, regardless of which Pact you use.
• Adds the most Life per point. Community-derived value: roughly 12 Life per point [to verify].
• Heavy armor scales off Courage.

Spirit

• The "caster" Virtue. Drives magick damage and shortens ability cooldowns.
• Empowers the second Arcanic of every Pact.
• Community-derived Life value: roughly 3 Life per point [to verify].
• Light armor scales off Spirit.

Grace

• The "rogue" Virtue. Boosts critical hits, Stability (stagger resistance), and finisher/ambush damage; also reduces how easily enemies detect you while sneaking.
• Empowers the third Arcanic of every Pact.
• Community-derived Life value: roughly 4 Life per point [to verify].
• Medium armor scales off Grace.

How You Gain Virtue Points

Virtue points come from several sources. The most important changed in the Preludes 13 rework:

• Envoy Rank — the main source. You gain +1 Virtue point per Envoy rank, starting with roughly 16 points as a fresh character [to verify].
• Virtue Prisms — since Preludes 13 you no longer manually spend points. You equip one of 12 Prisms, which automatically distribute every point you earn across Courage, Spirit and Grace according to its profile. Starter Prisms lean one way; hybrid and "extreme" Prisms let you dump everything into a single Virtue.
• Talismans — equipment that grants flat Virtue bonuses.
• Pact choices — some Pacts give a passive base increase to their aligned Virtue.
• Pact Arts Tree — investing in Virtue passives.
• Fable choices — certain dialogue decisions during Fables (e.g. The Shewolf Snared, The Waste Bear) grant a permanent +1 to a specific Virtue. Replaying the Fable lets you change the choice.
• Temporary buffs — Virtue Elixirs and Echo Stones.

The takeaway: your Prism decides the shape of your build, while rank-ups, talismans, Pacts and Fables add more points on top.

Weapon Attunement & the Threshold Rule

This is the single most misunderstood rule in Soulframe, and the one that will silently ruin your damage if you ignore it.

• Every weapon has a Virtue Requirement (a threshold) on one or more Virtues.
• If you are below the requirement, you get NO Attunement bonus at all. The bonus is not reduced — it is completely disabled. In-game this shows as a red number with greyed-out Attunement symbols.
• Dual-Virtue weapons must meet both requirements simultaneously. Meeting only one still gives zero Attunement scaling.
• Some weapons have no requirement and scale freely from the start (ideal early-game picks).

Once you meet the threshold, the weapon gains Attunement bonus damage based on the matching Virtue:

• Each Attunement pip on a weapon adds bonus damage per point in that Virtue. Community-derived scaling: roughly +0.5 damage per point per pip [to verify].
• Pips are capped (community reports a max of 5 pips per Virtue) [to verify].
• Total Attunement bonus is capped at about 150% of the weapon's base damage [to verify].
• Reforging with a Blessed Joinery adds an extra Attunement pip to a weapon, improving its scaling for that Virtue.

Practical rule: a weapon you can't "Attune" is a weapon doing far less than its tooltip suggests. Always check the Virtue Requirement before you craft or equip.

Armor Attunement

Armor is attuned to a specific Virtue, and its defensive stats scale with that Virtue's value:

Free Respec

Soulframe is refreshingly generous here:

• Since Preludes 15, you can freely reassign your Courage / Spirit / Grace points per loadout, from Arsenal → Virtues, with no consumable and no cost.
• The old Virtue Lith respec item has been removed entirely.

This means you should experiment freely: try a Courage-heavy melee build, then respec into Spirit for a magick run, at zero penalty.

Which Virtue Should You Stack?

Values to Verify In-Game

The following are community-sourced or version-sensitive and should be confirmed before final publication:

• Life per point: Courage ~12 / Spirit ~3 / Grace ~4
• Starting Virtue points (~16) and +1 per Envoy rank
• Attunement pip scaling (+0.5/point), pip cap (5), and 150% total bonus cap
• Exact Prism names (e.g. "Warrior of Mora", "Iridis' Shaman", "Rogue to Saphene") and their distribution profiles