Soul Knight – Beginners Guide

How to Get Started

By ReChord.

One good aspect of Soul Knight is that its controls and commands are simple, intuitive and customizable. If you don’t feel at ease with the default settings, feel free to modify them so that you are comfortable while playing. This seems insignificant, but greatly helps.

Lobby

These will be overall tips uniquely regarding the Lobby.

Complete the Drillmaster’s tutorial

You might have noticed a guy in black and yellow standing next to Elf in the lobby. He is the Drillmaster. Interacting with him begins a more advanced tutorial than the one you went through at the very start. Taking the time to do it will make you more familiar with game aspects and mechanics. Plus, as a reward for completing this tutorial, you will be gifted a good weapon, which you can collect in your mailbox. It can come in handy for your future runs, so it’s best to save it for a game you’ll be confident about.

Do not rush for other characters

This is a key tip. Even if you feel tempted to try other characters outside Knight, it’s a bad idea. Upgrade and max Knight at first, and nothing else. Get familiar with him and practice basic dodging. Also, having a max level character will make further grinding for gems significantly easier. Once you have maxed them, you may buy a character that you think would fit your playstyle. This is my next point.

Upgrade and develop your lobby

Throughout your games, you will unlock different lobby items. Do not leave them unnoticed, as they provide permanent buffs once upgraded. Here is a list of the different items and their effects:

• Plant: Increases your character’s speed. Very useful for dodging and moving around faster in the dungeon.
• Books: Increases your critical hit chance. Useful to increase your DPS. Also note that upon interacting with this item, you’ll sometimes be granted Paper Slip, a decent weapon to start a run.
• Safe: Increases the amount of gold coins you initially have when you enter the dungeon. Can go up to 10. It’s good for long term usage as you’ll be able to buy more stuff at the beginning of your runs.
• Pet food: buffs your pet’s attack and HP. Not the best item, but don’t neglect it, although it’s not a priority.

There are also other items which are already present in your lobby that are worth mentioning. They are the following:

• Task Board: The rewards (Feathers of Valkyrie, Gems, Blueprints and Materials) may not be amazing, but on a long-term basis they come in handy and rewarding. Check those tasks regularly.
• Chest: It’s good to have it unlocked early. It provides you with a random common weapon from a set selection, and most of those weapons are sufficient to make a good start in your game. Prioritize.
• Gashapon Machine: I wouldn’t advise using it, especially if you are a beginner with a limited amount of gems. It’s better to save your goods for character upgrades rather than an “rng-based gem eater” (that’s how I call it, tbh it describes the thing pretty well). I recommend ignoring it for now.

Check the Workshop area on a regular basis

After a couple games, you’ll unlock a new area: the Workshop. In there, you’ll encounter useful stuff, including:

• Daily shop: The Trader sells useful items for gems, from seeds and materials to vouchers and Trader Skin Fragments. Make sure to check the shop to see what’s new and if anything is worth buying. It will of course depend on your needs, but as weapon and attachment vouchers are only consistently available in this shop, you’re often better off buying them, apart from if you consider yourself short on gems of course.
• Forge table: this is where you can craft weapons. You need to obtain a weapon at least 8 times in the dungeon to be able to forge it. Note that weapons which can only be obtained by using a merge recipe can’t be forged. After each run, take a look at your Forge table to see if you unlocked anything. Keep in mind that you can check how many times you got a weapon in the Cellar (which you unlock after playing some games).
• Design table: All skins, skills, weapons and armor which you need to craft are in here. Keep an eye on it. When it is glowing, it means that you are able to craft something. Don’t jump on blueprint weapons though, as they aren’t your main concern as a beginner. Make them only if you have a good amount of gems and materials. Note that once you have crafted a blueprint weapon, it will automatically be available in your Forge table and does not need to be crafted again. Blueprints are single-use items. The Design table allows you to unlock 5 skills: Splash and Bash (Paladin’s 2nd), Pray (Priest’s 2nd), Vines (Druid’s 2nd), Leap (Berserker’s 3rd) and Close Air Support (Officer’s 3rd). It also allows you to unlock quite a few skins. To get them, you will need some gems and 8 skill or skin fragments, which you can obtain from specific bosses in the dungeon.
• Computer: To repair it, you need to select Engineer (either by buying him or by using a free trial voucher) and have enough materials (20 parts and 20 batteries) to repair it. Once you’ve fixed the Computer, you’ll unlock a new character: Robot. Then, the repaired Computer will give you access to Digital Space, which is basically a playground for you to test stuff, create your own levels and do pixel art.
• Redeem Machine: This is where all your vouchers are stored (excluding free trial vouchers). Upon obtaining Seed vouchers, use them immediately, just to avoid forgetting them. Weapon vouchers are to be kept and accumulated until you deem yourself confident enough for a run, so you can try your luck on them and eventually get a good weapon. Attachment vouchers are kind of precious since they aren’t this easy to get; you can only obtain them through the Daily Shop. It’s better to keep them for special occasions and not to use them all at once.
• Robotics Facility: All armors are available there. You’ll first need blueprints to craft them in the Design table. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to craft them for materials. This facility is notably useful for Engineer’s 2nd skill, since the armor selected by the skill is the one which is currently available in the facility. For example, if you craft the Dragon Dance armor, the skill will trigger this same armor for each activation in the Dungeon.
• Locker: This is where all your seeds, materials and vouchers are stored. You can check it regularly to see what you’ve got so far.

