The Origin

*The information on this page is for the mode after the Update 4.0.0. For the mode prior to this update, please visit this page.*
**The Origin** is a Tower Defense mode in Soul Knight.

## Story

*"With a flash of bliding light, you are teleported to the past. You find yourself in the battle that you once experienced. Waves of enemies are swarming to you."*
A present Hero time-traveled before the loss and destruction of the Magic Stone, where the Aliens – with the support from seven major factions (Glacier, Cave, Forest, Relics, Volcano, Spaceship, Knight Kingdom) – mobilized to seize it. Initially empowered and aided by the Shrine Priestess, a kamikaze robot puts her out of action when she shields the Magic Stone and the hero from its near-lethal blast. Severely injured, her aura was lost, and so would the augments it provided.

Evidently shocked by the Aliens' desperation, the recovering Priestess briefs the hero on the Shrine Backroom on some mechanics, as well as her missing allies held by hostile factions. She sends them off to rescue the Mechanical Engineer first. The hero confronts streams of onslaught and raids strongholds to recover their allies and scavenge loot to aid in their defense, while the Jolly Trader arrives on his own in discreet, also intending assistance.

Eventually, the Alien Aircraft Carrier arrives after previous assaults proved to be ineffective. In spite of its devastating ravages, it was shot down, yet history repeats itself when the wreck crushes the Magic Stone. Order was lost as the fragments scattered around the world, forcing the heroes to recover them yet again.

## Access

The entrance to The Origin is the Ancient Portal.

Entering it requires 500 gems.

* With the Mode Hopper card, the player is able to access The Origin for free once per day.

## Gameplay

In this game mode, the player must defend the Ancient Magic Stone from hordes of enemies that spawn in waves. The game will end once the player has died, and the Magic Stone is destroyed (by either enemy onslaughts or the Alien Aircraft Carrier's wreck) . The player can upgrade their defenses through the help of the NPCs inside The Origin. The goal is to hold off every possible attack the Aliens have to offer.

Apart from defending the Magic Stone like the previous iteration of The Origin, the player can explore biomes to obtain Weapons, Experience Points, and Alien Coins which can be used to trade for other items to help the player defend waves of enemies.

The player can use the map on the top right of the HUD to view the mini-map; tapping on a portal icon (including Shrine and Shrine Backroom) will teleport the player to the chosen room.

* In the last wave however, warping is disabled.

###  Alien Coins

Alien Coins are a currency exclusive to The Origin mode. It is used to purchase and upgrade defense towers.

Alien Coins can be found by defeating these enemies:

* Spaceship biome enemies spawned in rooms (except those from enemy summoning device)
* Bosses in rooms (including some hidden bosses)
* Spaceship biome enemies spawned in waves (only a few will drop)
* Turrets of Alien Aircraft Carrier

### EXP and Level

By defeating enemies spawned in rooms (except those from enemy-summoning devices), the player can collect green EXP orbs. The total EXP collected is shown as a green bar below the stat panel.

When the player has collected a certain amount of EXP, they will automatically level up.

* Each time the player level up, their Health, Armor and Energy will be increased by 8, 4 and 100 respectively.
* Levelling up grants the player a choice between three buffs until all buff slots are filled.
* The buff offer can be rerolled twice. (First reroll for 100 gems; second for 200 gems.)
* By clearing all rooms, the player will always reach the maximum Level of 12.

### Revives

The player can revive 3 times for free. The fourth revive costs 200 gems and any subsequent revive costs twice the amount, up to 1600.

## The Map

There are 7 different biomes on the map: the Forest, Glacier, Knight Kingdom, Cave, Relics, Spaceship and Volcano.

Unlike in Level Mode, the layout of these rooms is consistent between attempts, although the enemies are still random. Rooms may contain *one* of the following points of interest, marked on the mini-map once an adjacent room is cleared:

* One gold mine. There is a Mining Machine attached to the mine which must be repaired by paying a set amount of alien coins.
* A portal. Interacting with the portal warps the player to the Ancient Magic Stone chamber.
* A purple alien portal requires the defeat of a large summoning device which can spawn Spaceship-biome enemies when damaged.
* A cage. Interacting with the cage after the room is cleared will free one NPC. *See the below section 'NPCs' for details.*
* A bonus room. This room type is found four times during any attempt of The Origin.
* A boss from the respective Biome. Bosses may also have the same modifiers as enemies, though they won't spawn minions or heal themselves.
	+ The exception to the minion rule is Grand Slime, who still summons slimes as its health decreases. These slimes use their Level Mode stats, so they are mostly inconsequential to the fight.
	+ The Airbender enemy found in Relics will not carry any modifiers, and does not always spawn, unlocked as a playable character on defeat. Additionally, he will also grant the Qi-Gong Wave buff.

