Souls (Habby) Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Save the World

A broken continent, a cry for a savior, an answered call. How many times has it been? Because it hasn’t been enough. Up we go, once again, to heed the summons for a new batch of heroes.

Souls is a hero collector game from Habby, the folks behind popular titles such as Archero, Kinja Run and SSSnaker. In this game you step into the shoes of a wandering troupe of heroes exploring a ruined world with the help of bygone heroes at their side. To succeed in your journey, you’ll need to summon powerful allies, bolster them with equipment and mystic energies, and delve deep, dangerous dungeons. Aspiring wanderers can get Souls on both the Google Play Store and the App Store.

Souls is a very intuitive game thanks to its excellent tutorial and pacing, which both allow new players to quickly learn the ropes. If, however, you’d like to read up a bit before starting the game, want a refresher course on the game’s mechanics, or just want a clearer explanation of Souls’ systems, you’ve come to the right place.

In this comprehensive Souls guide, we’ll be going over:

• The basics of your heroes – stats, skills, races, and so on.
• The many methods of strengthening your heroes – levels, fusion, equipment, and so on.
• Where to get the many resources you’ll need to buff up your heroes.
• Combat – how it works and what you can do to gain an edge.

Understanding Your Heroes

Heroes are how you interact with the world of Souls. They battle for you, they…honestly they don’t do much else, but fighting is about the only thing you can do. Because of this, it’s important to have a solid understanding of your heroes so you can easily comprehend their stats, strengths, and weaknesses – which ultimately leads to victory!

Quick Tips:

• Heroes have stats. Stats in Souls are boiled down to 4 simple stats, but you can tap on the ellipsis (“…”) button on the right side of a hero’s panel to read their more detailed stats.
• Among the more detailed stats, the only ones you usually have to worry about are crit rate and damage. Battles in games like Souls are often determined by who can whittle down the enemy team the quickest.
• Heroes have skills. This affects what they can do in battle. A hero’s skills are often the determining factor in whether you should go for or pass up a particular hero.
• Heroes have a rarity. The higher a hero’s rarity, the better it is at almost everything. Try to ignore non-epic heroes as they’re inferior in the long run.
• Heroes have a type. This affects what kind of equipment they can use.
• Heroes have a class. This gives you a broad idea of what their role in battle is.
• Heroes belong to one of 6 races. Each race is strong against another race and weak to another. Masterful use of these bonuses can lead to easy victory!

Hero Stats

All RPGs run on stats, and Souls is no different. Luckily for us, Souls boils its stats down to four basic numbers easily found on a hero’s page.

The four basic stats in Souls are:

• HP: Hit points. How much crap this hero can take before they’re beaten up and have to retreat.
• ATK: Attack power. Offensive prowess; most things in the game (including healing skills) are based on ATK.
• DEF: Defense power. Mitigates incoming damage. The more of this you have, the less damage you’ll take.
• Speed: How fast this hero moves. As Souls is an auto-combat game, Speed determines who goes first in a combat round, which is very important for seizing the initiative.

Apart from these basic stats, there are also multiple substats that you can view on a hero’s page; these include numbers like dodge, accuracy, penetration, crit rate and crit damage, and so on. To view these, you can tap on the ellipsis to the right of a hero’s basic stats…

…though in most cases the only extra stats you should bother with are critical rate and critical damage. This is because battles in games like Souls are often decided by who can nuke each other the fastest and the most effectively.

One more thing: there’s a stat I’ll refer to as combat power – it’s the fist icon at the middle of a hero’s info panel. This denotes a hero’s average strength by factoring in its level, stats, skill levels, equipment, fusion level, and so on. While combat power is a good general guide to assess a hero, it doesn’t consider strategy, tactics, formation, and so on.

Hero Skills

Each hero also has access to powerful skills that they use in combat. Even heroes within the same role have vastly different skillsets from one another, and these skillsets are often the determining factor in whether you’ll use or pass on a hero.

Skills are divided into active or passive. Active skills require energy to be built up in combat and are automatically used once the energy gauge has been filled up, while passive skills are always in play. Both of these skill types are valuable; make sure you fully read up on a hero’s skills before committing to them!

