Soul’s Remnant is the kind of MMORPG where a lot of the fun comes from simply going out into the world and figuring things out for yourself. There are plenty of systems, maps, activities, and little mechanics that you will gradually discover as you play, so I would not recommend trying to follow a wiki for every single thing.
That said, there are a few things that are genuinely useful to know before you start wandering around. Some mechanics are easy to overlook, while others can save you a lot of time, Soul Crystal, or even lost EXP. This beginner’s guide covers the important basics without taking away too much of that exploration.
Soul’s Remnant Beginner Guide – Nighttime, Minigames
When you first arrive at Spawn, you will find that your movement around the world is limited by a magic barrier. You cannot simply walk into the rest of the world immediately, so your first goal should be figuring out how to get past it.
Before leaving Spawn, speak with the Quest Master. He is standing just to the right of the Great Campfire. Open his Quest Board and accept the leveling questline. This is worth doing immediately because it gives you a natural way to gain your first levels while also introducing you to some of the game’s basic systems.
Once you have started that questline, head toward Outskirts Northwest and look for the Shepherd. Speak with him to begin the quest that eventually allows you to leave the starting area.
The Shepherd will initially ask you to reach Level 10. You should be able to reach this fairly naturally by following the Quest Master’s leveling quests rather than simply wandering around killing random enemies.
Once you reach Level 10, return to the Shepherd. He will give you a Normal Dungeon Pass along with another quest.
This time, you need to clear Slime Garden Normal.
You can find Slime Garden in Outskirts Northwest. Look for the sign in the area and press Up when prompted to enter the dungeon.
After you successfully clear Slime Garden, return to the Shepherd. Completing this step removes the restriction and allows you to venture beyond the Outskirts.
I recommend doing this fairly early rather than spending too much time grinding around Spawn. The game opens up considerably once you can actually explore the rest of the world.
Searching the World Map
Once you start exploring Soul’s Remnant, the number of maps and different resources can become overwhelming. Fortunately, the World Map has a search function that makes finding specific monsters and gathering materials much easier.
Press M by default to open the World Map.
In the top-right corner of the map window, you will find a search bar. Type the name of a monster or gathering material and press Enter.
The game will then show you the maps that contain whatever you searched for.
Clicking one of the map names will display additional information about that location in the sidebar. For normal maps, the World Map will also move the view toward the location you searched for, making it much easier to figure out where you need to go.
There is one important exception: hidden maps.
Hidden maps are areas accessed through invisible portals, so they do not appear normally on the World Map. If your search points toward something that is located on a hidden map, you will not necessarily get the same map-navigation assistance.
The search function is also useful for gathering. If you hover over the name of a gathering material shown in the sidebar, the game will display its base appearance percentage when using the relevant gathering skill and entering its minigame.
Once you start collecting materials regularly, this search tool becomes something you’ll probably use far more often than you expect.
Understanding Nighttime
Soul’s Remnant has its own World Time, and nighttime lasts from roughly 7 PM to 5 AM in-game, which is around 22 real-world minutes.
When night begins, several things change.
The background music changes, most maps become darker, and players themselves begin emitting considerably more light.
For a new player, the darker environment can make nighttime seem much more dangerous than it actually is. You do not need to immediately run back to Spawn whenever night starts.
Only certain zones become significantly more dangerous during nighttime. Most of the world remains perfectly manageable, especially once you become familiar with the areas.
There is also a nice progression to this system. The first time you encounter a dangerous nighttime area, you probably won’t fully understand what is happening. After you have experienced it once or twice, you’ll know what to expect and will be much better prepared the next time.
So don’t treat nighttime as a reason to stop playing. Just be a little more careful when entering unfamiliar zones.
Keeping Return Crystals Ready
One of the most useful items you can carry as a new player is the Return Crystal.
You can purchase Return Crystals from the Shop Keeper at Spawn for 400 Soul Crystal, or craft them yourself later through Alchemy.
Using one is simple. Right-click the Return Crystal in your inventory or assign it to a hotkey and press that key.
If the area allows it, a Return Crystal creates a pale white portal that leads directly back to the center of Spawn. The portal remains available for roughly one minute.
