Soul Harvest

Soul Harvest is the headline gameplay of Season 1: Soul Hunt, and it is the season's answer to the question of what a whole lobby fights over. It did not ship with the game. The developers held it back and switched it on in the August 12, 2026 update, alongside a new stage of the Fate Chart. Once active, it turns an ordinary run into a race to finish a ritual before anyone else finishes you.

What it is

The premise is a rescue operation rather than a raid. Dew and the Gyldhunters are trying to mend the Web of Fate, and the Valgr are working against them by growing Soul Cocoons that warp living creatures into something else. Soul Harvest is the counter-move: find the cocoons, get them to an altar, and run a purification prayer that returns the disordered souls where they belong. The Valgr's wider project, an attempt to assemble a False God, is covered on The World and Lore.

The developers described the intent behind it as adding a high-reward layer that introduces more variables to a match, so that a run no longer revolves around a single objective. They framed it as three viable approaches rather than one: teams confident in a straight fight can rush the ritual site and contest the rewards directly, hunters who prefer flanking and ambush can hunt cocoon carriers away from the hot zone and take what they need at the right moment, and anyone wanting a more ordinary run can hand a single cocoon to Richie for a guaranteed payout without being drawn into the fight at all.

When it triggers

Soul Harvest does not run in every match. While the event is live, it has a chance to trigger during runs on Hallowgrove and Brandrgarde, the two maps described on Maps and Zones. The variable that moves the odds is Gyldening Intensity: the higher a map's intensity, the more likely the ritual is to fire. That makes the deeper, more dangerous state of a map the one worth queuing into if Soul Harvest is what you are after.

When it does trigger, two things appear. Soul Incubators carrying Soul Cocoons spawn at random points across the map, and a Fate Altar appears to host the prayer.

Soul Cocoons and resonance

Carrying a Soul Cocoon is the interesting part of the design, because it is not a quiet objective item. Any hunter holding one resonates with every other cocoon on the map. While that resonance is running, you can see where all the other cocoons are, which is exactly the information you want. The catch is symmetrical: your own position is broadcast to every other cocoon holder at the same time. Picking one up buys you map knowledge and sells your location for it.

Starting the ritual

The altar does not open immediately. A match has to have been underway for a certain duration before it will accept anything, which prevents a first-minute rush and gives the map time to fill with hunters who all want the same thing. After that, two Soul Cocoons submitted at the Fate Altar activate it and the prayer begins.

There is a second, cheaper use for a cocoon. Submitting one to Richie, the merchant who travels the map with you, unlocks a special Soul Cocoon reward for your whole team. That gives a squad a real decision each time it finds one: bank the guaranteed team reward, or hold the cocoon toward the two you need for the altar.

The Soulgnawer

The ritual comes with a guard. A new elite monster called the Soulgnawer appears in matches running Soul Harvest, described as having a slender build, a serpentine lower body, and human-like facial features. She actively disrupts the prayer rather than simply standing near it, so completing the ritual means putting her down first. She is listed with the rest of the roster on Enemies and Bosses.

The real difficulty is not the fight in isolation. A ritual that has to run to completion is a timer that every rival team on the map can see coming, and the standard extraction problem applies: the longer you hold ground, the more likely someone arrives to take the result off you. That third-party pressure is the same one described on Extraction and Gameplay Loop.

Rewards

Completed Soul Harvest runs pay out exclusive tokens rather than dropping the rewards directly. Those tokens are spent at the Mistchaser Shop, which trades a rotating set of rare items.

A Legendary Material Selection Chest and Moonlight Nectar were added to the Fate Chart Shop at the same time, and the developers have said more rare rewards will be added there as the season progresses. Where these fit into the wider power curve is on Progression, Skills, and Talents.

Three ritual-related faults were corrected in the August 19 update. Smuggler Woodlings had been failing to spawn correctly once the Soul Harvest began, the Mistchaser Shop's purchase limits were not refreshing after a ritual was completed, and the special Soul Incubators that appear during the purification prayer were wrongly dropping Soul Cocoons when looted. A missing-texture bug on the Soulgnawer was fixed in the same pass.

Naming

Two names circulate for this, and both are official. Soul Hunt is the name of the season; Soul Harvest is the gameplay that runs inside it. The developers used both in launch-window posts and said at the time that the name might still change, but the August 12 patch that shipped it called it Soul Harvest, and that is the name in the game. The patch-by-patch record is on Updates and Patch Notes.