Soulash 2 – Ultimate Grinding Guide

How to Gain the EXP for Your Skills

Combat Skills

Weapon Skills:

• You get 1 experience point when an enemy attacks you and 2 points when you use skills.
• The best way to gain experience is to attack enemies for 1 damage while they do the same to you.
• Try not to increase Strength and Dexterity. Focus on increasing Endurance and Willpower instead.
• Higher Strength and Dexterity will make your training enemies die faster, which is not good for training.
• Avoid Thorns and Dodge stats. Thorns prevent damage, and Dodge makes your character move away from enemies.
• Use weak weapons for training, like tools (knife, scythe, axe, short sword, flail, crude bow).

Defense:

• Focus on improving your physical defense.
• Increase Endurance first, then Willpower for some magic defense.
• Get equipment with high physical resistance as soon as possible (copper armor, cotton bracers, gorilla fur leather).

Good Training Enemies:

• Animated gems in high mountain areas (they don’t fight back).
• Dwarves in mountain regions and peaks (if you have enough physical resistance).
• Kangaroos in savannas (high physical resistance but can damage you).

Magic Skills:

• Use skills to gain experience, even if you don’t damage the target.
• Intelligence doesn’t limit skill improvement like Strength or Dexterity do for weapon skills.
• Use abilities with the shortest cooldown time.
• Reduce cooldown times with modifications from axe skill (-2 turns), maces skill (-4 turns), and magic mod (-6 turns, +5 stamina cost) at skill level 45.
• Unlock these modifications first for faster training.
• Some single-target damage abilities can be used on tiles instead of enemies.

Crafting Skills

Main ways to gain experience: salvage, craft, and build. Crafting skills use up skill points but don’t improve stats. You can ask NPCs to craft things for you, except for building.

Salvage:

• Important for getting your first skill level.
• Raid places like fisherman villages for items to salvage.
• Some materials like firewood, imbuing goods, and cloth can be salvaged.
• High Intelligence helps get more materials from salvaging.

Crafting Basics:

• The finished product’s quality depends on the materials used.
• Experience gained depends on the quantity and quality of resources used.
• Common items give +1 exp, green +2, blue +3, and so on.
• Magic ingredients follow the same rule for exp gain.
• It’s better to use magic ingredients from imbuing for crafting instead of selling them.

Crafting Tips:

• For salvaging, craft items using one regular ingredient and one magic ingredient.
• Use easily available resources like wood.
• Quality wood is easy to find in large amounts.
• Use bones instead of rare gems and metal.
• Learn floramancy to get more wood (tree bending at level 15).
• Intelligence reduces crafting time.

Building:

• Similar to crafting, but requires more resources and no magic ingredients.
• Build and destroy things on nearby tiles.
• Build on tiles you can see; your character will start building automatically.

Party Members:

• They can steal your crafting experience.
• Send them away when you’re building to get all the experience yourself.

Adventuring

Adventuring is a skill you’ll want to improve first. It unlocks useful features like:

• Fishing pole at level 12, which gives you unlimited food
• Ability to melt metals for use or selling
• Map of the first floor revealed at level 40
• 10 more inventory spaces at level 45
• Multitool at level 48
• And more

Basic experience points:

• Crafting: 1 point
• Finding resources: 3 points
• Discovering locations: 5 points
• Learning location details: 10 points

Ways to improve:

• Travel on the world map and find interesting places. This works well in areas with many cities after 100+ years have passed. Be careful not to run out of food and water, and remember your character will age as you travel.
• Make staffs. This can be boring but it works. Go to cold forest areas to get special woods like pine or cedar. You’ll probably level up by finding interesting places along the way. You can also use extra wood to practice carpentry.
• Discover things. This is the most fun way. Easy discoveries include:
  • Cutting down trees in jungles or cold forests.
  • Fishing until you catch something, then taking it apart.
  • Mining rocks in different mountain areas, except the highest parts.
• Melting metals. This works if you’ve unlocked some recipes. The best place to find ore is in low mountain areas. You can usually find 1 to 4 mountains on the local map, with 2 or more deposits of metals like copper, tin, iron, or coal.

Agriculture

This skill is useful for planting seeds and cooking.

• Higher levels let you plant rarer seeds and make food that temporarily improves your stats
• Lets you see when settlements are low on food

Experience points:

• Crafting: 2 points
• Milking and shearing: 1 point
• Gathering crops: 1 point per resource

How to improve: The best way is to buy a flail and scythe, then find grassland areas for wheat. You can break down wheat into seeds and hay. You can also grind seeds into flour if you want. This also helps improve your tailoring skill.

Armorsmith

This is the hardest crafting skill. It lets you make metal armor. Higher levels unlock better gear, especially shields with high protection and special armor with unique abilities.