Return Crystals cannot be used everywhere. Areas near other portals and certain special locations restrict their use, but they work in most of the regular overworld.
There is another useful detail that makes these items even better: the portal can be used by other nearby players as well.
That means you can be deep in an overworld map, activate a Return Crystal, and give yourself and nearby players a quick route back to Spawn.
A Return Crystal also costs 100 Soul Crystal less than manually warping back to Spawn, so keeping a few in your Use tab is a good habit.
The only downside is inventory space. Every Return Crystal occupies a slot, so you have to decide how many you actually want to carry.
Personally, I would keep at least one available whenever I’m heading somewhere unfamiliar. The first time you get yourself into trouble several maps away from Spawn, having a Return Crystal ready is much nicer than realizing you have no easy way home.
Understanding Death and EXP Loss
Death in Soul’s Remnant is not completely harmless, so it is worth understanding what happens before you start taking unnecessary risks.
When your Health reaches 0, your physical form disappears into soul particles and the screen fades to black. During this process, the game tells you what you lost.
The main penalty you need to worry about is EXP.
You lose 8% of the EXP required for your current level when you die.
The game also shows you the actual amount of EXP lost, so you can see exactly what the death cost you.
Afterward, your character returns to Spawn and is ready to continue.
This is one reason I recommend keeping a Return Crystal around. If you are carrying a large amount of progress or are exploring an area that feels beyond your current level, having a quick escape available can save you from turning a dangerous situation into an unnecessary death.
Building Your Survivability
Damage is obviously important in an MMORPG, but there is a point where surviving longer becomes more valuable than squeezing a little more damage out of your character.
You cannot kill anything while you’re dead, and repeatedly losing EXP because you are pushing content you are not ready for can slow your progression considerably.
There are a few straightforward ways to make your character more durable.
Joining a Guild
Joining a good Guild can make a noticeable difference, especially for newer players.
The obvious benefit is having other players around who can help you, but Guilds also provide Guild Perks.
These perks are not limited to combat damage. Depending on the Guild and its available perks, you can gain improvements to survivability, EXP gains, item drops, and other useful parts of progression.
If you find a friendly group that is actually active, joining them can make the game much easier to learn.
Putting Points Into CON
Do not completely ignore CON when spending your Stat points.
Even putting around 5 points into CON can give you a noticeable increase to your health pool while also increasing your DEF by 1.
You don’t have to build your entire character around CON, but a few points can give you some additional breathing room while you’re learning enemy attacks and figuring out how aggressive you can be.
For a beginner, having enough health to survive an extra hit can be much more valuable than it looks on paper.
Using Campfires
Campfires are another useful survival tool that are easy to underestimate.
Placing a Campfire creates a source of light and improves both health recovery and mana recovery for players standing near it.
That makes Campfires particularly useful when you’re hunting monsters that are above your level and need a reliable place to recover between fights.
There are restrictions. You cannot place Campfires inside content such as Dungeons, and you cannot place them in or under water.
Those restrictions actually give you a good idea of how useful they can be during normal overworld exploration.
Keeping a few Campfires with you is a simple habit that can save you a lot of downtime.
Understanding Group Activities
Soul’s Remnant has several activities specifically designed around playing with other people.
These include Dungeons, Minigames, Party Quests, and the Abyss Trial.
One important difference between these activities and normal overworld gameplay is how respawning works.
In many group activities, dying does not immediately send you all the way back to Spawn. Instead, your group can have a limited number of shared respawns that allow defeated players to continue inside the activity.
This is especially useful in multiplayer content because nobody wants to spend several minutes traveling back to the group every time they make a mistake.
Dungeons
Dungeons involve exploring a randomly generated collection of rooms.
Each room contains waves of monsters, so your party gradually works its way through the dungeon while searching for the Boss Key.
Once you find the Boss Key, you can enter the Boss Room and fight the dungeon’s boss.
Clearing the dungeon then rewards your party.
For new players, Dungeons are a good introduction to group combat because they require more coordination than simply fighting enemies in the overworld.
Minigames
Many of the game’s Minigames are connected to Gathering skills.
The main Gathering skills involved are:
- Herbalism
- Mining
- Fishing
Each skill has its own minigame, and the activities are not simply copies of one another.
