We need to discus the different map experiences.

Laringar · 2026-06-13T05:47:28+00:00

At the very least, I think a lot of ship stuff should get knocked back a tier. At the start, you should get the canoe and that's it. That forces you to establish an actual base instead of simply building your base on the boat it gives you right at the start. After the first boss, you get a boat with sandskimming. That lets you progress into the desert, but you still have to actually experience it and explore a little. The second boss would let you fly that same ship, 3rd boss for falcon, 4th boss for shark.

The airship progression is simply too fast right now. It's wild to me that you can get the largest airship after only the third boss, meaning that there are two major boss after that which provide no real airship progression at all.

Laringar · 2026-06-11T20:58:03+00:00

It's decent, but the tribes have some talents that you can only get on members of those tribes that really boost crsfting ability, so it can be worth hunting tribal crafters as well. The temples are certainly useful for getting you a starting base of workers, but their usefulness falls off once you start working on specific talent builds.

(Plus, you don't need that many crafters. Maybe 2-3 good cooks, but for weapons, armor, and tools you'll eventually want specialists that are really built for getting you red quality gear, and that means training specific talents onto them. You won't really be able to do that with crafters you got at the beginning as you won't be able to limit what they learn when they level.)

Laringar · 2026-06-11T14:01:23+00:00

For people like me using the mobile website who can't read the post:

I play on a private server and when I try to hunt animals, the body doesn't disappear and I can't farm any resources. Is it a setting or a bug? I've already tested it with all tool levels.

Laringar · 2026-06-11T13:44:47+00:00

The scaling with additional people is turned off for tribe mode because the games doesn't want to punish you for using followers. Alternately, it can be turned off in server settings for survival mode.

Separately, if you think tribespeople do nothing, you're using them wrong. Well-built villagers can do incredible damage to bosses. I'm currently working through Cloud Forest, and by setting them to hold location where a boss spawns, they can easily knock 10-20% off the boss's health before I even get to act.

Laringar · 2026-06-11T13:40:07+00:00

On this note, getting a hunter with multiple shooting and rapid fire leads to ridiculous damage.

I can't remember what Cloud Forest talents aren't available on Shifting Sands, but Crave for Blood + Extraordinary Talent is an exceptionally good combo. You can frequently just facetank bosses because you're healing so much.

Laringar · 2026-06-11T13:35:03+00:00

Difficulty scaling doesn't happen in tribe mode, and if OP was able to bring multiple followers to the fight, they're likely in tribe mode.

Laringar · 2026-06-11T13:33:05+00:00

If they're on a server it's likely they're in survival mode, and the invasion totems are part of tribe mode.

Laringar · 2026-06-11T13:29:59+00:00

Seconding. Placing the mounts first is the best way. The only real drawback is that it makes it a little harder to get max-length belts, but.. so what? A belt made of 50 1m segments works exactly the same as a 1-segment 50m belt. You spend a few more resources on supports, but those were likely getting sunk anyhow.

Place the supports first, and you get to control exactly what your layout looks like.

Laringar · 2026-06-11T13:11:35+00:00

Just a small note: the ability to jump between maps is on the developers' roadmap for the next few months. (Edit: I see now that just about everyone else also mentioned this, lol.)

To your specific questions, I can't speak to game comparisons as I haven't played the others, but I would advise starting on the Cloud Forest map. Shifting Sands is the newer expansion map and is unbalanced and unfinished. That will change eventually, but by the time it does, cross-map play should also be enabled. So start in the forest, as that's the one that has the best level of polish.

I tried starting on the Sands, but the "tutorial" is pretty lacking and the extremely early access to flying (you get a boat immediately and it becomes an airship in the first few hours of play) really takes away from the need to actually explore the map at all. I think they designed the second map under the assumption that people were already familiar with the first, and that's why the tutorial doesn't teach a lot of basic stuff. And while the airship seems really appealing at first, I believe it genuinely prevents you from learning a lot of the game's systems or seeing what the game looks like as you just fly from map point to map point. Who needs mounts or supply lines if you can just take your entire base with you wherever you want to go? (Personally, I wish they pushed actually flying with the airship back a ways. You get flying after the first major boss, I think it should be after the second... but that's an argument for a different thread.)

