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11 Soulbound: Online has no fixed classes. Your "class" is whatever your current gear and abilities make it, and you can change it instantly by swapping gear. As the studio puts it, you can tank for your friends one day and rain ranged damage the next; your character is every class you want it to be, whenever you want.
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33 Abilities At A Glance
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55 Abilities are split across five combat skills. You bring them into a run and then branch them with relic paths, which is where the pitch of more than a hundred build combinations per run comes from. Two players nominally using the same ability can play very differently depending on what they stack on it.
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77 Exactly how many abilities the Early Access build ships is not pinned down. The main roster below runs to thirteen, the game is marketed as offering ten or more, and a few further abilities sit outside that roster with no documented unlock. Treat the number as a floor rather than a fixed count.
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99 The Ability Roster
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1111 Each ability belongs to a combat skill, and levelling that skill makes the ability stronger. Some are available from the start, and the rest are handed out by named characters as you work through quests.
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1313 AbilityCombat SkillWhat It DoesPyrosphereKnowledgeFires a projectile that explodes on impact. Available from the start.Chain LightningKnowledgeLightning chains bounce between enemies and can bounce back to targets already hit.Ice CubeKnowledgeA circular area effect that knocks enemies back and freezes them.Healing PulseKnowledgeReleases an aura that heals you and nearby players.KusarigamaDexterityThrows three chained scythes in a cone. Recast pulls them back, dragging enemies in.ChakramDexterityThrows a chakram that returns along the same line. Catching it resets the cooldown.BombDexterityLobs a bomb that detonates on impact for an explosive blast.FortifyTechnologyAdds a shield to every player inside the aura.Blackhole BombTechnologyA grenade that releases a black hole and pulls enemies in.DroneTechnologyOrbits you and explodes on impact.MinigunMarksmanshipOrbits the user and fires bullets in all directions.MachinegunMarksmanshipOrbits the user and fires bullets across an arc.Gleam TwinsMarksmanshipUnleashes a pair of SMGs that fire rapidly for a short burst.
1414 A few more abilities exist outside that list, including Psionic Bolt, which casts a piercing bolt that damages enemies and shields players, and Healing Mark, which marks a party member and bounces its healing on to the next one. Their unlock conditions are not documented.
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1616 Combat Skills
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1819 Five of the game's skills are combat skills, and each one governs a slice of the ability roster. Levelling them also gates which weapons and armor you can equip.
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2021 Combat SkillCoversStrengthRaw melee power, levelled by dealing damage with swords, greatswords and heavy weaponsKnowledgeElemental and support magic: Pyrosphere, Chain Lightning, Ice Cube and Healing PulseDexterityAgile, precise techniques: Kusarigama, Chakram and BombTechnologyInventions and tactics: Fortify, Blackhole Bomb and DroneMarksmanshipLong-range firepower: Minigun, Machinegun and Gleam Twins
2122 Main-Hand Weapon Families
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2324 Your main-hand weapon sets your basic attack, and each class has its own pattern, cooldown and damage type. Which weapons you can hold is gated by your combat skill levels, and which ones you want is covered on Gear and Cosmetics.
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2526 Weapon ClassBasic AttackCooldownDamageSwordsFast slash in an arc in front of you1.1sPhysicalGreatswordsSlower area strike hitting two impact zones1.6sPhysicalHammersGround pound with a wide shockwave and knockback2sPhysicalStavesRanged sphere that detonates on impact1.8sVoid
2627 Hammers are also called heavy weapons, and the class takes in axes. Staves are the only class that attacks at range and the only one that deals void damage; the other three are melee and physical.
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2829 The studio uses a shorter grouping when it talks about the roadmap, describing a future gun as a new main-hand type joining staff, sword and heavy. That gun is a Q4 2026 item and is not in the Early Access build. The rest of the slate is on Early Access and Roadmap.
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3031 Upgrading Abilities
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3233 Abilities are permanently upgraded from the Upgrade menu by spending Power Cores. Those cores are made at the Power Core Fusion Station inside Dr. Fritz's Lab in Arcadia, which turns materials gathered around the world into the cores that unlock permanent weapon and ability upgrades. The upgrades themselves are meta progression: they persist between runs and unlock new relic upgrade paths inside dungeons, while your base overworld abilities stay the same. Instead of a modest few-percent damage bump, an upgraded Pyrosphere can gain a far larger one. Abilities also scale with their associated skill level, so higher Technology means stronger shields and heals.
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3435 Abilities are randomised in the tutorial dungeons and in the Abyssal Raid. An Ability Configurator item stops that randomisation and lets you take the loadout you want into those fights. Where it comes from is unsettled. Player documentation records a sale at Hector's Workshop in Arcadia and a quest grant attributed to Rigoku, and neither of those appears in the current game data, so treat both as unconfirmed.
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3637 Class Through Gear
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3840 The classless design means your role is set by what you carry rather than what you picked at character creation. Swap a staff for a hammer and you change your damage type, your attack pattern and your skill requirements in one move. Inside a run, the relic you pick up is what turns one ability into many playstyles, which is covered on the Relics and Builds page.
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4042 Post-Launch Ability Changes
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4244 Patch 4 fixed skill scaling for weapons and abilities, so players now deal more damage at higher skill levels. Combat skill experience scaling was updated in the same patch, and higher-tier dungeons now reward more experience.
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4446 Kusarigama's Chain Spread was repaired in the same patch. Dexterity experience was also brought in line with the other combat skills for the same dungeon content, so a Dexterity build no longer falls behind for running what everyone else runs.
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4648 Bomb Is Dexterity, Not Technology
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4851 The ability book had been listing Bomb abilities under Technology while paying Dexterity experience for using them, which is a straightforward labelling error and it was corrected on 9 September 2026. Bomb abilities are Dexterity. The one exception is Blackhole Bomb, which despite the name is a separate ability and remains Technology. If you planned a skill investment around the old label, the experience you earned went to Dexterity all along.
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5053 Empty Slots Now Offer Abilities In A Dungeon
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5255 Since 27 August 2026 a character who enters a dungeon with empty ability slots is offered a random ability at the level each slot would normally unlock, drawn from the whole roster including abilities that character has never unlocked. It is aimed squarely at onboarding: the tutorial dungeon and the early Virelda dungeon become a place to try the roster rather than runs with dead slots, and a new character can reach a full loadout mid-run.
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5457 Characters with every slot already filled get a normal relic selection instead, exactly as before. High-level players who deliberately run fewer than the maximum number of abilities, which is a real build choice, can complete a quest in Lunar City for The Vacan-Sealer, an item that suppresses the random ability offer so the empty slots stay empty and relics keep coming.
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5659 September 2026 Fixes
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5861 FixDateDetailRadial ability visuals9 September 2026Missing and corrupted effects on Fortify, Ice Cube and Healing Pulse were repaired. Fortify's body glow is back and the blue squares that appeared in place of radial effects are gone.DoT Potency27 August 2026Now works on damage-over-time-tagged abilities, adding ticks, shortening tick intervals and increasing impact power through capped scaling. It had been doing nothing.Frostbreaker chill3 September 2026Chill applied by the Frostbreaker hammer now grants the Frostline Belt's cold damage bonus, matching how Ice Cube already behaved.Party ability visibility4 September 2026Projectiles, boss telegraphs and spawned abilities sometimes never appeared for other players in your party.Ability data requests3 September 2026Clients with no equipped abilities had been re-requesting ability data several times a second inside dungeons.