Knowledge and Technology
Tech unlocks pass through two separate gates, Awareness Strength to make a recipe available and Technology Points from tablets to pay for it, sitting alongside two other progression tracks players keep confusing.
The tech tree holds every recipe in the game, opened with hotkey T. What trips up new players is that unlocking a recipe takes two different things, not one, and those two things come from two separate progression tracks that look similar but never level together. Get this distinction straight and the whole progression of the game reads clearly. Miss it and you will sit staring at a recipe you cannot unlock, unsure which currency you are short on.
The two gates
A recipe opens only after it clears both gates.
| Gate | What it does | How you get it |
|---|---|---|
| Awareness Strength | Makes a tech available to learn | Almost any activity: combat, crafting, harvesting, building |
| Technology Points | Pays to actually unlock the available tech | Reading Ancient Tablets and larger Divine Tablets |
Awareness is the master gate that decides what is even on the table. Technology Points are the spendable currency that buys what Awareness has made available. Because Tablets are the only source of Technology Points, hunting them across the map is a real progression activity, not a side errand. Plan tablet runs the way you would plan an ore run.
If a recipe will not unlock, work out which gate is blocking you. Awareness too low means the tech is greyed out entirely; enough Awareness but no points means you need to go read more Ancient and Divine Tablets. They are different problems with different fixes.
Three progression systems players conflate
Soulmask runs three parallel progression systems, and new players assume they level together. They do not. This is the single most important thing to understand about advancement.
| System | What it gates | How it grows |
|---|---|---|
| Awareness Strength | Which technologies you can learn, plus some mask upgrades | Almost any activity |
| Character Level | Ability points you spend on stats like Physique for HP | General play |
| Proficiencies | Effectiveness at a specific task or weapon | Repeating that exact action |
The confusion comes from all three rising as you play, but each responds to different things. Awareness climbs from broad activity. Character Level climbs from general play and hands you ability points. A proficiency climbs only when you do that one task, mining or cooking or swinging a spear, and it caps at 50 for the player against 120 for an NPC. Reading the tech tree does nothing for your mining proficiency, and grinding ore does nothing for your character stats.
Tools gate ore
One rule ties the tech tree to the map. The tool tier gates resource returns, not just damage. A Stone Pickaxe on a Tin node mostly yields plain Stone; a Bronze Pickaxe on the same node yields Tin fast. So unlocking the next tool tier in the tech tree is what actually opens the next ore to you, which is why the metal ladder and the tech tree move together. You cannot meaningfully mine a metal until you have unlocked and crafted the tool tier that matches it.
Related: see the tech tiers cheatsheet for the full metal ladder at a glance, and Combat for spending the ability points Character Level grants.