**Possible Bosses For Each Biome:**

Generally, it is impossible to encounter immovable bosses in The Origin. Therefore, Christmas Treant will spawn in the enraged state.

## Quests

In each play, 3 to 5 of 12 random quests will appear. By fulfilling the requirement, the player can gain special effects accordingly.

Here is a list of quests:

## Wave Defense

### Ancient Magic Stone

The main objective of the game. Enemies will attack it, the player must defend it. The Ancient Magic Stone can take about 20 damage before being destroyed, and the only way for the enemies to damage it is to ram into it. Enemies will die instantly (including Bosses) after ramming into the Ancient Magic Stone, while dealing damage scaled to the remaining health of that enemy. The Ancient Magic Stone cannot be damaged by any other attacks.

* For example, a minor Goblin Guard (Goblin Spear) can only deal a little amount of damage, while Zulan The Colossus will deal a lot. However, if the boss had very little health, it'll be a scratch.

Once it has been destroyed, either by enemies or by the Alien Aircraft Carrier after it is defeated, the Magic Stones will scatter around in different directions and end the game.

The player can also interact with the Ancient Magic Stone to let next wave of enemies spawn within 3 seconds. The player can continuously skip them by doing so repeatedly.

### Enemies

At the start of each wave, enemies will spawn from the Portals from each side of the map. The portal will spawn in the corridor between the Shrine and each biome. They will try to ram into the Ancient Magic Stone, and attack anything in their way. Unlike in the previous iteration of this mode, enemies follow a preset movement path with no deviation, entering closest to Forest. If Badass Mode is enabled, all enemies spawned from portals will be Elite/Champion status.

* By restarting the game, enemy waves may spawn from other entrances.

Enemies may also have modifiers indicated by unique overlays:

* Invisible (Transparent) - Reduces health by half but prevents players or turrets from automatically targeting the enemy.
	+ The Auto-Aim Human Mod achievement is obtainable for defeating any boss with this enemy modifier active.
* Devilish (Purple) - Grants major damage reduction unless a status effect is active.
* Shield (Black Bubble) - Blocks attacks hitting it until it is destroyed, after which the enemy becomes vulnerable.
	+ Can somehow block hits from Death Note.
* Reflector (White Bubble) - Releases damaging shockwaves whenever it is attacked.
* Holy (Gold) - Immune to most status effects with minor damage reduction.
	+ Cannot be affected by Death Note or Staff of Anubis.
	+ Cannot negate negative status effects inflicted by Alchemist's Gas Grenades.
* Strength (Red) - Increases size, damage and health, but decreases attack and movement speed.
* Agility (Green) - Reduces size, damage and health, but increases attack and movement speed.
* Drainer (Blue) - All attacks reduce the player's energy on hit. Projectiles are blue.

#### Additional Details

Waves follow a cycle where each set of three waves increments in enemy count between x-1 and x-3, with the exceptions being the boss waves. Normal waves are preceded with these messages according to their size 10 seconds before their beginning:

* *A small wave of enemies is approaching in **x** seconds.*
* *A large wave of enemies is approaching in **x** seconds.*
* *A sea of enemies is approaching in **x** seconds.*

On waves 1-3, 2-3, 4-3, 5-3, 7-3, 8-3, 10-3, 11-3, Some Spaceship biome enemies will spawn along with standard enemies. Some of them will drop alien coins. Defeating these waves causes a green chest to spawn in front of the Ancient Magic Stone. It will always contain 3-5 seeds or materials.

