Soulmask can be a little overwhelming at first glance, especially for anyone unfamiliar with survival games like this one or something like Conan: Exiles. Do not worry, though—here, I'll walk you through some of those really early steps to get you started in the right direction.
Soulmask early crafting guide
So, right off the bat, you'll be greeted by some pretty gnarly UI layouts and a lot of instructions on what to do. Thankfully, it really isn't as complicated as it may first appear, so let's break down some of the main elements you'll need to understand to start out right.
First and most importantly, you'll need to gather some resources. In the beginning, there are only three things you need to worry about, as these will allow you to craft your starting gear. You want to look for the following, which are pointed out and labeled in the image below.
- 1A - Rocks
- 1B - Branches
- 1C - Plants
In order to collect these, all you'll need to do is look at them and then hit 'E' to interact. Rocks and branches are self-explanatory, and plants will grant you thatch and vines. Take your time to collect heaps of these before moving on because you're always going to need them, and it'll save you a bit of a headache later on.
Inventory, Crafting & Knowledge
Accessing your inventory is as simple as hitting 'Tab', and here you can see everything you've picked up, some of your crafting recipes, and your hotbar layout. Assuming you've collected plenty of resources, you'll be nudged into learning how to craft a campfire. If you attempt to make one from your inventory, you'll note you're unable to do so. Instead, you're going to need to hit 'T' to access the knowledge screen.
What you'll want to do is select 'Campfire' which is up at the top left, which will then show up in that panel on the right side. Once you've selected it, you'll want to click and hold on to the campfire entry on the right panel to unlock it as a crafting recipe.
Once you've done that, you can return to your inventory and craft the campfire using some of the materials you gathered previously. To craft an item, select the recipe you want to craft from the right side of your inventory screen and double-left-click to add the build to your queue. You can queue three items at once, and they usually take a few seconds to whip up.
Your campfire will need some fuel, obviously, and it only starts with about five minutes worth. So, interact with the campfire once you've placed it down to be introduced to station-specific crafting. The campfire menu allows you to cook things as you might expect, so any nice juicy bugs you've picked up will suffice for practice.
To give it some fuel, you'll want to provide it with some thatch from your inventory. A handy tip here is to use the 'splitting' function, which will allow you to split your stack of thatch into two amounts, which saves you putting all your thatch in the fire and going out to collect more.
To split a stack, simply hover over the item you want to split and right-click once to bring up the context menu, then select split. This will then prompt you to select the amount of items you'd like to split from the stack, so adjust accordingly. Then you can give your fire some extra fuel and keep cooking up those Locusts.
While this might seem like simple stuff, it's easy to get bogged down early on for those unfired by the survival genre, so hopefully, these general crafting and knowledge tips will assist you going forward.
And if you're looking for more survival game content, check out our piece on the differences between ARK Survival Ascended and ARK Survival Evolved, or our review on Winter Survival, only at Pro Game Guides!