Hero Rarity

Since we’re already on the subject of stats and skills, you may have noticed that some heroes have much lower stats and are lacking one skill. This is due to their rarity. The three rarities in Souls, in descending order, are Epic, Rare, and Normal.

As you may have noticed, Epic heroes have 5 skills, Rare heroes have 4, and Normal heroes have 3. Apart from this, Epic heroes have much higher stats compared to their peers at the same level. Your takeaway from all this should be don’t get too invested in your Rare or Normal heroes as Epic heroes outshine them in every way possible.

Do note that at the beginning of the game, you won’t have much choice but to invest in your Rare and Normal heroes. That’s fine as we can get the resources back; we’ll discuss that later on.

Hero Types

There are three hero types in Souls, following the tried-and-true Warcraft III recipe:

• Strength heroes are denoted by a hammer.
• Intelligence heroes are denoted by a staff.
• Agility heroes are denoted by a bow and arrow.

You can see a hero’s type to the right of its combat power…

While a hero’s type rarely has any bearing on its abilities, it does affect what equipment that hero can equip. We’ll talk more about equipment later.

Hero Classes

Heroes also have classes on top of their type. Classes help you determine what a hero’s role on the battlefield is. You can see a hero’s type to the left of its combat power.

The classes in Souls are:

• Dealers are denoted by a red sword. These heroes have one task, which is dealing as much damage as humanly possible on the enemy forces. What these heroes have in offensive prowess they lack in defenses, so protect them.
• Tankers are denoted by a blue shield. These fighters go the opposite route of dealers, trading incredibly defensive power for lackluster or non-existent offense. Thanks to their great health, defense, and disruptive skills, tankers can easily hold off enemy assaults, leaving the rest of their team free to attack as they please.
• Healers are denoted by a blue cross. What you see is what you get – healers specialize in keeping the rest of your party alive by topping off their health. While it’s a simple job, it’s an invaluable one as healers can keep your dealers and tankers alive to do their duties.
• Supporters are denoted by an orange circle emblem. Supporters are varied; some of them focus on softening enemies for your dealers or otherwise inhibiting your foes while others buff your team.

Hero Races

Finally, each hero belongs to one of Souls’ six races.

These races are the equivalent of an elemental rock-paper-scissors system:

• Blue (humans) beats Orange(horde).
• Orange (horde) beats Green (elf).
• Green (elf) beats Teal (undead).
• Teal (undead) beats Blue (human).

There are also two unreleased factions (as of writing) – Yellow and Purple, which are both strong against and weak to one another.

When fighting, heroes of one race deal an extra 20% damage against the race that they’re strong against. Note that this doesn’t translate to an inverse defensive bonus. Humans do 20% more damage to the horde, the horde does 20% more damage to elves, and so on. Thus, it’s important to have powerful heroes of each race so that you’ll be ready for any and all enemy team compositions!

Note that while there’s no text indicating a hero’s race in their info screen, you can easily do so by checking the flag behind the hero as well as the color of their skill icons.

Remember: blue is human, orange (I suppose it’s meant to be red) is horde, green is elf, and teal is undead.

Strengthening Your Heroes

Now that you know how to read your heroes and pick out your potential stars, it’s time to learn to strengthen them. Strategy is good, but alone, it won’t get you far – you still need enough power to kick your enemies off the field. Here’s a quick rundown of the many methods you can use to power up your heroes.

