Soulstrain

**Soulstrain** is the overall term when someone goes too far with their soul, or whatever interfaces with the system, and suffers for it. There are many different kinds of soulstrain. Each kind has different symptoms, is incurred by different means, and resistance for each type is seperate. Though once incurred, most flavours of soulstrain will slowly fade over time with rest.

It appears that every soulstrain resistance known thus far has an upper limit that is increased by levelling up and most get better through training. Some of the known soulstrains are resisted by increasing an associate stat or by another factor.

## Mana Starvation Soulstrain

People suffer from this when their mana is too low or empty. The point where mana starvation kicks in varies from person to person and can change over time. This type of soulstrain is different to the others as it does not require time to recover, they just need to regain enough mana.

It is assumed that there is equivalent health and stamina starvation but health starvation has not been mentioned or shown and while we have seen Rain with low stamina, stamina starvation was not brought up and so it is unknown if the exhaustion that Rain was experiencing then was due to stamina starvation, normal exhaustion or if those are one and the same.

Mana starvation is often conflated with mana overuse soulstrain, but is its own unique category.

Rain has speculated that this soulstrain is caused when an awakened goes below the amount of health/stamina/mana that they have from their effective stat value, ie a mage with 50% focus synchronization would get mana starvation when they go below 50% their maximum mana. This is almost certainly the case given the circumstantial evidence that when mages gain focus accolades they get more headaches, which is also when someone’s effective stats decrease due to how effective stats are calculated.

Mana starvation soulstrain.

* Symptoms
	+ Headaches, light sensitivity, grumpiness, lack of clarity

* Soulstrain resistance
	+ High Focus synchronization. (Not confirmed but highly likely)
	+ High Clarity. Dynamos have extremely high tolerance or even immunity to this soulstrain. Most likely due to having more mana and so able to train synchronization faster.

Stamina starvation soulstrain.

* Unsure, possibly exhaustion. Resistance is assumed to be the same as with mana starvation but with stamina’s respective stats and class.

Health starvation soulstrain.

* Unknown, possibly just that you get hurt easily. Resistance is assumed to be the same as with low mana but with health’s respective stats and class.

## Health/Stamina/Mana Overuse Soulstrain

The exact cause of this category of soulstrain is unclear. It could be caused by filling a vital pool too much faster than normal or using it too much which can only occur if they refill faster than normal. There may not really be a difference if trying to fill while maxed counts as using it by overhealth/stamina/mana.

Also there are a couple different situations mentioned that may cause a variation of this soulstrain or may cause seperate soulstrain.

It was said that losing too much health in one instant was bad but nothing further was said. That may be an acute case of overused vitals like with how experience loss soulstrain includes both using too much experience in a day and losing too much in one instant

When Rain gave the Vivificant too much mana it hurt him but it is unclear if that is just him having a small pool and Rain overfilled it quickly or if it is a separate soulstrain.

Health overuse Soulstrain:

* Symptoms
	+ Extreme sensitivity and discomfort to physical sensations. General weakness.

* Soulstrain resistance
	+ Unknown. Assumed high recovery, possibly based off syncronisation.
	+ Training.

Stamina overuse Soulstrain:

* Symptoms
	+ Soreness, lethargy, and lack of desire to do anything. Tiredness.

* Soulstrain resistance
	+ Unknown. Assumed high vigor, possibly based off syncronisation.
	+ Training.

Mana overuse Soulstrain:

* Symptoms
	+ Vomiting, headache, trouble focusing. More extreme symptoms unknown.

* Soulstrain resistance
	+ Unknown. Assumed high clarity, possibly based off syncronisation.
	+ Training

## Under Health/Stamina/Mana

This category might not technically be a type of soulstrain but it is worth mentioning. This occurs when health/stamina/mana would be reduced below 0. Normally skills will not activate or turn off when they would cause under health/stamina/mana so it is rare but some attacks will directly reduce a pool rather than cause damage and skills like the ward auras where the cost is in reaction to something can cause it. It was also mentioned that old age causes underhealth.

Underhealth symptoms:

* Damage to body

Understamina symptoms:

* Presumably exhaustion

Undermana symptoms:

* Difficulty concentrating, mind fog and confusion.

## Experience Loss Soulstrain

This category refers to the soulstrain incurred when one "spends" experience.

The symptoms both builds up if too much XP is spent without resting, taking days to recover from a bad case; and they the symptoms spike when a lot is spent in one instance or spent when the soulstrain has built up already, which dies away in minutes.

Currently, the only known way to spend your accrued experience is to unlock skill tree tiers.

* Symptoms
	+ Nausea, vomiting, dizziness.

* Soulstrain resistance
	+ The larger your possible pool of experience, the less straining it is to spend it.
	+ Overall level and soul being acclimated to current level.
	+ Training. Rain was hit with this soulstrain spending 10,000 experience the first time at level 18. He was last seen spending his entire experience pool(over 20,000), setting off the system alarm, and then spending another 20,000 experience before experiencing discomfort while still at level 18.

## Experience Overload Soulstrain

This category refers to the soulstrain incurred when one receives too much experience from their training overview. Rain got it in chapter 93 when he had roughly 170k experience overload.

* Symptoms
	+ You feel like you're being stuffed full and going to pop.

