When you're changing your weaponry in Echoes of Aincrad from Sword Art Online, you'll see not only the weapon's general Attack stat (labeled as its ATK), but you'll see a secondary value added to it as well - the ACV, which is how your own skills weigh into your handling of that weapon.

As your character begins to specialize in their specific abilities and you establish a play style for this save, you'll want to invest in specific skills as you level up to get the highest ACV out of the weapons you enjoy using in battle the most often.

What Is Your ACV?

You'll see it attached to every weapon you consider equipping on your own player character in Sword Art Online when you're checking out each weapon's stats: the ACV, which measures how your attributes inform your weapon proficiency with any given type of gear.

If you've been investing your Growth Points (GP) at the Chest nearest you when you visit any town in Echoes of Aincrad, then you'll have seen that there are four main attributes you'll need to focus on. Strength informs how hard you swing your weapons, Dexterity is the finesse with which you can move during combat, Agility relates to how quickly you use your weapon as you fight, and Intelligence is all about how much you know about your weapon overall.

These four abilities impact a weapon's ACV Rating, a modifier that adds bonus damage to every weapon in the game. The more proficient your stat investment makes your character with a certain type of weapon, the higher your ACV will be when equipping a weapon of that type, the more proficient your combat will be.

Though you'll see it attached to weapons, ACV is calculated according to your character's stats instead of the weapons themselves, graded from D on the low end to S on the high end, so aim for as many stats with an S as you can! Finding a mid-tier weapon that best suits your character's build might be better than giving them something with a strong base stat that they can't use as effectively.

If you've got a character who has a high Strength stat, for example, they'll be better with weapons like Two-Handed Axes or Maces that rely on their brute force to drive damage totals than they'll be with something like a Rapier that requires Agility over Strength in combat, so you'll see a higher ACV on Strength-based weapons than on Agility-based ones.

When equipping any weapon in Echoes of Aincrad, you can see your current ACV for that weapon right on the weapon select screen. Looking at your current stats on the left, you'll see your weapon's stats broken down into its base stat plus your ACV for a total Attack stat for each weapon, and you'll see these totals vary based on your GP allocations.

While you'd be wise to level up all your skills in time to take advantage of the Bonus Modifiers available for milestone GP investments, the best thing to do when it comes to early-game growth in Echoes of Aincrad is figure out your weapon type of choice as soon as you can and begin to invest GP in correlating attributes once you've decided on your main type of weapon.

Though any character can use any weapon at any time, you'll know which stats will most impact your weapon proficiency and can spend GP accordingly. If you're planning to use weapons that rely on good Dexterity, for example, spend early Growth Points there first and save any Strength upgrades for later.