basic knowledge
Crafting

Trial of Chaos Crafting — Soul Cores

Basic KnowledgePublishedUpdated

The Trial of Chaos’s contribution to crafting is the Soul Core — an augment socketed into a piece of gear’s Augment Socket that grants modifiers you can’t get from ordinary runes. It’s in the same Augment-socket family as runes and the Abyssal Gazes, but its source is an Ascension Trial.

What a Soul Core is

A Soul Core is an Augment-class item that reads “place into an empty Augment Socket in a weapon or armour to apply its effect to that item.” It goes into both weapons and armour.

The key point is that the effect changes by slot. A single Soul Core gives one effect in a weapon and a different effect in the specific armour piece it targets. For example, Soul Core of Zalatl:

Martial Weapon: Recover 2% of maximum Mana on Kill Helmets: 3% increased maximum Mana

So the same core splits between the weapon slot and the armour slot it names. A couple more make the pattern clear:

  • Soul Core of Tacati — Weapon: 15% chance to Poison on hit with this weapon / Armour: +11% to Chaos Resistance
  • Soul Core of Xopec — Weapon: 30% increased chance to Shock / Boots: +1% to maximum Lightning Resistance

Each core targets a specific armour slot (Zalatl = helmets, Xopec = boots, and so on), so check where it goes before socketing.

Socketing rules

Same as runes. Once socketed, a Soul Core can’t be pulled back out — you overwrite it with another augment to replace it (the old one is destroyed). So decide the slot and effect before you socket.

Ancient Soul Cores

There’s a stronger family, the Ancient Soul Core. In our data these are the person-named “[Name]‘s Soul Core of [Effect]” entries — for example Xopec’s Soul Core of Power or Citaqualotl’s Soul Core of Foulness — and their effects are stronger, often build-defining.

The catch is a hard limit:

  • You can equip only one Ancient Augment across your entire character (a shared limit on all Ancient augments).
  • They have a higher level requirement (around 60) and are harder to obtain.

So while you can socket ordinary Soul Cores freely across slots, an Ancient Soul Core is a one-per-character choice — picking which one matters.

Where they come from and how to upgrade

  • The Trial of Chaos is the source. The Trialmaster offers Soul Cores as rewards. For the Trial’s rounds and entry, see the Trial of Chaos guide.
  • The Core Destabiliser gambles a Soul Core. It’s a Vaal-temple currency that turns a Soul Core into one of: duplicate it / transform into another core of the same tier / transform into an Ancient Soul Core / destroy it. This is the confirmed way to get Ancient Soul Cores. See Temple Crafting.
  • The Inscribed Ultimatum itself can roll a modifier like “(66–333)% increased effect of Socketed Soul Cores,” so running the Trial can amplify socketed Soul Core effects too.