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 forest where you spawn looks safe and convenient, but it is actually one of the worst places to commit to long-term. Head west instead and look for a spot that has three things close together: a portal, a water source, and a tribal camp. You will also want mines within reasonable distance, since ore becomes critical once you start upgrading gear.
Portal proximity is more important than it first appears. Fast travel depends entirely on portals, and being near one cuts down travel time dramatically once you start making regular supply runs. Build too far out and every trip back becomes a tedious hike.
How do you level up fast without grinding combat?
Soulmask breaks from most survival games in one key way: fighting is not the fastest route to experience. Gathering wood, mining stone, and working at crafting stations all give you XP. You can even craft while walking around, which means you can keep progressing while exploring new territory.
For revealing the map, locate a scout camp and mark it by pressing V. Damage a scout until their health drops low enough to interrogate with E. This opens up the surrounding map without removing the fog of war from specific landmarks, so you still get to discover things organically.
Understanding masks and your first choice
Your starting mask does not matter much. The differences between them are minor early on, and the perks at the bottom only become useful once you unlock the skills that actually matter. By that point, you will have found better masks anyway. Pick whatever looks interesting and move on.
Your main character caps out at 60 for production skills and 90 for combat skills. Other characters you recruit can exceed those limits, and you can possess them when you need access to a specific high-level skill. If a character's name shows up 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 after they accumulate 500 Recognition Points. You do not need to watch this happen in real time. Leave them on the ground, go 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 accelerate the process.
Once a tribesman reaches 500 Recognition Points, recruit them and deploy them so they follow you around. Bring tribesmen with you whenever you explore. They hit hard, they make fights significantly easier, and repeatedly using the same ones builds their individual skills over time.
Feed tribesmen to recruit them
Mounts, Alpacas, and how to move around the world
The world in Soulmask is large, and walking everywhere gets tedious fast. Get an Alpaca as soon as you can. They spawn 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 enough, 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 stepping 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.
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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