New Player Guide

The New Player Guide takes a brand-new Pioneer from buying the game to standing in Virelda with money in the bank and a questline to follow. The tutorial itself runs about 20 minutes; this guide covers it and the first hour after it.

Follow it top to bottom. Each section links a main article if you want the full detail on a system.

Quick start

If you just want the short version:

Buy Soulbound: Online on Steam — Windows only.
Launch it. Your account is created for you from your Steam account; there is nothing to sign up for.
Soul Link in at the station on introStreet, and let the opening scene play.
Learn to gather and farm — Jayden in the Arcadia mine, then Arthur at Beginner's Bay.
Earn 50 gold, buy a sword and armour from Finnley, and equip them.
Clear the Tutorial Dungeon — five rooms of robots.
Arrive in Virelda — your home hub.
Bank your things, pick up some contracts, and follow the main questline.

1. Getting into the game

Soulbound: Online is a paid Early Access game on Steam, released 21 July 2026. You need:

Windows 10 64-bit — there is no macOS or Linux build.
A Steam account that owns the game.

It cannot be played in a web browser or as a Discord Activity. Both were retired before Early Access, so if you find a guide telling you to visit play.soulbound.game, that guide is out of date.

2. Your account

There is no sign-up form. Buying the game on Steam and launching it creates your account automatically, linked to your Steam account — you never choose a Soulbound username or password.

Because of that, nobody can ever legitimately ask you for your Soulbound password. Anyone who does is scamming you. See Account Security.

3. Soul Linking in

You start on introStreet, outside a Soul Link station, in the middle of a protest against Soul Linking. Bystanders will tell you it is dangerous and that people who Link in never come back; a Y News broadcast plays overhead.

Talk to whoever you like — none of it is required — then enter the station and Soul Link to upload yourself into the world of Dreamscape and become a Pioneer. A short scene at the SoulLink Store follows, where you are given your first gear.

You will notice the upload does not go the way the broadcast promised. Keep going; that is the story, not a bug.

4. Learning the ropes

Three quests back to back, each teaching one thing. They take about ten minutes together.

Gathering — in the Arcadia mine

You arrive in the Arcadia mine, a desert clearing that seems to float in a void, and are met by Jayden — your first companion, and not a very confident one. This quest shows up as two log entries, Mine Crafter and A Helping Hand.

Talk to Jayden, who gives you the Old Pickaxe.
Mine the rocks nearby — swing and release to break them — to gather Sturdy Rocks.
Talk to Jayden again. He gives you the Old Gloves.
Forage the bushes to gather Pink Berries.
Talk to Jayden once more, then follow him to the farmland.

Rewards: the Old Pickaxe and Old Gloves, plus 100 experience each in Mining, Foraging and Cooking.

Farming — at Beginner's Bay

Jayden leads you to Beginner's Bay, a stretch of grassland and farm plots. The farmer Arthur teaches the full farming loop, start to finish — prepare the soil, plant, water, harvest, then sell your produce to Aster and buy more seeds from Seedle.

Do the loop a few times. You are about to need the gold.

Gear — buying and equipping

A travelling salesman, Finnley, turns up at Beginner's Bay with scavenged equipment.

Farm and sell produce to Aster until you have 50 gold.
Talk to Finnley and buy from his stock — everything is 2 gold each:
- Dull Katana — your first weapon
- Old Pioneer Helm, chestplate and greaves — the starter armour set
Equip all four. This is the step people skip. Buying the gear is not the same as wearing it — open your equipment and put it on, or the dungeon will hurt.
Talk to Finnley again, then open the beacon at the edge of the bay when you are ready.

5. Your first dungeon

Five rooms, solo, no entry cost, no level requirement. The little robot ZT-3Y tags along from the second room onwards — it hides during fights and will revive you if you go down, so a wipe here is not the end of the run.

