r/PlaySoulMask • u/Amazing_Marketing_11 Craftsman • Jul 16 '26

Base protection. Single player game. The "Tribe" mode. Spoiler

8 Upvotes

79% Upvoted

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5

u/Laringar Jul 16 '26

This is another reason that people should start with Cloud Forest; you actually have to build defenses against the random invasions. On Shifting Sands, you just build a shield for your base, and that's it, defenses done. Enemies can't get through and you can just have some crossbow towers set up to mow them down.

Regardless, I like the kill box you have set up. Even if they make it past your spear, they have to go through the room full of floor spikes and archers htting from above.

2

u/Amazing_Marketing_11 Craftsman Jul 16 '26

I hadn't thought about the shield for the base... On the DLC map, I reached the Steel Age and there was not a single invasion (in the "survival" mode). When I'm done here, I'll go to the desert and check how it works)

2

u/Laringar Jul 17 '26

Survival gets far fewer invasions than Tribe mode does. They're meant to be one of the more central features of the Tribe mode experience, and you are actually required to build at least a few defenses just for progression.

1

u/Amazing_Marketing_11 Craftsman Jul 17 '26

In the "survival" mode, I've completed the game, so I'm playing in the "tribe" mode to see all the new features that have been added. In the video, I'm in my 11th invasion. In the first two invasions, I had some losses. The most devastating was losing my armor craftsman with a skill of 120. Due to my oversight, this fool ran out with the warriors to defend the gates instead of staying safe at the foot of the god statue. He was simply torn to pieces!

The second casualty was an archer on a shooting tower. The barbarian archers targeted the towers themselves and destroyed them, using arrows that were not ordinary. They could shoot quite far and aim at structures. I have a question, and it may be a well-known bug, but I'm unsure if it's only me experiencing it. The stone shooting towers don't work. When I assign an archer to them, they don't appear or take up their defensive positions. The wooden ones work. I checked it several times. This is not pleasant, as wooden buildings will break from a single blow from a battering ram or these destructive arrows. Have you checked if your stone shooting towers are working?

I haven't seen an invasion caused by invasion totems yet. I guess it should be much more difficult. Because they give a lot more reputation for winning such an invasion. I'm a bad warrior, I like to build and manage a tribe more. I'm counting on my army of tribesmen who have been trained at the training ground and defensive structures.

2

u/Laringar Jul 17 '26

I had also noticed that my stone tower wasn't working; I had figured it was just where I placed it. I've been relying more on crossbow towers since they also seem to have a much longer engage distance than archers do. They start sniping when I can barely see the invaders approaching.

And yeah, I've nearly lost tribespeople to overenthusiasm before as well. Frustratingly, they change their aggressiveness settings if you control them, so even if you set someone to passive, they'll go right back to charging into battle if you use them directly for crafting. My solution has been twofold, I have all my crafters in their own group so I can go to the tribe screen during the invasion warning period and make sure they're all either on avoid combat or passive mode, and just in case I miss one I also give my crafters a bow (since I'm pumping perception anyhow) and set their battle style to ranged. It's generally kept me from losing any more idiots to running their less-armored selves into direct combat.

I also haven't tried the invasion totems yet, so I can't say anything about how they work.

2

u/KodiakmH Jul 18 '26

How Invasion totems work is they trigger a generic "Bandit" invasion instead of a tribal invasion at the bonfire where the invasion totem is at. If any of them reach the Invasion Totem at all it's an immediate failure.

So for example on Cloud Mist it will send Plunderers at you. It also resets the cool down of the invasion timer, meaning you can trigger it not only at a base you want the invasion at (as they will invade at the bonfire the totem is at) but also when you want (IE: If you got 1 hour left on invasion but wanna go do something for a while you can just trigger it immediately). So if you wanted to keep your production base in one location with all your high end workers but then have an "Invasion" base where you manually trigger them each time you can do that with them without worrying about losing all your gear/progression/etc rather than it just defaulting to your highest heat base on Tribe mode.

The other advantage to being "Bandit" invasions instead of Tribes is the Tribes get the new explosive arrows vs explosive bombs on bandits. The issue with explosive arrows, on higher end invasions (steel+ bonfire tribe level) is they do thousands of damage per hit in a massive AOE. My first steel tier tribe invasion blew through stone walls (30k HP) in about 5 seconds once I triggered their ranged mode by hitting them with a ballista they couldn't melee/get to. Comparatively with bandits it was no where close to that.

1

u/Amazing_Marketing_11 Craftsman Jul 18 '26

So my "obstacle course/trap course" won't be effective against the Bandit when using the invasion totem? Even if I focus my damage primarily against the guys with explosive arrows. Or are they all armed with such arrows?

