Hi there. Oversoul players often ask which characters it'd be worth it to grind-out; where, and what order they should perhaps tackle that in.
Scope of the Guide
This guide is pitched at players at the beginner-intermediate kind of level, at least at the outset. It will not cover basic game mechanics or battle strategies for the most part. However, it will include instructions to help boost your PvE kill rate, and by extension overall farming speed.
The guide's intended to be a guide to acquiring most of the strong and/or unique characters available to pure free-players - Soul Gem-requiring options may be mentioned later - but is not an exhaustive reference to filling out the Oversoul Pokedex; once you get the hang of the methods, if there's any random characters you're inclined towards, you can snag them yourself by looking through the char list.
Finally, although many of the chars here will put you on a great footing for PvP, PvP technique will not be covered. Partly because it's more fun to develop your own style yourself!
IMPORTANT NOTE ON SOUL GEMS
As a free player, you get a very small number of Soul Gems at the outset, 6 when you confirm the email on your portal.battleon.com account (or 6 by default if the email was confirmed already). It's not much, but it is something we can work with.
Soul Gems must be used to evolve certain characters, can be used to buy high-quality custom card packs (you won't have enough for this), but most importantly can be used to overrule the soul capture roll (obviously, always attempt it first) after defeating an enemy.
Don't use this willy-nilly!
There are some characters that have a very low encounter rate and a very low capture rate. You basically need to have a Soul Gem around to have a hope of snagging them. Some of these characters are just rare and aren't particularly useful, but several are among the best in the game and will be listed here.
If you happen to run into these while farming other characters, I highly, highly-recommend using one of your SGs to guarantee the capture if it fails (which is much more likely than not).
The Rogues' Gallery
Tyrant Moose,
DragonFiend Rider Male/Female,
Dean Gears,
Frost Dragon,
Poison Drake.
Char Breakdowns
Tyrant Moose spawns in a large number of locations at an extremely low rate (~1/1000) - almost anywhere worth farming and outside of Southern Lakes and the dungeons. With good card customization, Tyrant's arguably the best non-rare Earth character. Without any customization, he's still a competitive second with Treasure Chest Trap, and also boasts a good farm speed.
The DragonFiend Riders exclusively spawn as random encounters in the Nightmare Dungeon at a very low rate. Be aware that they use a Boss-type deck (more on that later), so if you're caught by surprise, beating one of them might be a bit of a feat to begin with. As a player character their deck's essentially a grab-bag of the high-class Shadow cards - they're not great for farming but they're a solid choice for general PvP. Bear in mind that they have identical decks so don't be too worried to snag their sibling once you have one.
Dean Gears is a recent addition. He's only been proven to spawn in Eastern Thicket so far, so it's unlikely you'll happen across him by coincidence, however it's not impossible he also spawns in West/other Ice Forests, and/or at the North Gate. Dean Gears has an extremely low encounter rate similar or worse than the DragonFiend Riders and just to add insult to injury, his possession rate is almost as small as the average number of OS players logged in on any given day. The Dean has an odd deck and can be played as a Combo Ice character (relatively cheap to cc into) or a Defensive Ice DoT character (much more expensive, will need at least 500k gold).
Frost Dragon is another character you're unlikely to run into unless actively farming it, spawning in Ice Cave and bizarrely, as a random encounter (using 'explore') in the Sleepywolf Inn Cellar (where the 15 rats are) at low rates; although generally Ice Cave is considered more reliable. Frost Dragon is a mediocre farming character but excels in PvP with or without customization once you get the hang of it - it's good to have simply for being the only free(ish) character to have the Dragon-exclusive Bashes and Thrashes.
Poison Drake is a bit of an oddball. It spawns at a low rate in Bottomless Pit - it's the only 'rare' encounter in that area - and at a significantly lower rate in Rocky Pass, as here it competes for the slot with Kruger, Frostzard and the like. Poison Drake is a ShadowNeutral character (albeit mostly inferior to the rare Skexis series) and is very potent in PvP with a little cheap customization to slow the duels down (Neutral 515 Defend, Shadow Defend, Shadow Defend is good).
PvE Farming Technique
General/Stating the obvious
- Lower-level characters obviously connect kills quicker than higher-level fights, however if you need gold (and you will), your gold income vs time spent per fight is much better with higher levels if you're fighting efficiently. Lower-level chars are also a little risky for bossfights and also for areas that spam Combo Shadow characters (Nightmare Dungeon), but this shouldn't be an issue above Level 5. Try to aim for below 40 seconds/kill at ~Level 10 and aim for below 60 seconds/kill at ~20.
- Aim to kill two or more birds with one stone - even if they're a slightly-slower farmer, it's more worthwhile to level a character you need to evolve or get to a certain PvP format level (9, 10 or 20); and aim to farm at areas which can give you multiple chars you don't have yet rather than just one possible rare.
- As dry as the grind can get, don't put your brain on AFK and charge to 19 energy before you do anything in every fight - whether we're talking PvE or PvP. This wastes time, especially if you're grinding with Combo Shadow or Void Incarnate, characters which frequently only need 3 never mind 4 energy income per turn (AKA charging to 10/charging to 14 respectively) to dump all of their useful attacks.
- Direct damage and combo strategies are your friend in PvE! Even though DoT strategies (Shadow or Resonance) may kill in as many turns or less than a combo character, the number and lagginess of the animations leaves them finishing fights more slowly. Every 3-hit combo attack deals a bonus 150 damage with a ~33% chance for a 50 per turn, 3 turn DoT (usually slows you down marginally if you trigger it, honestly). Every 5-hit combo attack deals a bonus 500 damage with a ~20% chance for a 1-turn stun.
How Oversoul's AI works
- All characters will use a card(s) in their hand if they are able to.
- If they aren't able to use a card but do have cards left in their hand, they will charge. If this is a card of another element (hybrid elemental chars like Arcane Ranger), they will start charging the energy of that element - this makes hybrid elemental characters complete pushovers, of course.
- If they aren't able to use a card based on something like a discard cost and their AI happens to make them use all applicable cards first, they charge indefinitely.
- If their hand is empty, they will draw cards and repeat by these rules.
So, the best course in almost all cases, even versus characters with boss decks, is to play as offensively as possible without actually dying (cough Void Incarnate). If you put all of your energy into offence they will die before you do. As for boss characters, the reason you need to end the fights quickly is because all of their cards are extremely energy-efficient (minimum 200, often 250+), but the poor AI hampers them.
However, if you let the duel drag and play defensively this increases the likelihood of you losing as once they've gotten through their opening hand and charged in several intervening turns while doing so, they'll have 4 or 5 energy per turn income for the second and beyond, which will allow them to dump their cards much more quickly and possibly overwhelm you.
That said, Combo Shadow chars are not great for bossfights until high levels due to all of the self-damage they do, it's generally better to use a solid Light, Earth or Fire character when farming for a boss character (or when you might run into DragonFiend Rider).
Card Customization for PvE and PvE character selection
Accessed by the 'Custom Cards' button in lobby, if you weren't aware before. This allows you to assign up to 5 additional cards from your arsenal to use with your character's base deck - anything you have is simply added into the total pool for draws (Oversoul's deck mechanics are a little too simple, as far as we know anything you don't have in your hand is simply put into your deck and randomized, so you have an equivalent chance to draw any particular card).
Bear in mind, whether PvE or PvP, you're essentially diluting your base deck when you use custom cards - having 5 customs means you go from having 15 cards in deck to 20 on an ordinary character, on a char with a notably large deck (not unlike those who play them) such as Treasure Chest Trap, it'll send you from 23 cards to a whopping 28! So in brief, don't feel you need to have 5 customs at all times, use customs when they're going to increase the average value of the cards of your character's deck, and increase their consistency.
That said, now let's go over some of the customization to boost PvE kill speed and how easily-gotten they are.
- For reference, the average * (rarity) rating of a card in a gold pack seems to be 2*. The average * rating of a card in an SG pack seems to be 4*. Note that higher-starred cards aren't necessarily the best ones, such as Ice Orb being a proud 5* rarity card despite being about as useful as a liberal arts degree; but bear in mind all of the cards which aren't element ~100, ~200, ~500, Pierce or ~500 Defend are at least 4* rarity.
- Most Important - The Neutral 515 Attack. This is something you should snag as early as possible into your Oversoul farming. You should get this within 2 gold packs of 'Neutral Series 1', an average ballpark spend of 30,000. If you'd never noticed, every non-Neutral character starts with 4 Neutral Energy as well as 5 of their element, exactly enough for the 515. This was done to help dual element characters before they were supplemented with charge cards so the player wouldn't have to switch between two elements at once. Once you have one of these bad boys, it should be equipped at all times when using a non-Neutral character to PvE. If you're fighting below Lv 10, you can equip 2 as well to ensure you'll see it before the fight ends.
