Patch 11 - Introducing Ironman Mode

Introducing Ironman Mode

Are you ready for a new challenge?

Ironman Mode is launching into Soulbound: Online as a new opt-in challenge. When you create a character, you can select Ironman Mode to play at a crazy new difficulty level. But be aware, this choice is permanent, so make sure you're ready to face it.

What is Ironman Mode?

If you select Ironman Mode, your character will become completely self-sufficient. You’ll have no support from other players and must earn, gather, and fight for every scrap of progression.

In Ironman Mode, characters cannot:

• Trade with other players
• Join parties or use Dungeon Finder matchmaking. Dungeons must be tackled solo, and party- up zones will send you in alone.
• Pick up items dropped by other players
• Enter other players' apartments or rentables
• Use the Auction House

How will I know who’s an Ironman?

Ironman characters will have a helmet badge on their nameplate so you’ll always know who’s with you in the trenches.

What if I don't choose Ironman Mode?

Nothing changes! If you don't select Ironman Mode in character creation, you'll continue playing as you did before. You can still access the Auction House, enter other players' homes, trade items, join parties, etc.

Are you ready for a new challenge?

Step up the difficulty by choosing Ironman Mode and see how far you can go on your own! Good luck Pioneers, you're going to need it.

Patch 11

Highlights

• The Halloweeb Festival runs from Thursday 8 October to Thursday 5 November: a new endless dungeon, Skull Night, with daily leaderboard prizes, three Halloween dailies, a Halloween vendor, six new achievements and seasonal decorations around the world.
• New Ironman game mode, chosen when you create a character.
• 14 more achievements now reward SoulBits, and Defeat Spectra's SoulBits reward doubles.
• Primary stats from buffs, relics and consumables now count towards your ability damage.
• A large localisation pass: better font support for Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Cyrillic and accented letters, and many more menus and messages translated.

Ironman Mode

• Ironman is a new opt-in challenge mode. You pick it in the character creator when you make a new character, and it is permanent.
• Ironman characters are fully self-sufficient:
• no trading with other players
• no parties and no Dungeon Finder matchmaking (you can still start dungeons solo). Party-up zones always send you in alone.
• you can drop items, but you can't pick up items other players dropped. Your own drops and normal world, enemy and chest loot are fine.
• no entering other players' apartments or rentables
• no Auction House

Ironman characters show a helmet badge on their nameplate.

Characters that don't pick a mode play exactly as before.

Halloweeb Festival (8 October – 5 November)

Skull Night

• Skull Night is a new endless dungeon. Skulls keep coming until you fall. There is no boss, only survival.
• It sits at the top of the Dungeon Finder and is open to everyone, with no requirements. It is only available during the festival.
• Runs are ranked by how long you survive, in seconds. The Solo and Team leaderboards are separate.
• Every day at 11:45 UTC the top 3 Solo runs and top 3 Team runs receive Trick Or Treat Tokens by in-game mail: 60 for 1st, 40 for 2nd and 25 for 3rd. Every member of a placing party gets the reward. Both leaderboards then reset for the next day.
• The first payout is on Friday 9 October at 11:45 UTC. Runs made before the festival starts do not count.

Halloween Dailies

Three daily quests reward 10 Trick Or Treat Tokens each and reset at 11:45 UTC:

• Seeds of the Season (Wigdis Itchcroft): forage 5 Pumpkin Seeds. While the quest is active, Pumpkin Seeds can drop from foraging nodes of every tier.
• Skull Sweeper (Leva Ernsthex): defeat 1,000 skulls in Skull Night.
• Pumpkin Harvest (Belladonna Crowe): harvest pumpkins 5 times, then hand in 10 Pumpkins.
• Pumpkin Seeds now grow Pumpkins. Each plant yields 4–5 Pumpkins after 5–7 hours.
• Pumpkins are untradable.

Halloween Vendor

Belladonna Crowe sells festival items for Trick Or Treat Tokens. Purchase limits are per player:

Item

Cost

Limit

Jack O' Lantern

30

3

Sbooky Ornament

45

3

Jack O' Lantern Set

60

3

Jack O' Lantern Tower

75

3

Halloween Stained Glass

90

3

Boney Joe

120

1

Skeleton Top (Blue, Green, Orange, Pink, White or Yellow)

120 each

1 each

• The Skeleton Tops are new cosmetic chest pieces.

Halloween Achievements

A new Halloween category has been added under Events:

• Seed Snatcher: forage 25 Pumpkin Seeds. 50 AP and 25 tokens.
• Patch Perfect: harvest 25 Pumpkin crops. 50 AP and 25 tokens.
• Skull Smasher: defeat 1,000 skulls. 75 AP and 25 tokens.
• Trick or Treater: complete 10 Halloween dailies. 50 AP and 25 tokens.
• Into the Endless: brave Skull Night 10 times. 50 AP and 25 tokens.
• Halloweeb Festival 2026: complete all five above. 150 AP.
• Halloween decorations are up in Arcadia City, The Tired Soul, Virelda, the Pioneer's Guild, the Virelda Tavern, Lunar City and SaLuna.

