Deadlock Souls Guide: How to Farm Fast and Why Farm Beats Fighting Early
Deadlock Souls Guide: Farm Fast, Spend Smart, Win More
If you are jumping into Deadlock during its current invite-only closed test (still going as of June 2026, with roughly 38 heroes and lobbies that sit anywhere from 60k to 125k concurrent players), the first thing that will click is this: souls run everything. You do not buy items with kills, you buy them with souls. Learn to farm efficiently and you will out-scale opponents who spend the early game chasing frags. This guide breaks down where souls come from, how to grab them cleanly, and why a calm farmer usually beats a hot-headed brawler in the first 10 minutes.
Souls as the core currency
Souls are the single resource you spend in the shop, and every item you want sits under one of three buckets: Weapon, Vitality, or Spirit. A gun-focused build leans on Weapon items, a tanky frontliner stacks Vitality, and ability casters load up on Spirit gear like the Cold Front item shown above. The catch is that nothing matters if your soul count is low, so the real skill is converting map resources into souls faster than the enemy. You can track the game's item categories, hero pool and live player numbers on the official portal here: https://steamdb.com/en/deadlock.
Here is a quick map of where your souls actually come from and how reliable each source is:
| Source | How you get it | Reliability |
|---|---|---|
| Lane creeps | Last-hit the orb that pops when a creep dies | High, steady income |
| Denying | Shoot your own creep's orb so the enemy gets a reduced cut | High value, denies them too |
| Jungle / neutral camps | Clear camps between lane waves | Good once you can clear fast |
| Hero kills | Take down an enemy player | High burst, but risky early |
How to farm efficiently
Farming in Deadlock is not just standing in lane and shooting. The souls drop as orbs that you must confirm. Secure the orb and you bank the souls; miss the timing and you leave value on the floor. A clean early-game loop looks like this:
- Confirm every orb. Each dead creep drops a soul orb that you shoot to secure. Auto-attacking the creep is not enough, you have to hit the orb.
- Deny your own creeps. When your creep is about to die, shoot its orb yourself. You still collect a portion and the enemy laner gets far less, so denying is two-for-one value.
- Rotate into the jungle. Between waves, pop neutral camps instead of standing idle. Dead time is lost souls.
- Grab mid-boss and crates later. Once you have items online, objectives and breakable urns add chunks of souls on top of your lane income.
- Watch your wave timing. Do not walk away from a wave that is about to crash, you will miss a full set of orbs.
Why farm beats fighting early
New players love to fight. The problem is that a kill in the opening minutes nets a burst of souls but costs you positioning, cooldowns, and the lane creeps you abandon while you chase. Meanwhile the patient laner is confirming and denying every orb, and that steady income compounds. By the time the brawler respawns, the farmer has the items to win the next ten fights instead of one.
The math is simple: orbs are guaranteed, fights are not. A duel you lose hands the enemy your souls and your tempo. Trade-up your aggression for consistency early, then once your build comes online you fight from a position of strength. Climbing the rank ladder, from Obscurus and Initiate up through Seeker, Alchemist, Arcanist and beyond, rewards players who understand that the scoreboard kill count is not the same as the soul count. Farm first, fight when your items say you can win, and you will out-pace lobbies full of people who never learned the difference.
Note: Deadlock is still a closed test and Valve has not confirmed a public release or any live skin economy. Datamined CS2-style trading strings have surfaced, which hint at a possible cosmetic market down the line, but that is unconfirmed speculation, not a promise. For now, the only economy that matters is souls.