- If you didn't get a 515 Attack from the first pack(s) but did get some 204 Attacks, equip a couple of those instead - it'll still boost your pace.
- After this, you should mostly first think about spending your gold as you earn it on strong characters that can't be obtained otherwise, like Treasure Chest Trap. Getting good card customization with gold alone costs an extreme amount of gold for most elements. If you do want to sink gold into this, focus on your favorite element - if you don't have one, buying Shadow packs is the overall best course as this will give you Bloodrages to improve your PvE speed with Combo Shadow characters and Empowers which are a great filler card usable with any element.
Full list of good PvE deck-types and the ideal customization you should use for them.
As a ballpark estimate, getting 3 copies of a specific 4* card averages a cost of 300k. 3 copies of a specific 5* card averages a cost of 600k. Frankly, this is endgame and long-term stuff, so don't worry too much about it, but here's the card list for reference.
Void Incarnate
Lv 1-10: 2 Neutral 515/525 Attack, 1 Shadow 515/525 Attack or Bloodrage.
Lv 11-20: 1 Neutral 515/525 Attack, 2 Shadow 515/525 Attack or Bloodrages.
Combo Shadow
Lv 1-10: 2 Neutral 515/525 Attack, as many Bloodrages as possible.
Lv 11-20: 1 Neutral 515/525 Attack, as many Bloodrages as possible.
Light
Lv 1-10: 2 Neutral 515/525 Attack, as many Holy Strikes as possible.
Lv 11-20: 1 Neutral 515/525 Attack, as many Holy Strikes as possible.
Volt Engineer - Super Charged
1 Neutral 515/525 Attack.
Fire
This varies with character - add what your particular Fire character lacks. If they have 0 or 1 copies of Incinerate, add Incinerate(s) or Empowers. Otherwise, add Fireballs. A general-purpose custom would be:
1 Neutral 515/525 Attack, 3 Fireball, Incinerate.
Earth
This varies with character somewhat but generally you simply want as many Earthquakes as possible within reason (Mountain Strikes also work pretty well due to the quick animation, short delay and good energy efficiency). General-purpose custom:
1 Neutral 515/525 Attack, 3 (any mix of Earthquake and Mountain Strike).
Ulrik - Lightning Wolf Apprentice
(Yes, I'm serious.)
2 Neutral 515/525 Attack.
Max Storm
1 Neutral 515/525 Attack, Super Charged.
Or
1 Neutral 515/525 Attack, 2 Energy 515/525 Attack.
Soul Wyvern
1 Neutral 515/525 Attack, 1 Water 515/525 Attack.
Human Fisher
1 Neutral 515/525 Attack.
Drakath Fiend
1 Neutral 515/525 Attack, 1 (Any of Death Flow, Power Flow, Chain Lightning, Meteorite)
Any archetype not mentioned farms encounters at a noticeably slower rate compared to these, but don't worry too much about using them, especially as Earth can be rather sluggish for example if you don't have a good PvE customization which requires a lot of gold. If you are using them, a good general rule is just to slap a Neutral 515/525 on it and up to 2 Empowers if you have them.
Refresh Farming
Of course, let's not forget we don't need to fight at all to track down rare mobs! As long as your connection's not being filtered through a wet dishcloth, you can let a fight load, see whether it's the character you're hunting for and hit refresh if it's something you have already. Depending on how easy the area is to access from Solace, this'll reduce the time taken per encounter from 40 seconds or more to between 10 and 20.
However, do be wary with this as any time you spend Refresh Farming is essentially for no reward (no levels, no gold) if you don't happen to get to the rare encounter(s) you're hunting. Overall, I wouldn't recommend leaning on it too much until you've already completed a majority of your hunts, and own a decent character of every element and archetype. Of course, if you simply get bored of grinding fights for awhile but don't want to take a break from looking for the character yet, feel free to Refresh Farm for a while as a rest of sorts.
Overuse of refresh farming may cause the server to lag, but with OS's current levels of activity it probably isn't something to be too worried about.
Alright, hopefully all of that didn't seem like you were being spoon-fed what you've known for ages already. Now we've got our technique for hunting down characters and gaining levels swiftly in check, let's get to the meat of what's worthwhile to hunt, and where.
This is going to be organised by location as it's the most sensible way to group the mobs. Each relevant location will have its notable encounters listed, with some information given of the difficulty of getting them.
Can't figure out which chars to hunt, when?
Starting from the very beginning, a good route would be to:
- Get your starter character to Level 5, or any random character you have that you like, it doesn't necessarily need to be a good one long-term.
- Enter the Nightmare Gateway (Nightmare Dungeon) via Oblivion in the left part of Solace (spawn), and fight for a while to capture an efficient PvE char like Void Incarnate or Burn Mage.
- Move to begin the very, very long hunt at the Southern Lakes.
- Use the time you get tired of South Lakes encounters to hunt down strong and/or useful miscellaneous characters that aren't too inconvenient to obtain, like Clan Warrior, Pactagonal/Pactonal Knight, Engineer and Necrosis Dezgardo.
- Once you've clocked 3 captures of Kid Drakath which is the main prize of the Southern Lakes, you can consider starting the longer hunts for top-class characters like Frost Dragon, Poison Drake and many others.
'The List' of the (roughly) 3 best characters of each element obtainable by pure free players.
Note this is a mixed grading of their PvP and PvE uses, and also doesn't take into account how difficult they are to obtain - for example, although Orc Chieftain is technically the third-best Neutral character for free players, I'd rate him quite lowly relative to the amount of effort he takes to get.
Neutral: Clan King, Shaolin Monk, Orc Chieftain.
Fire: Pyre Witch Master, Mana Guardian, Lizirra.
Ice: Frost Dragon, Dean Gears, Xmas Dark Elf (as long as she's obtainable, Snow Ninja if/when she's not).
Energy: Volt Engineer, Resonance, Max Storm.
Earth: Tyrant Moose, Treasure Chest Trap, Earth Ram (with a full suite of customization, otherwise Minotaur or Earth Elemental).
Water: Soul Wyvern, Human Fisher, Aqueous (for a defensive option, Gamma Pirate is similarly good to Aqueous).
Light: Gold Lycan, Pactagonal Knight, Maiden Aegea .
Shadow: Bandit Drakath, Necrosis Dezgardo, Void Incarnates.
Chaos: Drakath Fiend, Infected Lepid, Infected Eye.
Guide to the key of the low-budget Pokedex
Chars of note will be rated under the best location to find them specifically if they appear in multiple locations, but it will be noted when they appear in others as well.
Encounter Rate - How common it is for something they can be possessed from to appear.
(Very Low, Low, Average, High or Very High.)
Possession Rate - The rough likelihood of obtaining them after each defeat - do note that seeing as there isn't a database of the actual numerical rates, it's from my own experience and what others have said of them. As with any estimation, it's not impossible for us to have gotten very lucky or unlucky at that time.
(Very Low, Low, Average, High or Very High.)
PvE Strength - How quickly they can clear AI duels.
(Very Weak, Weak, Average, Strong or Very Strong)
PvP Strength - Your mileage may vary with this, but how good their match-ups in a generic Level 10 PvP duel tend to be without a million dollar customization.
(Very Weak, Weak, Average, Strong or Very Strong)
Evolution Potential - If they can evolve, whether they're worth evolving; noting if it costs Soul Gems to do so as well, do be aware that not all characters actually get stronger when they evolve although they 'should'.
(Very Weak, Weak, Average, Strong or Very Strong)
As an extra clarification, when I talk about (for example) a character being 'one of the best non-rare Earth characters', I don't mean that to say they can necessarily be found quickly and/or in lots of places, I'm using that in the AQW sense of rare characters being no longer obtainable. Luckily in Oversoul the general best Neutral, Water, Ice, Energy, Light and Chaos character(s) are non-rare, and all of those but Light are obtainable without Soul Gems as well.
Nightmare Dungeon
Access - talk to Oblivion in Solace.
The Nightmare Dungeon was originally intended to be the 'final area' of Oversoul. Ironically, it's a fantastic place to start given it houses many easily-captured and powerful Veteran and Master characters.
Void Incarnates
(Only place to find this character)
Archetype: Self-damaging Combo Shadow
Encounter Rate: Very High
Possession Rate: Low
PvE Strength: Very Strong
PvP Strength: Average-Strong
Evolution Potential: Weak
Possessed from: Blood Ranger (F), Shadow Void (M), Drow Assassin (M), Flesh Void (M)
An Oversoul classic who sets the standard when it comes to efficient PvE killing, albeit not as safely as other styles can. Also a bit of a menace in Lv 10s (the most common level to PvP around) PvP.
