Deadlock Souls and Economy Guide: How to Farm Faster

Souls run everything in Deadlock. They buy your gear and they level your abilities, all from one shared pool, so how fast you pull them in matters more than almost anything else you do in a match. The game hands out a ton of ways to earn them, from lane creeps to jungle camps to the big mid boss, and the whole economy is built to keep games close even when one side pulls ahead. Get the flow right and you hit your item spikes on schedule instead of scraping for pocket change all game.

How Soul Orbs and Denies Work

The two halves of every trooper kill

Lane creeps in Deadlock are called Troopers, and they're your main early income. Each one drops 100 souls to start, and that number ticks up by 2 per minute as the match rolls on. You begin every game with 600 souls in your pocket.

Here's the part that trips up new players. When a Trooper dies to a bullet or an ability, the souls don't just fly to you. They split into two orbs. One falls near the body and slides over to any friendly hero within about 18 meters, and that one is safe, nobody on the other team can touch it. The other floats up into the air, and that one is up for grabs by either side.

The exact split between the two orbs has been tweaked in a few patches. Lately it's been sitting somewhere close to half and half, though older versions leaned closer to 60 percent safe and 40 percent contestable. Either way, treat the floating orb as the one that actually decides who wins the lane.

Shooting and denying orbs

You don't walk over orbs to pick them up. You shoot them, or you smack them with a melee attack. A single bullet confirms one, and that bullet gets refunded, so ammo isn't really the cost here. The trick is hitting it before the other guy does.

That floating orb is where the deny lives. If an enemy player tags your floating orb before your team does, they steal those souls and you get zero from that chunk. So every denied orb is a double swing, the enemy pockets the souls and you walk away empty, which is why good laners spend almost as much effort swatting enemy orbs as they do last-hitting their own.

A few hero abilities can grab orbs too, things like Shiv's Serrated Knives or Lady Geist's Malice, which is handy when you can't spare the bullet. And if you kill a Trooper with a melee swing, no orb spawns at all, the souls just go straight to you. That's a clean way to lock in a kill the enemy can't contest, especially on the last trooper of a wave.

The ten-minute shift

Orb control gets way more important as the game goes on. Up to about the 10-minute mark, last-hitting a Trooper still pays you a little directly. Past that point, pretty much all of a Trooper's value comes from the orb it drops. Last-hitting alone stops cutting it, and whoever wins the orb fight wins the income fight.

This is also around when the safe orb starts lasting longer. Early on a dropped orb sticks around for about 18 seconds before it fades. After 10 minutes that window stretches up toward 40 seconds, so you've got more time to grab orbs that skitter off during a scrap. Still, leaving them on the ground is wasted money, so scoop them up when you can.

Jungle Creep Camps and Neutral Farm Routes

The three camp tiers

The jungle in Deadlock has three tiers of camps, marked on your minimap with little triangle icons. A bare triangle is a small camp. A triangle with one line under it is a medium camp. Two lines means a large camp. They're all the same creature model, just scaled up in power, so don't go looking for named mini-bosses hiding in the woods.

The payouts scale with the danger. A small camp creep gives about 41 souls, a medium one around 68, and a large one about 181, and all three tick upward a little each minute. Large camps also have more health and resistances, so they take real time and ammo to clear if you're not built for it.

One thing worth knowing, Deadlock doesn't have neutral items the way some other games in this genre do. Camps drop souls, not loot. So you farm the jungle for raw income and tempo, not to fish for a lucky drop.

Spawn timers and routes

Camp timing is the backbone of a good farm route. Small camps spawn at 2:00 and come back roughly every minute and a half after you clear them. Medium camps open up at 5:00 (they used to be 6:00, but a recent patch nudged them earlier) and respawn about every 5 minutes. Large camps don't show up until 8:00 and take close to 5 and a half minutes to come back.

That gives you a natural rhythm. Early on you clear small camps while rotating between lanes, you don't go full jungle farmer at 2 minutes. Once mediums open at 5:00 you start looping them into your path. Large camps and the special Sinner's Sacrifice machines at 8:00 are when dedicated farming really takes off, and by 10:00 the lane stops paying for last-hits, so the jungle becomes your bread and butter.

The move is to clear camps on your way through, not to detour across the map for 40 souls. Hit the camps and breakable crates along your natural rotation, and only commit to a big camp when you've got the firepower to melt it fast. Running a large camp solo before you're ready just burns your health bar and your clock.

Sinner's Sacrifice, crates, and the bug camps

Sinner's Sacrifice is a machine, not a creep, and it pays out based on how much damage you pour into it, so it's great for heroes with fast fire rates or strong abilities. It spawns at 8:00 and comes back about every 5 minutes, and late game it can kick out a few hundred souls if your team focuses it down together.

