Last Updated on by Samuel Franklin
Gloomhaven Soothsinger Guide – Cards, Builds, Perks, Enhancements & Items
In this guide to the Soothsinger you’ll become the master of songs as you buff your allies or debuff enemies through the power of your instrument and void. Filling a familiar bard archetype the Soothsinger is a powerful support character to the Gloomhaven universe who can also unleash a deceptive amount of damage in between these supportive actions. Ideal in the larger party sizes this guide will detail how to optimise your playstyle through card choices, perks, enhancements and item choices. With the full detail necessary you’ll find my recommended Soothsinger guide template along with detailed discussion of why these choices are effective opportunities.
The Soothsinger (Music Note) is an unlockable Quatryl class that makes them small in stature but like other Quatryls in the Gloomhaven universe they make up for it in their efforts to impress others. Unlike others in their race that have dedicated themselves to the arts of engineering and machinery the Soothsinger has instead opted to specialise in music that makes for a charming Quatryl with an abundance of supportive abilities for any party to either empower allies or bring enemies down. With these tools the Soothsinger is often considered to be the best supportive character in all of Gloomhaven although their limited damage cards makes them most suited to 3 and 4 party sizes. Unlike other supportive characters in video games that may take a traditional healing role the Soothsinger is instead focused on buffs like strengthen and bless alongside debilitating enemy status effects like disarm, curse, stun while having a persistent song playing that has an ongoing battlefield affect.
For information and build guides on other Gloomhaven character options visit our Gloomhaven classes overview and the related Gloomhaven class tier list. Note that from this point onwards this guide contains full card spoilers for this class and minor item spoilers (general themes only and not specific non starting items).
Table of Contents:
– Soothsinger Cards, Perks, Enhancements and Items Overview
– Soothsinger Cards Detailed
– Soothsinger Perks Detailed
– Soothsinger Enhancements Detailed
– Soothsinger Items Detailed
Gloomhaven Soothsinger Guide Overview
In this quick overview to the Soothsinger you’ll find my recommended template for playing the Soothsinger in an optimal manner that you can follow while playing Gloomhaven. It details the pathway from level 1 to level 9, the perk choices, enhancements options and ultimately items in a quick reference list for players of all skill levels. For further information on how to build the Soothsinger and some potential alternatives to the overview section below the detailed section at the end of this page provides additional depth.
By following the overview section you’ll lean heavily towards the supportive cards that the Soothsinger has available to them and play a pivotal role in disabling enemies before they can even attack your allies. With it’s heavy usage of bottom actions players this overview guide assumes you have a particular item available that is loosely referenced in the equipment section further down to prevent full item spoilers. Without this item some minor decisions may change although this will primarily be on your card removal choices rather than selecting an alternative level up card. This is a generally recurring theme of the Soothsinger that you have plenty of flexibility it what you bring to each scenario or can make modifications based on your specific party dynamics so don’t be afraid to experiment with your small 9 card hand size and different songs.
One important note to playing the Soothsinger is that unlike other Gloomhaven characters your persistent song mechanic cards are not burned which encourages players to swap their song as necessary during the course of a scenario. With each song also having an in built experience gain at the end of the turn the Soothsinger is one of the fastest and easiest mercenaries to level up as well.
Soothsinger Cards Overview
- Level 1: Remove Unending Chant, Wistful Wounding and Warding Dagger to create your starting deck of cards
- Level 2: Soothing Lullaby replaces Song of Speed
- Level 3: Echoing Aria replaces Power Ballad
- Level 4: Disorientating Dirge replaces Marching Beat
- Level 5: Melody and Harmony replaces Call to Action
- Level 6: Provoke Terror replaces Nimble Knife
- Level 7: Nightmare Serenade replaces Tuning the Outcome
- Level 8: Commanding Presence replaces Singing Arrow
- Level 9: Captivating Performance replaces Soothing Lullaby
Soothsinger Perks Priority Overview
- Remove two -1 cards (take twice)
- Remove one -2 card
- Replace one -1 card with one +0 stun card
- Replace one +0 card with +1 disarm card
- Replace two +1 cards with one +4 card
- Replace one +0 card with one +2 wound card
- Replace one +0 card with one +3 muddle card
- Replace one +0 card with one +2 poison card
- Replace one +0 card with one +2 curse card
- Add two rolling curse cards
- Add three rolling +1 card
Soothsinger Enhancements Priority Overview
- Add additional hex to the top of Throw Voice
- Add additional hex to the top of Provoke Terror
- Add curse or disarm to the bottom of Disorientating Dirge
- Add strengthen to the bottom of Disorientating Dirge
Soothsinger Items Priority Overview
- Minor Stamina Potion
- Cloak of Invisibility
Gloomhaven Soothsinger Guide Detailed
This detailed portion of the Soothsinger support guide goes into the depths of the decisions in the overview section so players can fully understand the decisions that are made and also point out some of the alternative options you may wish to make for your particular Gloomhaven campaign. For the most part these decisions for the Soothsinger is going to be driven by party needs and also the scenario at hand rather than a personal preference to a particular playstyle. Like the overview section above the detailed section covers the full suite of decisions a Gloomhaven mercenary has with cards, perks, enhancements and equipment selection.