Achievements

• 14 more achievements now reward SoulBits, on top of their existing rewards:
• 100 SoulBits: Discover Arcadia, Complete Arcadia Arena, Complete Arcadia Defence
• 200 SoulBits: Discover Minamoto, Treasure Hunter, Complete Eastern Reach - Fractured, Complete Everdune - Shattered, Complete Eastern Reach - Abyssal, Complete Everdune - Abyssal, Complete Farpoint - Abyssal, Complete Lunar Plateau - Abyssal
• 300 SoulBits: Spend 20,000 Gold at vendors, Earn 50,000 Gold, Earn 100,000 Gold
• Defeat Spectra now rewards 200 SoulBits, up from 100.

If you completed one of these but haven't claimed it, you'll get the SoulBits when you claim it.

We will be sending players Soulbits for already earned achievements in the coming days.

Combat & Balance

• Primary stats (Precision, Ferocity, Focus and so on) from buffs, relics, potions and consumables now count towards ability damage, and towards the bonuses derived from them, such as Critical Strike Chance, Critical Strike Damage, heavy hits and DoT Potency. Before, they showed on your character sheet but did nothing for your hits. Relic- and potion-heavy builds will hit harder.
• Ability-specific relics still only boost their own ability.

The ability damage shown in your Player Profile now updates correctly after you change gear, relics or skill levels. Before, it could show the number from before your last change.

Non-stacking proc buffs now refresh their buff-bar timer about every half-duration instead of on every proc, and stay up between refreshes.

Resistance-reducing debuffs can now be active on at most 20 enemies at once, in all dungeons. A boss that spawns once that limit is reached won't receive them.

Quests & Tasks

• Stash It Away (Virelda Bank Loop): the item to deposit is now Copper Ore, which you can mine again if you lose it, instead of the health vial. Selling or drinking the vial no longer blocks the quest. The quest now gives the Pioneer's Health Vial as a reward.
• Board Broken, Ego Bruised: dialogue now starts as soon as the guard leaves, with no more 10-second wait.
• Put Your Name on It: now shows a kill counter. Kills of any enemy in Eastern Reach - Fractured count, and progress carries over if you leave and come back.
• Where It Hurts II–VI (Pioneer Guild): boss tasks no longer complete on your first hit. They now complete when the boss dies, and party members who didn't land the killing blow should also get credit. If you accepted one of these tasks before the patch, abandon it and accept it again.
• Circuit Sleuth V and VI: Encrypted Lockboxes now drop Encrypted Key Drives, and Quantum Lockboxes now drop Quantum Key Drives, so both tasks can be completed.
• Fixed a typo in Vesper's dialogue after the cave dungeon.

Dungeons & Loot

• Dungeon Finder: the arenas below now unlock in the Dungeon Finder once you complete their quest, matching their entrances:
• Lunar Arena T4: Ringo - Trial by Moonlight
• Lunar Arena T6: Ringo - Cold Fire
• Virelda Arena T3: Asking the Right Way
• Virelda Arena T6 (Abyssal Virelda Arena): Deeper Than the Map

Arcadia Arena - Unstable no longer lists a Tier 1 seed as a reward. It now drops Tier 2 seeds (Carrot, Cucumber, Zucchini, Aubergine and Habanero Chili), like the other Tier 2 Arcadia chests.

Crafting

• Corrected the descriptions of 16 Tier 5 and Tier 6 Kitchen dishes so they match their actual ingredients and effects. Starfruit Gelato and Dragon Fruit Gelato now say they restore 50 Stamina. Warpfish Sashimi and Beelzebass Sashimi no longer claim to restore Stamina, because they grant a timed buff.

Localisation

Fonts

• Item and gear tooltips no longer show "?" in place of accented letters, Cyrillic, Japanese, Chinese or Korean text.
• The Dungeon Finder, achievements, relic choices and the upgrade window now use the Japanese and Chinese fonts, so characters are no longer missing.
• Language menus, context menus, the quest map and NPC names now display Japanese and Traditional Chinese correctly. Player names are unchanged.
• Room titles and banners now show French, German and Spanish accents. Boss names in the boss bar now support Cyrillic and accented letters.

Translations

• More of the game is now translated, including:
• party, friend, trade, mail, task and maintenance messages
• the Skills window title and skill names
• the dungeon entry panel, and the "Next Floor", "Exit" and "Farm" labels
• Dungeon Finder labels (and the "Show unlocked only" and "Expand all" options no longer overlap in longer languages)
• the "Reset" buttons in Settings

Fixed the one-minute maintenance warning appearing at two minutes. The two-minute warning now shows too.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a crash that could hit players watching someone else forage, most often on the tutorial island.

Performance & Stability

• Long dungeon runs with lots of on-hit effects (legendary procs, burn, Momentum) now generate much less server and client work, which helps frame rate late in a run.
• Quest map markers request routes far less often, and now point to the nearest door correctly.
• Buff and relic updates now use a faster server-side store.
• Network traffic from the game servers is now compressed for clients that support it.