Best Souls for specific paths?

[Doowy]

I'm aware that you can do literally any ending with any soul and beginning but what would you say would be the Best Soul pieces to start with as say One who wishes to follow the path of forge?

[cswiger]

You should therefore choose Shapt and Mettle as your starting cards, meaning you are playing as "The Archaeologist".

[Darkseed]

I would say any Shapt start has alot of power; so Artist, Archaeologist, or Twice-Born are all fairly easier. I would Guess Symurgist would be harder then normal as Wist/Chor has a fairly limited range of Principles.

Shapt is important early as IMO alot of Knock skills and books give access to things that make unlocking other things easier.

[Kilion]

I'd echo the power of Shapt, but with a specific caveat. The Artist has need of a specific book for their ending that is HARD to reach. I chose that on my first playthrough and had to wait a while to finish that game.

[Darkseed]

Originally posted by Kilion:

I'd echo the power of Shapt, but with a specific caveat. The Artist has need of a specific book for their ending that is HARD to reach. I chose that on my first playthrough and had to wait a while to finish that game.

I mean Artist has several Unique endings but both the main ones I know off hand require Secret Books and Memories that I get every game regardless of paths as I use those special books memories to unlock rooms or skills?

Mostly just think Shapt is great early game and a maladied Shapt is super powerful I can just pump out Gervinite, Chronsichord, and some Persistent Memories

Numens are very potent and are something that is really helpful in unlocking rooms and books earlier if you know where they are and how to prioritize getting to them, but by the time you need them starting Soul Elements should no longer matter as you should usually either have more Elements from the Tree of Wisdoms or have Soul+ or even Soul++ at that point.

[Falc]

Conversely: while shapt is powerful due to knock crafting being powerful, that does also mean that if you can get to the foundry, you only really need one shapt card to be able to get crazy amounts of knock through various crafts there.

As for what is most useful, in my opinion it's the Revolutionary. Starting off with Edicts Martial is excellent, as it has recipes that no other skill possesses.