Different Villagers are involved in these events, and each minigame asks players to communicate and perform different tasks.
Depending on the activity, you might be cooking fish, brewing potions, protecting a crystal, or dealing with another situation that requires cooperation.
This makes Minigames a nice change of pace when you don’t feel like grinding monsters.
Party Quests
There is currently only one Party Quest, but it is worth trying if you enjoy slower-paced multiplayer content.
Rather than simply throwing everyone into combat and expecting them to kill everything, Party Quests encourage cooperation and communication.
If you have a group of friends who enjoy figuring things out together, this is the kind of activity that can be much more enjoyable when everyone participates rather than one person doing everything.
And if you run into Gloopy, say hi.
Abyss Trial
The Abyss Trial is one of the more difficult pieces of content currently available.
It supports party play and contains several checkpoints, allowing you and your group to continue challenging floors without having to restart everything from the beginning each time.
There are also Weekly Rewards, which give you another reason to return and keep pushing farther.
If you’re new to the game, don’t feel like you need to rush into the Abyss Trial. It’s better to learn your character and basic combat first, then work your way into this content when you’re comfortable.
Taking Advantage of Party EXP
Parties are not only useful for Dungeons and other organized activities.
You should also consider forming a party when you’re simply grinding monsters in the overworld.
If another player is hunting monsters in the same area as you, there is very little reason not to party up.
Your party members’ kills can count toward quests you have accepted, and simply being in a party provides bonus EXP from monster kills.
So if you see another player farming the same area, don’t be afraid to send them a party invite.
It benefits both players and makes grinding feel considerably less lonely.
Managing Your Inventory
Inventory management becomes increasingly important as you explore more of Soul’s Remnant.
One of the first things you should get familiar with is the Magic Storage Chest at Spawn.
The Magic Storage Chest gives you additional storage space, but there is an even better feature: its contents are shared between your characters.
That means you can store useful equipment, materials, or other items there and access them from your other characters as well.
Use it instead of filling your character inventory with things you know you won’t need immediately.
Locking Important Items
There is a Locking toggle in the inventory interface.
When locking is enabled, any item you select becomes protected from being sold or altered through the game’s Souls or Gems systems.
The item also receives a special border so you can recognize that it has been locked.
This is worth using on equipment and other valuable items that you definitely do not want to accidentally sell.
Getting into the habit of locking important gear early is much better than realizing later that you accidentally sold something useful.
Disassembling Equipment
The Disassembly toggle gives you another option for dealing with equipment you no longer need.
Instead of simply selling or dropping unwanted gear, you can select items for disassembly.
The game shows you what you will receive from the selected items before you actually confirm the process.
This makes it useful when you’re trying to decide whether an item is worth keeping, selling, or breaking down for materials.
Sorting Your Inventory
The Sorting button automatically organizes the inventory tab you currently have open.
It is a small feature, but once your inventory starts filling up, it saves you from manually moving everything around.
You can also Middle Click your inventory or storage to organize it quickly.
Saving Equipment, Stats, and Skill Setups
Soul’s Remnant allows you to save different character setups.
You will notice numbered boxes above your Equipment, Stats, and Skills windows.
These slots allow you to save different configurations for a cost of Soul Crystal.
Once you have saved multiple setups, you can switch between them with a single button press.
This is particularly useful once you start using different builds for different situations. Instead of manually changing every piece of equipment and every skill whenever you switch activities, you can save the configurations and swap between them.
Unlocking Transmutation
You may notice a grayed-out square at the bottom of your Equipment window.
This is related to Transmutation.
Transmutation is a Life Skill that becomes available after reaching Alchemy Level 15.
Once unlocked, it allows you to change the Element on your weapon.
The cost depends on the relative value of the weapon being changed, so this is not something you need to worry about during your first few hours. It becomes considerably more relevant once you’re working with equipment that you intend to keep and optimize.
Useful Menu Shortcuts
There are several shortcuts that make navigating Soul’s Remnant easier.
You can press:
- F9 to toggle the entire UI.
- Backslash () to cycle the hotbar display between one row, two rows, and no hotbars.
- Ctrl + F4 to toggle fullscreen.
- Ctrl + F3 to show or hide the FPS and ping viewer.
