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Update History
August 26, 2026 at 01:45 PM
Corrected the achievement system outage note, and lowered the count of reworked legendary drops to match the unique items actually listed
Soulbound: Online has updated constantly since it launched into Steam Early Access on July 21, 2026. This page summarises what each published update changed. It is a digest rather than a full changelog, and it covers the updates the studio published publicly; a stream of smaller server-side hotfixes went out through the studio's community channels in the same period.
From the end of July the studio split its release naming. A patch is part of a scheduled update and bundles balance work and improvements together. A hotfix is an out-of-band release that goes out as soon as a problem is fixed, often the same day it is reported. Earlier releases used the hotfix label for both, which is why the numbering jumps around.
Published on August 20, 2026 under the banner of instant gear crafting and station upgrades, and the largest change to the crafting loop since launch. The studio found that players were turning their apartments into factories, switching on several stations at once to keep materials flowing, and decided to make that practical rather than discourage it. Weapon and armor crafting now finishes in five seconds at every tier, workbench upgrades complete with no timer at all, and generators put out twice as much power at every tier. Ore smelting was not part of that change: the smelter's ingot ladder still runs from six seconds for steel up to just under eight hours for astralite.
Area | Change |
|---|---|
Crafting | Weapon and armor crafting cut to five seconds across all tiers, and workbench upgrade timers reduced to zero, so station upgrades complete instantly. Ore smelting times were left alone. |
Power | Generators produce twice as much power at every tier. A new high-tier fuel, the Charged Cell, produces three times as much power as coal and is found in Tier 4 to Tier 6 hacking nodes. |
Gear | Crafted gear is no longer Legendary, reversing the previous week's change after players said it devalued legendary dungeon drops. Crafted Celestial Yoku Staffs now match their dropped versions instead of rolling different primary stats, Celestial Greatswords no longer display duplicate legendary effects, rare and epic Ferrox Braids carry properly different stats, and item level calculations were adjusted to better reflect item power. |
Progression | Experience rates within parties were increased significantly, so grouping is now the most efficient experience farm. Combat skill XP scaling was updated so higher-tier dungeons reward more XP, and Dexterity XP was brought in line with other skills for the same dungeon content. |
Life skills | Higher-tier farming rewards appropriate XP instead of paying less than Tier 4 farming, Tier 4 to Tier 6 seed growth timers were adjusted, and Bud's seed-purchase requirements were aligned to farming level requirements. |
World | Hacking and mining nodes appear more often and at higher density, dungeon ore drops were rebalanced to normalise rewards, and combat rooms are no longer incorrectly replaced by resource rooms. |
Relics and abilities | Cascading Power now correctly increases staff relic damage, Ethereal Duality swaps the staff to explosive damage and fires its healing orb, Kusarigama's Chain Spread was repaired, and Void Rift was fixed after the previous update left it unavailable or invisible. Skill scaling for weapons and abilities was fixed, so higher skill levels deal more damage. The Supporter relic now interacts correctly with support abilities, though it still does not show in the advanced stats display. |
Recipes | T5 and T6 stim and elixir recipes now list the correct crafting materials. |
Quests and NPCs | The extra mayor in Arcadia was removed after the Diplomatic Relations questline, Virelda's Chief no longer appears in two places at once during Dune It Yourself, Circuit Sleuth IV is completable via Broken Bots, quest markers clear once the relevant intel is collected in City of Light and Shadow, the fifth Lost Page no longer drops after Mirelle's quest is complete, and the Arcadia Oni Mask shop stock was raised to 100. |
UI and social | A new dialogue presentation system brings refreshed dialogue boxes, portraits, choice styling and transitions. Quest tracking is more visible on the map, the Magnetism relic's text was renamed to experience pickup range, and the Trade and Neighborhood channels were dropped from the default chat layout to leave more room for the channels players actually use. |
Cosmetics | The weekly commission cosmetic reward was swapped for a new set. |
Stability | Inventory rollback and synchronisation were hardened, cutting the chance of gear reverting, disappearing or being replaced with recall stones. Toolbelt auto-equip duplication involving the Forage Pouch was fixed, fishing with T3 and higher rods no longer hides the player's body, and several client crash scenarios now recover safely instead of closing the game. |
Combat logging arrived in the same patch, and it is opt-in. Turn on real-time combat logging from the settings and account menu and the game writes combat log files to the local game data folder, where you can read or parse them with your own tools to see how a fight actually went. This is the first version of the log format, so the fields it records may change as they are added, removed or reorganised. A simpler in-game combat metrics interface is planned for a later update for players who would rather not handle raw files, and the studio asked players to take care when installing third-party plugins.