Burn Mage
(Only place to find this character)
Archetype: Fire
Encounter Rate: Average
Possession Rate: High
PvE Strength: Strong
PvP Strength: Weak-Average
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Burn Mage
Resonance
(Only place to find this character)
Archetype: Defensive Energy DoT
Encounter Rate: Average
Possession Rate: High
PvE Strength: Average
PvP Strength: Strong
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Resonance
Void Mage
(Only place to find this character)
Archetype: Shadow DoT
Encounter Rate: Low-Average
Possession Rate: Average
PvE Strength: Average
PvP Strength: Strong
Evolution Potential: Very Strong (Level 20 evolution, 10 Soul Gems)
Possessed from: Void Mage
Infernal Fiend
(Only place to find this character)
Archetype: Fire
Encounter Rate: Low
Possession Rate: Low
PvE Strength: Strong
PvP Strength: Weak
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Infernal Fiend
Dragonfiend Riders
(Only place to find this character)
Archetype: Hybrid Damage Shadow
Encounter Rate: Very Low
Possession Rate: Very Low
PvE Strength: Average
PvP Strength: Strong
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Dragonfiend Rider Male, Dragonfiend Rider Female
From the Boss Spawns of Nightmare Dungeon
To farm this as quickly as possible, first determine you're on Nightmare Map 2 by comparing what you can see to this map.
Move from the red star to the blue star. If you're lucky, you won't get any encounters at all, but you should only get one random encounter at most. Witchblade is by far the toughest of the 3 possible bosses, but she should still be consistently doable with a character Level 8+ unless your draws are really bad.
Witchblade
(Only place to find this character)
Archetype: Combo Shadow
Encounter Rate: Boss
Possession Rate: High
PvE Strength: Strong
PvP Strength: Weak-Average
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Witchblade Boss
Fiend of Vergill is in a similar vein to Witchblade but noticeably worse, with a poorer deck and laggy animations. Storm Trainee (from Storm Knight) is excellent once evolved into Storm Knight but this costs Soul Gems - if you do fancy buying SGs then honestly, you might as well purchase them from the Character Shop since it's only saving 4 SGs to hunt Storm Knight, get a successful possession, and train the lower chars to 4 and 10.
Also notably possessable here, but not the quickest place to farm them - Druid of the Claw, Gravelyn Defender M/F, Trainee.
Southern Lakes
Access - Walking to the middle of any of the obvious lakes in the South Map.
Your main goal in Southern Lakes is to hoover-up as many of the other potent rare characters while training your Drakaths. Drakath himself is not an easy character to possess, but this is compounded by the fact that ideally, long-term you need at least 2 captures (preferably 3 captures) of a Drakath - Drakath Fiend and Bandit Drakath are two of the best characters in the game, and even Prince and Kid Drakath aren't too shabby either.
When you do capture Drakath, start using Kid Drakath immediately in order to evolve him into Prince Drakath as soon as possible. This will ensure that few or no encounters with a Drakath are wasted opportunities for captures. This is because you can not possess a character you already own, but if you evolve the character it will no longer stop you.
Young Paladin
(Found in many, many maps)
Archetype: Offensive Light
Encounter Rate: Very High
Possession Rate: Average
PvE Strength: Average-Strong
PvP Strength: Average
Evolution Potential: Average - evolve Young Paladin into his Veteran form but do not evolve that into Master Paladin.
Possessed from: Young Paladin
Water Ram
(Only place to find this character)
Archetype: Caster Water
Encounter Rate: Average
Possession Rate: High
PvE Strength: Weak
PvP Strength: Average-Strong
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Water Ram
Slime/Love Slime
(Only place to find this character)
Archetype: Annoying Fuck
Encounter Rate: Low
Possession Rate: Very High
PvE Strength: Very Weak
PvP Strength: Average - Mostly a power move on your opponent if you can win
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Slime/Love Slime
Kid Drakath
(Only place to find this character)
Archetype changes with evolution - in order, Combo Neutral; Offensive Light, Shadow DoT; Chaos
Encounter Rate: Low-Average
Possession Rate: Low-Average
PvE Strength: Average
PvP Strength: Weak
Evolution Potential: Very Strong (Prince is B-Class, Bandit and Drakath Fiend are both S-Class free chars)
Possessed from: Kid Drakath, Prince Drakath, Bandit Drakath
Soul Wyvern
(Can be bought for 50,000 gold from
Way of the Water Shop - not recommended)
Archetype: Hybrid Water
Encounter Rate: Low
Possession Rate: Average
PvE Strength: Strong
PvP Strength: Strong-Very Strong
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Soul Wyvern
Human Fisher
(Can be bought for 50,000 gold from
Way of the Water Shop - not recommended)
Archetype: Offensive Water
Encounter Rate: Low
Possession Rate: Average-High
PvE Strength: Strong
PvP Strength: Strong
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Human Fisher
Alpha Pirate
Archetype: Defensive Water
Encounter Rate: Low-Average
Possession Rate: Average
PvE Strength: Weak-Average (as Gamma Pirate)
PvP Strength: Average-Strong (as Gamma Pirate)
Evolution Potential: Strong
Possessed from: Alpha Pirate, Beta Pirate
Being evolved from Apprentice to Master is kind of a pain - while Gamma Pirate isn't Clan King or Bandit Drakath-tier by any means, he ends up a competent and fairly unique character with great animations. Note that the female human 'Pirettes' (Alpha Pirette, Beta Pirette) do not have their own Gamma/Master evolution for whatever reason. Beta Pirette sports an identical deck to Beta Pirate - she's a weak Water character, so don't train her unless you want to.
Alpha Voids
Archetype: Shadow-Water
Encounter Rate: Low
Possession Rate: Low-Average
PvE Strength: Average (as Beta Void)
PvP Strength: Average-Strong (as Beta Void)
Evolution Potential: Strong
Possessed from: Alpha Void M, Alpha Void F, Beta Void M, Beta Void F
The Void Pirates don't have the same issues as the human pirates - Beta Void M and F both sport identical decks and presumably if we had a non-binary Beta Void, they would too. Train whichever are preferable for you, most likely whichever you snagged first (although as a personal note, Alpha Void F's animations are fantastic and you can save that appearance after getting her Beta evo too.)
Also notably possessable here, but not the best place to farm them: Gravelyn Defender M/F
Notable very rare encounter: Weteye. Weteye takes most people several hundred encounters to run into, but unless you want them for the style points, don't feel like you should blow a Soul Gem if your capture fails - they have an identical deck to Ogre Shaman who's easier to obtain, and neither they nor Ogre Shaman are decent characters objectively.
Rocky Pass
Access - Grid References A9 and A10 on the center world map. It's the shadowed area at the edge of the map, southwest of Solace and directly west of the Undead Dungeon entrance.
Rocky Pass is an unusual unique area which offers a noticeably higher spawn rate of a few useful rare encounters compared to the other areas they spawn in.
Kruger
Archetype: Offensive Ice - DoT and Direct Damage
Encounter Rate: Low
Possession Rate: Average
PvE Strength: Average-Strong
PvP Strength: Average
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Kruger
Kruger's notable for their triple Shatter in base deck matched with a good attack spread - 4 200, 4 500. Kruger's struggle comes from defending themselves, but their damage per turn is excellent which makes them an unusually quick farmer for an Ice character; especially after Level 10, and probably the speediest non-rare among Ice in general excepting perhaps Frost Dragon. Kruger can also be a decent pick for PvP so long as he's given a customized Ice Defend or two, which isn't too pricy to obtain.
Earth Elemental
Archetype: Offensive Earth
Encounter Rate: High
Possession Rate: Average
PvE Strength: Strong
PvP Strength: Average-Strong
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Earth Elemental
Now here we go! Earth Elemental's a fantastic character, one who due to its solid ease of attainability ends up being; for many players, what I'd call the first 'real' taste of what Earth can do. Many Earth characters that don't seem stellar on paper (like Ogre Maiden) grow to be dangerous with a good card customization, but Earth Elly's excellent mixed base deck means it gets the ball rolling immediately. Though lacking defence, its attack spread is an enviable 3 200 5 500, with 1 each of Earth's best spell cards (…and Nature's Gift cough) - it smashes PvE encounters of all levels and, so long as you use its single Petrify judiciously to set-up a confirmed kill on your opponent, has a fair performance in PvP as well. It does eventually get almost-directly outclassed by Tyrant Moose and Treasure Chest Trap, but these are characters which take a much longer time to obtain.
Notable very rare encounter: Poison Drake. Poison Drake spawns much more regularly in Bottomless Pit than here as mentioned earlier, but it is a spawn here. If you run into it on your brief-ish farm here, I'd strongly consider using one of your few Soul Gems to secure its capture.
Bluffs
Access - This one's a little specific - it's the nook between the small boulders slightly to the west of Solace, and the forest a little west of that.