Quick Tips:

• Levels are the fastest, most basic, and most fundamental way of strengthening a hero. Each level increases a hero’s base stats by a fair amount.
• You will occasionally hit level caps. To break them, you’ll need to sacrifice Soul Stones via breakthrough.
• Leveling up also unlocks new skills and increases skill levels. You can tap on a character’s skills to see when they’ll level up or at what level they unlock.
• Leveling is expensive. Thanks to the Soul Link system, you can focus on leveling up just 5 heroes.
• You can reset a hero at any time to get a full refund on any leveling materials you’ve spent on it. Use this system to take back the materials you had to spend on any Rare or Normal heroes at the start of the game.
• Resetting a Rare or Normal hero is free while resetting an Epic hero costs gems.
• You can recycle heroes into materials if you decide you no longer need their services.
• You can fuse duplicates of heroes to increase their star rating, which boosts their level cap and base stats. At higher levels, you can use any hero with an equivalent star rating. This means that you can raise Rare and Normal heroes as fusion material for higher tiers.
• Note that increasing star rating like this does not increase rarity – a Normal hero will always only have 3 skills!
• Epic heroes require a 3 gold star rating to first unlock their awakened skill; higher star ratings will boost the level of this awakened skill.
• Heroes have multiple slots for equipment.
• Equipment can be refined to increase its stat bonuses.
• Equipment also has rarity; the higher a piece of equipment’s rarity, the higher its refine cap.

Leveling Up

Just as every RPG has stats, almost every RPG has levels. Each new level in Souls brings a small but considerable power boost as they increase a hero’s base stats and serve as a foundation on which to build the rest of their kit.

To level up a hero, you’ll need to feed it Magic Stones, those green gems you get from clearing stages and over time. Once you’ve accumulated enough Magic Stones, go to that hero’s page (via “Heroes” on the main screen) then tap “Level Up” at the bottom of the screen. You can also long tap to continuously level them up.

Note that bringing a hero into battle doesn’t seem to give it any experience points.

As you level up, you’ll eventually find your progress restricted by level caps. To break a level cap, you need to perform a breakthrough. It’s not as complicated as it sounds – a breakthrough is just a regular level up, although this time you’ll also need purple Soul Stones along with the other materials.

If, for some reason that hasn’t sold you on the importance of leveling up yet, allow me to sweeten the deal by saying that leveling up also unlocks and increases skill levels.

Yup, you heard that right. No farming new, crazy race-restricted materials in a limited game mode. All you need to do is feed someone enough levels and presto – new and stronger skills. You can see at what level a skill will be unlocked on its icon in the hero panel, and you can tap each skill icon to see at what levels that skill will be strengthened.

Soul Link

I won’t mince words – leveling up is extremely expensive. It’s not unheard of to get 24 hours’ worth of AFK gains just to level up 5 times or less. Thus, you’ll need to budget your leveling materials. Fortunately, that doesn’t mean that the rest of your team has to fall behind. Enter the Soul Link system.

The Soul Link system is similar to the level sync system of other hero collectors. In the Soul Link chamber, you’ll find the five heroes with the highest levels among your roster as well as some empty slots. Here’s the good part: You can assign heroes to those empty slots, and they’ll gain temporary levels until they match the lowest level among your top 5. Simple, right?

It gets better. The more progress you make in Souls, the more slots open up, allowing you to power boost more heroes. You can also choose to eject a hero from a slot if you want someone else to gain the power boost, though this incurs a one-hour cooldown.

Resetting Levels

Remember how the first chapter strongarmed you into leveling some of your heroes even if you didn’t want to? Now’s the time to take it all back.

After playing for a bit, you’ll unlock the Recycle Hero function. Here you can both scrap heroes you no longer need (more on that in a while) as well as reset heroes to level 1, which also gives you back all the leveling materials you spent on them.

Resetting heroes is an amazing tool that not only allows you to redirect your spent early-game resources into another, better hero that you might have gotten once the gacha became available, but also ensures that spent resources never truly vanish. However. do note that while Rare and Normal heroes can be reset for free, resetting an Epic hero costs you some gems!

Recycling Heroes

Not every hero is worth raising, but every hero can contribute to your cause. Once you’ve said your goodbyes to your Rare and Normal heroes, you can recycle them.

To recycle heroes, go to the Recycle Hero function then tap Recycle at the bottom right of the screen. This will bring up a new tab where you can select up to 10 heroes to scrap. Scrapped heroes are gone forever, but each one that you recycle leaves behind some Soul Fragments that can be exchanged for new heroes (well, their fragments) at the Soul Shop.

