Souls

Souls serve as currency for Curiosity Shop items and as progression toward Boons. Every player starts with 600. Unit rewards are called bounties. Neutral sources can grant Haunted Souls, which can be lost on death before they secure over time.

Values and growth

Values grow from match start unless noted; growth is per minute. Objective entries share 25% with eligible nearby heroes and 75% across the team, including those nearby.

First Blood adds 125 souls to the first killer’s bounty. The source’s breakables prose instead gives normal crates as 23 + 2.0 × minutes (83 at 30 minutes), while the table gives +1.8/min; its revision does not resolve the discrepancy. Normal crates have about a 60% chance to drop souls; tough crates always do and yield roughly twice as much. Underground cockroaches give one soul each. Trophy Collector, Golden Goose Egg and Cultist Sacrifice can provide additional souls.

Sharing kills

An assister must have damaged the victim within the last ten seconds. On assisted hero kills, the killer receives 120% more than each assister. First Blood enters the bounty before sharing; comeback and high-net-worth bonuses are separate. Percentages below show that a kill shared by three or more supplies less than 100% of base bounty to team net worth.

Trooper sharing is the same for melee kills and orb rewards. Two or three players receive 108% in total.

Haunts award their entire bounty as Haunted Souls on death, without orbs. Their value grows by 1.08% of base per minute and appears above their name. Allied players who damaged a Haunt within five seconds share equally, independent of damage dealt. Sinner’s Sacrifice pays Haunted Souls to melee attackers.

Comeback and catch-up

Killing a hero whose net worth exceeds the killer team’s average can award up to 126.8% more souls regardless of which team leads. The trailing team can gain up to 30% more from Troopers, Haunts, Sinner’s Sacrifices and objectives, reaching maximum at a 20% net-worth deficit after disregarding the first 3,000 souls of difference. The Soul Urn adds a time- and deficit-based bonus. After ten minutes, killing an enemy more than 15% above the killer team’s average also extends their respawn: from +6 seconds at a 15% gap and ten minutes to +22 seconds at 30% and 25 minutes.

From 8:00, the lowest- and second-lowest-net-worth players on each team gain passive souls at 2.5% and 1.5% of their team’s souls gained per second respectively. For example, 200 team souls in one second gives the lowest player five extra. Seventy percent of comeback souls earned by a player above the opposing team’s average net worth goes equally to the two lowest teammates. Thus a 100-soul bonus becomes 30 for that player and 35 for each of the two recipients.

Orbs and denial

A non-melee Trooper kill yields a ground orb and floating orb, each worth half the bounty. Ground orbs are green to their owning team and white to opponents, and only owners can collect them by proximity. They disappear after 18 seconds, scaling to 40 seconds once the match timer reaches 10:00. The owner and eligible nearby allies share the pickup.

Floating orbs also appear from Urn delivery, a drawn Rift and the base Soul Well. Team orbs are green to owners and orange to enemies; Rift orbs are neutral. They begin dark and intangible, then light up. Bullets, melee or certain abilities such as Serrated Knives and Malice can claim them. Shooting an enemy’s orb denies it and transfers its value to the denier and eligible allies; shooting one’s own confirms it. Owners get an 80 ms grace period after illumination before enemies can deny. Unclaimed team orbs pop after about a second and pay nearby eligible allies; if none are in range, the souls are lost. A single bullet or pellet claims an orb and is refunded to the magazine. Latency compensation can make the apparent first shot lose.

A melee attack, melee-damage ability or Mina’s Rake automatically confirms a Trooper’s floating bounty. Sharing checks allies within 45 m of the broken orb or 30 m of the Trooper killer. At 2:30 each base Soul Well begins producing a 10-soul orb every two seconds. On expiry it splits equally among nearby living allies; a player who confirms it receives the entire value. Its green or orange color does not change this behavior.

Haunted Souls

Neutral-source souls, including Haunts, Sinner’s Sacrifice and crates, are haunted. At death, a carrier with at least 50 + 5 per match minute haunted souls drops a Soul Bag. Either team can claim it with heavy melee; it disappears after three minutes. Below that threshold, the souls are lost without a bag. The bag appears on the hero as a silver-blue orb and on the minimap with a circle and green glow; the HUD marks haunted souls with a red icon. The large HUD total includes secured and haunted souls.

Each second, 0.375% of current Haunted Souls is secured, plus a flat rate starting at 1.2 souls/s and scaling with global bounty growth of 8% per minute. The source’s examples instead calculate the percentage portion of 1,000 as five souls/s and give roughly 7.9/s at 10:00 and 9.2/s at 20:00; five corresponds to 0.5%, so those examples conflict with its stated 0.375% rate. Haunted Souls can be spent after secured souls and count toward Boon progress. On losing them, a player retains the last unlocked level but loses equivalent progress toward the next.

Recent changes

July 9, 2026 reduced the nearby objective-bounty share from 40% to 30%; July 28 made expired base well orbs share with nearby players. September 16 reduced the nearby objective share to 25%, reduced comeback bounties, removed a fixed bonus for very small deficits and redirected 70% of qualifying comeback value to the two lowest players.

Source update-history table

The following recent changes are historical, as displayed in the cited source revision; they do not by themselves establish current values.

Sources and editorial notes

Adapted from Souls (revision 215374) by Deadlock Wiki contributors, checked 2026-11-01. Source text is available under CC BY-SA 4.0. The crate growth and Haunted Soul calculation conflicts are retained and identified above rather than reconciled without evidence.