Lore about soul points?

I know its linked to your soul or something but what are soul points/souls canonically and what do they do

 

A source of great frustration.

Seriously though, soul points are barely mentioned ingame at all, whether through lore or otherwise. They are only explained through an occasional warning dialogue box and the death message. So no, there isn’t any lore about them. And they are quite a terrible punishment for death anyway.

 

^

 

None, purely a gameplay mechanic and has no grounding in the universe of the game itself.
Basically just not as bad as dying in vanilla.

 

In the quest "Beyond the Grave" Death tells you that you've been to his realm many times before, you just don't remember the previous times.
This may be a hint at soul points existing canonically... Or it could just be another one of the quest's many jokes.

Also, soul point reset scrolls or something.

 

I think its just a game mechanic but I would like to see some lore around it.

 

There isn't too much around soul points, however if one thinks about what happened in Beyond the grave there may be something there.

In Beyond the Grave the player has to kill the thing that killed them in order to return to being alive, however in many cases when the player dies this simply isn't the case (or they are just bad and die to the same thing again). If the player dies to fall damage, Death can't tell them to kill that, so there has to be some alternative compensation. One way this could be approached is that Death actually is allowing the player to substitute the lifetime of the creature they killed and add that to their hourglass (effectively letting the player take the time of those they kill to return). Thinking of things this way, not everything that kills the player can bring them back like this so perhaps Death takes their stuff and uses that to fuel it. Something like that could be the case, however it's much more likely that Death actually is charging the player some kind of life insurance payment, and the more they die the more money Death wants from the player because they have bad credit. If this was the case, it brings up the question of what Death would be doing with all that stuff from all those players.

Alternatively, the most likely answer is that due to how long soul points as a concept have been around for, they never even cared about them having lore and hoped no one would ever ask such a question. But that's not any fun, is it?

 

One thing that should be brought up if we are going off of the idea that soul points are related to the player’s hourglass is the naturally regenerating soul points.
I’m pretty sure the average player knows that when the sun rises, they get a soul point or even two depending on how their Soul Point regen stats are on their items.

My interpretation is that when the player dies, they bargain with death to return to life in exchange for their soul points. But as the player keeps getting killed in rapid succession, those two soul points won’t be powerful enough to resurrect the player and some of the player’s items may have to be used as additional fuel. When the sun rises, the player gains some form of hope which allows them to regen a soul point, with various pieces of armor amplifying or negating this effect on the player. Regardless, the sun rising could symbolize life which makes the player’s ties to it stronger while making their ties to death weaker, essentially allowing their soul points to become more powerful to be used on their own again.
We could also give interpretations to Hardcore mode, tp scrolls and the Soul point bombs as well.
Hardcore interprets the player as someone who has severed their connections to life (thus losing their items like being at 0 points regardless). Tp scrolls could represent a player getting to one place, but can only work at a cost of using up a player’s soul point in order to make the teleportation work. Soul point bombs could work in a similar way to receiving support or even encouragement from someone who is close to you (in the same world as you).

And if we really want to, reseting stats without a scroll can just be the player hating how they turned out so much that they reset them by will at the cost of their soul points.

 

Can’t wait for businesses to pop up that just give you compliments

 

pro loretheorist here and from my reading ive concluded soul points are bad game design that made it into the game in its early stages and was never fixed

 

Hey! Potential lore here:
You know Fallen Delivery? Tied in with Warp's lore? Yeah well, teleport scrolls use soul points

I don't really have a coherent theory here but the scrolls were worth mentioning. It could be that it's a way to measure sanity and as you become more and more insane by dieing a lot (people say death is a traumatic experience) your insanity causes you to lose your grip on the world (and thus the items in it)
It also makes sense in the order you lose stuff too. Losing stuff you don't really care about first up to your gear and not being able to lose untradeable items at all
"You feel safer as the sun rises. [+1 soul point]" seems to imply that safety helps you regain soul points and it helps with sanity as well. A bit hair brained but it's something