Note that you can set the game to auto-recycle Normal heroes. To do this, tap on the gear icon to the left of the recycling screen.

Hero Fusion and Star Rating

If you don’t feel like recycling your Rare and Normal heroes or are lucky enough to have pulled duplicates of a powerful Epic hero, you can fuse them to make them much more powerful.

Fusion involves sacrificing duplicates of a hero at a specific star rating. After a successful fusion, that hero’s star rating will increase, leading to a boost in level cap and a substantial bonus to its base stats. At higher star ratings (starting from gold 1) you can start sacrificing any hero of that rarity, meaning that you can build up Rare and Normal heroes as fusion material.

Do note that while fusion increases the number of stars a hero has, it does not increase its rarity. Epic heroes may have 5 stars by default but raising a Normal hero to 5 stars doesn’t mean it will gain more skills!

Note that fusion is very important for Epic heroes as they unlock their awakened skill at 3 gold stars, with higher star rating levels further boosting this awakened skill.

Equipment

Last but not least, let’s talk about equipment. Each hero has 4 slots for equipment – one headgear, one weapon, one body armor, and one footwear. As I mentioned in the “Understanding your Heroes” section, heroes can only equip items matching their type; a strength hero, for example, can only equip strength gear!

Equipping an item isn’t the end of it. Equipment can be further upgraded to improve its base stats and thus its performance. Pay attention to the rarity (background color) of your equipment as that determines its refinement cap. Gray Normal items have a refinement cap of 5, while green Advanced items have a cap of 10. Always strive to equip your stars with rare gear as both its base stats and upgrade bonuses will carry you far.

To upgrade a piece of equipment, tap on it in your inventory or while it’s equipped to a hero, then tap “Enhance”. Enhancing has a 100% success rate but requires both gold and Enhancement Stones, which we’ll discuss in the next section.

Sourcing Materials

Now that we’ve gone through the basics of strengthening your heroes, it’s time to sift through the many ways to earn resources. In this section, we’ll be discussing where to get resources, what you should look out for, and so on.

Quick Tips:

• I’ve added a quick reference sheet that shows where to get basic resources.
• AFK gains are gathered by tapping the bird in the main menu. AFK gains will only go up to 24 hours.
• Journey rewards periodically become available. The timer counts down even while you’re AFK but note that any time that spills over (e.g., the timer was 12 hours but it was 24 hours before you were able to claim the item) doesn’t count towards the next timer.
• Missions come in two types – tap on the big guy on the left of the main menu for main (milestone) missions and the tall guy on the right of the main menu for daily and weekly missions as well as achievements.
• You get one-time bonuses for progressing through the main story.
• You can grind for resources and equipment in the Cave of Abyss game mode. As you explore, you fill up the exploration meter in the center of the screen; fill it up all the way and your next chest will contain a ton of prizes.
• Fighting bosses in Cave of Abyss rewards you for each life bar you remove from the boss.
• Exploring in the Cave of Abyss requires torches, which can be earned from main missions. Torches also regenerate slowly over time and can be bought with gems.
• The Tower of Souls allows you to challenge increasingly difficult foes for (Rarity) Soul Fragments, which can be exchanged for a random hero of that rarity. This is not repeatable!
• VIP levels give you more passive boosts as you climb the ranks; these boosts include an increase in income from certain game modes as well as AFK gains. Completing your daily activity rewards nets you 7 free VIP points, though you can also earn points by buying things in the cash shop.
• There are a lot of free gems up for grabs – check events, your mail, daily and weekly shop offers, and most importantly the ranking tab for server-wide player accomplishments.