Scattered crates and jars around the map break open for a small soul pile, around 23 to 30 souls. They're free money if you walk past them, so smack them when you can. Down in the Vents tunnels there are little cockroach camps worth a flat 1 soul each that respawn every 30 seconds, which sounds pointless but adds up if you're already down there fighting for vision.

The Mid-Boss and the Rejuvenator

The Mid-Boss is the big neutral that lives in a pit under the Museum at the center of the map. It's the largest soul payout in the jungle, worth 3,000 souls per player on the killing team plus 50 per minute, all shared around the squad. It's got a shield that regenerates and has to be burned down before its health bar takes damage, plus about 15 percent bullet resist, so it's a real team project.

It spawns from the start now (it used to only show up at 10 minutes), but most teams leave it alone early because it'll eat an uncoordinated group alive. The respawn slows down the more you take it, starting around 7 minutes after the first death, then 6, then 5.

The real prize is the Rejuvenator. When the boss dies, a crystal drops that up to three players can claim with a heavy melee, and either team can grab it regardless of who got the kill. Each claim gives that player a charge that lets them revive in place at full health instead of dying, for about 3 minutes. Winning a Mid-Boss fight and pocketing those charges can flip a losing game, so it's worth grouping for once mediums and large camps are online.

Prioritizing Souls Versus Objective Damage

What objectives pay out

Deadlock is won by killing the enemy Patron, and there's a fixed ladder of structures you have to tear down to get there. Each lane has a Guardian, then a Walker, then the base has a pair of Base Guardians, then Shrines, and only then does the Patron open up. Every one of those structures drops a soul bounty when it falls.

A Guardian pays out around 1,250 souls. A Walker is worth about 3,500. Those are team rewards split between the players nearby and the people who helped damage it, so the whole squad gets a cut, not just whoever lands the last hit. Knocking down enemy Guardians and Walkers also unlocks extra flex item slots for your whole team, a big deal for build space late.

Objective armor slowly decays over the match, so structures get easier to kill the longer the game runs. That's a quiet comeback lever, a team that's behind can still crack a Walker late if they group up, because the thing has gone soft.

When to push and when to farm

Balancing farming against pushing is the hard part. Objectives hand out lump sums and flex slots, while steady farming gives you the soul flow you need to be strong enough to take those objectives. Starve yourself farming and you'll show up to a Walker fight with no items. Tunnel on farm and you watch the other team take everything for free.

So when do you actually shove? Farm hard early, then rotate for objectives when your team has a number advantage or a fresh power spike. If you just won a fight and the enemy is dead, that's the moment to crack a Walker, because it's basically free. If everyone's alive and you're not clearly stronger, clearing a jungle camp on the way to regroup beats forcing a bad fight.

Structures also pay out to anyone who dealt damage in the last 20 seconds, plus nearby heroes. That means you don't have to land the last hit on a Walker to get paid. Just being there and chipping damage is enough, so show up to objective fights even if you're not the carry.

The Soul Urn

Every 5 minutes starting at 10:00, a Soul Urn spawns near the mid bridge and has to be carried to a delivery point on the far side of the map. It's worth 250 souls plus 70 per minute, locked in when it spawns, so later urns are worth a lot more than early ones. It alternates between two lanes each time.

Carrying the urn is a commitment. The runner gets speed and stamina buffs, but they can't use ziplines, vents, or parries, which makes them a big target. There's also an anti-stall timer, after about 45 seconds of holding it the value starts decaying, and it drains to nothing if you keep camping. The delivery pays out in deniable soul orbs, so the other team can contest the payoff, and urn runs are almost always a team effort.

Item Tiers and When to Spike Your Build

The four tiers and what they cost

Items in Deadlock come in four tiers, and each one costs roughly double the last. Tier 1 items run 800 souls. Tier 2 is 1,600. Tier 3 jumps to 3,200. Tier 4 sits at 6,400. Those doubled price tags mean moving up a tier is a real power jump, not a tiny bump.

Everything splits into three columns. Weapon covers bullet damage, fire rate, and ammo. Vitality is health, resistances, and survivability. Spirit handles ability power, cooldowns, and spirit damage. The shop builds items out of components, and if you already own a piece of a bigger item, buying the upgrade just charges you the difference and eats the component. So you're never punished for grabbing a cheap part early.

