Soulmask throws a lot at you from the first minute: a massive open world, a Technology Tree you have to unlock before you can craft anything, and map icons that mean nothing until someone explains them. The 1.0 launch on April 10, 2026, also dropped the Shifting Sands Egypt DLC alongside it, adding ships that can fly and a whole new biome to explore. Here's everything you need to get your footing fast.
Unlock blueprints via Tech Tree
How does crafting work in Soulmask?
You cannot craft anything in Soulmask until you have unlocked the recipe first. Recipes live in the Technology Tree, which you open by pressing Y. To spend points in the tree, you earn experience through basic actions: gathering resources, fighting wildlife, and completing tasks. Once you have enough points, you spend them to unlock blueprints, and only then do those items appear in your crafting menu.
The first things worth unlocking are Stone Tools and the cluster that includes Water Bottles, Bug Nets, and Luminous Waist Lamps. Water Bottles handle your hydration. Bug Nets let you catch insects that power the Luminous Waist Lamps, which keep you alive at night. For weapons, starting with a Spear is the practical choice.
To build your first set of tools, look for Branches on the ground. They are the core material for crafting a Pickaxe (mining), a Stone Axe (wood), a Scythe (plant gathering), and a Butcher Knife (skinning animals). Each tool has a specific job, and using the wrong one means worse drops.
info
After killing an animal, switch to your Butcher Knife before looting. Using a combat weapon instead of the knife gives you lower-quality materials from the carcass.
Why does tool tier matter so much?
Tool upgrades in Soulmask are not just a speed boost. They change what resources you actually receive. The clearest example: hitting a Tin Ore deposit with a Stone Pickaxe mostly produces plain Stone. Swap to a Bronze Pickaxe and the same node yields large amounts of Tin quickly. The progression runs Stone Axe to Bone Axe to Bronze Axe, with each tier opening up better resource returns across the board.
Always push toward the highest tier tool you can access. The gap between Stone and Bronze is large enough that farming with Stone tools in the mid-game wastes significant time.
Understanding item quality colors
Every crafted item in Soulmask is assigned a quality tier based on a color system. From lowest to highest: White, Green, Blue, Purple, Gold, and Red. Early in the game, most of what you make will be White. A lucky craft might produce a Green item, such as a Green Scythe or a Green Wooden Spear. If you want a higher-quality version of something specific, the only method is to craft it multiple times and hope for a better roll.
info
Quality is assigned at the moment of crafting. There is no way to upgrade a White item to Green after the fact. Craft multiples if a specific quality matters to you.
How do you read the map in Soulmask?
The world is large enough that crossing it on foot takes a long time. The map displays icons from the moment you load in, but they are not labeled, so knowing what each one means saves you a lot of wandering.
Question marks mark Ruins. Visit them to collect building materials and a special currency used to upgrade your Mask through the menu. If you want a stronger Mask, Ruins are the supply chain.
Yellow icons are higher priority. These locations contain items needed to repair your Relic, and reaching one lets you unlock a new Node in your skill tree. Nodes grant full new abilities rather than incremental stat bumps. The example given in sources is unlocking something like Control from the top row of your skill tree. Prioritize yellow markers whenever one appears nearby.
The eye symbol represents a Scout location. These appear in areas like the Western Rainforest. At each one, find the Tribesman NPC, talk to them, and absorb their knowledge of the region. This clears the Fog of War from that area and adds new Waypoints to your map. It is the primary way to reveal the world and find new objectives.
What are all the ships in Soulmask Shifting Sands?
The Shifting Sands Egypt DLC, which launched free for all Soulmask players for one month after the April 10, 2026 release, adds ships as a core travel system. Ships can move on water and land, and the advanced ones can fly. According to Destructoid's coverage of the update, you can link multiple ships together to form a flying fortress, and blueprints can be uploaded to the Steam Workshop for other players to download.
Here is every ship type available at launch:
Tribe boat
The Tribe Boat is found fully built in random locations across the map. It travels on water and land but cannot fly. You can hold a maximum of 3 at a time, and each one has a built-in side inventory. Spawn locations appear to vary per save file, but they are common enough that you will find them naturally as you explore.
Wooden Sky boat
The Wooden Sky Boat is the first ship you build yourself. You unlock it by completing the introductory quests or by reaching the Bronze Age, whichever comes first. It is significantly larger than the Tribe Boat, has a big base inventory, and supports foundations for extra storage. You can upgrade it to fly and swap in a faster engine later. Strangely, you can place your Bonfire on it without burning the ship down.
Falcon
The Falcon unlocks at the Iron Age. Open the Knowledge and Technology tab and purchase the Premium Shipbuilding Technique to gain access to its parts. Compared to the Wooden Sky Boat, the Falcon is slower on water but faster in the air. Its larger hull provides more storage space, and you can add foundations to expand capacity further. Engine upgrades are available to push its air speed higher.
Shark
The Shark is the largest ship in the game and mounts giant cannons for combat. It requires reaching the Steel Age and unlocking the Advanced Shipbuilding Technique. As of the 1.0 launch, the Shark is listed as arriving in a future update, but the unlock path is already in place. Based on developer materials shared before launch, it will be substantially bigger than the Falcon and built around offensive capability.
What game modes does Soulmask 1.0 offer?
Campfire Studio described the 1.0 release as a "complete reinvention of the game itself." Three distinct modes shipped with it:
- Survival: The original experience. Resource scarcity, combat pressure, and the full challenge loop.
- Tribe Mode: Focused on building and developing your civilization, managing settlement politics, and repelling enemy invasions.
- Warrior Mode: Combat-focused. Enemies are tougher, the mechanics are less forgiving, and weapons do not degrade or break.
The 1.0 update also added the Mask Knowledge Base, an in-game encyclopedia that covers systems and items so you do not need to tab out to a wiki mid-session.
warning
Warrior Mode removes weapon degradation entirely, which sounds appealing, but the tougher enemy scaling means your early tools will feel underpowered much faster. Start in Survival if you want to learn the systems first.
For more survival games, crafting guides, and open-world tips, browse more guides on GAMES.GG.