Note that Giant Boulders - the two big rocks on centre map to the southwest of Solace - have an identical encounter table except for the inclusion of Flying Eyeball (a rare you can afford to miss honestly, although does evolve into Infected Eye, an okay Combo Chaos char) and some slightly differently-weighted encounter rates, but that might be conjecture. In my experience the Ogres spawn more frequently at Bluffs and the Hammer and Sword Nomads (rare Nomads) most frequently at Giant Boulders.
The Bluffs offer a lot of elemental diversity belied by the tiny area they cover, and can be a fantastic area to pick-up reasonable characters of the rarer elements, like Light, Energy and Chaos. They're also a vital area for completing the quest for Orc Chieftain in the long-run. However, be a little wary that unlike Nightmare Dungeon and the like, the characters here don't generally come ready to fight - most of them are Veteran or Master evolutions of an Apprentice you can recruit here.
Druid of the Claw
Archetype: Like Drakath, he has split archetypes with evolutions. Druid and Young Lycan are both Combo Shadow, Gold Lycan is Offensive Light, Dark Lycan (Soul Gem) is Shadow DoT, and Frost Lycan is Hybrid Ice.
Encounter Rate: High
Possession Rate: Average-High
PvE Strength: -
PvP Strength: -
Evolution Potential: Strong
Possessed from: Druid of the Claw, Young Lycan, Gold Lycan; and at other locations, Dark Lycan and Frost Lycan also.
Druid's not a character I can give one set of potency ratings to. Let's start with the Shadow side of his family tree, which is a bit of a no-brainer - Druid isn't a Combo Shadow char to be sniffed at, especially by Apprentice standards, but Young Lycan is an objective slight improvement over his base deck. Dark Lycan is a character you should never bother with unless you really like his looks - unlike Gold and Frost he requires a Soul Gem bribe to be evolved into, and he's a mediocre-at-best Shadow DoT character… Shadow DoT being by far the most overpopulated archetype in the game.
Gold Lycan's the interesting brother in the tree, and the reason why training Druid could be well-worth the hassle. Unfortunately the top-class (especially defensive) Light characters are either rare, cost Soul Gems, have to be levelled to 20 (a right pain in the tits) or all three! However, Gold Lycan is a great (and often overlooked) Light character for free players. He's a strong rating on PvE clear speed and can be oppressive in PvP - Level 10s format - as well, with a strong attack spread and direct damage toolkit (3 200, 3 500, 2 Holy Strike backed by 1 Might and 1 Blessed Strike), not to mention 2 Heals and a Penance to keep you away from a suspected kill threshold. I'd highly recommend him if you don't mind the ~100 fights' training requirement (without any x-boosts).
Frost Lycan definitely has middle-child syndrome. There's just not much to write about him. His defense cards are pretty good along with 2 Shatters, but having no Freeze makes him an unsatisfactory Ice DoT character, and his attack spread is meh at best as well (Ice's attack cards are probably the worst of any element except perhaps Water so this was always going to be the case).
Lepid
Archetype: Combo Chaos (as Infected Lepid)
Encounter Rate: High
Possession Rate: Average-High
PvE Strength: Average (as Infected Lepid)
PvP Strength: Average (as Infected Lepid)
Evolution Potential: Average
Possessed from: Lepid
Obviously, if you put Infected Lepid up against Drakath Fiend, you're going to see some things way too inappropriate for me to mention here. That said, don't write Infected Lepid off out the gate. Drakath Fiend takes 700-odd kills to get. 700. Until then, if you want a taste of Chaos; and you don't want to sign up for a dating app, Infected Lepid's your man worm. When you put Fiend aside, they're the best free Chaos character excepting perhaps Infected Eye if she gets lucky. They're a very straightforward character, just remember that you should avoid using Chaos 200s unless it's needed to complete a combo, or the energy would just be wasted.
Earth Apprentice
Archetype: Tiny Deck Earth
Encounter Rate: High-Very High
Possession Rate: Low
PvE Strength: Weak
PvP Strength: Weak+
Evolution Potential: Very Weak
Possessed from: Earth Apprentice, Earth Adept, Earth Wizard
Earth Apprentice is an interesting character I'd formerly overlooked who is, admittedly, better than he has any right to be. Don't get too excited though, he's someone who's playable; not someone who's going to top the tier list tomorrow (not that there is one). So Earth Apprentice has a 13-card deck which includes Petrify, 2 Crush and a passable attack spread. He has far too few base deck Defends to support his 2 Crushes but that can be corrected with Stonewalls in card customization. For those with a luxury Earth customization available, Earth Apprentice has potential… hampered by the fact that if you have that good of a customization, you probably have Tyrant Moose; TCT, Earth Ram; Ogre Maiden, Minotaur - all sorts of characters which're stronger regardless.
However, if you have even just a single Earthquake and/or Mountain Strike, you could try giving him a shot with a cheap customization of Neutral Attack/Defend (either works here), Earth Defend, Earth Defend, Earthquake/MS (and another if you have one, obviously).
Never evolve Earth Apprentice as he literally gets worse with every evolution.
Hammer Nomad
Archetype: Indirect Damage Earth
Encounter Rate: Low
Possession Rate: Average-High
PvE Strength: Average
PvP Strength: Weak
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Hammer Nomad
Hammer Nomad is a pretty awful character and he's mainly here by virtue of uniqueness than actual ability. He can get some decent damage going by dropping Defends into Crushes immediately as he draws them (rather than the usual of saving them for an end-of-duel burst) along with his base deck double Mountain Strike, but these are… pretty lukewarm advantages, and he pays heavily for them elsewhere for no readily apparent reason. 2 Crush supported by a total of only 2000 in Defends is not good and his attack spread is eye-wateringly bad. With or without customization, you're going to see more piercings than a punk rock concert.
Sword Nomad
Archetype: Defensive Earth
Encounter Rate: Low
Possession Rate: Average-High
PvE Strength: Weak
PvP Strength: Average+
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Sword Nomad
Sword Nomad's admittedly far from stellar, but is nonetheless a somewhat underrated character. He's mostly a watered-down Earth Ram and, like Earth Ram, struggles to get much going without a bit of customization as his damage output isn't up to par (2/3/2/2 is an awful basic attack spread). He does however have the solid 2 Defend 2 Stonewall in core deck in addition to 1 Crush (very good, arguably even better than 2 Crush) and a Petrify. I do actually think that Sword Nomad is the 'best' of the many nomads in the game, but do bear in mind the whole family aren't exactly meant to be powerhouses.
Earth Ram
Archetype: Defensive Earth
Encounter Rate: Average
Possession Rate: Average-High
PvE Strength: Weak
PvP Strength: Weak-Average
Evolution Potential: N/A
Card Custom Potential: Very Strong
Possessed from: Earth Ram
Although (almost) all Earth characters benefit massively from strong card customization, this is truer of Earth Ram than any other character in the element, and possibly in the game. Earth Ram's base deck only has 6/15 cards which are anything less than excellent, this ends-up being basically moot because Earth Ram's damage potential is horrible, and it's not as if even a Defensive Earth character can stall forever. With Earth's offensive spell cards Earthquake and Mountain Strike being costly, but very efficient, just a few of either in your customization gives Ram the offensive edge they sorely need. For reference, with full customization they're a top 3 non-rare Earth character - so they're worth considering if you really like Earth and want to put a lot of gold into it in the long-run. Otherwise, leave them on the bench.
Ogre Maiden
Archetype: Combo Earth
Encounter Rate: Low
Possession Rate: Average
PvE Strength: Average
PvP Strength: Average-Strong
Evolution Potential: Weak (Varett costs 4 Soul Gems, but she's a downgrade over her pre-evolution!)
Possessed from: Ogre Maiden
Nomad
Archetype: Combo Energy (As Max Storm)
Encounter Rate: High-Very High
Possession Rate: Low-Average
PvE Strength: Strong
PvP Strength: Average-Strong
Evolution Potential: Strong
Possessed from: Nomad, Max Storm (here); Sword Apprentice, Berserker (elsewhere)
The only non-rare free character with the classic Energy core of '2 Energise, 2 Charged, 2 Surge, 2 Storm'. He's practically identical to the likes of Storm Knight and Lei Blades/Crossbows.
Other notable encounters: Ogre Shaman - required for obtaining Orc Chieftain. Seraphim of Ver (not the best place to obtain Priest of Ver). Zardzirra (rare but not a very good series of characters at all).
Very rare encounter: Tyrant Moose, Soul Gem cap if encountered.
Cave
Access - The obvious cave to the west and slight north of Solace.
Only one character who's really worth the grind here, but he's an absolute banger, albeit about as much fun as a bowl of Bran Flakes without milk.
