This is not entirely my build. It is a result of extrapolating some do's and don't's from random bits of hearsay dropped by more experienced players. I am no master, and the build is likely not perfect, but it is nonetheless effective, and until there are more up to date guides on buildcrafting, this one should be more than a rock solid baseline for 1-handers to rip through the story mode with, hard mode included.

A new dificulty mode has been introduced since this guide was written called expert, but the only things it really changes are nerf the Healing Potion and butcher the Barrier skill. No real adjustments are necessary.

Arcade is a different beast. This build theoretically should work there as well, but due to Arcade's nature it's a whole lot more risk for not all that much reward.

If you're in a hurry and just need the raw build without any explanations, here it is:


Skills

One-handed - Blade Flurry, Shadowclones
Magic - Static Touch
Utility - Barrier, Blink, Empower, Haste, Fortify


Talents

Melee - Combo Starter, Burning Weapon, Insult to Injury, Second Wind, Knowledge is Power, Brawler, Backhander
Magic - Intelligence
General - Surgeon, Brutality, Got You Covered, Utility Flow, Lady Luck, Quick Reflexes, Fine Taste


Endgame Gear

Accessories - Mysterious Cube + Magic Battery
Weapon - Wooden Leg
Shield - Crab
Armor - Crab
Hat - Ornate Helmet / Crab
Facegear - Evil Eye Mask / Blindfold / Crab
Shoes - Mushroom Slippers


How do I?

Use utilities. Precast Static Touch before engaging, giver 'er a few good whacks with the basic attack, then Blade Flurry. Rince repeat the last two steps until one of you dies.

Meat & Potatoes

The foundation of the build consists of three skills: Blade Flurry and Shadowclones from the one-handed category, and Static Touch from the air magic category. These are the three main offense skills that the build hinges upon.

The core attack pattern consists of casting Static Touch at the start of an engagement, and then performing a combo of priming the target with a few basic attacks (I prefer to do 3 strikes personally) before landing a Blade Flurry finisher, then repeating said combo until you run out of enemies. On rare occasions it might happen that you run out of Static Touch cubes during a fight. This may happen if you overindulged in basic attacks and didn't perform enough Blade Flurries. In that case you're gonna have to recast it. Shouldn't happen often thoughever.

The overall upgrade order should be: 1 point in each first, then upgrade Blade Flurry until silver, then Static Touch, then Shadowclones. You go in that order because Blade Flurry is the main DPS, and Static Touch receives a massive power boost when silvered because it will spawn additional cubes for each Blade Flurry you cast, allowing you to keep your cubes up without having to constantly recast them. Once you start getting gold points, you should definitely focus on maxing out Blade Flurry first. Afterwards you get some wiggle room, but realistically you will only have 2 fully gilded skills. Personally I maxed out Shadowclones, but that's because I have a very strong fascination with that skill. Maxing out Static Touch instead is more likely than not to yield higher DPS, but I have done no testing to back that up.


Secondary Skills

The most important and high priority secondary skill is Barrier, from the Utility category. It is an immensely powerful defensive skill that will significantly boost your staying power. However, in the expert difficulty that has been added to the game since this guide was written, Barrier sees a tremendous nerf that increases its cooldown from 15 to 50 seconds and decreases the number of hits it can handle from a respectable 5 to a pathetic 2. This is a significant nerf that makes Barrier nowhere near as gamechanging as it was on hard, but it's still a neat enough thing to put one point into for boss fights, I suppose. Kinda worthless in grinding areas though. I invest only 1 point into mine because it pops from a single hit most of the time anyway.

After you have pumped all the silver points into your "Holy Trinity" and put at least one point into Barrier, some wiggle room will open up as to what else you can use.

If you're playing on hard/expert, you will EXTREMELY likely want a mobility skill. There are some choices here, that being Blink, Dodging Strike, and Piercing Dash. I recommend Blink. Dodging Strike is gimmicky and includes far too many variables to consider, and Piercing Strike is much less versatile. Blink is a rock-solid mobility skill that does its main job as well as a mobility skill in this game possibly can. Keep in mind that Blink benefits the most out of all Utility skills from being upgraded. You will really feel the difference between level 1 and level 3 Blink, since level 3 makes your first (as in, without the blink lag debuffs) Blink literally free.

After Barrier and Blink, I personally favor getting all three of the Enhancement skills - Empower, Haste, and Fortify. They're fairly substantial buffs, although keeping tabs on them can be a hassle. I recommend at the very least getting and keeping up Fortify if you really don't want to use all three for one reason or another.

