Souls

Soul released by the trooper.

Dark and light soul orb. Only light orbs can be claimed or denied

 Souls are a crucial element in Deadlock, serving both as currency and experience points (XP) for heroes. Players collect souls by various means, including shooting Soul Orbs released when certain entities die, taking Guardians/Walkers, killing enemy players, and finding Unsecured Souls in boxes or crates. Unsecured souls are added to your total immediately but can drop upon death for other players to collect.

Every player starts the game with  600.

Soul Orbs

Troopers and the Soul Urn release souls in a Soul Orb. These orbs may be shot or hit with melee to confirm (or deny) the souls and grant them to the attacker. If they are not attacked, then the souls will be granted to the killer automatically after around 1 second. Certain abilities like Serrated Knives or Malice can also confirm or deny orbs.

The soul orbs spawn dark-colored, and can only be shot and confirmed once they light up. Ally orbs are green and enemy orbs are orange. Hitting an enemy orb will deny the souls to the killer and grant them to the player who hit it. Orbs can be claimed by a single bullet or pellet, regardless of damage. The bullet that hit the orb is refunded to the player's magazine.

Soul confirmation accounts for latency, which in some situations can cause the player to lose the orb even if they visually seem to have hit it first. The ally team has confirm advantage.

Soul orbs can be divided into "local" and "global" soul orbs:

Local

These orbs grant souls to the killer/attacker and are shared with any nearby allies. These are the most common kind of soul orb and are gained from killing Troopers and players

Global

These orbs grant souls to the entire team of the player who claims them. These are earned by turning in the Soul Urn

Local Soul Sharing

When souls are to be shared, the game checks two distances to add allied heroes to the "pool" of heroes to split the received souls:

• 45m from the soul orb itself when it is broken
• 30m from the hero that killed the Trooper

If an allied hero is within either of these distances, souls are shared between the killer and those allied heroes.

Soul Well

Inside each team's base, there is a soul well that releases orbs worth 10 souls each. Unlike regular orbs, these orbs only grant souls if they are confirmed, and they can be either green or orange-colored.

Gathering Souls

• Teams with fewer souls will gain more souls from all sources (see Comeback Mechanics below).

Soul Distribution

• Hero kill souls are distributed between nearby players with the following rate:
  • 125%/57%/28%/17%/11%/8% (for 1/2/3/4/5/6 players)
    • EX: 1000 souls between 4 players would grant each player 170 souls (1000 * 17%)
  • Additionally, for kills with two or more players, the player who got the kill receives bonus souls.
• Trooper souls are distributed between nearby players with the following rate:
  • 100%/54%/36%/25%/20%/16% (for 1/2/3/4/5/6 players)
    • EX: 120 souls between 4 players would grant each player 30 souls (120 * 25%)
• Before the 2025-04-17 update, two players in the same lane both received 100% of souls before 8 minutes (soul duplication). Now the soul distribution is the same for the entire match, so both players get 54% per Trooper.

• When a Trooper is killed, 60% of the Trooper's souls drop as a ground orb that flies to allies within 18m and remains on the ground for 18 seconds (scaling to 40 seconds after 10 minutes), while the remaining 40% fly out as a deniable soul orb that enemies can shoot. Both orbs use Soul distribution among nearby allies; enemy ground orbs are visible but cannot be claimed. Killing the Trooper with a melee attack grants 100% of the souls instantly, distributed among nearby allies.

Denizens (Jungle Creeps)

• Jungle camps contain Denizens that give souls to players on kill. They do not release soul orbs.
  • In order for Denizens to give souls to both players, both players must deal damage to the Denizen.
  • Souls from Denizens are split between all allied players who dealt damage to said Denizens.
• Souls from Denizens are unsecured souls

Breakables

• Breaking the wooden crates scattered throughout the map will have a chance to spawn some souls.
  • Chance for any given crate to drop souls when broken is approximately 60%
  • Amount of souls dropped is a function of in-game time:
    • [Souls Dropped] = 23 + 2.0*[Game Time in Minutes]
    • For example: At 30:00 game time, a broken crate will drop 83 souls.

Unsecured Souls

Unsecured souls icon

Souls earned from killing Denizens, destroying Sinner's Sacrifice machines, and bonus souls from kills with Vindicta's Assassinate are unsecured and are lost on death. If a player dies with at least 150 unsecured souls they will be dropped in a Soul Container, which can be claimed by any player by hitting it with a Heavy Melee. Soul Containers will despawn after 3 minutes. These containers are marked with a circle icon on the Minimap and have a green glow effect. If a player dies with fewer than 150 unsecured souls, no Soul Container will drop—they are permanently lost.