Shaolin Monk
(Can only be found in this area)
Archetype: Tank Neutral
Encounter Rate: Low
Possession Rate: Low-Average
PvE Strength: Weak-Average
PvP Strength: Strong-Very Strong
Evolution Potential: Very Strong (Requires Level 20 and 4 Soul Gems)
Possessed from: Shaolin Monk, Dire Monk
Ice Cave (Admittedly, the backgrounds don't look very cave-y.)
Access - on North Map, ignore the first cave you see (this has a generic encounter table). Head east and explore on top of the much bigger cave replete with stalactites, glowing maw and the works.
There are several characters worth getting that reside here and may even be at a slightly higher spawnrate here than elsewhere in some cases, but I'm only going to reference the Ice Cave exclusives in this list as the hunt at Eastern Thicket; when you choose to embark upon it, is way longer than this one unless you attempt to capture Frost Dragon without a Soul Gem backup (which is masochistic).
Cosoma
Archetype: Ice DoT
Encounter Rate: Average
Possession Rate: Average
PvE Strength: Weak
PvP Strength: Average-Strong
Evolution Potential: Strong (Requires Level 10 and 6 Soul Gems)
Possessed from: Cosoma, Cosoma Titan
Frost Dragon
Archetype: Unique
Encounter Rate: Very Low-Low
Possession Rate: Very Low-Low
PvE Strength: Average-Strong
PvP Strength: Strong
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Frost Dragon
Frost Dragon is a superb character and a free-player favorite, albeit one of the more difficult hunts in the game as well. Frost Dragon arguably has the best attack spread in the game, sporting the draconic-exclusive Bash and Thrash cards, which deal 300 and 600 damage respectively for the same cost as a plebeian 200 and 500 Attack. This makes its combo attacks nothing short of devastating. It also brings with her an iron defense (Triple Defend and 2 Icewall) in its base deck. That said, its Ice deck isn't without flaws - it lacks Freeze, which means its main method of controlling the duel is rather slow; stalling while waiting for your Shatters to trigger so you can deliver a massive combo that most enemies cannot prepare any defenses against.
Furthermore, it has two copies of Snow Orb, which can be a useful card for closing-out duels when you're ahead; but otherwise, it's a really dreadful card to see given that it requires having defenses set-up to even be useful and even then, it's 1000 damage for an outrageous 11 energy. In spite of being a strong PvP character overall, it struggles against two common and key PvP matchups - Earth and Tank Neutral. Earth plays damage much faster than it does and can ruin its momentum with Petrifies while generally having a similar amount of defense available, and Tank Neutral leaves it unable to do anything as the duel drags-on, setting up Iron Hide and Defends to absorb Shatters and Counter Attack to reduce the strength of its combos.
Don't let these little drawbacks and nuances give you the wrong idea, though - it's her own character which is reason enough to snag it, and it's easily a top 10 f2p choice in the game as a whole. Within Ice specifically, it's a part of the three vying for the top slot, otherwise known as The Good, the Bad and the (B)Ugly: Dean Gears, Frost Dragon and Cosoma Titan.
Sleepywolf Inn
Access - click the Inn door in Solace (you can also use /join sleepywolf in the chatbox).
There are absolutely loads of encounters possible here, mostly of all of the generic characters like the starters, the nomads and the guard-type characters (Pikeman, Merc Recruit etc). However, there are two useful characters in particular who spawn here far more regularly than they seem to in other places.
Orc Rogue
Archetype: 'Shadow Except Forgot Defends'
Encounter Rate: Low-Average
Possession Rate: Average-High
PvE Strength: Strong
PvP Strength: Weak-Average (not too bad in Lv 10s, definitely don't level this character to 20 and try to play him there, you'll be left as disappointed as an Oversoul player's significant other)
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Orc Rogue
Priest of Ver
Archetype: Combo Light as Priest, Defensive Light as Archpriest and Seraphim of Ver
Encounter Rate: Average
Possession Rate: Low
PvE Strength: Average
PvP Strength: Average
Evolution Potential: Strong-Very Strong - note that Archpriest of Ver is an upgrade to his PvP potency but a slight downgrade of his PvE (he loses 2 100s and 1 Might for 1 Defend and 1 Blessed Strike). Seraphim of Ver is a Level 20 evolution of Archpriest
and costs 10 Soul Gems. Seraphim is arguably the best Light character that doesn't get banned in every tournament (
Unlike this character), although some people including myself do prefer Templar of Notlim for her improved burst potential. Regardless, clearly an excellent non-rare character but of course not a free one.
Possessed from: Priest of Ver, Archpriest of Ver, Seraphim of Ver
'Blair'
Blair spawns in a very large number of maps, on the off chance you haven't gotten her so far you likely will here, so I'm putting a card for her as she certainly is worth training, albeit requiring a little more effort to put in work than Burn Mage (but Pyre Witch Veteran and Burn Mage are almost the same thing anyways, so the Master form is just an upgrade over them).
Archetype: Fire
Encounter Rate: High-Very High
Possession Rate: Average
PvE Strength: Strong (as Pyre Witch M)
PvP Strength: Average (as Pyre Witch M)
Evolution Potential: Strong
Possessed from: Fire Witch, Pyre Witch V (with the auburn hair), Pyre Witch M (with the hood).
'Ulrik'
Same story as above, only Ulrik is definitely
not a character worth training to evolution. Not because Ulrik is bad, but because while Ulrik's Apprentice form is quite unique and effective, his Veteran and Master forms have really messy decks which at best can be described as worse versions of Max Storm.
Archetype: Charged Spam Energy
Encounter Rate: High-Very High
Possession Rate: Average
PvE Strength: Strong
PvP Strength: Basically a gamble character, I'd say they're weak-average overall but can catch people out with good draws in hand.
Evolution Potential: Weak
Possessed from: Lightning Wolf, Lightning Wolf V (with the body armour), Lightning Wolf M (with the helmet and armour).
Notable very rare encounter: Tyrant Moose
Dirt Road
Access - This one's a little hard to describe, so I recommend checking the Wiki page. The castle to the far east of Solace on the centre map has a path leading to it, and a wider road leading off
that. You want not the widest part of that road but the part where it's between the two treelines.
The Dirt Road's a serendipitous little place - although it doesn't have any technical 'rares', it's a good spot to hunt two characters which're otherwise pretty obscure, but are very useful as a free player - most notably the Clan King, who even without a pricy card customization is either the first, second or third-best overall free (and is probably still top 3 or 5 even including Soul Gem picks) character in the entire game.
Pactagonal Knight
Archetype: Offensive Light
Encounter Rate: Low-Average
Possession Rate: Average
PvE Strength: Strong
PvP Strength: Average
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Pactonal Knight
Equivalent to Gold Lycan in PvE although slightly less capable than him in PvP, the Pactagonal Knight is a very competent Light character relative to his ease of obtaining, and stands as a solid upgrade of the similar Paladin Veteran once you snag them.
—-
Frogzard
Archetype: Combo Chaos (as Infected Frogzard)
Encounter Rate: High
Possession Rate: High
PvE Strength: Average-Strong (as Infected Frogzard)
PvP Strength: Weak
Evolution Potential: Average
Possessed from: Frogzard
—-
Clan Warrior
(Can also be bought for 15,000 gold from the Character Shop in Solace - I wouldn't recommend it but if he's proving a real pain to hunt, it isn't that large an amount of gold.)
Archetype: Tank Neutral
Encounter Rate: Average
Possession Rate: Average
PvE Strength: Average-Strong (as Clan King)
PvP Strength: Very Strong (as Clan King)
Evolution Potential: Very Strong
Possessed from: Clan Warrior
Eastern Town
Access - as the name implies, go to the East Map and then keep heading directly east to stand on top of the small settlement in that map.
This should be a nice brief area to cross off your list, but it's definitely not one to skip-over. There's one exclusive character here who, as well as being one of the few decent characters of his element available completely for free, is almost objectively the best of his entire element. He's a powerhouse both in PvE and in PvP in either level format, although he's just as frequently banned in the latter with some good reason.
Engineer
Archetype: Super Charged
Encounter Rate: Average
Possession Rate: Average
PvE Strength: Very Strong (as Volt Engineer)
PvP Strength: Very Strong (as Volt Engineer)
Evolution Potential: Very Strong
Possessed from: Engineer
For the record, Engineer's quite a decent character in his own right, but being honest he's not really who we're here for. His Master evolution, Volt Engineer, ditches his boring Neutral element for Energy and brings with it almost the ideal offensive Energy deck. Volt Engineer doesn't need to charge to 19 energy and can even in some fights go on 10 energy. He'll fire off a 3-hit combo before most enemies have even gotten started to draw blood, then redraw into a painful Super Charged combo more often than not. On paper you'd think his strategy would be inconsistent, but it really can't be as much as Yugi Muto, for his deck has no pathetic cards. Even if your Super Charged draw comes slower than me with a sheet of basic maths problems, you won't be behind much if at all before then simply by using your attacks, defends and Energy Arc.