On waves 3-3, 6-3, 9-3, the player will encounter one boss from the Spaceship biome. These bosses will drop 8 Alien Coins on defeat and possess one random enemy modifier. These three bosses spawn from Forest, Glacier & Volcano's Biome entrance passage respectively. These waves also spawn the aforementioned green chest. These waves have the following announcement message:

*The boss will attack in **x** seconds.*

### Final Boss

*Main Article: Alien Aircraft Carrier*
The mothership, **Alien Aircraft Carrier**, will appear at wave 12-3. It has approximately 1 million health and is invulnerable until four external components are destroyed - two cannons & two shields/vents which have 85000 health each. Once defeated, the mothership will crash into the center of the map and explode, scattering the Magic Stone fragments and ending the game.

## NPCs

There are 5 main NPCs in the Origin.

* Shrine Priestess - Unlocked after the cutscene. By having experience points, she will enhance the player's Health, Armor and Energy every upgrade. For every upgrade, the player will have a choice to choose between 3 Buffs. The player can re-roll the Buffs slots 2 times with 100 Gems for the first re-roll, and 200 for the second time.
	+ As of Update 4.2.0, upgrades occur automatically as soon as the player possesses sufficient experience points for a total of 11 times and with 9 buff slots.
* Mechanical Engineer - Can be rescued in Glacier biome Cage. Sells turrets and other defenses that helps the player in defending the Magic Stone. Upon rescuing, a free set of Wrenches will be available once, as well as 15 alien coins.
	+ Purchasing an owned turret increases its rarity. If a turret is upgraded to Red/Legendary rarity, it can no longer be purchased, allowing only one turret per type.
	+ 1 alien coin is required to restock.
	+ A destroyed turret costs 5 alien coins to reconstruct. However if Wrenches is used on destroyed turret, it will be removed.
* Mentor - Can be rescued in the Forest biome Cage. When he is in the shrine, increases the player's skill mentor effect and overall effectiveness for a fee, by both a damage or range increase. Skill can be upgraded 15 times.
	+ Mentor prices are consistent, with the cost beginning at **100** for Skill Level 1 and increasing to **1200** for Skill Level 15.
	+ He provides the Mentor buff to a player's skill upon saving him.
* Weapon Master - Can be rescued in the Volcano biome Cage. Increases damage of the player's weapons for a fee, with a percentile chance to fail depending on the grade of the item. Weapons can be upgraded to +18 grade, though weapons can be initially acquired with a maximum of +15 grade.
	+ He provides 1 attachment upon saving him. This is the only way to acquire attachments in The Origin apart from Weapon Attachment vouchers in the Workshop. If this attachment can deal damage (like Grenade Launcher), the damage will be scaled with weapon level.
	+ Failing to upgrade will increase the chance until a successful upgrade occurs.
* Jolly Trader - Appears after defeating wave 1-3. Sells Potions and a set of Wrenches for 5 Alien coins. All items restock infinitely.
	+ Trader's potions in this mode restore half of a player's health/energy respectively.

## Items and Upgrades

In this mode, weapons can be found through defeating enemies in each biome. After 4 seconds, dropped weapons will be teleported into the Warehouse located next to the Weaponsmith.

### Warehouse

Weapons can be combined in the Warehouse. Three weapons must be selected in order to combine; when pressing the "Remake" button, a new weapon will be created.

Weapons will deal more damage according to their enhancement levels. Some weapons can even gain more tracks (shotgun), bounces (laser) and combo-hits when reaching certain levels. These effects stack with corresponding Buffs.

* About weapon rarity:
	+ If two or three of the weapons can be merged normally, the combined weapon will be the product weapon.
		- The exceptions to this are Assault Rifle Pro, Spike Knives and Cherry Blossom. If these weapons are used, and the other weapons do not match any merging recipe, the result will always be Assault Rifle Elite (Stun), Spike Knives Eagle (Poison, despite looking like fire) and Weeping Eagle, respectively. If more than one of these weapons are used, one of them will show the corresponding result.
			* To get Assault Rifle Elite and Spiked Knives Eagle with desired element, it is required to merge them normally instead of remaking. However, their elements will be reset if placed into warehouse again.
			* These exceptions apply regardless of the rarities of the other weapons.
	+ If all three weapons are the same, the result weapon is also the same weapon.
	+ Otherwise, if all weapons are of equal rarity, the combined weapon is guaranteed to be the next rarity.
	+ If weapons are not of equal rarity, the result weapon can be any rarity between the lowest one and one rank above the highest one.
* About enhancement level:
	+ The absolute maximum of enhancement levels is +18 grade, but the cap for remaking is +15.
	+ If all weapons are of equal enhancement level, the combined weapon will always be 2 levels higher.
	+ If the enhancement levels of the weapons are in direct ascending order (i.e. 1, 2, 3 or 10, 11, 12), the resulting value is always 1 more than the highest-quality material (in these examples, 4 and 13) used.
	+ If the enhancement levels of the weapons are random, the combined weapon is guaranteed to possess either the highest material level or one more.

