Souls
Souls are your wallet and your XP bar at the same time — and the trick most players miss is that buying items never costs you a single level.
Souls are Deadlock's one resource: the money you spend in the shop and the experience that levels you up, tracked in the same number. Out-earn the enemy and you spike harder and sooner — that lead is how matches snowball.
Money and XP in one number
Deadlock shows souls as two readouts. Your net worth (top of the scoreboard) is every soul you've ever banked — it only ever climbs, and it's what levels you up. Your available souls (the spendable balance) is just your shop wallet. Here's what newer players get wrong: spending drains your wallet but never touches your net worth or your level. Buying a 3,200-soul item does not delay a single level-up, so there is no reason to sit on cash. As your net worth crosses fixed soul thresholds you level automatically — the first handful of levels hand you your four abilities, later ones give the ability points to upgrade them, and every level also nudges your base Weapon, Spirit, Health and melee a touch (that growth is your Boons). One wrinkle: freshly earned souls start 'unsecured' and tick over to 'secured' while you stay alive, and the shop spends your unsecured pile first. Secured souls are safe when you die; a fat unsecured stack can spill into a pickup-able container for the enemy — so carrying a big unbanked pile paints a target on your back.
Where souls come from — and the share tax
Roughly in order of reliability: last-hitting troopers and grabbing the Soul Orbs they drop (your bread and butter), clearing jungle camps, cracking crates, taking map objectives, and killing heroes. Objective bounties are flat and fat — a Guardian pays the team 1,500 souls, a Walker 4,000, a Base Guardian 1,000 and a Shrine 2,000. Jungle income ramps with the clock: medium camps open at 5:00, so the map gets richer the longer the game runs. The catch is the share tax — when allies stand near a dying trooper, about 40% of its souls is split between you, so two heroes crammed into one lane earn less per head than a solo laner. That's exactly why lanes sit 1-on-1 during the laning phase: doubling up quietly starves the duo's economy. (How far the game lets you claw back when you're behind — the catch-up souls — lives under Net Worth.)
How to play it
Spend, don't hoard. Because buying never costs levels, dump souls the moment you can afford your next component — cash in your wallet does nothing, an item in your hands wins fights. Shop after you clear a wave or between objectives, not mid-trade. Treat a net-worth lead like a clock: every soul the enemy misses is one you bank instead, and clean last-hits plus denying their orbs swing the gap twice. A few hundred souls in lane becomes an item-tier lead, which becomes map control — push the snowball before they stabilize. Watch your thresholds: you spike hardest the instant a level lands a new ability or the points to max one, so glance at how close you are and pick the fight just after, not just before. Mind your unsecured stack — after a big farm or a multikill you're carrying souls that drop if you die, so bank them by surviving a few seconds or spend them before you dive. And don't double-stack farm: one hero per lane early, rotate to empty camps and crates instead of fighting a teammate for the same orbs.
Raw dataidentity & API
identity
- id
- mechanic_souls
- slug
- souls
- category
- economy
- flowStage
- laning
- aliases
- souls, money, currency, gold, farm, soul economy, soul share, shared souls, net worth, xp, experience, души, экономика душ, деление душ
- sourcePath
- manual:mechanics/souls
- updatedAt
- 2026-06-06T00:00:00.000Z