Undead Dungeon
Access - exploring on top of the skull-covered castle south of Solace will take you into the dungeon.
This area in particular is absolutely saturated in Shadow characters who are all decent enough that I should give them their own 'dex entry', but in honesty they're almost entirely identical to one another - we're only talking some having 2 less or more 200 Attacks, for example.
So basically, objectively they're worth having, but unless you're a completionist (or you just have a thing for skeletons) I wouldn't recommend going out of your way to acquire the lot.
The list the above message applies to:
Crypt Soldier
Maggot - Greater Maggot
Undead Squire - Axe Skeleton
Undead Warrior
Undead Knight
Shadow Acolyte
Shadow Priest
Shadow Squire - Vampire Lord 'Valdis'
The few that aren't listed but are in the encounter table weren't missed off by accident, they're just a pile of smelly old chicken bones that should be left in the bin. Seriously, to repeat, some of these specifically like Undead Warrior are damned rare encounters and they're nothing you haven't seen 20 times before.
The Special Encounters
Uniquely, the Undead Dungeon has both its boss point encounters and separate encounter tables at certain square(s) within it.
The General Map
You know the drill, red for where you get dumped-in, blue for the boss, yellow for where Treasure Chest Trap can be encountered on an explore (reminder: TCT cannot be recruited/possessed, they just give you a little extra gold when you defeat them which does at least help you towards purchasing TCT in the shop). After you defeat a boss at blue star, you're returned to red star. Unlike other dungeons Undead Dungeon only has one potential map/maze to be placed onto.
Crypt Rogue
Crypt Rogue can only be encountered at the gully directly up from TCT's encounter spot. This gully also has a much increased chance at Undead Knight encounters, but Undead Knight can be encountered in the map generally as well.
Crypt Rogue
Archetype: Hybrid Shadow
Encounter Rate: Average (at its spot)
Possession Rate: Average
PvE Strength: Average
PvP Strength: Average
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Crypt Rogue
To be honest, considering Crypt Rogue's the only non-boss encounter in the Undead Dungeon to come at a Master ranking (and having their own special spot for no readily apparent reason), they're not much of a step-up over the competition, if any at all.
Necrosis Dezgardo
Only encounterable at the boss point (blue star). Note that Necrosis Dezgardo does not utilize a boss-type deck when you fight him in the Undead Dungeon, so they're a much easier take-down than the character mentioned after him.
Necrosis Dezgardo
Archetype: Hybrid Shadow
Encounter Rate: -
Possession Rate: High-Very High
PvE Strength: Strong
PvP Strength: Strong
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Necrosis Dezgardo
Dez is a very unusual Shadow character (what a relief, given that there's about 100 with seemingly the same exact deck - not an exaggeration), and he's not one to be missed. You've probably noticed that most every Shadow character with the excellent Sacrifice card also gets given the same number of copies of its antithesis, Life Drain - except we're all well aware Life Drain is generally a pretty rubbish card, especially for PvE. Void Incarnate is good for having more Sacrifices than Life Drains, but Dez really bucks the trend by having 2 Sacrifices, 2 Bloodrages (another fantastic card for farming as it deals 500 Pierce for 3 energy) and yet 0 Life Drains to go with them.
Bizarrely, Dez has both a top-class direct offensive core and simultaneously has a great toolkit for Shadow DoT - possible as; whilst 95% of Oversoul's characters have at least 5 cards allocated between 100/200/500/Pierce 100, Dez only has 3 slots total occupied by those. 3 copies of Poison is tied for the second-highest in the game (although his deck is slightly larger than the average at 17 cards), as well as double Mark for Death and a Void Reflection to create defensive momentum with. Avoid using Poisons in PvE as they will slow you down (Mark for Death is okay), as for PvP, feel free to go all out - Dezgardo can win a lot of duels simply by laying down so much DoT early which tears at his opponent, then cutting them off with a 3-hit+ combo of mostly unblockable damage.
Do bear in mind Empower can't be used on his Sacrifices.
Arch Lich
Unlike Necrosis Dezgardo, Arch Lich does pack a boss-type deck when they battle in the Undead Dungeon, in fact it's in my opinion the strongest of all the boss-type decks in the game.
Witchblade had enhanced Death Flow, which deals 2000 direct damage for 8 Energy.
Fiend of Vergill had Corruption, which deals 500 damage per turn for 4 turns (2000 total) for 10 Energy. Although this sounds intimidating this is ironically one of if not the weakest of the cards in the boss' decks.
Not only does Arch Lich have at least one copy of both which already makes them a tremendously dangerous opponent, the most powerful card-type bosses can use is actually probably the most overlooked - the 800 damage basic attack which only costs a piddling 2 energy. Arch Lich and Dragonfiend Riders both have Death Flow and Corruption, but Arch Lich seems to have more 800 damage cards. In fact, it's bad enough to the point that them drawing Corruption is actually a saving grace, because it forces them to waste turns charging back to 10+ at some point in order to use it, rather than redrawing into more 800s to toss at you.
There is an element of luck into downing the Arch Lich but so long as you're above Level 7 or 8 and have a good offensive character (avoid Combo Shadow if possible) you should be getting wins when you encounter him at least three-quarters of the time.
Arch Lich
Archetype: Shadow DoT
Encounter Rate: -
Possession Rate: Average-High
PvE Strength: Average
PvP Strength: Average-Strong
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Arch Lich
Given the much increased difficulty between the two, it's kind of ironic that Arch Lich is generally outclassed by Necrosis Dezgardo. Lich does have a sturdier defence in duels where Void Reflection wouldn't be very effective, but his direct and indirect damage-dealing is both weaker. Two Life Drains, seriously?
Don't get me wrong though, Arch Lich is certainly one of the better free Shadow characters, there's just such a massive amount of competition within that slot - they don't really measure-up.
Bottomless Pit
Access - the giant, er, hole in the ground on the east map.
Another 'one-and-done' location, quite fitting considering its epithet. Be warned though that this can be a pretty frustrating location to hunt in, the encounters are very repetitive and while in Cave you were only really looking for Shaolin Monk, Poison Drake - the sole reason to come here - has a vastly lower spawn rate than the Shaolin (Cave had some miscellaneous rare encounters like Mishap and Time Apprentice to keep things interesting, too). But if you've already obtained the rares at Rocky Pass but not Poison Drake, and you do want it, you'll have to spend some time here. Blood Voids most often seem to cause Oversoul fights to freeze which is basically your insult to injury.
Poison Drake
Archetype: Shadow Neutral DoT
Encounter Rate: Very Low
Possession Rate: Very Low-Low
PvE Strength: Weak-Average
PvP Strength: Strong
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Poison Drake
I put a pretty good blurb for it in the Rogues' Gallery all the way at the start of this guide (which fortunately isn't printed on any paper, since otherwise it wouldn't be worth the paper it was printed on). It's definitely an unusual character and one that's a bit of a nuisance to train due to its slow-starting nature, but with a suiting customization and strategy once you get the hang of it, it is, crucially, worth the onerous hunt for its duel skills.
Eastern Thicket
Access - like the Bluffs, this is another encounter table that's in a very specific location. The grid reference (Q7) and local image are listed on its Wiki page, but if you're having some trouble finding it from there - go to the North Map, keep heading east until you hit the Ice Cave, then head east again until you're standing on the pile of flat rocks. Then, just head north ever-so-slightly so you're standing next to the large Christmas/pine tree and start exploring.
Even though Oversoul's scant had updates over the past 3-4 years, the North Map is still somewhere that was relatively unexplored. There's still a little bit of debate over what can and can't be found in the Eastern Thicket, which has a slightly different encounter table to the large Snowy Forests in the western side of the North Map; as well as whether the large North Gate actually has a different encounter table to other areas or not.
The main reason for these things being undecided until recently was because the North Map is bluntly, a bit of a pain in the neck. The vast majority of the landmarks share the same generic encounter table, and all locations in the North have their brunt of encounters being Ice Nomad and Barbarian evolutions, who're notorious for firing-off Defends and Freezes, so most players hunted Frost Dragon and then got the heck out of there.
But the 2018 Christmas update gave us the dubious gift of another hunt in the North, and this one's significantly tougher than the Frost Dragon (who wasn't exactly a pushover itself) - Dean Gears.
Jack
Archetype: Ice DoT
Encounter Rate: Average
Possession Rate: Average
PvE Strength: Weak
PvP Strength: Average
Evolution Potential: Average (Jack Ice is a slight improvement over Jack. Jack Frost I
would say is another slight improvement over Jack Ice, but that's an evolution that costs 5 Soul Gems. He's definitely not worth spending Soul Gems on unless you love his design.)
