Soulash 2: Year 25 Challenge

The start date in Soulash II is more or less analogous to the difficulty of the game.

A later start date will have higher level towns. Higher level towns will have higher level trainers and more types of trainers. This makes it easy for the player to find trainers for their desired skills and craftsmen to order their desired products.

Conversely, an earlier start date will have lower level towns. Lower level towns will have lower level trainers and less types of trainers. This makes it hard for the player to find trainers for their desired skills and craftsmen to order their desired products.

Whenever you save a new world for the first time, the game will usually progress time until the Year 100 to allow most towns time to develop their basic skill buildings. This is usually enough time for the player to find trainers in most skills up to the 30s and 40s. If the player chooses to progress time further, the world and the trainers within will develop further.

However, if you are looking for an additional challenge in your start date, there is a secret start. In the words of the developer: “it’s not intended, the world is not developed enough, but it’s a single player game so explore anything you like 😄“. With his blessing, this guide will now show you how to survive and thrive in Year 25.

Starting in Year 25 is incredibly simple. First, create your desired world with whatever parameters you like. This start works with any seed, map size, and civilization setting. Once your world is created, hover your mouse over the Save World icon and your finger over the escape key.

Once you click Save World, your world will save, and time will start passing. Press the escape key as soon as see this screen.

Depending on your computer and world parameters, time will pass incredibly quickly. A few years may pass in the half second it takes to press escape. This is okay. The challenge is functionally identical in the first 5 or so years of world generation.

If you press escape too quickly, you will generate a corrupted world. This could lead to your game crashing every time you click “To Adventure” on the Main Screen. If this happens, you must delete your corrupted save. Your save file is not found under Steam’s “browse local files“. Its default location is:

“<windows drive>:\Users\your_user\AppData\Roaming\WizardsOfTheCode\Soulash 2\saves”

If this happens to you, simply delete the world you were trying to create and try again, making sure to wait until you see time progressing to hit the escape key.

Because you are starting so early, there will be a distinct lack of trainers in the majority of skills. This means that your starting skills are critical in defining your gameplay for this challenge, as they may be the only points you receive. Assuming you level every available skill to 10 and your starter skills to 20, you should have around 100 levels to spend on stats by the time you reach the middlegame. I have divided my recommended starter skills into four distinct classes depending on your desired gameplay: The Mage, The Builder, The Blacksmith, and The Hunter.

The Mage is the purest and most difficult form of this challenge. It is a glass cannon start with all three pure magic skills: Cryomancy, Floromancy, and Pyromancy. This start requires a great deal of game knowledge to even survive, as starting with pure magic means you get no starter gear. This means no tools to scavenge with, no weapons to use, and no waterskin to drink from. The lack of magic schools until town level 4 also means that your magic skills will be stuck at 20/50 for a very, very, very long time. Elves are almost a must because of this if you want a chance at a max level mage, as they have a 500 year lifespan.

Note that the distinct lack of strength means your inventory will be tiny.

The Builder is a starter character meant to pave the way for other characters. This start allows you to build a beautiful town for your future characters to reside in. The skills of Construction, Agriculture, and Carpentry allow you to build most of the necessary buildings for a functioning town (although it will be a long time before there are families who are willing to migrate). Opt for the hoe over the sickle, as gathering tools are abundant in POIs like the Abandoned Farm. If you want a truly beautiful settlement, opt for Floromancy over Agriculture, as this will allow you to grow the grass to your liking. Taking the hatchet can allow for lots of easy income early on, and could theoretically allow for a pacifist run if you’re into that sort of thing. Any race works in theory with this class, but you may not find someone to marry before you grow too old to have children if you do not pick a long-living race, so be wary of that if you want to roleplay the early creator of a dynasty.

The Blacksmith is a brawny fighter that forges their own weapons and armor. Because the Pickaxe takes weaponsmithing level 12 to create, it takes a very, very long time for NPCs to gain the ability to craft one, and it is complete RNG whether you find one in a chest or not. Taking Adventuring as a starter skill not only allows you to start with a pickaxe, but gives you enough potential to smelt iron and silver. This pairs perfectly with Armorsmithing and Weaponsmithing, allowing you to craft much greater armor than any of the other classes. This also allows you much greater choice of your desired magic ingredients when crafting. When crafting weapons, remember that basic attacks in Soulash II only check for the lowest applicable resistance. This is best explained with a visual guide:

This formula works because the damage numbers on the left are added up and then checked against the lowest applicable number on the right. So the final example is checking 16 overall damage against 5 fire resistance. Note that this only works for basic attacks, as abilities and spells only deal one type of damage.

Any race works for The Blacksmith, but Dwarves feel the most fitting, don’t they?

The Hunter is the final class, and the easiest by far. The starting skills of Hunting, Leadership, and Athletics allow you to keep enemies at a distance while you send in companions to do the fighting for you. Even if they do get close, the points spent in Athletics allow for a quick lunging and sprinting getaway, leaving your companions to valiantly die while you live another day. While Carpentry is good at later levels, there are no decent bows between levels 10 and 20 that warrant taking Carpentry over Athletics in this specific challenge.