Investment bonuses

On top of the raw stats, spending souls inside one column builds toward a passive investment bonus. The big breakpoint people aim for is 4,800 souls sunk into a single column, which is when that passive really kicks in and your hero starts feeling different. You get smaller bumps along the way at roughly 800, 1,600, 2,400, and 3,200, but the 4,800 mark is the one that matters.

So focus one or two columns rather than spreading thin. A hero that dumps everything into Weapon and Vitality will hit that 4,800 spike and start hitting hard while staying alive. Spread the same souls across all three columns and you get a pile of small bonuses that never add up to a real spike, just a hero who's okay at everything and great at nothing.

Timing your spikes

Your job in the early game is to hit your first tier jumps as fast as you can. That means clean orb control in lane and squeezing small camps in between waves. A player who lands their 1,600-soul Tier 2 item two minutes before their lane opponent has a real window to bully them out and snowball the lead.

Mid game is when you're working toward that Tier 3 and the 4,800 investment bonus. This is where steady jungle farming pays off, because skipping camps to chase kills leaves you short of the spike right when team fights start deciding the game. Late game, Tier 4 items at 6,400 are the goal, and at that point the Mid-Boss and big objectives are your main income since lane and small camps matter less.

A cheap item that fits your build right now usually beats hoarding for a flashy Tier 4 you can't afford for five more minutes. Power on the board wins fights, and a half-finished dream build loses to a completed Tier 2 pretty much every time.

Comeback Mechanics and Soul Sharing

How souls split between teammates

Soul sharing is local, not global. When a Trooper dies, the game hands souls to any friendly hero within 45 meters of the orb or 30 meters of whoever made the kill, whichever applies. That range is pretty forgiving, so a duo in lane naturally shares income without much effort.

The split has a quirk worth knowing. Two heroes sharing a Trooper each get about 54 percent, which adds up to 108 percent of the kill's value, so laning with a partner actually generates a small surplus. Three heroes each get 36 percent, also 108 percent total. Past that it starts costing you, four heroes split to 100 percent, five to 100 percent, and six drops to 96 percent. So stacking too many bodies on one camp or wave actively wastes souls.

Hero kills use a different formula. A solo kill pays 125 percent of the base bounty, which starts at 200 souls and climbs 50 per minute up to a cap of 2,200 around the 40-minute mark, with first blood throwing in a bonus 125. Two players split it 57 percent each, three drop to 28 percent each. Solo pickoffs are worth more raw souls, but team kills are usually safer.

The rubberband bounties

Deadlock really wants games to stay close, so it layers a few comeback systems on top of each other. The big one is kill bounty scaling. If you kill an enemy who's got a higher net worth than your team's average, you can pull up to about 127 percent bonus souls on top of the base bounty. Picking off a fed enemy doesn't just remove them from the map, it pays out big.

There's also a map-wide farm boost for the team that's behind. If your squad trails in net worth, your Troopers, jungle camps, Sinner's Sacrifices, and objectives all start paying up to 26 percent extra souls, peaking when the gap hits about 20 percent net worth. The first 3,000 souls of the gap get ignored, so it's not punishing a small lead, just a runaway one.

On top of that, respawn timers start penalizing the team that's ahead. Past 10 minutes, if you kill a player whose net worth is well above your team's average, their respawn gets stretched, starting around 6 extra seconds and climbing past 20. That hands the team that's behind longer windows to push or farm while the fed enemy sits in respawn.

Catch-up income and the soul container

After the 8-minute laning phase, the two lowest-net-worth players on each team start pulling passive income. The poorest player gets about 2.5 percent of the team's total soul flow per second, and the next-poorest gets 1.5 percent. It's not huge in any single second, but over a few minutes it keeps your supports and your behind-laner in the game.

Then there's the unsecured souls system, which is the one that actually bites people. Souls you earn aren't locked in immediately, they sit as unsecured and slowly convert to secured, faster when the stack is bigger. If you die holding more than about 50 souls plus 5 per minute, you drop a Soul Container that anyone, friend or enemy, can grab with a heavy melee. It hangs around for 3 minutes. Die below that threshold and the souls just vanish into the void.

Two things follow from that. First, don't wander into a risky fight with a fat unsecured stack. Bank it first by killing creeps and letting it absorb, or just spend it at the shop. Second, the container is lootable, so if you kill a fed enemy who's been hoarding, sprint over and heavy-melee their dropped container before their team does. It's free souls on the ground, and late game those containers can hold hundreds.

The economy in Deadlock is forgiving by design, but it still rewards the player who grabs every orb, clears every camp on the way through, and banks their unsecured souls before a fight breaks out. Do those three things and you'll hit your item spikes on time, even in games where the early lane goes badly.