Posted By Rubenvdz at

Okay, I'm a settler, and in the details of my package it says I have 3 souls to choose from. What does this mean? It could mean 3 sets of perks to choose from but I don't know

Its pretty much Soul=character slot. but when you play with say soul A and he dies (of old age/permadeath) you can again use this soul (if you have the soulpoints) and use this to inhabit your heir with some of your traits.

Well we don't know a huge amount about souls at this stage (or at least those who may know more can't say). The information we have however, suggests that souls will have some differences and may have types. Talents (with a capital T) will be attached to a soul but you won't know about it unless you meet the right in game requirements.

The other key feature of souls is that they have memory of their past lives in some form, they will learn skills that the previous body they inhabited knew faster than normal. Therefore if your previous character was a master blacksmith some of that knowledge is stored in the soul. When your new character begins smithing he should pick up those skills much quicker than normal.

my understanding is 3 souls are randomly generated and you pick one to play. each one has some of the traits you are looking for. one could could have been a lumberjack, another could have been a theif. you pick the soul that best matches the way you want to play that character, as the "destiny" of that soul will likely be based on that role.

Each soul will have skill ramps that will allow you to improve those skills more quickly. Souls that have past lives may also have achievements that provide additional perks that can be activated in your new character.

Talents and Destinies are not tied to souls. They are based on the alignment of the stars at the time of your character's birth.

As far as we know so far, a "soul" is basically a character slot. In order to make a character to fill that slot, you need to spend a "Spark of Life", which is paid for with real money - this is what Elyria uses instead of a subscription-based pay-to-play system.

Souls are reusable, Sparks of Life are not. Once your character perma-dies (a number of conditions must be met for this to happen - info available on the Wiki or this forum), the Soul is released and your character is gone forever.

Making a new character in the same slot (Soul) is not like making a brand new character in another MMO. Souls "remember" the skills from previous lives, making it easier to level skills you learned in a past life. If the Soul was a blacksmith in the past, you'll find your smithing skill goes up faster with a new character in that slot.

Souls can also have "Talents" - this can be magic, the ability to talk to animals, shapeshifting; the full extent of talents has not been revealed to us yet. It won't be immediately apparent from the creation menu which Souls have Talents - they have to be activated in-game under arbitrary conditions.

When you open Elyria for the first time, your Souls will be randomly generated! There's a chance the Souls will be brand spanking new, with no history. There's also a chance the Soulbound engine will generate a history for the soul, as if you had already played a character, giving that soul a head start in a particular set of skills.

Last, and most vaguely, is the concept of "Destiny". The Soulbound engine, on character creation, generates a series of custom quests and events for your character that are activated under specific circumstances. Your character's destiny might be to become a world famous breeder of horses, or to one day assassinate the king - but if you spend all your life growing corn, your character may never fulfil the destiny laid out for them, so the Soulbound engine may re-jig the whole thing. The Destiny system needs fleshing out, and I'm sure we'll be hearing more about it as time goes on.

I hope this answers any questions you might have about Souls! Hahah.

Souls are basically - in terms of game mechanics - a predetermined set of skills and skill ramps. With the basic game (Elyrian pack in the store) you will recieve one spark and 3 souls.

Souls will be randomly assigned and will also be randomly aligned. Some will have extra lives and thus extra skill ramps so that you can excell faster at skill advancement. (The numbers are generally thought to be rather small, so don't bet on getting a multi-life soul.)

A spark allows you to place a soul into an IG character. Thus, your TOON is a combination of a Soul, a Spark, and an IG character (12 - 18 for typical NPC, 19 + for Non-Traditional Character ot NTC for short)

While "character slot" is adequate, it's not concise, since there are no slots in this regard. If you have a spark (cost $35 retail) and a soul (retail cost unknown, you receive three with your package, but possibly can earn/buy more later) you can create a character.

What puts limits on this is monetary expense ($35 per spark) so if you start too many alts, you may find the price of sparks to maintain those extra souls too far out of your RL financial reach.

The other main limit is what you can/can't do with a character.

Since you cannot "learn" with an offline character, you will be required to be online for a certain amount of time in order to make sure your skills progress (unknown what specifics are ATM). If you pursue multiple alts, your time on each is limited and your toons then progress at a relatively slower speed, simply because you cannot dedicate the time to ALL your characters in order to properly progress all of them.

Talents are not readily known, and are not soul bound, but TOON bound. This means that if you spark a soul into a character and that character ends up with a Talent, the soul will not retain it after the toon's permadeath.

I hopr I was able to help flesh out the information for you.

The above answers are pretty good, so I'll just quickly reiterate a few things as there were a few pieces of misinformation above.

