First Duel Guide

Quick Guide on how to win the first duel in the game.

Introduction

This guide is to help win with the duel against Seign after the first war battle. To avoid spoilers for people I will refer to them as O for opponent.

I beat this fight at level 22 and using a HP rune by farming near the village you recently went to before the events unfold. Otherwise I had my weapon max upgraded and the best armour I could get.

I do think a bit of RNG is involved with this so if you fail then you will have to redo the whole event again. Reminder that if you hold B on the xbox controller it skips cut-scenes which helped me with attempting this multiple times.

Phase 1

During this first part, you follow a strict order of events.

Attack > Counter > Attack > Counter > Break

As far as this battle is concerned, whenever you get the option to break, always take it. It will progress you onto the next phase immediately.

Phase 2

During this phase, you and your opponent will have swapped places and the actions are RNG. Refer to the following table for when to do each action

Line	Action
Nowa: I'm sorry, O, But you're not getting in my way.	Attack
O: Try Me!	Counter
O: Here I come Nowa!	Counter
O: In the name of House Kesling, I will bring you in line!	Counter

As a reminder, whenever you get the break option, use it immediately to progress to the next phase.

Phase 3

You will change scenes for this section and will be under a bridge as you fight, or rather next to it. When you first get to this section, your first two actions are the most important as they give you a buff and your opponent a debuff. As soon as you get here to buff your attack and debuff their attack, do the following actions

Attack > Counter

After this, the duel becomes RNG again so follow the next table:

Line	Action
O: Fight harder Nowa!	Attack
Nowa: I'll never win if i stay on the defensive!	Attack
O: I will not hold back!	Counter
Nowa: He's tough...	Counter

As another reminder, once you get the option to break, break asap to get to the final phase

Phase 4

This final part is scripted again. Once you get to this point you just have to hope you you have enough HP to get through the final part. This event will proceed as following:

Counter > Counter > Break!

And with that, you will have completed the first duel.

[Jurisprudence]

Such whiny little babies in these comments.

[LoadedVirus]

I beat the fight at level 24, you NEED a 15% HP rune or you won't make it. Also when on phase 4 drag it out as far as your health will allow to get more tension to increase your odds of winning, you don't seems to get anything for winning but it feels nice to see him fall.

[J-Russ]

Followed the guide to the letter and still lost early phase 3

[omnislash024]

The fact that this fight happens right after a Battle, has no Save Point in between EVEN THOUGH the Innkeeper is standing right there is bad enough. But they have to make this duel near impossible to win with no way to know how it even work without a tutorial is mind boggling. It probably should have happened a bit later in the game? Sheesh, give us an easy duel. Yep, bad design.

[Yaseeda]

Try building burst gauge before using it in final phase, like it was suggested. I maxed it, and got victory without problems.

[tonberry]

Even if you do everything right you still can loose. Sadly it´s a little bit random.

[Mr Fantastic]

This fight is absolute trash game design, it's heavily scripted and you cannot even save the game between the invasion and this fight. At the end of the fight you have only a small % of being able to execute the break, so you have to try it several times and the only thing you get is a couple different lines of text.

[Vim]

I've tried this at level 17, 23 and 26; and the duel seems to have absolutely nothing to do with my stats. Even picking every right option, I can't win this duel.

[Caspertfg1]

Thanks for the Guide, it worked for me. I also had to be lvl 22, tried to win at lvl 20 but it seems impossible.

[Schion.93]

for those who find themselves still losing even though they managed to reach the end of phase 4, its because the final clash is rng based and the description for break says it "has a chance of failing if the meter is too low", so a way to increase your chances of winning would be to counter as many times as possible to raise the tension meter (one indicator that might help determine if you have enough health to tank a hit is if Nowa is kneeling or not) and finally, you can easily tell who won in the cutscene immediately after the clash by who is calling out the characters names, Lian calling Nowa if he lost and Hildi calling Seign if you won