Possessed from: Jack, Jack Ice, Jack Frost
Jack's a decent staple Ice character who you'll snag long before you run into the Dean unless you're spectacularly lucky. I wouldn't say that Jack's fantastic but you wouldn't be going wrong using him either, and I'm kind of aware that I've neglected mentioning Ice characters other than the very strongest ones so far.
Dean Gears
Archetype: Unique
Encounter Rate: Very Low
Possession Rate: Very Low
PvE Strength: Weak
PvP Strength: Strong-Very Strong
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Dean Gears
Now, here we go again. This new boy's the reason we've suffered through 200+ Ice AI encounters, and by now your mouse-clicking fingers're probably feeling like they're going to drop off from Frostbite. Was he worth the effort?
Well, the short answer is 'probably', but it depends on what you were looking for in the first place. Dean's deck has two completely unique features. He has a Neutral 500 Attack in his base deck (well, obviously besides Neutral characters no one has that) and he sports 2 copies of Freeze, one of the absolute best cards in the game. The rest of his deck though isn't necessarily off to a winning start on paper. 4 Defends would be fantastic on a Shadow character, but from an Ice you would've hoped for at least 1 of them to be an Icewall instead (that said, the individual cheapness of all of his cards can be useful for assuring you can immediately use Freeze every time you draw it if it seems to be a good time to).
His offence is a bit muddled - Dean's probably the character in the game with the biggest difference between his PvP usefulness and his (lack of) PvE ability. The Neutral 500 in base seems fantastic for PvE until you realize that it's essentially a slight disadvantage, seeing as you'd put a 515/525 in your customization anyways. His Neutral 500 is also a slight hindrance in Level 20 PvP with the slow pace he plays at, but it's a quality addition in Level 10s PvP.
So, how do we bring out Dean's potential? Having used him myself, one thing I think a lot of players have massively underestimated is his potential as a (lone?) Combo Ice character. Combo Ice has pretty bad energy efficiency on paper, sure, but being able to crank out a 1650 direct damage combo on almost every redraw is not to be sniffed at. The poor energy efficiency is not much of a hindrance for Dean because his two Freezes reward him for getting through his hands quickly and waste lots of his opponents' energy as well. Another advantage is that Combo Dean only needs to run a couple cards in customization unless otherwise desired - the other style needs a full 5 CC, which does mean that this tactic draws Freezes earlier and more often on average.
Combo Dean
2 Ice 515/525 Attack
and 1 Icewall if owned and versus a character with a lot of direct damage (e.g: Tyrant Moose)
You can consider swapping one 515/525 for an Ice Needle, but only versus characters such as Gravelyn Defender which use excessive Defends - if you have unlimited customization, I'd use the second style anyways.
Of course, a great thing about this build is that getting 2 515/525 Attacks will only take 2 or 3 Ice packs if you're unlucky. That said, I do think Ice DoT Dean is overall better, especially in Level 20 PvP specifically, but the customization for Ice DoT Dean is extremely expensive and will probably take ~500,000 gold plugged into Ice Packs as a minimum.
Ice DoT Dean
3 Shatter
1 Icewall
or
4 Shatter
1 Icewall
Notable very rare encounter (besides the Dean): Tyrant Moose
Labyrinth Dungeon
Access - talk to Martha, the woman with a cane on the rightmost side of Solace, and accept her quest to pursue her kidnapped daughter.
The de facto place to hoover-up some decent Earth (non-Ogre) characters.
Minotaur can be obtained as a result of clearing the quest here. They're an excellent Earth character - see the Shop Characters section for more details.
Stone Knight and Stone Assassin are both characters you'll doubtlessly catch very quickly here. Both are useful… but admittedly a little bland.
Stone Knight is in the same archetype as Ogre Maiden, Ogre Bandit and Earth Golem, but they swap Stone Strikes (admittedly a meh card but decent late game) for 100 Attacks (even worse!). They're a good fall-back but not really worth your time once you've got a more rounded roster.
Stone Assassin is best played with customization as an offensive caster. She's got the excellent 1 Crush 1 Petrify to hand but the rest of her basedeck lacks a lot of oomph, unfortunately if her basic attack spread were a hair better or if she had an Earthquake (everything's better with Earthquake) she'd stand-out as a risky offensive pick for the element, which she fails to right now.
Reminder also that Earth Elemental and Gravelyn Defenders are still found here.
Earth Golem
Archetype: Combo Earth
Encounter Rate: Low
Possession Rate: Average-High
PvE Strength: Average
PvP Strength: Average-Strong
Evolution Potential: N/A
Possessed from: Earth Golem
Earth Golem is a very competitive choice for dedicated Earth players, particularly in Level 10s. They also bring a lot more appeal to the table than Ogre Maiden. Basically, Earth Golem is an Ogre Maiden alternate, they trade her 200 Attack in for a Stone Strike. Which is a pretty low-impact swap, in my opinion the 200 Attack is marginally better but Stone Strikes are good late game whereas 200s are only useful for getting the extra 150+ damage from completing a 3-hit combo. Earth Golem is not too shabby without customization and can squeak out some wins but, as always while their offence isn't necessarily low it's pretty inefficient - a 3-hit 500-500-500 (which is basically your best-case scenario by default) stacks up at 137.5 energy efficiency compared to casting Earthquake which is at 150.
Darkon
Archetype: Shadow DoT
Encounter Rate: Very Low-Low
Possession Rate: High
PvE Strength: Very Weak-Weak
PvP Strength: Average-Strong
Evolution Potential: Average-Strong (Level 20, 6 Soul Gems)
Possessed from: Darkon Drago
Okay, here we go. Darkon's one of the oddest characters in the game for a number of reasons. Firstly, the Wiki; which as we all know is sacrosanct and never, ever, incorrect as well as player experience confirms that Darkon Drago is not on the encounter table for Map 3 - look at the page to be sure you're on Map 1 or 2; and for the record most people seemed to find him on Map 2.
That's not the end of his irregularities. His PvE strength goes down very quickly not because he's actually that bad for PvE, it's because he's incredibly laggy. Darkon Drago is and was a surprisingly popular character mainly since Shadow DoT seems to be the go-to archetype for people quite new to PvP (not intended to be any kind of thrown shade, Shadow DoT is good, fairly simple and has stable matchups against most of the contending styles so it makes sense). That said, Darkon Drago is arguably worse than Darkon - and I doubt anyone's ever evolved Darkon into Darkon Drago rather than buying Darkon Drago outright due to how slow Darkon is to train and it's a Legendary/Lv 20 evolution.
So, how does Darkon actually stack-up? His deck's somewhat unusual for Shadow DoT by featuring 2 Empower. For those with no Shadow customs available at all, having 1 (only 1) Void Reflection is advantageous although another Mark for Death or Poison certainly wouldn't go amiss. Darkon's fairly consistent and can use his energy very efficiently but he's not a very tactical character, so his wins are mostly predicated on his opponent bricking or just being a poor match for Shadow DoT. Last but not least, Darkon is extremely glitchy in PvP duels and it seems that, especially when he has a duel sent to him, he creates a lot of HP glitches and other visual bugs (which unusually are always invisible to the Darkon player themselves). I guess in a sense you could argue this is an advantage!
Shop Characters
Access - in various places and with varying prerequisites.
Although some characters that were valuable hunts were also buyable as listed earlier in the 'Dex, there are also some excellent characters that're exclusively buyable with earned gold (and in some cases, Soul Gems, but those won't be covered here).
Treasure Chest Trap
Archetype: Unique - most alike Earth DoT
Location:
Malakai's Shop in Solace (demon dude)
PvE Strength: Average-Strong
PvP Strength: Strong-Very Strong
Evolution Potential: N/A
Price: 95,000 gold
Treasure Chest Trap, along with Dean Gears, was made playable during the 2018 Christmas update. TCT hit the ground running as a fantastic addition to Earth, already generally considered one of the overall stronger elements in the game. TCT's at the least the second-strongest non-rare Earth character; and in my opinion if the player doesn't have an expensive luxury Earth customization (Stonewalls, Earthquakes, Mountain Strikes available), then TCT is the overall best non-rare.
TCT's base deck is humongous at 23 cards, but whilst that might put the fear of God in you to read, the proportion of TCT's cards which are excellent cards compared to even very strong characters like Tyrant Moose is extremely good. However, this does mean that card customization is less effective on TCT than on other characters - in fact, I'd strongly recommend running just 1 Neutral 515/525 and possibly 1 Stonewall (1 Earthquake to go offensive) if you have access to it. A full set of customization would increase the size of your deck to a gargantuan 28 cards, and frankly, none of us can really handle a deck that large, even if we might daydream about it sometimes.
Just to jog your memory if you haven't dozed-off yet, customization is supposed to increase the value of the cards you're drawing on average, which mostly won't be true in TCT's case: you want to see any of their 3 copies of Petrify as often as possible and see copies of their unique 'Natural Poison' as early in the duel as possible.
