Soulstone Survivors: Beginners’ Battle Tips for Prestige Leveling

Hello all! I just wanted to share my basic setup and strategy when it come to picking runes and skills for leveling. This is a basic archetype I use regardless of class unless I am on an over 100-level character which is where I would then choose only very specific runes and skills. The most important advice I can give is read the card descriptions and use your dash often! I hope this information helps you out!

Usually when I am leveling any class, I go with the following runes:

Efficient Extraction: increases the amount of materials collected by 50%. More materials is great, especially when you will need them for crafting and upgrading!

Weapon Expert: You start the game with the special weapon skill for the currently selected weapon. Hugely important because this will give you 2 skills at the start of every fight instead of just one.

Skill Mastery: Arcane/Chaos use these to select either Bloodlust or the Arcane Power buff, which I will get into later in this guide. These buffs are important!

Ready for Battle: the first 5 levels will only offer you active skills. Hugely important! This allows you to come out of the gate strong and establish a full skill bar hopefully before bosses start activating.

Lord’s Bane: Increases your damage by 25% whenever a lord of the void is alive. This is great pick for regular maps, but can be replaced.

Surefooted: you take 15% less damage from all sources and you are also much more resistant to pushback. A great defensive choice, but can be replaced.

Dash Mastery: increases your dash speed by 50% resulting in a longer distance traveled. A great defensive choice, but can be replaced.

Below is an image of what these runes look like:

Now, if I am playing a primary summon class, such as Beastmaster or Necromancer, I will use the following runes in the “can be replaced” slots:

Extra Help: the maximum active units and quantity of units summoned by all of your skills are increased by 1. Hugely important! More summons = more damage.

Harmony: increases your damage and the damage of all your summoned units by 0.8% per active summoned unit, up to a maximum of 24%. Hugely important! This is a giant damage boost.

Lastly, you can alternate Efficient Extraction with Material Harvest: whenever you collect a major soulstone you also gain random minerals and gems, according to the minerals available in the map you are in. You could also run both together if you really, really need resources!

Once a character reaches prestige level 20, they unlock the character specific skill tree and the very first skill on that tree will always be the special skill for that class. For example, Monkey King collects orbs that summon clones, and the orbs look like this on the map:

It’s important that you gather your class specific orb drops to cast and empower your prestige skill. On most classes these are a free damage boost, although some classes’ skills are better than others imo, and I will do a tier list of my personal opinions on class prestige skills at a later time. A short example is that for me, the Legionnaire’s stationary catapult with its build cost is not that good, but the free raptor pack summoned by Beastmaster is a huge damage boost. You will notice as you play and experiment with different classes that you prefer some more than others, and that’s perfectly ok!

There are 3 major buff skills that I consider vitally important to have at least one of when leveling. These skills are:

Generally, you want to definitely have Bloodlust if you are playing a summon class, as it applies to all summons and can nuke bosses. Arcane Power is more of a personal buff, and great on classes that aren’t using summons. Might, while a great buff, is not as necessarily as the other two buffs as the cast speed and multicast simply outclass it. However, don’t let this discourage you- you can still pair Might with one of the other buffs in addition! I would prioritize selecting Bloodlust, then Arcane Power, and then finally Might. Now, there are some other lasting buffs besides these, but I feel that these are the most important and best options, which is why I am only including these three for the time being.

While certain classes are primarily a summon based playstyle, such as Beastmaster, Necromancer, and Engineer, other classes have generic summons available in their skills they can select from, in addition to using Skill Mastery to grab summons they wouldn’t normally have access to. For this section, I am only going to focus on the two major general summons:

As you can see, the Power Conductor example I provided is from a match where I got to 300% damage modifier on it, which nuked every boss that spawned. It’s an excellent idea to pick one of these general summons when possible, as they can make your life a lot easier especially if your class prestige skill is not the best or at a very low prestige. As a final note on summons, it is essential to pair Bloodlust with your summon skill(s) whenever possible, as they synchronize extremely well together!

Next, I want to cover the importance of utilizing “locked” skills when selecting from the skill pool. You will unlock the ability lock certain skills by leveling up the basic middle rune tree. You then use this mechanic by clicking “lock skill” and selecting the skill you want to lock. Upon leveling up again, the locked skill will be there as a choice now. See example below:

In this example, I locked Swift, and selected Increased Quantity. Then, the next time I leveled up, I was able to select Swift. I generally recommend saving locks for when you get two or more good choices at the epic (purple) quality or above. I also recommend selecting damage increases first, then utility. In this example, the additional amount of summoned units makes it a damage increase. Below I’ve got a good example of how extra summoned units really helps with having a large minion army to deal damage:

Along with locking skills, you can also select skills to banish, which removes them from the rest of the match anytime options are presented to you. Banishing is also unlocked via the central basic skill tree. Below is an example of how it looks when you select banish:

Generally, the only skills I normally banish are defensives, as increased damage and utility are far more important; additionally, the defensive skill bonuses are not that good, and you should be using your dash as often as possible anyways in order to avoid being hit.

In the example above, I always banish Resilient. Here are the other skills I always banish:

Leviathan may look good at first glance, but slower movement on higher difficulty means you’re more likely to get hit and not be able to get out of the red circles in time. However, if you’re using a movement speed buff such as Dazed, you may be able to get away with it- but please do note how many stacks of the skill card you’re using as they add up quick and may overpower the effect of the buff to place you in the negative here!

Now, I’d like to highlight the passives I always select and why they are important. Below is the most important one:

This makes gathering the experience crystals a lot easier and levels you up faster! If you’re only playing one match, then I would only advise take 1-3 copies of this passive. If you plan on staying in additional rounds, please take this buff as much as possible as it will enable you to acquire more skills overall!

Next, I’d like to highlight an important combo:

Generally, I advise prioritizing damage buffs over critical anything, BUT if you get Vicious Strikes, then by all means stack Merciless! Always take Vicious Strikes whenever you see it (and you will only see it once as it is not a stacking skill).

Next is Multi Cast:

This is always a huge damage boost because the more times an ability is cast, the more damage it does overall, especially against the same target such as a boss.

Additionally, Relentless:

More abilities casted means more damage overall as well!

Expanisve:

Larger skills mean more mobs dead however please be careful with this one! Certain skills when they get too large make it very hard to see the red circles you need to dodge. A big offender here is any cloud/stationary or slow moving spell.

Speed:

Speed skills may show as several names as shown above. When selecting speed skills that enhance a buff such as Bloodlust, I recommend going for about 40-50% cast speed total then focusing on other skills. For cast frequency on other skills, I don’t really have a set limit on those, but try to evenly distribute among active skills- so if you just picked for one skill, then reroll to find another skill boost if needed.

Class prestige skill:

You may see skill cards like these associated with your class’s specific mechanic. Generally, read the text to determine if it’s good or not- damage is always better than crit or defensives.

Utilities:

I generally recommend always taking at least some levels of these whenever they appear; if you plan on doing multiple rounds, then please take more than one health. This gives you some room if you miss a dodge by mistake.

Damage buffs:

These appear in the two types listed above, and both are great choices! Direct damage up is always great, but damage to a specific spell is fine as well!

Finally, there are two important categories of skill cards called skill chain/skill infusion:

These are both good types of skills to invest in, but please read the text and be mindful of what categories of active skills you have selected! For example, if the the secondary type of skills you have are buffs, then you don’t really need the chain as it wouldn’t really do much for you. However, if you have 3 slam skills and then two electric skills, then the chain would be a huge boost. The same applies to infusion- read the text and just be mindful!

So, I hope this guide helped you with some of the basics and as always questions and comments are welcome!