- Middle Click in your inventory or storage to organize items.
The hotbar shortcut is especially worth remembering. Accidentally hiding your hotbars in the middle of combat is not exactly ideal, so consider changing the keybind if Backslash is too easy to press accidentally.
Using Strafe Effectively
The Options Menu contains a useful setting called Auto Strafe on Skill Use.
You can find the option under General → General.
There is also a Strafe keybind under Controls → General.
Strafing allows your character to continue facing a particular direction while moving.
This can be very useful during combat because you can keep facing an enemy and continue attacking it while moving away.
Once you get comfortable with it, strafing can make certain fights much easier, especially when you need to create distance without completely turning your character away from the enemy.
Housing and Campfire Controls
The controls listed below the Strafe option in Controls → General are related to Housing and Campfires.
The Build Tgl key is particularly useful because it allows you to close the Build interface.
Remember this when you’re building or decorating your home, as well as when you’re setting up Campfires.
Managing Hotbars
The Hotbars keybind can be found under Controls → Misc.
Pressing it cycles between three different states:
- First hotbar visible.
- Both hotbars visible.
- No hotbars visible.
If the default Backslash key is uncomfortable, I strongly recommend assigning the function to something easier to control.
The last thing you want is to accidentally hide your hotbars while fighting a dangerous enemy and suddenly be unable to see your abilities.
Using the Quick Menu
The Quick Menu is located in the bottom-right corner of the screen by default.
Clicking the Menu button opens it and gives you quick access to several important parts of the game.
The default shortcuts are:
| Menu | Key |
|---|---|
| World Map | M |
| Inventory | I |
| Equipment | L |
| Stats | O |
| Skills | K |
| Crafting | Comma (,) |
| Quests | Forward Slash (/) |
| Research | B |
| Buddies | Period (.) |
| Party | P |
| Guild | N |
| EXP Tracker | — |
You can also right-click one of the Quick Menu bars to reset it.
Once you have played for a while, these shortcuts become much faster than repeatedly opening the full menu.
Useful Chat Commands
Soul’s Remnant also has several chat commands that are worth knowing.
/dps calculates your current Damage Per Second and displays the result in the middle of your screen. This is particularly useful when testing equipment, skills, or different builds.
/guildinvite [name] sends a Guild invitation to the specified player.
/guildkick [name] removes a specified player from your Guild.
/kill kills your own character. This sounds strange, but it can be useful in certain situations where you intentionally want to return to Spawn.
/find [name] tells you which map a particular player is currently on.
/save manually forces your character data to save. You can use this once per minute. The game already autosaves periodically, so you generally don’t need to spam this command, but it is useful before doing something important.
/time displays the current World Time, which is handy when you’re trying to determine whether nighttime is approaching.
/w [name] [message] sends a private message to a specific online player. Private messages appear in purple text.
/p [message] sends a message to your current party. Party chat appears in blue.
/g [message] sends a message that can be seen by your Guildmates. Guild chat appears in green.
Getting Comfortable With the Game
The biggest piece of advice for a new Soul’s Remnant player is not to feel like you need to understand everything immediately.
The game has a lot of systems, but they gradually make more sense as you interact with them. Start by following the Quest Master’s leveling quests, reach Level 10, complete the Shepherd’s requirements, and get yourself out of the Outskirts.
From there, start exploring.
Use the World Map search when you need to find a specific monster or resource, keep Return Crystals available when traveling far from Spawn, and don’t be afraid to party with players who are grinding in the same area.
When you’re fighting stronger enemies, remember the simple survival options: put some points into CON, use Campfires in the overworld, and keep an escape route available.
For your inventory, make good use of the Magic Storage Chest, lock important equipment, disassemble items you no longer need, and use the saved Equipment, Stats, and Skills setups once you start experimenting with different builds.
Most importantly, don’t turn the entire game into a checklist. Soul’s Remnant is built around exploration, and some of the best moments will come from finding a strange map, meeting a new NPC, discovering a mechanic, or stumbling into something you weren’t expecting.
This guide gives you enough information to avoid the common beginner mistakes without taking away that sense of discovery. Once you know the basics, the rest of the world is much more fun to figure out on your own.