Trial of Chaos Crafting — Soul Cores
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, as of 0.5.5:
Martial Weapon: Recover 4% of maximum Mana on Kill Helmets: 5% 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: 25% increased Magnitude of Poison / Armour: +13% to Chaos Resistance
- Soul Core of Xopec — Weapon: 25% increased Magnitude of Shock you inflict / Boots: +2% 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.
0.5.5 note — all three examples above changed in this patch, and two changed in kind rather than degree: Tacati moved from chance to Poison on hit to Magnitude of Poison, and Xopec from chance to Shock to Magnitude of Shocks. If you’re following a build guide written against 0.5.4, recheck it.
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.
0.5.5 — 17 new cores, and a Limit of 1
0.5.5 both widened this family and tightened it.
Seventeen new cores were added:
- Jiquani’s, 13 — Abundance, Automation, Malediction, Munitions, Quaking, Radiance, Rallying, Rippling, Severing, Snares, Squalls, Targeting, Thundering
- Atziri’s, 4 — Devotion, Alacrity, Inoculation, Vitality
Several existing cores gained a Limit of 1 — the Soul Cores of Jiquani, Opiloti, Puhuarte, Ticaba, Topotante, Tzamoto, Xopec, and Zalatl. Blanketing multiple slots with the same core is out, and individual values generally went up in exchange.
| Core | Before | 0.5.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Topotante (weapon) | Penetrate 15% Elemental Resistances | 25% |
| Tzamoto (weapon) | 30% increased Freeze Buildup | 60% |
| Opiloti (weapon) | 15% chance to cause Bleeding on hit | 40% increased Magnitude of Bleed |
| Puhuarte (gloves) | +1% to Maximum Fire Resistance | +2% |
| Ticaba (body armour / shields) | Hits against you have 20% reduced Critical Damage Bonus | 50% reduced |
| Atmohua · Cholotl · Zantipi | Convert 20% of Requirements | 40% |
Atmohua’s Soul Core of Retreat was reworked outright — from granting additional Ailment and Stun Threshold to scaling Energy Shield from Focus and Body Armour.
This “Limit of 1” means one of that specific core per character, which is a separate rule from the Ancient Augment cap above (one Ancient augment shared across all of them). How the two limits interact isn’t spelled out in the official wording.
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.
- Since 0.5.5, run rewards are Currency and Soul Cores only. Corrupted items were removed from the reward pool, which narrows the point of running the Trial to cores and currency. In exchange, each room now ends with a reward chest, so dying mid-run no longer forfeits what you’d already earned.
- 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.