BLACK SOULS Character Recruitment Guide
How heroine routes work in BLACK SOULS — keeping Leaf, Red Hood and the other characters' stories alive, what closes routes, and which to run first.
Ten of BLACK SOULS’ fourteen endings belong to individual characters. That makes the route system — how you meet, follow and finish a character’s story — the true main mechanic of the game. This guide covers how it behaves and how not to break it.
How routes behave
The system runs on three verbs:
- Meet. Characters appear at fixed points in the world. Some are unmissable; others stand off the main path and simply never enter your story if you don’t explore.
- Revisit. Dialogue advances with story progress. The single most important habit in BLACK SOULS: after every boss, walk your circuit of known characters and talk to everyone again. New lines mean the route is alive; a character with nothing new to say is waiting for you to progress elsewhere.
- Choose. Routes fork on explicit decisions — and on quieter things: fighting or sparing someone, bringing an item, arriving before or after a story beat. The boss list reflects this: “Red Hood, Poro” has a 17.8% kill rate against her ending’s 27.9%, because many players resolve her story without that fight ever happening.
What actually closes routes
- Main-story speed. The mist doesn’t wait. Each act transition can retire events behind it — the classic failure is reaching the endgame with three half-started routes and no way to finish any of them this cycle.
- Killing route characters. Several heroines can be fought. Winning is sometimes a route’s end and sometimes its point — but you rarely get to know beforehand. If you care about a character’s ending, exhaust their peaceful options first.
- Ending the cycle. Rolling credits closes the book. Unfinished route progress does not carry over the way your levels do.
Suggested route order across cycles
| Cycle | Routes | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Leaf or Red Hood | Earliest starts, most forgiving, most-completed (28% / 27.9%) |
| 2 | The other of the pair + Dorothy | Dorothy’s Oz thread (26.5%) runs mid-game and pairs well |
| 3 | Victoria + Miranda | Mid-table routes (24.2% / 23%), both boss-linked |
| 4+ | Jeanne, Catherine, Elisabeth, Goose, Elma | The boss-gated tier — Jeanne and Catherine’s fights are the rarest in the game |
Route habits worth keeping
- One serious route per cycle, one casual. Serious means you check on them after every boss; casual means you’re seeding conversations for a future cycle.
- Journal your choices. Cross-cycle play makes it genuinely hard to remember which fork you took for whom last time.
- Let the first cycle be imperfect. You will close a route by accident. That’s the game teaching you its tempo — New Game+ exists because of it.
Related pages
- Characters database — individual pages with each character’s achievements and endings
- All Endings — the full 14-ending matrix
- Ending Checker — track route completion across cycles
Frequently Asked Questions
How many character routes does BLACK SOULS have?
Ten characters have their own endings: Leaf, Red Hood, Dorothy, Jeanne, Victoria, Miranda, Catherine, Goose, Elma and Elisabeth.
Can character routes be missed?
Yes — within a cycle. Routes advance through repeated conversations and events, and pushing the main story too fast can close them. New Game+ reopens everything.
Which character route should I do first?
Leaf or Red Hood. Their endings are the two most completed on Steam (28% and 27.9%), their routes start earliest, and they teach you how the route system behaves.