Collection activity-a word of hints for newbies

[Mask]

With the upcoming Steam Next Fest, we anticipate an influx of players venturing into the treacherous jungle of Soulmask. Are you experienced enough to share valuable survival tips for our newbies? Drop your hints in the comments section below this post!

[Yria]

build bonfire first
while burning: no decay

[lathaen_00]

You can use stone OR flint to make your first gathering tools. Just pick up the stones, no need to try to get flint.

[Kainos]

The beach has plenty of fresh crabs for food and also sea water is "currently" drinkable. Also for starting out it's safe to explore and live there before going deeper into the jungle.

[Waxmaker]

1. You gotta build a bonfire first, or everything else you build is going to decay and have to be repaired constantly. A bonfire is NOT a campfire, so don't get confused like I did. HOWEVER your bonfire must be on perfectly level ground far away from any other players' buildings. If you try to build near other players it will tell you you "can't build near enemy buildings". What you will find, for all servers right now, is that you're going to have to walk a LONG way away from the starting zone in order to find perfectly flat ground where someone else hasn't already grabbed a spot. So be prepared for a hike before you can settle down. Also, be sure to build a high roof over your bonfire or it will regularly extinguish in the rain.

2. You'll only find clay by water. You'll need a lot of it, so it helps to build your base close to it if you possibly can. Clay looks weird; it's slightly darker-colored, slightly shiny boulders, so you may miss it at first.

3. You find green crystals to repair your mask in chests at small "ancient ruins" sites all over the map. They'll always be guarded by aggressive dogs or barbarian warriors. Part of the goal of the game is to repair your mask enough so that you can execute a special mask attack when a barbarian is down to 10% health, at which point they'll pass out and you can throw them over your shoulder and take them back to your base as a "tribe member", i.e, slave. Hopefully you've made a cooking stove by now, and a pottery bench for bowls, and you can make "broth". Move the broth to the comatose barbarian's inventory and click the activation button to make them drink it. Do the same with a water skin, and some bandages if you can. Wait about an hour for them to wake up and then you have a slave you can program to do all the tedious tasks around your base that you're already sick of doing. I never did figure out how to make them hunt, however. Mostly they operate the craft tables (you can only have one slave assigned per table), gather logs, hardwood, clay and stone, and "upkeep"; add fuel to the fires.

4. You'll probably get your ass kicked in all kinds of fights because the barbarians glitch-teleport near and far rapidly but always seem to hit you regardless. The secret here is to block with your shield WHILE attacking with your weapon. It helps an immense amount. The spear also has a useful distance attack that knocks them down. If you get your timing right, you can stun-lock them by throwing and knocking them down and throwing again just before they get up again. A good tactic when fighting animals is to circle-strafe them with your spear, since they have difficulty turning around. You can also "deploy" one slave to follow along behind you and fight with you. It's best to give them a bow and adjust their attack to be "ranged" to keep them out of your way, however. Don't select the "dismiss" option when you want your slave to go back to base because this will make them leave you permanently instead.

5. Once you make a farm patch, it looks like there's no way to use it without a granary, which you won't get for many more levels. This is misleading; you can put some seeds in your hotbar and "activate" them while standing on the farm patch to seed it. Same with fertilizer.

6. You get points to level up your character's stats but I made it to level 25 before realizing this. The controls on the character screen to apply points to your stats are kind of wonky. Check the bottom of the screen for instructions.

7. There's got to be some kind of trick to trapping animals but I don't know what it is. I made probably 40 small and medium traps at various times and 39 of them decayed before they caught anything. Ones I built near my own bonfire didn't decay but also never caught anything. I finally caught one animal, so it is possible, but it's hard.

8. Once you get ready for the bronze age, go south-central until you find a tin "mine" (cave), which you'll probably have to clear the barbarians out of before you can mine. Go north-central until you find a large barbarian camp around a copper mine. If you head west from there you'll eventually find copper caves along the cliffs that are less guarded. You need both tin and copper to make bronze.

[Waxmaker]

9. You need to make sure you add specifically "staple foods", like roasted corn or potatoes, to your dining table, also, I think, both "meat" foods and "fruits and vegetables" foods too or your slaves get unhappy and may leave you. If you see that your slaves are stuck, check their inventories; sometimes they go out and gather a ton of clay and logs or whatever and don't deposit them in chests correctly, and have so much weight they can't move. So you have to clear out their inventories yourself to fix them.

[Waxmaker]

10. You may think at first that you can only command your slaves to gather logs and stuff around your bonfire, but you can have them do it around a marker on the map too. Go to the map and place a custom marker, then you can command your slaves to gather stuff around that point instead of your bonfire.

[Slip]

To Equip Arrows - drag them onto your bow which should be on your belt.

[Slip]

Always make sure you have camp fires crafted on a long journey for respawns - if you die you can go get your backpack but make sure you put a custom cursor marker where it was - my bag marker just disappeared for some reason on the way there - this was followed by a rage quit

[Setari]

Originally posted by Slip:

To Equip Arrows - drag them onto your bow which should be on your belt.

jesus christ this game is so unintuitive, thank you

[Siozen]

Where do you craft arrows? I didnt see them show up in the search bar.

[vyraka]

- With your first base, try to pick a spot close to fresh water so that you are closer to clay. You'll need a lot of it.

- NPCs can not only work your benches, they can also harvest too - check out the bonfire tasks.

- You can farm abandoned ruins over and over for green glass to repair your mask based on a timer. Not sure if this is permanent, but certainly useful if you want to try out the various mask repairs/bonuses without running around the map.

- This is for those who want to start fresh with a group of friends. You can reset your demo timer by deleting your online character on a server OR by joining another server.

- If an item mysteriously disappears, before you think it's a bug, check all your boxes. NPCs are methodically about putting away produced goods - but not always consistent with which box they put it in. Rule of thumb - strategically place chests around your home/base before adding benches.

[tea]

thank you, stone OR flint OMG..... choosing is not explained or intuitive in its design. Wow this angered me at the very start of my time with game

[redeyedprince]

Originally posted by Setari:

Originally posted by Slip:

To Equip Arrows - drag them onto your bow which should be on your belt.

jesus christ this game is so unintuitive, thank you

agreed. once I know how to do things, it will be fine. but the process of finding how to do it, is extremely frustrating. for example: a simple thing at the beginning of the game, getting a flint. there was no explanation anywhere and this is super annoying. the absence of proper tutorial is a weak point for a game with this massive potential.
when I play a game, I want it to give me positive feelings. if I want lots of frustration, I will just live a real life. yeah, not gonna pay money for this

[antivilf]

how EXACTLY to respawn not in pre-set points?
sunny day, i tryed to place Bonfire (small one, with fuel) at ~50m from bsrbarians, died and was able to respawn only at the pre-set spots

[Vengeance/Ian]

There's a lot to unpack in this game. Keep in mind that this is just a demo. I'm in the bronze age now and have figured out farming (for the most part), and how to get the traps to work. The traps are all about stealth, using the right size trap, and most importantly, using the right bait.

If you guys have question, shoot me a message. I'll do my best to help.