Souls are indeed functionally a character slot, except incorporating two major features.
First, your soul has an identity. On a few screenshots we can see that souls have "true names" that are randomly generated. They also have a color and a (very cool-looking) shape. There have been hints that a Coup de Grace (killing blow) performed on an already unconscious character (no accidental pvp deaths) will result in a sort of darkening of the soul for the killer (not the victim) tainting it forever, if only by a little bit (or a lot, who knows) per kill.
Second, other than identity, your Soul has memory. Past lives provide small skill ramps (more efficient improvement) of skills honed in past lifetimes. As it was mentioned above, some souls may generate with prior past lives, but not many.

I can confirm as it was said above that a Soul Pack comes with 3 Souls to choose from, and the possibility of Soul Packs being sold closer to Exposition & Launch is pretty high.

One important thing to note is that when a Spark of Life is used and a Soul is bound to either a Ward (longer life, no family) a Traditional Character (medium life + family) or a Non-Traditional Character (short life, inhabit existing NPC's body) a Soul cannot inhabit a new body until their current one permadies (lifespan - CdGs × Fame) and becomes a non-bound Soul.

This next part needs to be very clear:

Talents and Destiny are not bound to a Soul!

While a Destiny may be the result of many things (soul name, soul alignment, birth date, birth location and more) you get a new Destiny (to pursue or ignore) for each lifespan.
A Talent has a tiny chance (I think someone mentioned .5% or 1 in 200 players but possibly lower) of Bodies will have a dormant Talent, waiting to be discovered by a trigger event (such as drowning or falling a certain distance etc) making the number of people with discovered Talents very, very small.
It's worth noting that these Talents are probably not bound to a Soul but to the mortal coil it inhabits, making Talents a one-life boon most are unlikely to interact with but will probably hear stories about.

I hope this clarified some things on the differences between Souls, Soul Packs, Bodies, Talents, Destinies, and Sparks of Life.

TLDR: Soul + Spark + Body = Life

Destiny and a possible Talent are bound (or generated) to a Body, not a Soul as some mentioned above.

So everyone in this topic mentioned that talents are only bound to the body and not to the soul, but iirc from a design journal, if a talent is unlocked and or you received some achievment that is kind of a talent, your soul will permanently carry that on.

Just that the Talent will not be as strong in the new life, but needs to re-awaken under some conditions first or in another sense mature to the point where it would be able to fullfill its previous requirements again.

Would just like to know which one is currently the intented plan since the design journal is still able to change and the statements here don't say that any of the talents or achievments carry over.

A long time ago they changed talents from being bound to the soul to bound to the body. It was said because that way more people will have a chance at getting a talent and you would not know that you had a talent just because you had it before. Only about 5% of the toons at one time will have a talent and you won't know what it takes to activate it. Sometimes it was said talents will be given to a character to advance a story arc. Example, there is something under water no one can reach without drowning that will make a major change in the world. The devs said if no one has water breathing for example, they will give the talent to someone that is close to possibly discovering this thing under the water. They still have to find how to activate the talent and they won't know they have it.

I have never heard this, "Just that the Talent will not be as strong in the new life, but needs to re-awaken under some conditions first or in another sense mature to the point where it would be able to fullfill its previous requirements again."

However, this sounds very similar to how previously learned "SKILLS" work. Are you sure your not confusing the two?

Posted By Sareseras at 09:46 AM - Sat May 13 2017

So everyone in this topic mentioned that talents are only bound to the body and not to the soul, but iirc from a design journal, if a talent is unlocked and or you received some achievment that is kind of a talent, your soul will permanently carry that on.

Just that the Talent will not be as strong in the new life, but needs to re-awaken under some conditions first or in another sense mature to the point where it would be able to fullfill its previous requirements again.

Would just like to know which one is currently the intented plan since the design journal is still able to change and the statements here don't say that any of the talents or achievments carry over.

Nid is correct. The old system was that talents were tied to the soul, but it was changed to being generated (along with destiny) at birth instead. Talents, as currently designed, do not transfer to the next body. If you have one in one life, you will most likely not have one in the next, and no amount of work on your part will re-unlock it. This will push you to make full use of a talent while you have it, pushing the story forward, the point of the talent system to begin with.

Posted By RedDoggybone at 5:01 PM - Sat May 13 2017

I have never heard this, "Just that the Talent will not be as strong in the new life, but needs to re-awaken under some conditions first or in another sense mature to the point where it would be able to fullfill its previous requirements again."

However, this sounds very similar to how previously learned "SKILLS" work. Are you sure your not confusing the two?

No I was thinking about Achievments in that regard, as they told and is still in the Wiki. Achievments would become part of the Soul and carry over but in the next lifetime it wouldnt initially be as strong Link to the Wiki page: https://chroniclesofelyria.gamepedia.com/Achievements