A Quick Reference Sheet

If you’ve already grasped the basics of strengthening by reading the above section or are just looking for a reference sheet of the game’s many resources, look no further:

Resource	What is it for?	Where do I easily get more of it?
Gold	Leveling up heroes and upgrading equipment, among many other things.	AFK gains, missions, events. It’s hard to not earn gold.
Magic Stones	Leveling up heroes.	AFK gains, missions, events.
Soul Stones	Hero breakthrough levels.	AFK gains, missions, events.
Gems	Buying stuff from the cash shop, but most likely pulling for heroes.	Account levels, repeatable missions, achievements, other player milestones, AFK gains (small amounts)
Equipment	Bolsters hero stats.	AFK gains, missions, Cave of Abyss (tends to be of higher rarity here).
Enhancement Stones	Improving equipment.	AFK gains, Cave of Abyss, missions, dismantling equipment via the “Alchemy” option in the “Support” tab.
Torches	Exploring the Cave of Abyss.	Missions, buying with gems. Slowly regenerates over time.
Soul Fragments	Spent at the soul shop.	Recycling heroes.

AFK Gains

AFK gains in Souls are claimed by tapping the bird in the main menu.

A few things to note about AFK gains in Souls:

• AFK gains will only accumulate up to 24 hours. Anything beyond that goes poof.
• The further along you are in the main quest, the higher your AFK gathering rate is. You can see the exact amounts of resources generated per minute in the AFK gain screen.
• AFK gains also give you equipment, gems, Soul Fragments, and Enhancement Stones even if it isn’t listed.
• You can claim 2 hours’ worth of free AFK gains daily by tapping the hourglass in the main menu. Any subsequent fast-forwarded gains will cost you gems.

Journey Rewards

Journey rewards are nice little bonuses that Souls hands out from time to time. After a certain amount of time has passed, a reward becomes available. All you have to do is wait!

Note that this time counts down even if you’re away from the game, but any spillover time does not count toward the next timer!

Missions

Missions in Souls can be divided into two types – main quests and repeatable missions. It may not be obvious, but to access these quests, you’ll need to tap on the two guys to the left and right of the hooded girl in the main menu.

Main quests are big, one-time quests meant to guide you through story progression. If you’re feeling stuck on where to go next, consult your main quests. On a side note, these also give out large rewards for completing them, so get to it!

Repeatable missions, on the other hand, are comprised of your daily and weekly missions as well as your achievements. Make sure to always do these as they dole out a good amount of not just gems but also resource chests and even VIP points.

Chapter Bonuses

As you progress through the main story, you’ll not only get better AFK gains but also unlock some meaty one-time rewards via chapter bonuses.

You can tap the bonus button that appears to the right of the screen before starting a main story battle to redeem your rewards.

The Cave of Abyss

The Cave of Abyss is a deep, dark dungeon that exists on the fringes of civilization. So of course, we’re going to go into it.

While it may sound dangerous, plumbing the depths of the Cave of Abyss is actually incredibly rewarding. You’ll run into treasure chests containing equipment (which I believe tends to be of higher rarity than your AFK gain fare) as well as monsters. As you explore the cave, you’ll fill up a counter in the middle of the screen; after you’ve filled that counter all the way up, your next encounter will be a chest with massive prizes!

During a monster encounter in the Cave of Abyss, you’re tasked with depleting as many of its life bars as you can. The more life bars you deplete, the bigger the prizes – which include Enhancement Stones, equipment, and special currency – so make sure you’re armed to the teeth!

To explore the Cave of Abyss, you’ll need torches. In the early game, you can get quite a bit of these from your quests, but as time goes on, they’ll become sparse due to their painfully slow regeneration rate. You could also buy torches with gems if you really want to.

The Tower of Souls

Despite its name, this ominous spire is a great way to bulk up your roster and earn bonus resources.

Each floor in the Tower of Souls pits you against a powerful enemy team with gold, Soul Stones, and most importantly (rarity) Soul Fragments that can be used to summon a random hero of that rarity when you have enough of them. Combat in the tower is also helped by the fact that each floor has a special bonus (usually it’s a buff to the ATK of a specific race) so there’s really no reason to not challenge it!

VIP Level

Yes, there’s a VIP level in Souls. VIP levels give you prevalent bonuses without requiring you to activate a VIP service, unlike in other games.

Each VIP level grants you passive bonuses. While they’re small, they do add up. In the beginning, you’ll only see minor things such as a 5% increase in AFK gold and Magic Stone gains, but later on, you’ll gain the ability to auto-battle or sweep certain game modes, increased speed, and more!