Treasure Chest Trap's defenses are pretty horrible at base - just 2 Stonewalls in a deck ~1.5x the average deck size, making it likely you might not even see one of them in your first two draws - which ordinarily is inconvenient for a DoT-based character, but TCT barely gives a fuck. Their defense is their ability to slow the opponent to a crawl with Petrify spam while bombarding them with Natural Poisons and Mountain Strikes until they break.
However, it does remain to be seen whether TCT will end up a common fixture on Oversoul tourney banlists or not.
Minotaur
Archetype: Hybrid Damage Offensive Earth
Location: They require a very easy prequest before they can be purchased - Martha, the woman with a cane on the right side of Solace will tell you about her kidnapped daughter if you talk to her. Agreeing to rescue her will take you to the
Labyrinth Dungeon.
Map layouts 2 and 3 are identical (with different standpoints), with 1 being the mirrored version of it. I recommend leaving and re-entering until you get placed on map layout 2 as the route to the boss is much briefer. You'll know you're on map layout 2 when your starting view looks like this -
Taurus themselves are a proud graduate of the Necrosis Dezgardo Academy of Pushover Bosses, you're more likely to be killed by an Earth Elemental or Stone Assassin on the way to them if anything (or if you're lucky, by the rare Darkon Drago). Kill Taurus and possess him to obtain Sonja. Then, talk to Martha again in Solace to receive your thanks and discover that Sonja got a deed poll to rename to Diana for whatever reason. In any case, she'll offer you the Minotaur Shop.
PvE Strength: Average-Strong
PvP Strength: Strong
Evolution Potential: Average - Level 20, Soul Gems required. Taurus is generally acknowledged in the community as being an overall downgrade over the Minotaur, as while Taurus' evolution does add a few good cards, it also changes their base deck size from an excellent 13 cards to a sub-par 17. This disadvantage is magnified considering how Earth probably benefits from card customization the most out of any style except perhaps Offensive Light.
Price: 50,000 gold
Minotaur is a rather old-fashioned but nonetheless solid addition to your Earth arsenal. However, I strongly recommend buying TCT before you buy the Minotaur in spite of TCT being almost twice the price. Both are worth buying but TCT performs much better without a costly customization than Minotaur does, who isn't too shabby at base but really loves to have an Earthquake or two to work with as well.
Aqueous
Archetype: Offensive Water
Location: Another really easy prequest. Type /join grotto and talk to the fish guy relaxing on the left side of the map you'll find yourself in. They'll implore you to show them a
Water Elemental. If you somehow didn't obtain one from all the grinding you've (probably) done at the Southern Lakes, that's proof The Machine has taken over. Succeeding in this herculean feat will give you access to the
Way of the Water Shop.
PvE Strength: Strong
PvP Strength: Average-Strong
Evolution Potential: N/A
Price: 100,000 gold
Aqueous is a good character, but if I'm not mistaken she was released slightly earlier in the game's lifespan than Soul Wyvern and Human Fisher - it shows. Her design's brilliant (albeit a bit of a lagfest, so if you're using a toaster laptop downgrade her PvE strength to Average-Strong immediately).
She's especially outshined by the excellent (and easier to obtain, even if you did want to buy her it'd be at half-price) Soul Wyvern, who also uses her Healing Spring/Sacrifice strategy to much greater effect, and she's also outclassed as an Offensive Water character by the aforementioned Human Fisher. I don't recommend buying her until you've obtained all of the 'must buy' shop characters and gotten a few good cards for your main element(s), but she is the third-best free Water character and you won't be disappointed by her performance, so long as you don't compare her directly against Wyvern.
Xmas Dark Elf
Archetype: Ice DoT
Location: talk to Santa Warlic in Solace, click 'Open Box' to get into the
Xmas Present Shop
PvE Strength: Weak-Average
PvP Strength: Strong
Evolution Potential: N/A
Price: F r e e
Seeing as Xmas Dark Elf is almost as cheap as Chaotic Flux, you should pick her up immediately, although the next Oversoul update'll probably be in 2 years so; don't strain yourself logging-on the instant you read this. Xmas Dark Elf isn't only cheap, she's also very good at what she does.
Xmas Dark Elf's only really outclassed by the very rare unique archetype Ice characters, as a generic Ice character she's fantastic, although she does shine more with a little bit of defense from customization to ensure she can stall for her Shatter pops and Freeze draws.
Nulgath 'NulgaClaus'
Archetype: Ice DoT
Location: same as above
PvE Strength: Average
PvP Strength: Strong (but slightly weaker than Xmas Dark Elf)
Evolution Potential: N/A
Price: F r e e
Nulgath is picked-up in the same place and is almost identical to the Dark Elf. Compared to her, he has a more effective basic attack spread for improved comboing and plays it safe with an extra Icewall, but loses a Shatter which makes his DoT pop potential rather less exciting. Nulgath essentially has the classic Ice deck core of 2 Shatter, 2 Icewall, 2 Defend and a Freeze, but he's better than most if not every other character in that vein due to not being stiffed with cards like Frostbite and Ice Orb that'd be insta-discards otherwise. That said, he does have 2 copies of Ice Needle, which while not Ice Orb-tier are not very useful to have at all in most matchups.
In brief, Nulgath's a little better at PvE farming (though neither stand as good farming characters) and I'd say he's marginally better in duels than Dark Elf out the box, but even just a little cheap customization puts Dark Elf ahead.
Orc Chieftain
Archetype: Tank Neutral
Location: this character's an absolute pain in the
neck to farm! Be sure you want him before you embark upon getting him. Granted, it's not as if he's Void High Lord 2: Electric Boogaloo or anything, but it's still going to be an estimate of a 6+ hour farm for a free player (not including his 100,000 gold bribe as well); but he also really isn't
that good either. He
is an effective character, especially with customization, but it's nothing you couldn't get with Shaolin Monk - and get blown out the water by with Clan King.
Anyways.
Typing /join horkfort will take you to the Orcs' Fort (it's also obvious on the centre World Map). The Big Man Chief will give you a task that really is a nuisance - to snag an Ogre, an Ogre Shaman, an Ogre Maiden, and an Ogre Trapper.
We're going to start by typing /join ogre from the Orcs' Fort (or from back in Solace). This'll take you to the Ogre Encampment. Here Klunk's awfully busy standing in a corner - so instead his shamaness will offer you a quest which mirrors the one you're currently on.
You can ignore her.
Anyways, now that we're here, explore through encounters in the area (you can also try Mountain Base, which is a bit better for Ogre encounters, but it's not too bad either way). Ogres are a fairly common encounter and they're who you want to nab. Don't worry about capturing Ogre Bandits, they're not a very good character and they're not required for the quest. It's only the basic Ogre you need to capture here, although his capture rate isn't very generous.
Once you've stuffed him in your ghostly car boot, I'm afraid we're now onto the most lengthy and certainly the most RNG-based portion of this wild goose chase. Now, you'll probably remember the Ogre Maiden and Ogre Shaman being mentioned earlier if, God help you, you read all of the area entries. They're most commonly found in Bluffs, but that isn't saying too much. They're rare encounters and don't have particularly high capture rates to compensate unlike some characters. Try Giant Boulders as well if Bluffs is giving you a hard time, anything to 'mix it up'.
I can't stress this enough, two birds with one stone. Fight with the Ogre while farming here, at least until he hits Level 10 (~90 encounters). Hopefully by that point you've gotten the two Ogre girls but that's probably not the case. Head into char tree to evolve your Ogre straight into Ogre Trapper. Now you can switch to your most efficient farming character(s) again. Once you've captured both of them, make a quick return to the Ogre Encampment to capture Ogre a second time. With that done, simply re-/join horkfort and talk to the Chieftain to crack open the Orc Quest Shop.
PvE Strength: Very Weak-Weak
PvP Strength: Strong-Very Strong
Evolution Potential: N/A
Price: 100,000 gold
The Orc Chieftain is an appalling PvE character, obviously there are worse out there than him but probably none among those actually listed in this scaled-back 'Dex. Orc Chieftain epitomizes Tank Neutral (an archetype that the game would probably do better without!) - he's a brick house with only 6 and a half of his cards being any kind of useful offensive tool. Triple Defend, Triple Counter Attack, Double Iron Hide and Energize makes him debatably the beefiest character in the entire game (Iron Hide-customized Queen Aegea is the only possible competitor). But being a slightly firmer wall than Clan King really isn't worth it when considering that Clan King is still incredibly durable, and unlike the Chieftain he sports an above-average offence.
I have to say that the Chieftain is still a top 5% character easily when PvP's concerned, but in context I don't think he's worth the hassle. I also can't look at him long without imagining in my head how bad those pants must smell.
Sorry for leaving this guide off (at least at the current time) with that wonderful mental image. x