Soul Essence is the in-game currency of Gunfire Reborn that allows you to improve Talents, which are special hero abilities that increase your player level. Soul Essence is attained through killing enemies and clearing Vaults. With that in mind, you’ll want a lot of it.
In this Gunfire Reborn guide, we’ll break down how to maximize the amount of Soul Essence you are banking at any given time, helping you collect more of it with less (hopefully) the most efficient effort.
How to Get More Soul Essence in Gunfire Reborn
Increase the Difficulty
Getting Soul Essence is very straightforward in Gunfire Reborn, and you will earn it just through natural play. Killing enemies will give Soul Essence, and once you reach the end of a run, you can cash Soul Essence in for further upgrades. If you’ve put some time into the game, you’ve likely already banked a fair amount of Soul Essence, but how do you get even more?
The simplest way to get more Soul Essence is to up the difficulty. There are three base difficulties: Normal, Elite, and Nightmare. Elite has proven to be the best option for grinding out quick Soul Essence.
Compared to Normal difficulty, normal enemies on Elite have a +10% chance of dropping Soul Essence, while elite enemies drop 14 Essence, as opposed to 10. Similarly, bosses will drop an additional 15 Essence.
Not only are drops improved, but enemy spawn counts are increased. The pool of available Challenge Events is also higher. In these events, the rates of elite enemy spawns are increased by a large margin, allowing for more opportunities to earn large bags of Soul Essence.
Of course, with this difficulty increase comes more challenging gameplay. Bosses and enemies have 40% more health and shields/armor, while they also deal 40% more damage. Factoring in a higher enemy count also ups the difficulty, but even with faster deaths, the rate of Soul Essence gained over time is definitely the most optimal.
On Nightmare, the increase compared to Normal is double what the increase from Normal to Elite is, meaning normal enemies have a +20% chance of drops, elite enemies drop 18, and bosses drop 30 extra Soul Essence. Challenge events are also once again more generous; however, the enemy health/damage is increased 140% compared to Normal, which is significantly more than Elite.
Extremely talented players may be able to make better work with Nightmare’s higher drop rates, but the difficulty increase is so steep that it may do more harm than good. If you are able to beat Nightmare, however, you will unlock Reincarnation mode, an even more difficult game mode with even better Soul Essence drops. So the choice is ultimately up to you.
Explore Gunfire Reborn Vaults
The Exploration Talent is one of the cheapest in the game, costing only 5 Soul Essence to buy. This talent should be one of the first you purchase, as doing so will allow you to open and explore Vaults in subsequent playthroughs.
Vaults are areas hidden behind cracked, purple-glowing walls. Within these Vaults, you can find numerous treasures and challenges with high rewards that can drastically increase your Soul Essence income. To enter, all you need to do is shoot at the cracked wall to open the portal that leads inside.
There are four types of Vaults in Gunfire Reborn:
- Non-Fighting Vaults
- Fighting Vaults
- Elite Vaults
- Special Vaults
Non-Fighting Vaults are effectively parkour courses and are not ideal if you’re looking for Soul Essence. Fighting and Special Vaults, however, come jam-packed with enemies, plus the occasional Challenge Event. They are effectively the same, except that Special Vaults require you to fulfill some additional side objective as you fight.
Elite Vaults are your best-case scenario for getting more Soul Essence. You will alternate between fighting Normal and Elite enemies, with the Elite opponents often being assisted by more Normal enemies. This is a great opportunity to take advantage of the high drops from Elites, and you’ll be walking away from every Elite Vault feeling rich.
Those are some of the most important things to know about getting more Soul Essence in Gunfire Reborn. As you become more powerful, you’ll naturally see your income grow faster as you level up and make quicker work of enemies. If you’re interested in learning more about Gunfire Reborn, consider checking out our guides hub!
