Category: Games

How to Become the Bloody Barbarian (and Other Game-Breaking Builds) in Soulstone Survivors

Allan Smith, Programmer & Game Designer, Soulstone Survivors

Soulstone Survivors is an action roguelite that rapidly transforms you from a peasant to a god. It’s kind of like if you were playing a Path of Exile character from level 1 to 99, but in about 20 minutes, and no matter what power fantasy you can dream of – from a Wizard who controls the elements, to a holy Paladin, to a nuke-hurling Engineer – you will find it in our game.

After a few years of development, listening closely to our PC community, the game is finally coming to Xbox Series X|S on June 17, 2025.

A demo is also available now on Xbox Series X|S, and we’ve pulled together some tips to inspire some build ideas, as well as how to get the most fun out of them.

The freedom to build your character exactly how you want is what sets Soulstone Survivors apart, and you’ll be able to test it against the dangers of the Void. And, if you didn’t fancy what you tried… just iterate and try again until you find the absolute perfect build.

Soulstone Survivors is designed from the ground up for you to push it to the extreme. For example, when your critical chance exceeds 100%, your attacks start landing multi-crits. We have an attribute called multicast, which allows you to launch multiple copies of the same skill (such as Chain Lightning or the dagger-hurling Flurry) at once – and guess what? As it gets higher and over 100%, you can be launching two, three, or even ten copies of the same skill at once. While many games might cap these stats, Soulstone Survivors gives you the freedom to experience what true god-like power feels like.

While it’s easy to jump in with basic character setups, the game shines when you go deep into the different systems that play off each other to create game-breaking builds, and we are always surprised with the creativity of the community – we love it when someone posts a new build on Discord with some crazy strategy that we didn’t even think was possible!

Buffs Are Your Friends

Buffs are effects applied to your character which give you an advantage against your enemies. For example, each stack of “Prowess” (i.e. each time you gain/improve your “Prowess”) gives you 1% extra damage. Although focusing on a specific buff can be a powerful strategy, it’s a good idea to create a build with a few different buffs that play off each other. There are power-ups that will grant you a chance to gain a buff every time a different buff is applied. “Devastating Strikes”, for example, grants you a chance to gain an Aptitude stack (which increases your critical damage) for every Prowess stack you gain.

Negative Effects Are Your Friends Too

Negative effects are the counterpart to buffs. These are applied onto your enemies, weakening them in some way. These can empower you to do ten times (or even hundreds of times) more damage to your opponents, depending on what combination you get. A particularly good one is “Poison”, which will deal damage over time and, when the enemy dies, a portion of the remaining damage spreads to nearby enemies. Or there’s “Fragility”, which increases damage received by the enemy for each stack. It’s always a good idea to have at least a couple different negative effects instead of going all out in one.

Consider Your Skill Types

Each skill or attack in the game has a particular type, such as Fire or Electric. When you’re trying to maximize your power, you’ll definitely want to think about the skill types. You could do a super focused build, as some power-ups will increase the damage of all skills of a particular type, sometimes by as much as 50%.

On the other hand, you could mix and match different skill types, as there are power-ups that will chain different skill types – for example, when you cast an Electric skill, you would then have a certain chance to also cast a Fire skill. It really depends on the kind of gameplay that suits you best!

Try Out Different Stuff!

There are plenty more factors that influence your build, such as the skill tree, Runes (artifacts you equip before each run with unique effects), your weapons (which you craft as you progress through the game), your character’s ascension skill (a temporary god-like power you gain after unlocking all the core skills).

The important thing is to experiment with different elements until you find the patterns that work and the ones that don’t, finding the play style that suits you best. I don’t know if I should, but here, I’ll share with you my secret Bloody Barbarian build!

Baca Juga

The Bloody Barbarian Build

The Barbarian is the first available character in the demo, but don’t mistake him for the weakest – far from it! He specializes in melee combat, having access to Swing, Thrust, Slam, Electric and Earth skills, and all of these are great to make some crazy buff synergies!

The key points for this build are:

Choose the Barbarian with his first weapon, the Barbaric Cleavers
Look for skills that buff you with Finesse, such as Double Slash
Make sure to get the skill Scent of Blood
Grab some popcorn, as you watch what happens!

Alright, let’s break it down. All Barbarian weapons are great, but for this build we’ll start with the Barbaric Cleavers, the first weapon available, as it comes with “Whirlwind”, which has a large damage area. More importantly, it grants you both “Bulwark” (which increases your block power) and “Finesse” (increases your multicast chance), the core of our build!

Start the game, and be on the lookout for skills with the Swing type, as many of those will also give you more “Finesse”. Earth-type skills also synergise very well with this build, since they grant you “Colossal” which increases the area of effect of your attacks, and you want to be slashing the whole world! Remember to save a skill slot for “Scent of Blood”.This is a skill unique to the Barbarian which increases your attack speed based on the number of “Finesse” stacks you have.

By now, your Swing skills will give you tons of “Finesse” stacks which increase your multicast, which in turn means all your skills are used multiple times, and they will be hitting a huge area because your Earth skills will also be launched multiple times granting you even more “Colossal”. Finally, the cherry on top is “Scent of Blood” as it uses your “Finesse” stacks to grant you even MORE attack speed, which causes your skills to be launched even faster! Do you see where I’m going with this?

The madness that ensues is glorious! You will soon be spinning like a mad man, decimating an entire screenful of enemies every second! You can even add in the skill “Subdue” into the mix as well, which deals damage based on how many stacks of “Finesse” you have, being a great finisher that will be dealing hundreds of thousands of damage in this setup!

In the full game, you can make this build even more extreme by picking up a few runes, such as the Synergetic Rune, as it increases the chances you will get power-ups that chain from one buff to another and the Multicast Mastery Rune, because it increases the effectiveness of the multicasts. Runes aren’t available in the demo, but even without them you will be slicing through enemies like butter.

And this is only one build, of one character, in the demo, without exploring runes, ascensions, skill trees… it barely scratches the surface of what you can do! You could also try the Thor Barbarian build with a bunch of Lightning skills that are great for critical strikes, the nasty Dirty Barbarian that uses Slams and Earth skill for massive damage, or experiment with the Pyromancer (also available in the demo), and bring down a fiery apocalypse onto your enemies!

I hope that this sparks your imagination and encourages you to explore all the build, buffs and power fantasies that are possible in Soulstone Survivors. Hop into the demo on Xbox Series X|S today.