In addition, any amount of weapons can be selected to be dropped for the player to equip when pressing the "Take out" button with weapons selected.

### Turrets

The Mechanical Engineer provides 11 types of turrets, and their utility is the key to victory. Turrets can be placed in one of the 17 slots around the Ancient Magic Stone. Some turrets have two modes which can be toggled by interacting with them.

The Turrets have 2 distinct levelling up systems, an Engineering Level and an Experience Level:

* The Engineering Level ranges from 1 to 6, represented by the color of the Turret's name: **White** → **Green** → **Blue** → **Purple** → **Orange** → **Red**. Purchased Turrets start at **White**, and each time a duplicate Turret is purchased, it advances to the next color. Once a Turret reaches **Red**, purchasing a duplicate will result in a new, **White** Turret.
* The Experience Level ranges from 0 to 18, with #0 being empty. Afterwards, each three levels are represented by the colors **White** → **Green** → **Blue** → **Purple** → **Orange** → **Red**, with each color having 1 to 3 stars: ★ → ★★ → ★★★. The Experience Level advances according to the death of enemies (and bosses) spawned by waves. They don't have to be killed by the Turret itself. Having more than 1 Turret will make them split the EXP equally.
	+ The amount of EXP gained scales according to the number of Turrets placed. There seems to be no difference in EXP yield between Normal and Badass.
		- If planning to make all turrets reach max Experience Level, the recommended amount is 3 (4 if the Boss Alien Invaders is present). They all must be bought before Wave 1-2.
	+ Below is a table of the existing Experience Levels and the amount of EXP required to reach each of them:

## Other Gameplay

* It is always possible to ride on mounts.
* Challenge conditions from the Task Board and all Garden Buffs are dysfunctional. Character starting buffs remain unaffected.

## Tips

Despite the radical overhaul, a couple of concepts still apply to this mode.

Try to rescue all NPCs as early as possible. After the Mechanical Engineer is secured, save Mentor next. Weaponsmith isn't of high priority if there are still good weapons during the earlier waves. The difficulty of each area also emphasizes this order of progression - Volcano enemies are significantly harder than Forest and Glacier enemies.

The scarcity of Alien Coins puts a serious strain on defense, as one cannot rely on stacking turrets in large numbers to overwhelm enemies. What's even worse is that wrecked turrets can be rather expensive to restore with very few means of protection (unlike the holographic turrets, Priest skills can't heal them). This greatly limits available options, especially if the player is going for the "Great Wall" achievement.

Character-specific attributes can also ease various difficulties:

* Alchemist has the  by default, negating hazards produced by Varkolyns, Tentacles, Varkolyn Leader and various Forest enemies. His Gas Grenades can be abused to easily stall enemies and at higher skill levels, inflict enough damage to cripple them, while also supporting the player's other defenses against bosses.
* Knight's Dual Wield skill level determines the power of the other duplicate, partially removing the need to upgrade them. Energy is far easier to gain in The Origin as well, so it shouldn't be a concern.
* Assassin can summon clones to avoid hits himself and multiply the destructive power of his weapons, made possible with the Mentor's upgrades greatly increasing their health. With the correct weapons, this can dramatically speed up boss fights with their concentrated suppression, taking down even the Alien Aircraft Carrier in less than a minute. He also has the melee reflect buff to aid both the Air Force Base and against Flame Knight Captains' explosive projectiles as well as other Volcano enemies, which would otherwise eat through the player's defenses in seconds.
* With mentor and character upgrades, Airbender works exceptionally well simply due to the sheer offensive power of his melee and laser attacks. Engineer's Armor Mount works similarly, but its lengthy downtime would require another weapon to compensate.
* Paladin's Energy Shield can essentially nullify any amount of enemy projectiles to guard the player's defenses from being sniped off-screen and allow him to tear through their sources, as eventually the uptime of the skill exceeds its cooldown.
* Costume Prince, as Slime King, is exceptionally good for crowd control, as the enemies move in predictable straight lines, allowing the player to crush them with the fatal smash. The enemies will also run into the lingering bullets & poison pools generated. This is made better by how  and  allow the player to weaponize damage taken, & how increasing the skill level just increases the mount's HP.

