The Dueling Greatsword is a two-handed Slash weapon in Windrose that scales with Agility and rewards aggressive parry play. Its Retaliation perk turns every Perfect Block into a stacking damage buff, which makes it one of the more interactive greatswords in the early and mid game.
What the Dueling Greatsword does
The base weapon deals 315 Slash damage with 100 ATK at level 1, scaling up to 380 ATK at item level 15. It scales with Agility at B rank in the Rare tier and A rank once ascended to Epic, putting it firmly in the agile two-hander bracket alongside sabers and blunderbusses.
The defining trait is the Retaliation effect. Every successful Perfect Block adds a stack that increases your melee damage by 10%, capping at three stacks for a 30% bonus. Taking any damage strips the buff entirely, so the weapon punishes sloppy defense as much as it rewards clean parries. The Epic ascension keeps that effect and layers on a 10% Health refund whenever you Perfect Block at maximum stacks.
| Tier | Effect |
|---|---|
| Rare | Each Perfect Block applies Retaliation, increasing Melee Damage by 10%. Stacks up to 3 times. Taking damage removes all stacks. |
| Epic (added) | A Perfect Block at maximum stacks restores 10% Health. |
Crafting the Rare Dueling Greatsword
The Rare blade is craftable at a Weaponsmith Workshop. Both ingredients are early-zone materials, which means the weapon is realistically obtainable well before you reach the Foothills proper.
Step 1: Build or visit a Weaponsmith Workshop. The Level 1 station is enough to produce the Rare variant, so you do not need any advanced workshop upgrades at this point.
Step 2: Gather the materials. You need 10 Copper Ingots, smelted from Copper Ore at a Furnace, and 2 Rough Hide from boars and similar wildlife in the Coastal Jungle.
Step 3: Open the Weaponsmith crafting menu, select Dueling Greatsword, and queue the craft. The finished weapon arrives at level 1 with 100 ATK and the Rare-tier Retaliation perk active.
If you would rather skip crafting, the Rare version also drops from a wide spread of pirate camps and ruined locations. The drop chances are uniform across the listed sources, so any of these can roll the weapon.
| Source | Location type | Drop chance |
|---|---|---|
| Blackbeard Crew Chest | Pirate camps (small, large, cliffside, near shipwreck) | 20% |
| Buccaneers' Chest | Abandoned Buccaneer Camp | 20% |
| Decrepit Chest | World loot containers | 20% |
| Old Skeleton | Ancient Farm, Fire Sanctuary, Buccaneer Fort, Jungle Cave | 20% |
| Smugglers' Chest | Smuggler's Cache | 20% |
| Thomas Richards' Chest | Blackbeard Pirate Camp | 20% |
Ascending to the Epic Dueling Greatsword
Ascension is the bigger power spike. Pushing the Rare blade to Epic raises its Agility scaling from B to A and unlocks the Health-restore line on top of Retaliation.
Step 1: Acquire the Dueling Two-Handed Sword plan. The Epic recipe will not appear at the Weaponsmith Workshop until the plan is in your inventory.
Step 2: Stockpile 9 Tumbaga Ingots. Tumbaga is found inside the ruins scattered across the map, which require 1 Rope to rappel into. Bring extra rope if you plan to clear several ruins in one trip.
Step 3: Return to a Weaponsmith Workshop equipped with an anvil and bellows. Place the Rare Dueling Greatsword and the 9 Tumbaga Ingots into the ascension recipe. The Rare weapon is consumed in the process, and the Epic version replaces it with the new perk active.
Some workflows also use Foothills Iron Ingots and Smithing Flux for intermediate upgrade steps. Smithing Flux is sold by the smugglers operating out of Port Royal if you cannot find it through exploration.
How to play around Retaliation
The weapon's identity rests entirely on Perfect Blocks. A clean parry adds 10% melee damage; chain three of them and your next swing lands at +30%. A single hit absorbed at any stack count wipes the bonus, so the practical loop is: parry, parry, parry, commit to a heavy attack while the buff is live, then reset.
Greatsword heavies cost more stamina than saber heavies, so weave light attacks between heavy commits to avoid bottoming out your stamina bar mid-combo. Once you reach Epic, the 10% Health refund at max stacks effectively gives the build its own sustain, which softens the cost of holding three stacks during a long fight.
How it compares to other greatswords
Greatswords in Windrose all share Slash damage and Agility scaling, but each has a distinct identity. The Dueling Greatsword leans into active defense, while its peers reward stamina management, posture, or special-attack burst.
| Weapon | Damage | Scaling (Rare → Epic) | Identity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Two-Handed Sword | 300 Slash | Agility (B) | Uncommon baseline, no special effect |
| Dueling Greatsword | 315 Slash | Agility (B → A) | Perfect Block stacks for damage and healing |
| Stalwart Greatsword | 310 Slash | Agility (A → S) | +1 Posture Point, +20% Critical Damage at Epic |
| Soul Eater | 325 Slash | Agility (C → B) | Health-draining special attack on a 2-minute cooldown |
If you parry consistently, the Dueling Greatsword competes with anything in the class. If your timing is unreliable, the Stalwart Greatsword's posture and crit bonuses are a more forgiving alternative.
Talent and gear pairings
Agility builds pull from the Agility and Fencer talent branches. Useful picks for a greatsword loadout include anything that widens the Perfect Block window, boosts Slash damage, or extends Retaliation's stack duration. Two-handed damage talents stack multiplicatively with Retaliation's 10% per stack, which is where most of the weapon's late-game scaling comes from.
For armor, the Flibustier set is the standard Agility shell, though its 4-piece bonus rewards one-handed damage and fits sabers more naturally than greatswords. With the Dueling Greatsword specifically, prioritize sets that improve stamina regeneration or damage resistance to support extended parry exchanges.
Respeccing talents costs in-game currency, so commit to the Agility tree before sinking points into adjacent branches. Greatsword play locks out off-hand pistols entirely while the weapon is equipped, so plan your ranged option around weapon swaps rather than dual-wielding.