A weekly patch focused on item data and tooltips. Gear tooltips were overhauled so rolled stats now appear consistently in the bag, in equipped slots, on the ground and in comparison screens, and refresh when stats change. Legendary effects and other custom stats display their descriptions more reliably, and unusual legendary effects no longer produce broken comparison values or crash the game. Bank, bag and equipped items share a more reliable inventory versioning, so transfers and equipment swaps no longer leave slots stuck or out of sync.
Area | Change |
|---|---|
Crafted legendaries | Crafted Legendary gear now correctly receives its legendary effect, which it had been missing |
Crafting | Viridium Yoku Fillet is available from the Chemistry Lab again and is recognised by gearforge recipes; the plain Yoku Fillet is the T4 item and recipes need the separate T5 Viridium version |
Craft time | The T5 Viridium Yoku Hammer had its crafting time corrected from 50 hours down to the intended 4 hours |
Void Rift charge stacks now last 20 seconds instead of 8, with each cast still carrying a 25% chance to add a stack and five stacks opening the rift. The Pyrosphere relic tree no longer begins at an unreachable Phase II | |
Legendary items | Around twenty-five legendary drops were fixed or reworked for more consistent and measurable effects, including the Redeemed Yoku Sword, the Dark Yoku Staff, the Voltscale Broadsword and the elemental belt line |
Dungeon crashes | A frequent crash caused by Cactaro enemies being reused before their hitbox data finished initialising was fixed, and Elite Hovertrix now returns to combat after an attack rotation instead of stalling |
Events | Fishing events no longer end participation when a server-wide contribution bar fills. The global cap was removed, and reaching 10 personal contribution during an event qualifies you for rewards |
Login | Players whose Steam usernames contained words the filter objected to could not log in and were shown a create-account prompt instead of an explanation. Fixed |
The largest patch since launch, and the one that reversed the studio's wipe plan. Before Early Access the studio had said version 1.0 would start fresh and leave Early Access progression behind. After feedback across the community channels and store reviews it changed course: characters created in Early Access persist into 1.0, and progression, items, cosmetics and achievements will not be reset. The studio apologised for the original plan and said it is still working out how players who join after Early Access get a fair start.
The rest of the patch was performance and economy work. Much of the dungeon system was rebuilt for higher frame rates, less stuttering and more accurate hitbox detection, with the studio's own benchmark on a mid-range machine showing roughly a 30% frame-rate improvement. Craft and upgrade timers were cut heavily so that no upgrade takes more than a day.
Area | Change |
|---|---|
Dungeon performance | Client-side frame stutter during heavy action reduced, and server-side ability processing reworked so simultaneous casts and relic-triggered events cost less under load. The Bomb chain-reaction relic was changed to stop runaway chains grinding performance down |
Combat feel | Hit detection now matches what is on screen more closely, cutting phantom hits after moving away. Last-second dodges register more reliably at moderate latency, damage and dodge reactions and health updates appear faster, and enemies track their server position more smoothly |
Connection | Profile loading gained proper timeout and recovery handling, so one failed request can no longer block a character from spawning |
Crafting | Craft and station upgrade times were rebalanced across T4 to T6 to remove multi-day waits, and the Generator had its maximum output raised |
Rolled stats became visible on gear again, all eighteen core T3 to T6 necklaces were given built-in secondary stat packages, and unused duplicate necklace recipes at T3 and T4 were removed | |
Live events | Daily live events went live, paying Commission Medals and Credits, starting with a fishing event and an abyssal raid event and carrying exclusive cosmetics, mounts and pets |
Abilities | The Celestial Yoku Staff now behaves as a staff ability rather than a greatsword one, and the Tritanium Elemental Pendant was renamed from a mislabelled name and clarified so its extra projectile applies to drones only |
A short pre-weekend release. Creating a new character shortly after a deployment no longer risks crashing the game, and a separate crash on login was fixed. Getting caught on the large hemlock near Virelda no longer leaves the character or nearby interactions broken, and reloading after that happens no longer breaks later interactions with plants, rocks or lockboxes. Fishing at the Abyssal spot no longer makes the fishing window vanish the moment a fish is hooked, and high-tier crafting recipes can be completed again.
