Soulmask 1.0 – Our First 72 Hours: FAQ, Apology, and Next Steps

We are grateful to everyone who has joined us — and we want to sincerely apologize to players who have not had the experience they hoped for. We know that 1.0 did not meet every expectation, and we know we still have real work to do.

We have been reading everything: Steam reviews, discussions, social media, streams, YouTube comments. Your feedback is being taken seriously, and we are moving as fast as we can.

And we want to be upfront about where we fell short and what we are doing about it.

• Fixed the PVP building damage bug that broke raiding entirely

• Fixed tutorial images displaying bug

• mproved localization quality across several areas

• Added a proper tutorial skip option (including a key rebind so the End key is no longer required)

• Added long-term PVP servers, including a no-raid mode

• Updated Modkit tools to resolve crash issues caused by mod incompatibility

• Improved the Blueprint UI and added a direct in-game link to the Steam Workshop

• Adjusted anti-gravity engine drop timing in Shifting Sands Survival Mode — it now drops after defeating Sobek, so you can get your ship airborne much sooner

• Expanded official server capacity after login and matchmaking issues at launch

We know that 1.0 did not meet every expectation, and we know we still have real work to do.

— New player experience The onboarding for Tribe Mode needs a full rethink, and we are doing that work now. We are specifically looking at the first 30 minutes — the point where most new players tell us they lost the thread. The goal is fewer dialogue boxes, more contextual guidance, and a first hour that feels like an invitation rather than a gauntlet. First impressions matter. We did not nail this one and we are fixing it.

— Controller support A full controller UI overhaul is already in development and is one of the first items on our post-1.0 roadmap. We will share screenshots and specifics soon.

— South America and OCE servers We are in active conversations with providers in both regions. If you know of options we should be considering, we are open to hearing them via Discord.

We will follow up with a proper update as soon as we have one.

— Crashes Most crash reports right now are mod-related. We have updated the Modkit and are asking mod creators to update their work. If your crash is not mod-related, please share your details in our Discord — the specifics matter a lot for tracking these down.

— Boss difficulty We will be reviewing elite and boss damage values across the mid-game and adjusting them in upcoming patches. Smoothing out the difficulty curve here is a priority.

— Combat feel We will be direct: Soulmask is our studio's first 3D game, and combat is the system that shows that most clearly. Building responsive, satisfying melee combat is a craft that takes years to develop — and we are still developing it. We know that. We are not satisfied with where it is either.

Improving this is also genuinely hard for a team our size. We do not have a dedicated combat team iterating in parallel — changes have to be sequenced, tested, and balanced against everything else that needs fixing. That means this will not turn around in a single patch.

What we are not going to do is promise a complete overhaul and then go quiet. So here is what we are committing to specifically:

• In parallel, we are reworking the equipment and gemstone upgrade system — not just numbers, but making your build choices feel like they actually change how a fight plays out.

• we are starting with the whip, which has been the most-requested combat fix. From there we will work through animation responsiveness and hit feedback.

This will not be fixed in one patch. But we will show you the work as we go.

— Performance and VRAM If you are seeing out-of-memory issues, we recommend setting graphics to Medium or below if your GPU has less than 3GB VRAM, and updating to the latest drivers.

The large map, tribesmen AI, and airship physics are all genuinely demanding. We will continue optimizing.

— UI and menus This one is harder to address honestly.

Soulmask has a lot of systems — tribesmen AI, training, production chains. There is a real depth here, and we have always believed that depth is worth it. But depth without clarity is just friction, and right now the interface is not doing enough to bridge that gap.

We have reworked these menus 12 times since Early Access, and we know the current result still falls short.

We do not have a complete solution to share yet. This is a hard problem and we want to get it right rather than ship something that moves the friction somewhere else. If you have specific pain points — menus you find confusing, flows that feel broken — please tell us. The more precisely we understand where things go wrong, the better.

Soulmask is our team's first game. That is not an excuse — it is context. We launched something we are proud of, and we also launched something that still needs work. Both of those things are true.

This work did not start 72 hours ago. It started the day Early Access launched, through every patch, every community thread we read at 4am, every system we rebuilt after your feedback told us it was not good enough. That continues now.

What keeps us going is you. The players who are still building, still exploring, still leaving feedback even when it is critical.

If you are having a rough time with the game right now, we understand. Keep telling us — we are listening. Every note you write — whether it is a detailed bug report, a design suggestion, or just telling us what felt wrong — lands on a team that is reading it.

And if you have been here a while — if you know what this game can be, because you have already seen it — your voice matters more than you might think. If you have had real moments in this game — a tribe you are proud of, a fight that surprised you, a 2am session that ran longer than it should have — sharing that honestly is the best thing you can do for players who are still on the fence. Your experience is part of this game's story, and it deserves to be heard.

We will have more to share soon — patches, and the specific changes we mentioned here. We will not keep you waiting long.

Thank you for staying with us.

Soulmask Team