Souls and Karma

Souls and karma

Souls are the mod's currency: they pay for class upgrades, rerolls, doll layers and cradle charges. Karma is a value from -100 to +100 that changes how the peoples of the worlds and the Surface villagers treat you, which quests open, the variant of the worlds you open and your ending. Both are stored on the player and survive death.

Soul values

Rarity	Souls
Common	1
Rare	10
Epic	30
Legendary	100

Vanilla items use their own rarity: epic 30, rare 10, uncommon 3, common 1.

Earning souls

Source	Souls
Boss kill (every player within 64 blocks)	100
Reaper gear	5% more per piece (more with the level) on every kill, and a chance of a soul from creatures worth none
Elite creature kill	5
Structure chests: Soul Shard (5) and Soul Vessel (20), used from the inventory	about 10 per chest, about 100 per world
Progress achievement	5
Exploration achievement	10
Quest rewards	10 to 100
Soul Altar	the item's soul value x its stack size

Your souls are shown on the HUD and with /matriochka karma show.

The Soul Altar

Place an item on the altar and make a final choice. The item is consumed either way and you receive its souls.

• Purify: you gain karma.
• Devour: you lose karma.

Karma per use = max(0, souls / 10 - repeats / 4), where repeats counts how many times you have already used that same item type on the altar. An item worth 10 souls or more always gives at least 1 karma for its first four uses. Cores and Hidden Dolls are refused. Purifying raises karma and devouring lowers it, as do the karma quests.

The altar also has a third button: Rebuild a layer, which buys back one Doll of Life layer for 50 souls and 4 rare resources of the current world (see Doll of Life and death).

Karma quests

Each world has one karma quest. In the Journal's quest tab it shows Help and Betray buttons: Help adds the quest's karma (+5 or +10), Betray removes it. Both paths give the quest's soul reward. See Quests.

Karma tiers

Karma	Attitude	Prices	What opens
+50 and more	Very welcoming (villagers glow green)	-10%	Mutual-help quests
+25 to +49	Friendly	-10%
-24 to +24	Neutral	normal
-25 to -49	Wary (villagers smoke)	+10%	Black markets
-50 and less	Hostile in places: one villager in three turns you away ("They turn away from you. Your karma precedes you.")	+10%	Pact quests

Prices change by at least one item both for the peoples of the worlds, the Doll Peddler and the Surface villagers (on top of their own reputation).

Killing an innocent

Killing a villager or one of the peoples of the worlds costs 5 karma (less once it becomes a habit).

Black markets

From karma -25, every people keeps other goods under the counter: diamond fragments before their time, boss offerings, materials of the next world. The Doll Peddler sells Diamond Fragments and Shell Shards. Each black-market offer can be bought three times.

Karma Paths quests

A chapter after the ten worlds in the Journal's quest tab. Mutual-help quests open at karma +50, pact quests at -50.

Path	Quest	Objective	Reward
Help (+50)	A Light for Others	Free 100 souls at the Soul Altar	Chance Doll
Help (+50)	Many Hands	Trade 10 times with the peoples of the worlds (not the Doll Peddler)	40 souls
Help (+50)	A Warm Hearth	Bring 16 Wool Threads to any people of the worlds	Soul Cradle
Pact (-50)	Hunger	Absorb 100 souls at the Soul Altar	60 souls
Pact (-50)	The Price of Silence	Buy 3 goods on a black market	2 Shell Shards
Pact (-50)	No Witnesses	Silence 3 innocents, on the Surface or in the worlds	2 Diamond Fragments

Completing a help quest adds 3 karma, a pact quest takes 3.

Karma at the extremes

• World variants: a Seed planted or a rite performed at karma +100 hatches into a Hallowed world, at -100 into a Cursed one. See World variants and mutations.
• Endings: beating the Unfinished with a karma of 0 or more seals it away; with a negative karma you absorb it, and your karma falls to -100 for good. See Endings and the New Cycle.
• Karma is kept through a New Cycle.

Design notes

The design document balances about 300 souls per world (100 from the boss, 100 from structure chests, 50 from elites, 50 from the altar), which would let a player finish one level 5 set around World 8.

Souls in structure chests

The chests of the worlds' structures keep souls for the 100 the design budgets per world (about ten chests of ten souls):

Chest	Souls it holds
Common	1 Soul Shard, a second one 34% (World 1) to 48% (World 10) of the time
Rare	2 Soul Shards, a third one 42% to 60% of the time
Vault (secret and large combat structures)	1 Soul Vessel, plus a Soul Shard 34% to 70% of the time

A Soul Shard holds 5 souls and a Soul Vessel 20. Use one to free its souls; sneak to free the whole stack. These souls are neutral, like those of bosses and elites: they do not move your karma, and the Soul Altar refuses them. Surface chests hold none. Chests already generated before this version keep their old loot.