* Soulstrain resistance
	+ Probably larger possible pool of experience.
	+ Training.

This likely to be having higher essence density than your max level which the paling is rated for. This would then occur during essance exchange when resource experience is extremely high.

## System Manipulation Soulstrain

This category refers to the soulstrain Rain experiences when trying to bend the functions of the system or how a skill works. Hypothesized by Rain that there's some cross-soulstrain tolerance between this soulstrain and experience loss soulstrain.

* Symptoms
	+ Dizziness. More extreme symptoms unknown.

* Soulstrain resistance
	+ Ameliah tells Rain it's increased by overall level and stats. Moreso by "secondary" stats like Clarity and Vigor than the "primary" stats.
	+ Isn't explicitly stated, but assumed this soulstrain resistance gets higher with training and consistently attempting to manipulate the system.

## General Equipment Soulstrain

This category of soulstrain is currently still vague. We know it has to do with how powerful the enchantments on the equipment someone is using, but there isn't a quantifiable measure given for how much enchanted equipment is equal to however much soulstrain. Though we do know that stat increasing enhancements have their own seperate soulstrain and is not included in this one.

* Symptoms
	+ Pressure or weight. An extreme case of equipment soulstrain will leave you feeling squished or flattened.

* Soulstrain resistance
	+ It isn't said explicitly, but it's implied in many ways that equipment soulstrain is almost entirely dependent on level. If so, the higher the level of the awakened in question, the higher their resistance to general equipment soulstrain.
	+ It isn't specified how much, but Val's tolerance of his father's jacket goes from crushing to barely tolerable. And Rain's armor eventually becomes less of a weight over time. While it seems level gives an absolute limit (if level is actually what determines this soulstrain), there's still some room for stretching those limits. How much training helps is currently unknown.

### Stat increase Equipment Soulstrain

This category of soulstrain refers to the specific soulstrain incurred by increasing stats with enchanted gear beyond your tolerance to it and ends as soon as the buff is lowered below your tolerance. Going just a little past your tolerance has only a small affect but as more is added it rapidly gets worse. The general rule to avoid the worst of the effects is to not add stats via equipment more than your level x 10.

* Symptoms
	+ A "heat" inside your body and bones that increases the closer you get to your limit. Passing your limit makes your body feel like it's burning alive from the inside out.

* Soulstrain resistance
	+ One of the soulstrains that is almost entirely dependent on level. Increasing your level increases your resistance to this soulstrain. A level 20 awakened can handle 50 or so more stats via equipment than a level 15 awakened.
	+ Training tolerance. Soul isn't used to this type of soulstrain at first and even hitting the standard x10 level amount is very uncomfortable. Might be able to handle stats x10.5 or x11 current level with constant training and if one can tolerate discomfort and pain. Currently unknown upper limit, speculation only.

## Stat Specific Increase Soulstrain

It's unsure if this is a category of soulstrain or a physical adaptation issue. Included here for ease. This category is completely separate from stat increase equipment soulstrain other than both are caused by buffing stats.

This category is caused by going beyond an Attribute's tolerance but effects don’t start occurring unless you’re far beyond your tolerance for a significant amount of time. The effect then persists until you rest and recover. This category is really six seperate soulstrains as each stat cause different symptoms and suffering from one doesn’t make you more or less susceptible to the others.

The only way to increase your tolerance is to go over it and train the stat.

Strength

* Symptoms
	+ Unknown.

Recovery

* Symptoms
	+ Feel uncomfortably "stuffed".

Endurance

* Symptoms
	+ Only described as "painful" without us knowing how.

Vigor

* Symptoms
	+ Hungry, weak, and simultaneously restless in spite of it.

Focus

* Symptoms
	+ Excessive single-mindedness. Seen during the fight with the Crimson Swords.

Clarity

* Symptoms
	+ Inability to focus. Similar to ADHD but magnified to a much larger degree.

## Chaos Essance Use

This occurs when regenerating resources when there is no pure essance.

TBC

## Essence Starvation

This is when there is little available essence in the soul.

TBC

## Ruptured Paling

It has been caused by excessive experience overload and when souls came into conflict.

It causes low soul essence pressure/density and purified essence leaks out, causing only chaos essence to be inside the soul.

TBC

## Miscellaneous

* Theorized there's cross soulstrain resistance and tenderness from several soulstrain types. Currently unknown what types do or do not crossover, however all place a strain on the soul so even types that don't directly crossover will work together to place strain on the soul.
* While Rain's class and high clarity provides (as of yet) immunity to mana overuse soulstrain, it's unknown how resistant he is to overmana soulstrain.
* Theorized that because of Rain's higher experience requirements and his Rare class, his overall strength of soul might be stronger than other Awakened at a similar level. Unknown what areas it would apply to, if at all. Likely to at least apply to experience loss soulstrain.
* Soulstrain resistances seem to be increased by a combination of: Overall level, (sometimes) an associated stat, effectiveness of the stat (via class), and training.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Any stat will do it, the secondary stats more so than the others. My interface used to be a giant pain in the ass too, but now, it’s second nature. Clarity might nudge you toward a certain way of viewing things, but ultimately, it’s all the same. The stronger your soul gets, the easier it will be to work with.” -Ameliah, Chapter 67