There are two ways of raising VIP points. F2P players can get in on the action by completing 9 daily missions per day and then claiming 7 VIP points from the daily mission bar:

Alternatively, you also gain VIP points by buying anything from the cash shop.

Free Gems?!

Gems are one of, if not the most important resource in the game. Without gems, you can’t buy Summon Stones, which stops you from summoning heroes, which not only blocks off your roster but also denies you the incredible power of fusion.

Luckily, there are a lot of ways to earn gems without paying for them. Here are just some of those methods:

• You get a small number of gems from AFK gains. This is random so don’t count on it too much.
• Dailies and weeklies will serve as your main source of gems. Make sure to complete them all – each daily mission is worth around 50 gems.

• Go to “Support” then “Ranking” to claim rewards for players reaching certain milestones. Their successes are nice, but it’s the free gems we want.
• Always participate in running events – there may be more than gems at stake!

Understanding Combat

Now that you know how to read your heroes, how to build them up, and where to source the materials to make them the best they can be, it’s time to take all that theory and put it into practice on the battlefield. As Souls is an auto-combat game, we need to take every precaution we can and translate our knowledge and planning into solid victory.

Quick Tips:

• Battles in Souls occur in 3 layers, with 3-2-3 slots. Try to keep your sturdy units in front and your squishier units in the second or third rows.
• You can have up to 5 units on the field at once.
• Formation bonuses are triggered based on how many heroes of a specific race you have.
• Units will automatically target the closest enemy, with a bias towards the left side.
• Because of this automatic targeting, units that have variable targeting (such as splash or backrow attacks) are invaluable.
• You can preview the enemy’s formation before a battle and adjust your formation if they’re using units with special targeting mechanics.

Formation

Battle rows in Souls follow the 3-2-3 formation – that is to say, 3 rows with 3, 2, then 3 slots.

Targeting in Souls is simple, too, though we’ll discuss that in a little bit. Suffice it to say that your tankers should be in the front row to mop up enemy hits as much as possible. Your damage dealers and supporters should be placed into either the second or third row, depending on who you’re willing to sacrifice first. This gives them more leeway to perform their tasks, especially while your tank row is still up and running.

Formation Bonuses

Don’t set your initial formation in stone yet. We talked about races and how each race is strong against another, but there’s a second layer of complexity to this in that the races of the units you bring to battle can trigger a formation bonus for some extra stats!

The formation bonuses area:

• 2 units of 1 race and 2 units of another: 10% bonus ATK and HP.
• 3 units of 1 race: 12% bonus ATK and HP.
• 3 units of 1 race and 2 units of another: 15% bonus ATK and HP.
• 4 units of 1 race: 17% bonus ATK and HP.
• 5 units of 1 race: 20% bonus ATK and HP.

Note that this bonus applies to the entire party – even in the case of the 2/2 split. On another note, light and darkness heroes (which, as of writing, don’t seem to be in the game yet) count as every race for the purposes of triggering a racial formation bonus!

Targeting

Combat in Souls is simple – everyone takes their turn, whacks the nearest target, then ends their turn.

The “closest” target is the enemy on the nearest lane, and priority is given to targets from left to right. It’s a bit confusing, but you can see it in practice during the preparation screen. As you move a unit from slot to slot, its attack target will be highlighted on your opponent’s side.

Because of this auto-targeting system, units that have special targeting mechanics, such as splash (like Calix), hit the enemy’s backrow, or even target a specific enemy can be invaluable. Note that your opponent will also be using these against you, so if you’re losing a fight, be sure to check your opponent’s formation and heroes and swap your formation around as necessary!

To The New World!

The world of Souls is massive, and we’re not going to save it overnight. Put one foot in front of the other and look to your allies for strength; together, you can carve your way through the darkness that infests the land and usher in a new age of light, glory, and prosperity.

This wraps up our guide to Souls, and I hope I was able to help you get a better understanding of the basics of the game. If you have any suggestions on how to improve this article or are feeling generous and would like to share some tips and tricks of your own, don’t hesitate to leave us a message in the comment box!