The Essentials

Melee - Combo Starter, Burning Weapon, Insult to Injury, Second Wind
Magic - [NULL]
General - Surgeon, Brutality

These are the high priority talents. The ones in Melee are your "primers" - they're the reason you do your basic attacks inbetween Blade Flurries. Combo Starter boosts your Blade Flurry crit. Burning Weapon will maintain a debuff on a target so that you can capitalize on it with Insult to Injury. Second Wind will assist you with recovering EP inbetween your flurries, since the skill is quite "voracious" at 45 EP when fully gilded. Surgeon and Brutality are mostly just solid DPS options, but Surgeon will also help you when you obtain a certain piece of equipment that I will go into in more detail later.

The Nice-To-Haves

Melee - Knowledge is Power, Brawler, Backhander
Magic - Intelligence
General - Got You Covered, Utility Flow, Lady Luck, Quick Reflexes, Fine Taste

Knowledge is Power is a pretty hefty bonus to your ATK. Brawler is a sizeable defense buff. Backhander will sneak in some bonus damage into the primer part of your combo. Intelligence will give you a wee boost to your Static Touch damage and double up as a 2.5% ATK bonus with Knowledge is Power. Got You Covered and Utility Flow are for when you start dabbling in enhancements, with Got You Covered aleviating a bit of headache from buff management and Utility Flow making triple-dipping into all 3 of the enhancements actually feasible. Start your buffing chain with Haste since it's the cheaper of the 3, so you'll get better EP discounts on Empower and Fortify (and Barrier if it so happens to go off cooldown while you're chain-buffing). If you're feeling particularly cheeky - you can Blink first so that you get your first discount stack for free, but that's extra management and extra time spent away from navigating the battlefield towards your victim's throat, so I personally never do that. Quick Reflexes is there to make perfect-guarding less stressful. You will need perfect guard on hard. Lady Luck is just a nice 10% extra defense. Fine Taste is there because potions are pretty neat. Alchemist is good too, but I personally didn't wanna sacrifice any of my other talents to make room for it.

I will mostly go over endgame gear, because in early to mid game there are many variables that are more trouble to account for than they are worth. Just try to kinda stick to the general vibe whenever you find something in the lower tier that looks like it fits the build well.

For the most part I recommend focusing on defense with an occasional offense boost here and there if it's really good. It may not sound very fancy, but DEF stacking is highly effective, and unless you are hacking directly into the matrix to gain prescience and supernatural reflexes to dodge every attack, you WILL feel the difference in survivability, even on the final boss who pierces 65% of your armor on hard, let alone all the others who don't.


Accessories

Luckily, both are easy to acquire early on and will serve you faithully for the rest of the playthrough.

Slot 1 - Magic Battery. Found in Pillar Mountains after you get the Season Orb ability. The stats don't look too impressive, but the active effect massively boosts your EP regen after a crit, and allows you to reliably keep up with Blade Flurry's ravenous EP hunger.

Slot 2 - Mysterious Cube. Pillar Mountaints fertilizer spot. Randomly procs various effects from basic attacks. Can deal damage, can buff you, can even heal you.


What You Hold

Weapon - Wooden Leg. Quest reward in the final dungeon. Best wand in the game with diamond-solid hybrid stats. Nothing more and nothing less than exactly what you need.

Shield - Crab. Crafted in the final dungeon. Not the highest shield HP, but it's still more than enough and it gives you passive DEF.


What You Wear

Armor - Crab. Crafted in the final dungeon. Just a solid piece of DEF gear. Nothing fancy, only pure and simple effectiveness.

Helmet - Ornate helmet. Bought during or after the festival. Combines solid DEF stats and the rather uncommon + highly sought after CRIT. Might look expensive at first, but you'll be able to afford it no problem soon enough after you encounter it. Alternatively you can use the Crab Helmet for even more DEF. Personally I don't think it's worth it, but it is a solid enough choice. The helmet blocks facegear, so keep that in mind.

Facegear - Evil Eye Mask. Found in the final dungeon. Very solid offensive stats. Alternatively you can use the Blindfold found in a chest in Pumpkin Woods for extra CRIT. I prefer the eye mask, but that Blindfold will almost certainly serve you all the way until you either get the mask or the crab helm, so don't neglect getting it.

Shoes - Mushroom Slippers. Quest reward in Port Manneau (I refuse to spellcheck that so hopefully I got it right on the first try). Highest Defense shoes available in the game.


Pet

You don't really have to, but if you really want to, I say either go for Power if you're on the budget since you can just farm hordes of Pumpkins, or go for speed since you get huge amounts of ASPD and CSPD per level of a pet compared to Power. You could also go for Health if you wanna exploit a bug/oversight that can turn you immortal, but I'm not gonna get into that.

Feel free to comment on any poor advice or inconsistencies or even typos I might have in the guide. I hate typos.

I can't guarantee that I will update the guide with your feedback, but offering additional context and perspectives to the readers should count for something too.