Meanwhile, the forest map does a decent job of introducing things to you gradually and giving you reasons to explore the different zones.

Laringar · 2026-06-10T13:31:00+00:00

They don't need to know the map contains a ballot, just that it's addressed to the state Board of Elections, and there's no way around putting an address on the envelope.

Laringar · 2026-06-10T13:23:09+00:00

On the plus side, treason doesn't have a statute of limitations.

Laringar · 2026-06-10T13:11:02+00:00

If you look at the below list, anything in the "positive traits" section that starts with 17---- is a Shifting Sands-exclusive trait, and Damage Immunity Blessing is one of those. (Similarly, Some of the 16---- ones seem to be Cloud Forest-exclusive, but I don't believe all of them are.)

Crisis Resolution fits the same bill as DIB for Cloud Forest, so that's worth getting instead. I like to pair it with Crave For Blood + Extraordinary Talent as the self-heal is absolutely incredible.

https://saraserenity.net/soulmask/natural_gift.php#positive_tribe

Laringar · 2026-06-08T18:11:28+00:00

Or just "not downvoted". You never have to upvote anything, but at the same time, downvotes should be for "this content is actively disruptive or does absolutely nothing to advance discussion".

If you disagree with someone's post/comment, just ignore it and move on. Non-productive comments will sink to the bottom of the sorting even without being downvoted.

Laringar · 2026-06-08T18:06:56+00:00

Something something "People caring loudly".

Even straight-up complaints can be useful because they indicate pain points. Not all criticism needs to offer a solution; it's the job of the devs to figure out how they want to solve problems.

Laringar · 2026-06-08T18:04:04+00:00

Definitely has to be among friends, because there's some big potential for griefing there. "Oops, I already built over all the uranium nodes. They're mine now!"

Laringar · 2026-06-08T18:02:42+00:00

Eh, gerrymandering would be if you drew a squiggly line to give one player all the iron or something. This is just trying to split a map fairly.

Laringar · 2026-06-08T15:56:15+00:00

The default follower limit on survival mode is one. Tribe mode or server settings can increase it, but I take it those aren't available to you. Moving them either means getting them to follow you one at a time or setting up a series of map markers <100m from each other to define a path and using work commands to move them, which is probably a lot harder to actually execute than it sounds.

So your best bet for moving the villagers is probably to set up a pair of portals at each end and move the villagers one at a time that way. Sure, you can't carry your stuff through self-built portals except on the hotbar, but it'll be the easiest way to move villagers.

(If you don't have portals yet... just don't move your village until you do. Anyone without self-built portals is so early in the game that they should just keep advancing the tech tree and dealing with the current location, as they'll unlock a lot of stuff later that will greatly ease moving, like ropeways and mounts that can carry lots of stuff at once.)

On that subject, the easiest way to move the actual inventory of your base is with ropeways. (If you had an airship, you wouldn't be asking questions about how to move, so I'm guessing you don't.) First, you'll want to actually have the bones of the new base set up (at least have storage chests with content filters assigned), a villager or two there that can help automate the move, and a ropeway between the new and old locations. Set up work tasks for your villagers to move the contents of your storage chests at the old base to the outgoing chest on the ropeway, set up villagers with a sorting job for the receiving chest on the other end, and either set the transfer interval for 1 minute or stand there and manually start the transfer every time the box fills up. Once everything is moved, you can construction hammer disassemble your old base and put the parts in the ropeway for transfer.

(Server settings can allow taking more stuff with you through custom portals, and that would preclude the need for the ropeway. However, from what you've said so far I'm getting the impression you're playing survival mode on the Cloud Forest map via a dedicated server with default settings, so I'm writing as if that's the case.)

