Soulmask Repair Guide - How To Fix Your Broken Junk Fast
Nothing drains your will to live faster than watching your favorite weapon shatter right in the middle of a raid.
The durability system in this game is an absolute nightmare if you do not understand the underlying mechanics. When you first start out, it feels like every tool you craft is made of wet cardboard. You swing an axe at a tree three times and suddenly you are holding a handful of splinters. If you just keep crafting new items to replace the broken ones, you will completely bankrupt your resource supply before you ever manage to build a decent compound.
You need to learn how to maintain your inventory and your architecture. Once you figure out how to get bronze, copper, and tin, replacing gear from scratch becomes way too expensive to justify. I am going to break down exactly how you can patch up your tools on the fly, set up a dedicated repair station, and keep your walls from collapsing after a barbarian attack.
Fixing Basic Gear By Hand
If you are still running around with basic equipment crafted from wood, stone, or bone, you do not need any fancy machinery to keep it functional.
You can repair these primitive items directly from your inventory. All you have to do is right click on the broken gear and select the Repair option. The catch is that you actually need the raw materials in your possession to patch the item up. Thankfully, the game throws you a massive bone here. If you are standing within the operational radius of your Bonfire, you do not need to manually pull twigs and rocks out of your storage boxes. The system will automatically draw the required materials directly from any nearby chests. It is a massive time saver that keeps you from digging through ten different crates just to fix a single pickaxe.
Upgrading To The Repair Bench
Hand repairs are great for sticks and stones, but they become completely useless once you start crafting proper metal gear. You are going to need industrial solutions.
Open your tech tree and navigate to the second tier. You are looking for the Medium Craftsmanship node. Unlocking this gives you the blueprint for the Repair Bench. Build one and place it inside your base. When you interact with this station, you will see a large grid interface on the right side of your screen.
Instead of fixing things one by one, you just dump all of your broken tools and armor into that grid. Hit the Repair button located right underneath it, and the bench will automatically process every single item in the queue.
The Headache Of Automation
Ideally, you want your NPC followers to handle this nonsense for you. Since you already know how to increase your tribe limit, you probably have a small army running around breaking their own tools.
The automation logic for gear repairs is incredibly wonky right now. Sometimes I catch a tribesman fixing their own scythe, and other times they just stare blankly at a wall. To get this working reliably, you need to micromanage the station. Click the massive plus sign on the Repair Bench menu to create an Auto Repair Plan. Assign a specific NPC to be the dedicated caretaker for that exact bench. It also helps to order your followers to withdraw broken items from specific dump chests, but make absolutely sure the auto store function inside the Repair Bench itself is completely turned off. Otherwise, they just get stuck in a frustrating logic loop.
Patching Up Your Crumbling Base
Weapons are only half the problem. When an enemy raiding party shows up and starts hammering on your front door, your actual buildings are going to take structural damage.
You cannot fix a wall by clicking on it in your inventory. You need to craft a Construction Hammer. The blueprint for this tool is locked behind the Medium Building node, which is located inside the Dawn of the New Tribe tier of your tech tree.
Swinging The Hammer
Once you craft and equip the Construction Hammer, the game overlay changes. A list of controls will pop up on your screen, and you will suddenly be able to see the exact health values of any building piece your crosshair hovers over.
Just aim at the damaged floorboards or walls and hit your Left Mouse Button to repair them. Just like manual inventory repairs, this action consumes raw building materials. If you do not have the required wood or stone in your pockets, the game will automatically pull what it needs from your storage chests, provided you are standing within your Bonfire radius.
Keeping Your Ships Afloat
This exact same logic applies to your vehicles. If you have progressed far enough to understand how to build boats and airships, you will notice they take damage just like a stationary wall. Keep a Construction Hammer in your cargo hold. When your hull gets chewed up during an expedition, you can equip the hammer and patch the ship up using the exact same left click mechanic.
