Understanding the Soul Tree [For Beginners]

So you have createde a character, and have started playing the game. But then there's this thing called a soul tree - and you have no idea what the heck it is? You have come to the right place my friend. Welcome to your guide on what souls are and how exactly thye are to be used =)

There are 4 Callings in the game:
Warrior
Cleric
Mage
Rogue
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Once you have picked a class, there are these things called Souls. Souls are essentially sub-classes. They allow for a variety of gameplay. For example, let's say you want to be a Mage. Well, not all people that want to play a Mage like the same type of gameplay. Some people that like to play mage like to play a character where they summon undead pets and cast spells while staying back. Some people want to play a mage that casts fire spells at their opponents. The reason for having souls in the game is so that you can have a more unique experience, and your character is more likely to fit your play style. Each Calling has different Souls that they can choose from. [The Picture is from the Rift Wiki]



[Click on the Image to Enlarge]
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As you level up, you will be able to spend more soul points. The higher the level of your character, the more soul points you will earn. You can than put your soul points into particular skills.
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To add more variety into the gameplay, you can choose 3 souls per character! This is to further make your character unique, and can lead to 1000's of builds. The best thing to do is to find a soul that you like best and to focus on just that soul as being your main soul. Then you want to choose 2 other souls that complement your main soul or 2 other souls that cover up your main soul's weaknesses. Let's look at a basic example:

Let's say I'm going to play as a Rogue:






[Click on the Image to Enlarge]


Don't worry - It may look complicated, but their's not that much to it!

The Main soul I want to choose is: Saboteur (Location of the soul doesn't matter. I just like to have my main soul int the middle). Now I can pick 2 other souls. Like I said, this can be used to cover up the Saboteur's weaknsesses, or it can be another ability that I like, or something that helps the Saboteur's abilities.

One of the other souls i have chosen is Nightbalde. Now I chose this because I know that the Saboteur is pretty bad when it comes to close range combat. Also they need a significant amount of preperation to uphold victory. If someone were to come right next me out of nowhere, then I would be screwed. So that's why I wanted to choose a mele soul. And I liked the description of the NIghblade so I chose that soul. Now, let's say that I love Saboteur, but I also love to use my bow and attack with arrows. Perhaps I would choose the Marksmen or Ranger Soul, because It gives me abilities to attack with a bow.

Once you choose your souls, you can choose which skills to spend your soul points on. As you keep spending soul points, certain abilities will start to unlock.

As you can see - this is completely open ended. By that, I mean there is no specific path that you need to take. You are free to choose which ever way you want to customize your character. However sometimes, It can be daunting to think of all the different customization options. That's why many players have built certain custom builds that work best with certain souls. There are many builds on the interent, just a quick google search will yield thousands of results =)