Experience points:

• Crafting and upgrading: 1 point
• Breaking down items: 2 points

How to improve: Start by breaking down items. Dwarfs have the best gear to break down, but they can be dangerous for new players. There aren’t many easy-to-find enemies wearing metal armor. Some humans wear metal shields, but that’s about it.

After reaching the first level, you’ll need to use a lot of metal to improve until you can make clogs. Later, you can make scale items. Using magic materials from imbuing is necessary and cheaper than metal. Try making items from bones instead:

• Level 26: Moccasins (1 leather, 2 bones)
• Level 31: Bone Greaves (3 bones, 1 leather)
• Level 34: Scale shield (2 shell, 1 leather, 1 wood)
• Level 37: Scale boots (1 leather, 3 shell)
• Level 39: Scale legs (2 shell, 2 bone)
• Level 40: Scale armor (4 shell, 1 bone)

Athletics

This skill gives you various bonuses:

• +20 weight limit
• Sprint ability (faster movement)
• Escape ability
• More maximum health
• Second Wind ability (heals 500 health and 100 stamina, but has a long cooldown)
• No fall damage
• Faster skill use

Experience points:

• Using abilities: 2 points
• Dragging: 5 points
• Throwing: 3 points
• Climbing: 2 points
• Jumping down: 2 points

How to improve: The first level is the hardest. You can climb stairs and jump down from cliffs, but be careful of your health. This works at all levels and gives experience quickly, so use it when you’re in a safe area.

Use the drag ability as soon as you unlock it. Cut down a tree and drag the log to gain experience quickly until level 5.

After that, you can throw logs to nearby areas. The thrown object must weigh more than 40. This is boring but necessary to get the first ability and weight limit bonus.

Once you unlock Sprint, use it everywhere. It makes exploration faster and is the most comfortable way to improve the skill.

Axe Mastery

This skill improves your ability to fight with axes:

• Gives you special moves and stat points
• Makes other skills faster to use
• Focuses on dealing damage
• Ignores 50% of physical defense, which can make it hard to train other weapon skills

Experience points:

• Attacking: 1 point
• Using abilities: 2 points

How to improve: Use a weak axe, like a hatchet, and attack enemies that only do 1 damage to you. You can also use the rage ability when needed.

Carpentry

Used for building various structures and furniture, as well as crafting bows or elven armor.

Experience points:

• Crafting: 1 point
• Breaking down items: 1 point

How to improve: Get wood, turn it into firewood, then break it down into common wood again. You can get a lot of firewood from boreal forest areas. This skill improves quickly with thousands of wood materials. You don’t need a crafting station to make firewood. The tree bending ability from level 15 floramancy also helps improve this skill.

Construction

The ability to build things, mostly used for creating settlements.

• Needed to build settlement buildings
• Unlocks a companion slot at level 40

Experience points:

• Crafting: 1 point
• Starting a settlement: Instantly reaches level 1

How to improve: Get a lot of wood and start crafting. Works best with the carpentry skill because you can break down firewood. It’s helpful to be near a boreal forest, but not necessary. You can also make wood using the floramancy skill.

• Reach level 1 by starting a settlement
• Build and destroy storage units until you unlock beds
• Build and destroy beds until you unlock mills
• Build and destroy mills

Most things needed for settlements are unlocked around level 25.

Cryomancy

Ice and water-related magic that gives many ability points:

• Automatically quenches thirst when wet
• Various ways to get wet
• Ice/water attacks
• Freezing things
• Walk on water at level 44, allowing ocean travel without a boat
• 50% fire resistance

Experience points:

• Using abilities: 2 points

How to improve: No easy ways to gain experience. All abilities have cooldowns, but you can target tiles with HP using your first spell.

Warning: You can’t gain experience without choosing the 5-level bonus at the start or using cheats/mods.

Floramancy

Nature-based magic focusing on poison and thorns:

• Tree bender ability helps crafters get more wood, especially rare types
• Can use on fruit trees for extra yield without removing the tree
• Poison immunity at level 15
• Can spawn trees for common wood without changing location
• Thorns attacks can interfere with weapon skill training

Experience points:

• Using abilities: 2 points
• Tree bender production: 2 points

How to improve: Hard to improve until level 15 as you need enemy targets. After unlocking Tree Wall ability, you can chop them down for free wood.

Warning: You can’t gain experience without choosing the 5-level bonus at the start or using cheats/mods.

Hunting

Skills for using crossbows and hunting animals:

• Track ability to find creatures
• Two companion slots
• Ability to tame pets, useful for ranches
• Passive bonuses for pets
• More materials from fish/corpses

Experience points:

• Attacking: 1 point
• Using abilities: 2 points
• Tracking: 1 point
• Taming: 20 points
• Petting: 1 point

How to improve: Start by attacking enemies with a bow, but this uses many arrows. After unlocking abilities, use them when traveling safely on the local map. You can also pet animals in cities. Using Sense Life ability repeatedly helps improve the skill without a bow. At higher levels, tame and release pets for lots of experience.