The first release under the new naming, and the one that made the top gear tiers workable in practice.
Area | Change |
|---|---|
Smelting | The smelter's top upgrade, which unlocks Tier 6 ingots, now takes significantly less time |
Mining | Mining progression was rebalanced so it is less skippable, and dungeon chest ore rewards were adjusted so mining stays worthwhile for longer |
Crafting | Chronosteel crafting experience was rebalanced for its tier |
World map | Resource tooltips now show the correct drops for each zone |
Regions | Region selection now communicates whether character creation is available. Existing characters can still log in anywhere, and disabled creation is temporary |
Gear icons | Missing inventory and equipment icons for some Tier 6 weapons now appear |
Encounters | Lunar Plateau bosses no longer jump out of bounds and crash the run, and Farpoint Storm rooms no longer strand players without an exit portal |
Items | Several weapons and pieces of headgear that broke combat were fixed, including the Viridium Yoku Staff, both Dark Yoku heavy weapons, the Necrotic Warrior Crown and the Neotilus Trailseeker Visor |
The largest post-launch release so far, and the one that reworked combat balance across the whole ability roster. Solo runs were made slightly tougher and three-player runs slightly easier so difficulty scales more evenly with party size.
Area | Change |
|---|---|
Combat balance | Fortify, Bomb, Machine Gun, Drone, Blackhole, Greatsword, Gleam Twins, Staff, Chakram and Sword were all retuned. Fortify's base value and duration were cut sharply, bombs gained damage and shed their negative trade-off stats, and the greatsword and chakram had their cooldowns shortened |
Damage types | Phantom Resonance on the chakram now grants void damage instead of ethereal, and staff relics moved off ethereal onto explosive damage |
Relic display | Relic paths now stack as separate rows rather than drawing as one connected line, with standalone relics shown beneath them, and rare relics that had gone missing from selections were restored |
Legendary items | Several legendary effects that could reach a 100% trigger chance and run away with a fight had their trigger rates corrected |
Yoku catfish are easier to farm, and Pioneers Guild fishing tasks need fewer catches so fishing progression is less stamina-heavy | |
Gear tooltips | Ring secondary stats were returned to their intended values and necklace tooltips now show their stats and legendary effects correctly |
Quests | Fragment hunts, contract board unlocks and several quest reward and progression faults were fixed, and quest fragments became key items so they can no longer be lost when a bag is full |
Naming | Dungeon names and type labels were corrected, including several dungeons labelled Trail instead of Trial |
The opening days were dominated by server capacity. A set of bugs capped how far each server environment could scale, so far fewer players could get in than the studio had planned for. Six new player-facing environments were deployed and the capacity of each existing one was raised. Two of the most damaging early faults, players losing items and players getting stuck in place, were fixed within the first days, and the achievement system was temporarily switched off after being traced as the cause of a wider set of problems, with the studio saying it would be switched back on very shortly.
The same release rolled up the launch-week hotfixes: in-quest guidance for finding hemlock and copper ore, new portal icons for resource and drill event rooms, gear tooltip compare hints, adjusted respawn timing on Voltgrass patches and Neo-Tilus fishing spots, a fix for the crash after the Noxley Drill event, power cores added to more drop tables, cloak recipes added to the gearforge from level 2 upward, working leaderboards for every Dungeon Finder entry, and a fix that stopped players entering apartments before unlocking apartment access.
The studio also used the same announcement to confirm what was coming next: the first raid, language localisation, more NPC voiceover, and tests toward ten-player co-op dungeons.
Before the Steam launch the game ran as a browser and Discord title with its own long patch history. Those releases apply to the earlier build rather than the Early Access client and are not summarised here. Background on that period is on the SpiderWare page.
