Soulmask 1.0 Base Management Guide

Starting out in Soulmask without losing your mind

Soulmask is not a typical survival game, and the first hour can feel genuinely disorienting if you go in blind. The systems stack on top of each other fast: masks, tribesmen, mounts, skill caps, base placement. Miss one of those early decisions and you will spend hours correcting it. This guide covers the most important things to know before you place your first bonfire, recruit your first tribesman, and step into your first ruin.

Choose your base spot wisely

Where should you build your first base?

The starting forest area looks tempting for setting up camp, but it is one of the worst spots in the game for a permanent base. According to the NoobFeed beginner's guide, the best move is to run west and build near a portal, a water source, and a tribal camp. That area also has mines nearby, which become important as soon as you start crafting better gear.

Portal access matters more than most new players realize. Fast travel is tied to portals, and being close to one saves enormous amounts of time in the mid-game. Build too far away and every supply run turns into a slog.

How do you level up fast without grinding combat?

Here is something Soulmask does differently from most survival games: combat is not the fastest path to experience. Chopping trees, mining stones, and working at crafting tables all grant XP. You can even craft items while moving and exploring, so nothing stops you from progressing while you scout new areas.

For map exploration, find a scout camp and mark it by pressing V. Lower a scout's health until you can press E to interrogate them. This reveals the surrounding area on your map while still leaving points of interest for you to discover naturally.

Understanding masks and your first choice

Your starting mask does not matter much. The perks at the bottom are the main difference between masks, and those perks only become relevant once you can actually select the skills that matter. By the time you reach that point, you will have found better masks anyway. Pick whatever looks interesting and move on.

As you progress, your main character has a skill cap of 60 for production skills and 90 for combat skills. Other characters you recruit can have higher caps, and you can possess them when you need a specific skill. If a character's name appears in red, they are Legendary quality and worth keeping at almost any cost.

How do you recruit and manage tribesmen?

Recruiting tribesmen requires feeding them broth or soup once they accumulate 500 Recognition Points. You do not need to babysit this process. Leave them on the ground, do other things, and check back when they are close to the threshold. If you are inside a village, place them in a bed to speed up point gain.

Once a tribesman hits 500 Recognition Points, recruit them and deploy them so they follow you. Always bring tribesmen along when exploring. They are strong, they make combat significantly easier, and using the same ones repeatedly builds their skills over time.

Feed tribesmen to recruit them

Mounts, Alpacas, and how to move around the world

The world in Soulmask is large, and moving on foot gets old fast. Get an Alpaca as early as you can. They are found in tribal camps. Pick one up and tell it to follow you back to your base.

To ride an Alpaca, you need a saddle crafted at the Armor Forging Table. Your followers do not need their own mounts. If you ride fast, they teleport behind you automatically. Your animals do the same. Mounts are not targeted in PvE combat, so they are safe to leave nearby during fights.

When using a portal, dismount before going through. Tell your mount to follow you so it travels through the portal with you. For watering animals, equip a Water Bucket as a tool and press E near a trough.

How do you get good gear early?

Crafting your own gear from scratch is slower than raiding camps for it. Attacking enemy camps for gear is often the better play, especially early on. Leaders in ancient ruins can drop legendary bronze armor, and you can farm them by saving and reloading the game. If you do this, remember to redeploy your tribesmen after loading because they stop following you when a save is loaded.

For the Ancient Ruins Dungeon specifically, bring a mount with extra inventory space and make sure your team has Hammers or Gauntlets. The enemies inside take damage from those weapon types, according to the NoobFeed guide.

Ancient Ruins Dungeon entrance

Base management tips that save hours of frustration

Buildings can be upgraded by pressing E on them and selecting the upgrade option. Work tables specifically require the Building Workshop to upgrade, which is a separate step that trips up a lot of new players.

If your tribesmen are standing around doing nothing, check whether you placed a resource marker on the map using R. With a marker placed, they will travel to the location, gather resources, and sort them into chests back at base automatically.

Tool durability is another pain point. Build a Repair Bench and set it to auto-repair. Tribesmen will deposit broken tools into a chest, a worker at the bench will fix them, and they get returned. Set the durability threshold you want in the bench's settings so repairs happen before tools break completely.

Survival habits worth building early

A few small habits make a big difference over time:

• Save manually and often. Do not rely on autosave alone.
• Enable the setting that drops your items at your respawn point on death instead of on your corpse.
• Carry a portable bed at all times so you can sleep in the field when energy runs low.
• Use the same tribesmen repeatedly to build their individual skills faster.
• Craft while moving to earn XP during exploration without stopping progress.

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