Use your Garden slots wisely

After playing some more, you’ll unlock another area: the Garden. This part of the lobby is very important. You can use the proposed Garden slots to plant various seeds:

• Gem plants (Gem Tree, Gem Flowers and indirectly, Crystal Mushroom): these are the plants you should prioritize in early game. They will really help you develop your lobby faster and more easily. So whenever you get those types of seeds, use them.
• Material plants (Ironwood, Trumpet flower, etc): These should not be neglected as well. They are useful to develop your Workshop faster. At the start, you can plant them randomly; but after a short time, when you already have some materials, it’s preferable to select the ones that provide materials which you lack to optimize your resource management.
• Buff plants (Mirror Flower, Snow Lotus, etc): these are what we can call “optional” plants. They’re good to have fun, but that’s pretty much it. They are not beneficial to your progress. In fact, they can be rather detrimental. Using buff plants to make OP setups makes you, as a matter of fact, more lenient, as you will get used to always being OP. I’m not telling you not to use them, but to minimize their use. You can have fun for sure, that’s the point of the game. But if you really want to progress, I highly recommend you to avoid these plants as much as possible until you get sufficiently good at the game.

Do not grind for lobby buff items

What I call “lobby buff items” are the following: Magic Well, Beverage Machine, Holy Statue and Fish Tank. These can be crafted by using blueprints and various materials. They are expensive, and the overriding fact that only 1 of them is really worth it (Beverage Machine), you should not make them a priority. It’s simply this. They are costly in materials, need a big amount of time and grinding and don’t really bring anything amazing. You can craft them later on if you like, but keep focused on more important things.

Dungeon

These will be overall tips uniquely regarding the Dungeon and your games in general.

Practice dodging

This tip will help you all along your Soul Knight adventure, as well as boost your skills and progress. In a bullet hell game like Soul Knight, dodging is a key skill and should be mastered early enough for not to get stuck in higher levels. Playing as Knight is perfect to get started, as you can familiarize yourself much better with the basic game mechanics as you don’t have any i-frames or protection. This is when you should train to dodge.

Do not clear all the rooms

Throughout your games, you might have noticed that sometimes, there will be extra rooms which are not necessary to clear to get to the next level. Clearing them is, by convention, not mandatory. Taking the unnecessary time to do them might make you lose HP or even die while you could’ve simply gone to the portal. The time you spared for not cleaning those optional rooms allows you to clear games faster, thus being able to play more. Keep in mind that it does depend on the situation as well; if you feel confident about the last room and you need, for example, a couple coins to buy whatever you want in this level, you can go for it. Remain cautious though and evaluate your chances before taking this step.

Pick the right weapons

Weapons are very important for your run, it’s therefore essential to be able to decide whether a weapon is worth picking or not. Although this is situational, there is one thing that I want to clear up: a weapon’s name color does not represent its viability. Chillyroom has made different colors for item names:

• White: Common
• Green: Uncommon
• Blue: Rare
• Purple: Very rare
• Orange: Epic
• Red: Legendary

As indicative as these names might seem, they represent a weapon’s rarity, or more conventionally their chance of encountering. Do not get confused by that. Typically, most red weapons have a mitigated viability, whereas some blue weapons are way more viable than many red weapons.

One main advice I can give you is: when you encounter a new weapon, use it for a couple of rooms. This way, you’ll get to know many weapons better and get a more concrete idea of their viability.

Always check Chest and Special rooms

This is an important tip: do not rush for enemy rooms. After completing a level’s first room, you will always have a Special room (rooms which are marked with a “!” on the minimap) and/or a Chest room, linked to the one you just cleared. Always check them beforehand. You can find better weapons, good perks such as mercenaries, armors, etc. all of these increasing your survivability. Don’t be rushy, take your time.

It’s also a good idea to move back when you open a chest to avoid taking damage if it’s a mimic. 