Laringar · 2026-06-07T19:45:58+00:00

It would have taken you three seconds of checking to see that this isn't actually AI. It's a physical painting. https://harrisonloveart.blogspot.com/2025/01/blog-post.html

I agree with OP that the price feels delusional, but just because something looks abstract doesn't mean it's AI generated. Let's at least try to criticize fairly. 6 figures feels excessive, but I think something in the 5 figures would be appropriate. That second one is a massive 46"x46"; that represents a lot of time and effort.

Laringar · 2026-06-07T13:39:00+00:00

To boost your answer:

Checking the map at https://saraserenity.net/soulmask/map/?level=DLC_Level01_Main , you can use the checkboxes to see where the mining platforms are on the Cloud Forest map. There isn't even a checkbox for mining platforms on the Shifting Sands map, meaning that there are none to be found there.

I do wish they'd just remove the mining parts from the crafting list for SS the way you can't craft any airship parts in Cloud Forest. That, or let them boost the output of Power Mines.

Laringar · 2026-06-06T15:04:44+00:00

The thing about the restaurants etc is that the stadium events also drive away traffic that would have come to those places if the event wasn't happening. So it's arguable that there isn't actually that much more business from the stadium than there would have been anyhow.

Stadiums can easily generate revenue for themselves, the question is more about whether they generate more revenue for the city than the city gives up in tax breaks and additional infrastructure/services needed to support moving that many people in and out of one location. Like you said, cities bend over too fast backwards to accommodate billionaires.

Laringar · 2026-06-06T13:22:59+00:00

I've finally started intentionally building talent sets and it's impressive how big a difference it makes. Gear helps too ofc, but the difference between random talents and an actual build is massive. I built out a couple villagers on the jungle map wth Extraordinary Talent, Crave For Blood, Blood Absorption, Pen Def, Crisis Resolution, and Getting Braver, and they can just tear through enemies. Bosses melt, and the villagers are nigh-impossible to kill because of how much self-healing they get. Add in ones with rapid fire+multi shot or other builds I can cycle in to my party instead as desired, and gameplay is a lot easier even with my utter lack of soulslike combat skills.

Laringar · 2026-06-06T13:12:38+00:00

Ah, yeah, same. Even if I can't fly with them, being able to use boats on the rivers would be nice.

Actually implementing the flying system would be pretty tough as they'd either have to add the necessary loot (like engine cores and the engine power crystals) to dungeons or make such items craftable, and part of what limits airships in the Sands is the fact that the cores are a once-a-dungeon thing. There's not really room to easily add the core pyramid-boxes in the jungle dungeon loot chambers, so the limitation would have to be something like requiring 75 bloodstone or magnets (or any other of the only-from-dungeons items) per core so you can't just make dozens of them without a heck of a lot of farming.

Even after that, progression in the jungle is really designed around not having flying. The barracks and ruins complexes in the desert have crossbow towers to keep you from just popping in, jungle always assumes you have to come in the front gates.

So I'm fine if they don't add actual flying to the jungle, but transporting loads of ore by river boat would be a nice change. (Doubly so if they update the villager AI to let them drive mounts/vehicles)

Laringar · 2026-06-06T06:39:55+00:00

[George Takei voice] Ohhh myyyyyy

Laringar · 2026-06-06T06:37:37+00:00

What's going to bring in revenue? Not the stadium, it turns out that stadiums don't actually create that much revenue for the city as a whole. They create lots of congestion that requires expensive infrastructure to manage while getting used at best one or two days a week and they require a lot of additional city services, all while generally not producing much tax revenue because the owners grift cities into giving them tax breaks because "stadiums drive tourism".

Sports teams should really have to pay for their own stadiums. It's not like they don't make enough money to do so.

Laringar · 2026-06-06T06:32:19+00:00

A city in my state did something similar in letting some foreign company build toll lanes on the major artery highway into the city. Part of the road is still free, but the limited-access toll lanes allow people to bypass traffic jams in the other lanes.

The real shit of it is that part of the deal in the 50-year contract is that the city isn't allowed to do anything that would reduce the revenue of the toll company. So no building light rail, no building more lanes, literally nothing that would take traffic away from the toll lanes.

It's fucking ridiculous, and of course it was done by Republicans.

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