Room	What's in it
0	Empty. The opening room.
1	Six waves of robots, and a chest.
2	Thirteen waves — the longest fight of the run. Pace yourself.
3	Four waves, ending with the Bulky Robot — a heavy, tanky finale.
4	Extraction. Reaching this room ends the run.

You will meet the Orange Robot, the Orange Jumping Robot, the Blue Robot and finally the Bulky Robot. Their levels scale, so exact numbers vary.

Do not forget to extract. Clearing room 3 is not finishing the dungeon — you have to reach the extraction room in room 4, or you lose the run.

The Anima

Clearing the dungeon drops you into a scripted scene. Entities the game names only as "???" — the Anima — have been draining Yoku from arriving Pioneers, including yours, and have rewritten parts of the world's training layers. They argue about whether to destroy you. They decide not to, and throw you out instead.

This is not optional and cannot be failed. It is also the single most important thing in the game's story, so it is worth reading.

Minamoto's reroute

Minamoto and his team catch your falling upload. He explains what has happened, admits he is breaking the rules by holding your signal, and reroutes you — out of the broken onboarding path and into the world proper.

6. Arriving in Virelda

You arrive in Virelda, a desert hub town of pale stone and red awnings around a central beacon platform. This is your home base for the whole of the first chapter, and everything you need is here.

It is easy to stall here — the tutorial hands you an open town and stops telling you what to do. So, concretely:

Talk to the Virelda Chief and Fritz to find out what is wrong with the townspeople. This starts the main questline.
Find the bank and stash anything you are not using — see Stash It Away below.
Talk to the Task Manager, just east of the bank, to unlock Pioneer Guild Contracts.
Use the beacon in the middle of town for fast travel once you have unlocked destinations.

There is also a travel bot near the Chief's house that will teleport you back to Tutorial Island if you want to revisit the starting area.

Banking

The bank teller teaches you the bank. Your bag has 28 slots and you will fill it faster than you expect, so bank early. Keep a health potion and some stamina food on you at all times.

7. Your first hour in Virelda

Once the Chief has pointed you at the main questline, follow it — it is the spine of the game and it unlocks most of the content. Alongside it:

Pick up contracts before you go anywhere. They pay out the moment you finish them, and they reward things you actually need early: gold, food, combat potions, upgrade materials and Skill experience. You can hold five at once.
Head north to Virelda Outskirts for Foraging plants and Mining ore — take a foraging and a mining contract with you first.
Talk to Farok for starter armour, accessories, combat potions, stamina food and Recall Discs.
Visit Bud, just south of the bank, for seeds to farm produce.
Talk to the Virelda NPCs for the introductory skill quests — Cooking, Chemistry, Foraging, Mining and Farming.
Skip Gearforging for now. You need the gold for other things; you can forge later.

The main-questline quests you will hit in roughly this order are Thirsty Work, Into the Truck, Sow Much Trouble, Dune it Yourself and Empty Tank (the stamina tutorial).

If you get stuck, follow the main questline. If you do not know where to go next, there is usually an NPC you have not talked to yet.

8. Where to go next

The tutorial is the only part of Soulbound that tells you what to do. After it, pick whatever you like:

Keep going on the main questline — it opens up Arcadia, Everdune, Farpoint and the rest of the world.
Run a real dungeon — the Eastern Reach dungeon is the one on Virelda's doorstep.
Level your skills — Farming, Fishing, Cooking, Crafting, Mining, Foraging and more.
Chase achievements, collect cosmetics, or trade on PixelBay.
Read up on the systems — Getting Started has the full interface and systems reference.

Quick reference

Task	Where to learn more
Move, camera and interact	Controls and Mechanics
Fight and use abilities	Controls and Mechanics · Abilities
Take and track quests	Quests
Equip and upgrade gear	Items · Equipment · Upgrades
Level up and train skills	Skills · Leveling and Progression
Health and stamina	Energy
Dying	Death
Find your way around	Locations · Map
Enemies	Bestiary
Staying safe from scams	Account Security