Because Hunting is leveled by one of the earliest available buildings, this is also the easiest skill to cheese to level 50. Simply get your hunting to max potential, then choose to pass one year working at a hunting camp within your settlement. Doing so will increase your maximum potential by one. You can then quickly gain one level by repeatedly using Sense Life, and then repeat the process to increase your maximum potential again. If you do this 30 times you can pass 30 years to get to 50 hunting without ever visiting a trainer. For this reason, Elves are recommended yet again. (Artur, please add more long living races!)

Note that the majority of your inventory will be held by companions, as they will have vastly more carry capacity than you, especially if you build them pure strength.

Tools can be the trickiest part of this challenge if you are not familiar with some natural spawn locations. For instance, note that none of the above classes chose a knife to start with. This is because a knife is incredibly easy to acquire, even in Year 25. Desert Villages will almost always have a bone pit to start, and will thus have random humanoid bones lying around. You can craft these bones into a bone knife, even with no work bench.

As discussed above, a gathering tool is easy to acquire from Abandoned Farm POIs (though you must be strong enough to defeat a few troublesome level mobs to do so). Most tools related to farming are found within the first 10 levels of carpentry. A woodcutter can be mildly RNG dependent, but there are plenty of axes found in various easy and troublesome POIs, and they are very common drops from chests. Much more common than the Pickaxe in fact, as there are multiple woodcutting tools but only one mining tool.

Even with the Pickaxe in tow, it can be hard to find a smelter, a workbench, and an anvil. Check the various buildings of each town on the overworld map, especially dwarves and trolls. If you ever find a toolmaker, you are in luck.

Even though the toolmaker themselves will probably not be able to make the tools you desire for many years, they will still have the workshops you need. Make note of this place, as you will likely return here many times to use the same workshops.

If there are no towns with the exact workshops you require, do not worry. That is part of the challenge. Simply begin playing the game and passing time naturally. The towns will naturally expand over time, and should eventually get the buildings you desire (assuming they are available to that town’s race). Note that you do not need a pickaxe to gather stone if you chose The Builder class, as you should be able to find a town with a quarry to buy stone from.

Even if you rush a settlement as quickly as possible, there will not be any migrants who want to join. This is because all the families that generated with the game will already be assigned to buildings, and only families without a building to work in will be willing to migrate. This is naturally solved over time, as the children of these families will grow up to form their own families, and these will be the families that you are able to recruit to your settlement. This may take a generation or two depending on if the settlements construct buildings faster than they have children. Just make sure not to recruit too many companions from the same town to be your meat shields, as you will hurt the overall population.

Despite the early start, the world will not be without skill trainers. The trainers will not be high level, but many of them will still exist, especially for various military skills. Be sure to talk to the leader of each town, as they are usually the highest level warrior, and might have some tricks to teach you. Hunters especially seem to be one of the earliest NPC skills to level up, as every race has the potential to spawn with a hunting building as their first food building.

As stated throughout the guide, potential is very limited in this challenge. Because of that, stat point increases are also very limited. Take your time to level every single skill to 10 for the bonus stat increases, even if it is not a weapon or skill you plan to utilize in the future. The 100 stat points under each class that I have allocated are made under the assumption that you have leveled every available skill to 10 and your 3 starter skills to 20. Your exact final stat count will vary depending on the skills you chose.

Like the developer said, this game mode isn’t exactly intended. It is entirely possible that you will hit a wall where your current gear and skill distribution is not enough to take on the POIs you have. Creating a larger world can help alleviate this, as the time will naturally progress faster with the increased walking distance between everything. But if you really want to, you can just pass time in your own settlement. Just make sure to keep your first 10,000 gold for this. Everything from settlements should be considered a “renewable” resource, while the lack of NPC buildings in towns means most goods from POIs and random map tiles are finite resources.

Because the challenge is based off what skills you have available, your starter skills really do impact the core of how you approach the challenge. Consider alternative paths like Imbuing and Leatherworking, or Stormthrowing and Thievery. Just be wary not to pick Tailoring unless you also pick Carpentry. Almost everything in the Tailoring tree requires a Tailoring workshop, and a workshop requires 20 Carpentry to create. Other than this, almost every combination of skills is viable in some way.

The Year 25 Start is a challenging way for roguelike veterans to reinvigorate their love for Soulash II by forcing themselves to engage with the majority of early game systems in a much deeper and more meaningful way than they usually would. It requires game knowledge, creativity, and strategy to successfully navigate, and can be an unforgiving experience. However, if you are up to this challenge, you will find that it is an intensely rewarding experience to overcome. Big thanks to the members of the Soulash Discord community for inspiring this challenge. I hope you now have what it takes to survive and thrive in Year 25!