Save and manage your energy

One of the most crucial pieces of advice. Do not recklessly spend your energy in normal rooms. Keep in mind that regardless of your base energy, you always need to keep at least 150 mana for the boss (as some characters have 140 max energy, you should keep this bar full for them as you can’t go any higher without More energy buff or Orange Juice). Getting below this value during normal rooms is not good. If you don’t have sufficient energy to defeat the boss, you’ll end up being stuck with no mana and often obliged to spam melee the boss in that case. If you like to spam your weapons, pick the ones which don’t cost any energy, or at least some low-cost ones. Remember that most of those weapons – melee excluded – will impact your damage output given their comparatively lower efficiency (most 0 mana ranged weapons sacrifice DPS for energy).

What can also help you save energy is your base melee attack, aka slap. When you get close enough to an enemy, you can hit it with an integrated attack whose damage is specific to your character (between 3 and 5 damage depending on the character). As it doesn’t cost any energy and can be spammed, thus dealing pretty consistent damage, it greatly helps for when you don’t want to waste too much energy. It is risky though, as it requires you to get close to your enemies; what I recommend is to use it against weak enemies, or enemies you can kill relatively fast in general. You mainly use it for self-defense; when an enemy comes to you, spam melee it to either kill it or push it away.

Badass mode trivializes this point, as the energy you get from Elite enemies (the spawn rate of which is increased in BA) compensates for your mana losses. On a global scale though, you’d better learn how to manage your energy so that you don’t get caught off-guard by not paying attention to it.

Bring a melee weapon with you

Especially when playing Knight (or some other character with no defensive mechanics), you’ll probably notice that they can’t do much in bullet hell because of their lack of defense. This is where melee weapons prove their efficiency. Breaking bullets in general, more specifically clearing bullet hell, helping to escape from tricky situations such as being cornered, etc: melee weapons are very useful in all situations. Always carry one with you as a backup or to deal with rooms (a strong melee weapon isn’t necessary if you already have a strong ranged one). However, do keep in mind that the said weapon has to have a reliable attack pattern, in order to provide sufficient protection. Typically, weapons like Butcher’s Knife won’t be reliable as their range and AoE are too small.

The setup I would recommend is one ranged weapon (for DPS and overall damage output) and one melee weapon (as an accessory for defense or to attack when you’re getting low on energy). This will enable you to practice one of the fundamental techniques to use with a melee weapon: melee switching. This strategy is as efficient as it is hard to master. It basically consists of switching onto your melee weapon when there are imminent bullets which are hard to dodge, swinging the weapon to break them, then quickly switching back to your ranged weapon. This allows you to efficiently protect yourself from immediate danger while keeping a consistent damage output. As said earlier, this needs a good amount of practice to be used at its full potential.

That said, some characters will sometimes not need melee weapons to be good, as they can provide themselves sufficient protection or i-frames. Carrying a melee is optional when you get used to dodging, but if you want more security, it’s always good to have one.

Mobility is the key to victory

A fundamental advice is to not stay immobile. As a bullet hell game, Soul Knight’s difficulty lies in the frequent swarm of bullets which you will have to deal with. This is why, under any circumstances, you should never let go of your joystick except while taking cover. This can be, of course, adapted in function of your situation: characters like Elf derivestrength from (partial) immobility.

This is linked to a specific situation: being cornered. When you are cornered, you are sticking to a corner of the room. While it can seem rather advantageous, it is, in fact, very dangerous. Getting cornered is one of the worst things that can possibly happen to you. Your mobility and dodging capabilities will be considerably reduced given the lack of escape routes you will have.

That said, regardless of your weapons, buffs or conditions, constantly moving while being in the open will greatly help you in dodging. As this game has auto aim, you should focus more on foresight, prediction and anticipation.

Useful Tips

These are tips that are universal and highly advised to follow. Don’t forget about codes for free gems!

Always check your info sources

If you see someone saying, for example, that one character or setup is overpowered, check out if this is opinion or facts. Opinions are proper to the people who express it and can be biased. This is why you shouldn’t believe what is told to you right away. Or, at least, ask them why they think so. If they can justify themselves then their sayings are more believable. This is in correlation to my next point.

Don’t hesitate to ask experienced players for advice

The title is self-explanatory. Seasoned players have enough experience to help you throughout your progress, so if you have any concern do not hesitate to ask. This works for info sources as well: I highly recommend you to ask those experienced players to check the info you found.

Refer to the Soul Knight Wiki page for specificities

Though unofficial, the Soul Knight Wiki provides very useful info about the game. Don’t forget to check it out, and if you can’t find the answer to your question in there, ask experienced players about it.

I hope this was helpful to you!