The first developer livestream of 2026 for Soulframe has come and gone, and in it Digital Extremes primarily showcased what’s in its next Preludes build as it slowly and squishily moves its way through paid-for pre-alpha testing, though it also provided a couple of hints at what’s to come after the next major update.
Among the major changes that will come in the next build are a wholesale shift for the three stat-improving “virtues,” which now will have an earnable prism system that automatically allocates stat points in a variety of what are effectively color-coded combinations that either lean hard into one stat or blend several. The devs explain that this will be among the “big swings” being taken to shake up the meta and a character’s power fantasy.
This change has ripple effects throughout the rest of the game, including characters’ effectiveness with weapons, armor, and pacts: Stats will now have a much more significant impact on how useful certain weapons and armor pieces will be in order to prevent players from pouring points into a mage stat while equipping warrior armor. That said, players won’t be actively penalized for their equipment choices; there will just be better bonuses to “encourage” specialization. Players will also be given a bunch of transmog materials to dress up their envoys, just in case they still want to be mages who wear armor.
Another big part of the update is focused on combat flow and feel, with changes to make player characters feel less slippery, the addition of a less rigid camera, and multiple improvements to animations. Most of what fueled this change appears to have been spurred by the way polearm combat operated before; the devs claim polearms feel “amazing” now. The devs also talk about balance adjustments that make strings of unblockable attacks less frequent and make most attacks blockable.
Additional features previewed in the stream include three new weapons, the ability to customize a character’s face, a quest board functionality for world trees that shows nearby encounters, a new world boss, and a new game mode that tasks players with destroying a massive polluting tower known as the Organ. The complete broadcast can be seen below.