For the warehouse & weapons, there are also several pieces of advice:

* Getting a good weapon and high enhancement levels is at top priority. Without them, the turrets can only do so much.
* It is crucial to have +15 as quickly as possible if the desired weapon should be retained for extended periods and has meaningful upgrade benefits (direct damage, etc.), as they will become eventually significant.
	+ Once a suitable weapon is procured, try to upgrade it using the Weaponsmith as much as possible, even if the chances of success are slim.
* **Always** combine three weapons of equal rarities. This secures a generally better result, usually as rare and powerful weapons.
	+ Weapons that can't be obtained randomly such as starter weapons, boss chest drops and some merge-only weapons (without the requisite components) won't spawn via this method. This limits the pool of potential results and increases the chances of certain items being obtained, most notably Staff of Anubis and Death Note, both of which excel at taking down extremely tough common enemies.
		- Though, if some of the constituents do spawn (like those of Laser Sword Gold, Thunder Sword and Star Bow), it is good to keep them and try some luck. Merging can also get weapons while skipping some rarity.
	+ Using high-levelled weapons as fodder to remove weaker ones from the storage can be beneficial as the result will always follow the highest enhancement level if not beyond.

## Rewards

Defeating the boss will reward blueprint fragments and a chance to receive a full blueprint to make jewelry items, which can be used at the Shaman.

## Trivia

* Many weapons - in particular, most Legendary weapons that are boss drops - are unobtainable in this mode without bringing them from the Lobby, limiting the pool of Legendary weapons acquirable from merging in the warehouse. The only exception are Grand Knight's Sword & Deep Dark Blade, both under specific circumstances.
* This iteration of The Origin was introduced in Update 4.0.0, replacing its endless counterpart from Update 2.5.0.
* Inter-dimension Traveler's starter weapon when held by him used to retain its +12 grade instead of being weakened to +6 after Wave 0-1.
* Retcons:
	+ The raid on the Magic Stone is explicitly masterminded by Aliens, rather than being implied. Their alliance with several fixed factions also explain their ability to amass quantity for the invasion, though the exact means of which was never specified.
		- This also explains the in-game absence of the Knights depicted in the reused legacy intro, which persisted until 4.2.0 where they are properly re-introduced.
	+ The Summoner/Granny Millie is nowhere to be seen, whereas the Shrine Priestess and her crew were somehow introduced, which accounts for other NPCs' motivation of assistance - they have aided her for some time before they were abducted.
	+ The Mechanical Engineer only accepted gold as payment rather than alien currency, and sold different items with no way of removal.
	+ The Mentor is now able to give an additional skill enhancement, but exclusively improves skills and not stats.
	+ Weaponsmith will give an attachment only once and now has a maximum limit as well as a failure chance for enhancement.
	+ Weapons that are not retrieved will somehow be recovered inside a storage unit instead of despawning.
	+ The Trader now only vendors wrenches for alien currencies and potions for gold. He claims to hail from a nomadic merchant clan and joined the clause for profit, implying time travelling for financial gain.
* Each of the Origin biomes plays a recomposition of their own original biomes.
	+ All of the new Origin soundtracks plays in a stereo channel instead of the usual monotone like the rest of the soundtrack. They are also first to use it.
	+ All of the biome theme arrangements - such as the recompositions of *Deep in the Forest*, *Blizzard* and *Roaring Lava* - are currently unavailable beyond this mode.
* Before Update 4.0.2:
	+ Gold mines would require the player to buy a mining machine from Mechanical Engineer, and then attach to start mining. The mining machine could also be removed for use on another.
* The Repair Center is currently defunct as of 4.0.2 and can't heal anything.
* There was a recurring bug where SMG M1 couldn't be used in any remaking recipes.
* In 4.2.0, the drop rate of weapons in Badass Mode is drastically reduced on occasion. It is unclear whether this is intentional.
	+ Another change modified the rule of shotgun enhancing such that weapons need more level to gain one more line. For example, Snow Fox Rose Gold can only have up to 2 lines without buffs, while before it could gain up to 4.