Unsecured souls are converted into secured souls over time, meaning they will no longer be dropped on death. This conversion rate is dynamic:

• Percentage Drain: Each second, 0.5% of the player's current unsecured souls are converted. This means larger amounts of unsecured souls secure faster initially.
• Base Drain: In addition to the percentage, a flat amount is secured every second. This starts at 1.6 souls/second and increases as the match progresses (scaling with the global bounty growth of ~8% per minute).
  • Example at 10 Minutes: A player carrying 1,000 unsecured souls will secure them at a rate of roughly 7.9 souls/second (5 from percentage + ~2.9 base).
  • Example at 20 Minutes: That same player carrying 1,000 unsecured souls will secure them faster, at a rate of roughly 9.2 souls/second (5 from percentage + ~4.2 base), due to the base rate scaling over time.

Souls UI for Heroes

Unsecured souls may be spent in the shop, but are spent after secured souls. They are indicated by the silver-green ball on the Hero's hip known internally as a Soul Container, as well as in the number on the HUD with a red icon.

On the character UI, the large souls number is the total number of secured and unsecured souls added together.

Leveling Up

Gathering souls will directly "level up" your hero gain skill points, Boons and other upgrades. See leveling up for more information.

Soul Values

• Soul Value: Value of the target at the time = 0m
• Soul Gain: How the value changes over the time of the match, measured in minutes

Source	Soul Value	Combined Soul Gain (/min)
Heroes	250	+48.75
Trooper	116Total	+1.16
Small Denizen	59	+0.55
Medium Denizen	97	+0.91
Large Denizen	259	+2.43
Sinner's Sacrifice	310	+3.35
Soul Urn*	1300 Total	+230
Guardian**	1000	N/A
Walker**	3500	N/A
Base Guardian**	750	N/A
Shrine	0	N/A
Weakened Patron	0	N/A
Crates	23	+2.0

* Soul gain from Urns is divided among the team. The Courier gets slightly more souls.

** Soul gain from structures is split with 40% given to nearby allied heroes, while 60% is divided amongst the entire team.

Comeback Mechanics

When a team is behind on souls, there are some "comeback mechanics" that come into play to allow the losing team to quickly catch up.

• Killing an enemy Hero will award more souls if your team is behind.
• Killing an enemy Hero that has a Kill Streak will reward a "Bounty" of extra souls.
• The Soul Urn will give 130% additional souls to a team that is behind.
• The losing team gains up to 30% more souls from Troopers, Denizens, Sinner's Sacrifices and Objectives, based on how behind they are (peaks at 20% max net worth difference). The first 3k in net worth difference is ignored.

Catch up Mechanics

Catch up mechanics allow for players with low net worth to catch up to the other players on their team.

• The two players on each team with the lowest net worth have a passive gain of souls per second based on the total souls per second gathered by the team (2.5% and 1.5% for the lowest and second-lowest player, respectively). This occurs after laning phase (8 min).
  • For example, if a team gathered 200 souls in the last second, the lowest player earns 5 extra souls.

Update history

Main article: Update history

Update	Changes
December 16, 2025	Increased kill bounty for solo kills (1 attacker in the kill) by 25%, and by 15% for duo kills Increased portion of the bounty the killer gets relative to the assist portion Increased comeback bounties for losing team a bit
November 23, 2025	Hero kill bounty split efficiency for 1/2/3/4/5/6 players changed from 100/100/90/84/65/72% to 100/100/85/70/55/50%
November 21, 2025	Trooper bounty mechanics have been reworked. The first half of the souls still fly out as deniable orb, however rather than the other half being instantly given to nearby players it will fall to the ground as an orb that you need to get near to pick up. It has a 18m capture radius where it'll travel to you once you get within. Only one player needs to claim it, share rules remain the same as before. They last for 18s on the ground. Duration increases by 2s per minute up to 40s after 10 minutes. Enemy orbs are visible as faint colorless soul orbs to your team, but cannot be claimed. Amount of souls in the flying orb that can be secured/denied reduced from 50% to 40% Very small tweaks to the secure/deny lag calculation to improve it Increased trooper range to be considered in range for souls to drop from 35m to 45m Starting souls count increased from 400 to 600 Trooper bounty values increased by 10% Trooper bounty split ratios updated from 1/0.65/0.28/0.15/0.12/0.08 to 1/0.54/0.36/0.25/0.2/0.16 Minimum unsecured gold to drop increased from 100 to 150