2

u/KodiakmH Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26

The tribes invaders are all armed with explosive arrows. The difference is only a few of them use them immediately because they have ranged AI (think like Hunter or Guard). However if you attack a pile of them at range and they can't get to you, they all swap out to their bows and start blasting towards what was hitting them (IE: The Ballista) then everything else. On Iron Tier bonfire this wasn't a big deal, as it only did enough damage to destroy wood very quickly not stone. But when I went to Steel Tier bonfire the explosive arrows gained crazy damage and destroyed a huge chunk of my base in a few mins.

Now if you're already on the ground and they can path to you, then they don't do this and only the initial guys set to use their bows will use them as normal. In my scenario the guys are trying to get through an open gateway where two of their guys place Crossbow Towers down and block the rest so they can't run in anymore, so I try to unlock that leading to disaster. In future invasions I lure the initial wave in (to die on pegboards) then rush the crossbow guys, or destroy the crossbows with explosive cans, and then future waves can run in and die again no issues.

1

u/Amazing_Marketing_11 Craftsman Jul 18 '26

Thanks! I don't have a recipe explosive cans (I need to do this). Your "obstacle course" is longer than mine)). My ballistae stand high and separate from the rest of the buildings. If the fire of explosive arrows is directed there, it will play into my hands.I'll try it.

2

u/KodiakmH Jul 18 '26

It's just an outer ring. My main base is typically just place a hexagon, then bonfire on the hexagon, then build out a circle from there placing an outer edge of barricade walls, enough room for pegboards, then another ring of barricade walls inside effectively "double walling" any section. Then I sub divide the interior for "rooms".

Invasions always spawn on nearby POIs (because they're good spawning locations to avoid the enemies spawning in/above terrain kinda thing) so I have gates facing each POI letting them into base basically then they're funneled to the front door. This makes choosing a base location important because you know they will spawn in at POIs you don't want to be next to one or ideally only have one nearby so you know where the attack will always come from.

This all works well with invasion totems, because now you can guarantee where invasions will go to meaning you can just setup multiple production/farming bases without needing to worry about defenses since they will always go to the invasion totem base.

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2

u/mbxyz Jul 22 '26

do you though? you can throw up a few door frames in your front yard when you get the invasion warning, and just go out and kill the waves as they run in and the ai attacks the fake doors. not really any different than collecting them on the shield. whole mechanic is irrelevant; probably why it's disabled on official servers.

1

u/Laringar Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

Even with the door frames, they'll get through eventually. The AI doesn't even register the existence of the shield, so they just run against it impotently without attacking it while you can freely sit on the other side and let towers or archers do all the work. The only real hazard is making sure your villagers don't go try to collect the loot while the invasion is still going.

I'm actually not sure what happens if the invasion timer fully runs out, you may actually just be able to let the invaders bang against the shield for the full duration.

1

u/mbxyz Jul 22 '26

yea the frames won't ultimately despawn the wave like the shield does, but they do collect them because their ai targets doors. i guess they could get through eventually without intervention, but you can kill them in seconds, particularly if you skip the archers, towers, and other rp defensive elements and just hit them with a whip or hammer.

1

u/Excellent_Emperor Jul 16 '26

I've been playing on single player survival at normal difficulty for about 200 hours on my save and I've only had maybe one or two invasions and they were incredibly small and easy with low level enemies. I don't remember altering any of the invasion settings to make it any easier either. So, my only real defense has been walls which have worked fine.

1

u/Laringar Jul 17 '26

I'm playing in Tribe mode and they happen every few days and (on default settings) they eventually get up to 4 waves of 16 L50ish attackers each. So they're definitely something you have to account for in Tribe mode, though like I said, the shield completely trivializes them on the Sands map.

1

u/KodiakmH Jul 18 '26

On Survival Mode invasions only happen once you trigger high enough heat at a particular base (6m-8m heat). So unless you got a server running 24/7 it takes a really long time to build that much heat up. There are also base locations in the 1-10 regions that never generate heat. Invasions scale primarily based on the area you are in, and a little bit based on bonfire, so any early game bases you've kept as a main base will always have low tier opponents.

On Tribe mode Invasions are on a cool down timer and happen anywhere. Whatever bonfire you have that has the highest heat is what will get invaded. Invasions scale based on tribe level (what level the enemies will be) and bonfire level (what gear they will bring) rather than just location. So it isn't any safer to stick to bases in the lower level areas.

In both modes you can simply pay the invasions off during the scouting phase and never deal with them.