Hello, Chieftains!
It's been a while, and we hope you've all been doing well.
It's now been two months since the launch of Soulmask 1.0. Over that time, many of you have been wondering what the team has been working on next, and we've been closely following your feedback across all of our community channels every day.
In fact, we've been focused on one major goal: improving Soulmask step by step. Through a series of targeted updates, we're addressing some of the game's most important issues and refining the overall experience to make it smoother, more intuitive, and more enjoyable for everyone.
And today, we're excited to officially introduce:
The Soulmask 1.0 — 90-Day Overhaul Plan
Between June and August, each monthly update will focus on a different aspect of Soulmask, with targeted improvements designed to make the game smoother and more enjoyable to play.
At the same time, we're continuing development on brand-new content, including the final region of the Shifting Sands: Burning Highlands.
Featuring a new boss encounter, vast new areas to explore, and the region's ultimate Mask, this update is currently planned for September.
Over the next three months, we'll also be sharing regular development updates to give you a clearer look at our progress, upcoming changes, and the reasoning behind them.
But first, let's take a look at what's coming in June.
June Update — Focus: Balance & Difficulty Tuning, HUD Overhaul
After reviewing a large amount of player feedback, we've decided to make gameplay balance and progression flow our first major optimization priority.
Many players told us that certain parts of the game felt more frustrating than intended, particularly during the early stages of progression. We want the challenge in Soulmask to feel rewarding, not frustrating, so the upcoming mid-June update will include a wide range of balance and gameplay improvements, including:
Balance & Difficulty Tuning
Some boss encounters presented a steeper challenge than intended for first-time players, so we've adjusted the values and mechanics of several boss abilities.
Many players reported situations where bosses would disengage from combat and rapidly regenerate health. To address this, we've adjusted disengagement timers and health regeneration values for bosses and elite enemies, reducing the chances of fights being unintentionally reset.
•We've refined numerous dodge and stagger interactions. In addition, while in Mimicry Form, dodging will now function as a collision-free blink, allowing for more responsive and reliable evasive maneuvers.
•For players who prefer exploration and combat over production management, we've significantly increased the upper limits of production-related settings in Solo Mode, giving you more flexibility to reduce crafting and production time.
We also want Solo Mode players to enjoy a smoother progression experience. As a result, progression speed in Solo Mode will be increased by default.
These are just a few of the improvements coming in June. We'll be sharing a more detailed breakdown next week, and we'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
HUD Overhaul
This will be the first step of Soulmask's UI overhaul plan. In June, the in-game HUD will be completely redesigned. We welcome you to try it out and share your feedback.
Our longer-term goal is to significantly streamline all of Soulmask's current interfaces, and we'll be pushing this forward step by step.
Cross-World Portal
Many of you have been waiting for Cross-World Portal support in Solo Mode, and we know it's taken longer than expected.The feature presented a number of technical challenges behind the scenes, but after months of development and testing, we're excited to finally bring it to Solo Mode.To make it work, we've implemented a save-switching system that allows a single character to travel between Shifting Sands and Misty Woodlands worlds.We'll be sharing a detailed breakdown of how the system works next week.
Enemy AI Improvements
We've adjusted enemy combat behavior to create more varied attack patterns and reduce situations where enemies rely too heavily on the same actions. Certain high-damage combo sequences will now only appear at higher difficulty levels. Enemy behavior will also vary across game modes, allowing each mode to better reflect its intended playstyle and provide a more distinct gameplay experience.
Tribesman AI Improvements
Improving Tribesman AI will be an ongoing effort, and in June we're focusing on some of the issues that have the biggest impact on everyday gameplay.
Tribesmen will now respond much more quickly to assigned tasks. When a crafting queue changes, the assigned tribesman will immediately begin working without unnecessary delays.
We're also temporarily disabling certain spiral staircases that have been causing pathfinding issues. If your save contains these staircases, we recommend removing them for now.
In addition, we've reduced how often tribesmen make unnecessary trips to storage containers when searching for materials. This should help reduce pathfinding issues, improve overall efficiency, and lower the chances of tribesmen falling off ships.
Tribesman AI is a complex system, and not every issue has a simple solution. For this update, we're focusing on practical improvements that address some of the most commonly reported frustrations. We believe these changes will make tribesmen significantly more responsive and reliable in day-to-day gameplay.
Dungeon Difficulty Adjustments
We believe ranged enemies currently pose far too great a threat to Chieftains, and the lack of transparency around dungeon difficulty makes it hard for newer players to prepare. We'll be making significant changes to dungeon design and guidance to address this—ranged enemies will receive noticeable nerfs, and all major exploration zones will display recommended gear and level information.
Public Test Branch (PTB)
This will become an important part of our future development process—a standalone Public Test Branch (PTB), separate from the live version, where all changes (especially large or potentially controversial ones) can be released early for Chieftains to test.
We plan to open this branch today. For the first test cycle, we'll still require a brief sign-up process to ensure the initial rollout goes smoothly. After that, testing will be open to all players through our Discord community.
We welcome all Chieftains to check out our work in progress. More importantly, we need your feedback and suggestions—we'll be making rapid adjustments based on what you tell us.
Compared to the upcoming June update, some parts of the July and August updates aren't ready to share in full yet. But we've already locked in the themes, so we'd like to give you an early look at what we're thinking.
July Update — Focus: Building System Overhaul
As a survival game, we firmly believe that building is one of the most important gameplay pillars. Beyond the Shifting Sands ship-building system, we've received a huge amount of feedback about camp construction. So during this 90-day plan, we want to go further—a major overhaul of the existing building module:
New Building System
We agree that mixing item crafting and building component crafting in the same interface was not a good idea. In the upcoming July update, all building components will be plannable directly from Building Mode and will be automatically crafted and placed using materials from your camp storage or inventory.
This means you'll no longer need to craft a pile of building parts at a workbench, stuff them into your backpack, and then place them one by one. Even if you don't have enough materials yet, you can lay out your entire building framework first and let your tribesmen fill it in once the resources are available.
Building Blueprints
Ever since we shipped the ship blueprint feature, expanding community creativity from ships to buildings has been one of our ambitions—and in the July update, it will officially arrive.
By saving your buildings, you'll be able to quickly duplicate them, and even upload them to the Steam Workshop. In our vision, building blueprints will also support snap-point connections with existing structures, meaning you can create modular prefabs and rapidly combine them.
This will open up even more creative possibilities than ship blueprints. We'll share more concrete details soon.
Building Quality-of-Life Improvements
Improvements to snap-point behavior, functional building interfaces (such as a better logistics management system), and more are things we'll be working on continuously starting in June. These aren't limited to the July update alone—they span the entire 90-day period. Our goal is to let Chieftains immerse themselves in the joy of building, rather than wrestling with a single snap-point issue for half an hour.
August Update — Focus: Soulmask UI System 2.0
Our current focus for August is a major UI overhaul. Our goal is to significantly streamline Soulmask's current interfaces, simplify information presentation, and improve usability across the entire UI experience.
We'll start with major changes to the main menu, then move on to redesigning most of our management interfaces, character and tribesman progression panels, the tech tree, and most importantly, the crafting and workbench interfaces—all with friendlier interactions and more controlled information density.
Please bear with us that we can't share more details just yet—most of these changes are still in the design phase, and we don't want to promise anything that hasn't been finalized. But please keep an eye on our Public Test Branch and community channels. You'll be the first to know.
What's Next?
We know that nothing speaks louder than real update progress and concrete previews. This post is just the beginning. Next week, we'll share more detailed information about the mid-June update, alongside the long-term test branch that opens today, to give you an even clearer picture.
See you soon.