Imbuing

This skill helps you craft various magic ingredients for other crafts:

• Can be crafted from almost anything
• Crafted goods can be sold for wealth
• Helps improve other crafting skills
• Introduces a new metal type
• Easy to level up

Experience points:

• Crafting: 1 point
• Breaking down items: 2 points

How to improve: Start by breaking down jewelry or magic ingredients. Then, get cloth materials from shearing sheep or gathering wheat. Craft rings from cotton for extra physical resistance. Make lots of ingredients from wood, especially maple. Settlements with maple sources help level up Imbuing easily to level 50.

Leadership

This skill boosts your party members and gives you more party slots:

• 3 party slots
• Stat boosts for party members
• Party-related improvements
• Increases party weight limit and inventory slots

Experience points:

• Giving orders: 2 points

How to improve: You need a party slot first, which you can get from hunting or level 40 construction. To gain experience, give orders to your party members. You won’t get experience from a new order until the previous one is finished.

Leatherworking

This skill lets you craft equipment from fur and leather:

• Can make a mask that removes daytime penalty for night vision
• Fur pouch for waist slot, useful in early game
• Some materials have special bonuses, like stamina regeneration

Experience points:

• Crafting: 1 point
• Breaking down items: 2 points

How to improve: Get leather from settlements, especially your own. You’ll also gather a lot of leather and fur after clearing points of interest.

Mace Fighting

This skill is focused on weapon piercing and stunning:

• Converts damage to true damage, ignoring defense (very useful for reaching level 48)
• Stun ability and bonus damage on stunned targets

Experience points:

• Attacking: 2 points
• Using abilities: 2 points

How to improve: Attack enemies that can’t kill you, similar to other melee weapon skills.

Pole Fighting

This skill is for polearm weapons:

• +10% Agility stat bonus at level 27
• +25% critical damage at level 18
• More passive bonuses than other skills
• Agility and dodge can make weapon training harder
• Increased weapon ability range at level 15

Experience points:

• Attacking: 1 point
• Using abilities: 2 points

How to improve: Attack enemies with melee weapons, like other weapon skills.

Protection

This skill is related to shields:

• More defensive abilities and passive bonuses
• Ability to see behind you up to 33% at level 46
• Thorns effect when missing health at level 42
• One more parry counter

Experience points:

• Parrying: 1 point
• Using abilities: 2 points

How to improve:

• Set animation speed to maximum in options
• Equip a shield and weapon with high parry rate
• Stand near a few enemies that deal 1 damage
• Use regeneration and healing abilities if needed
• Don’t get surrounded by too many enemies (parry count is limited to 1 by default)

Best shield for parrying: Medusa shield. You can also use any shield with 50% parry rate and a dao sword (40% parry rate).

You can also use the block ability with cooldown reduction, but it’s much slower. This skill improves slowly while training other weapon skills by parrying enemies.

Pyromancy

Fire-related attack spells with high damage:

• Gives 100% ice immunity at higher levels

Experience points:

• Using abilities: 2 points

How to improve: Use the skill with the shortest cooldown. You can target destructible tiles with your spells.

Warning: You can’t gain experience without choosing the 5-level bonus at the start or using cheats/mods.

Sword Fighting

Skill for using swords:

• Great parry rate
• Bleed-related abilities

Experience points:

• Attacking: 1 point
• Using abilities: 2 points

How to improve: Similar to other weapons. Best improved alongside defense skills because swords have the highest parry rate.

Tailoring

Skill for crafting clothes:

• Backpacks and cargo pants increase inventory slots and weight capacity for you and party members
• Easy to level up

Experience points:

• Crafting: 1 point
• Breaking down items: 2 points

How to improve: Improves alongside agriculture. Get hay by farming wheat in grass biomes. Using magic ingredients is necessary.

Thievery

Skill for knives and robbery:

• Gives a good escape ability early on
• Unlocks thief-related actions
• +0.1% critical hit chance per Dexterity point at level 27

Experience points:

• Attacking: 1 point
• Pickpocketing: 5 points
• Robbing: 10 points
• Using abilities: 2 points

How to improve: Like other weapon skills: attack enemies with a knife.

Weaponsmith

Skill for crafting various weapons

Experience points:

• Crafting: 1 point
• Breaking down items: 2 points

How to improve: Start by breaking down items. Attack easy targets with bone weapons. After first level, use bones to craft. Make bone knives until you unlock bone spears, then craft those until you unlock wooden mallets. Prefer recipes using wood over metal-only ones. Wooden mallets use 2 planks and 1 metal, making them very cheap to craft.

Hopefully this guide helped you!