Soothsinger Cards Detailed
The Soothsinger card choices are relatively straight forward with only a few levels that offer a true choice with the majority of your choices being related to which cards you don’t bring for a specific scenario as you’ll end up with many decent sideboard cards to consider. A critical building element to the Soothsinger hand is also a balance of bottom and top actions as it’s easy to become overweight in a either of these areas that will force you to use a weak default action. If you do find yourself playing in a party of 2 you’ll want to pass on a few of the disable focused actions and instead grab a few extra attacks for either the Soothsinger or attack granting actions to our allies.
- Starting Cards: Removing Warding Dagger takes away an unnecessary melee attack and useless burn action at level 1 as we want to avoid being in this position in the first place and is an easy removal decision. Next to be taken from our starting hand is Unending Chant as we really can’t afford to have a temporary persistent card at our hand size and we already have enough curse actions available. The last card for removal is the harder decision although by default I’ll choose Wistful Wounding as our weak modifier deck does little with a bottom attack 1 action and wound is not always a necessary utility. As already mentioned though if a scenario calls for wound don’t be afraid to swap something else out when playing Soothsinger.
- Level 2 Cards: Level 2 is an easy choice with a useful bottom heal action that rounds out our utility tools with a traditional support mechanic in healing while the top song is perfectly suited to poison and wound heavy scenarios now and into the future. Accordingly we take Soothing Lullaby without even taking a second look at Change Tempo that offers little in comparison and we can replace Song of Speed as this is our weakest card currently within our hand.
- Level 3 Cards: Level 3 is a less clear choice when you first look upon these cards and players may even lean towards Crippling Chorus at first. While this card does bring us a massive burn stun we will acquire non burn options for stun and disarm in due course and need to be careful of using burn cards at our hand size and the bottom disarm can be slightly more difficult to use in practice as we prefer to sit behind our frontline. Instead I recommend taking Echoing Aria as it provides a surprisingly strong bottom action as 2 shield at level 3 effectively negates an entire enemy attack and the top retaliate has some niche party and scenario uses if you get desperate for damage sources.
- Level 4 Cards: Level 4 provides one of our most powerful cards in Disorienting Dirge as we obtain a bottom action that simultaneously buffs our modifier decks and weakens the enemies. As if that wasn’t already attractive enough the bottom action has two enhancements slots that allow us add strengthen to our allies and then double down on curses or add disarm instead that literally does everything in a single card. The top disadvantage song is also a great option once the curses have been stacked to ensure they are drawn and have the desired effect of lowering enemy damage output.
- Level 5 Cards: Level 5 provides us the interesting Melody and Harmony that allows us to play two songs at a time that might sound incredible but if you play this card even once you’ll quickly realise your mistake as your hand size quickly crumbles under the pressure. For this reason I don’t recommend ever using the top of Melody and Harmony but still recommend taking the card at level 5 as the bottom move and attack provides another great bottom action that lets us benefit from our strong perks we are slowly accumulating. Mobilising Measure simply doesn’t compete as extra movement to our allies or the Soothsinger aren’t at the top of our priority list.
- Level 6 Cards: Once again we have an easy decision with a critical Soothsinger card that gives us the rare area of effect stun in Provoke Terror which is also a priority upgrade opportunity. In the rare instance we don’t want to stun a group of enemies we have a powerful bottom attack to pull an enemy into a trap or hazardous terrain. All of this makes Provoke Terror the obvious choice over Pull the Strings which while interesting in theme is a weak combination of actions and particularly so when you factor in we are stacking curses on enemy attack decks that mean the bottom attack action is likely to cause zero damage
- Level 7 Cards: Speaking of curses the Nightmare Serenade puts our enemies in an even darker place and with an attack 1 value on this means this becomes a deadly damage dealer when our perks are factored in on top of the curses that are being added. The effectiveness of this card in damage and curse additions means that Booming Proclamation really doesn’t compete on any level with its weak push attack with only 2 range and weak bottom burn that we can’t afford to use at our hand size anyway.
- Level 8 Cards: With all the great cards available to date the song was due to end and level 8 provides our first mediocre choices for the Soothsinger which means it’s also a good opportunity to reflect back on any cards we’ve passed on previously. An important note is that we desperately want something with a strong top action at this level as we already have many great bottom actions and need a card to balance out our hand actions which means this is one of the few times we really only care about one side of the card. Focusing on level 8 specifically Commanding Presence actually offers us a top option that can consistently produce 4 or 6 damage before we factor in the attack perks of our selected ally and is a good default pick. Other tempting options include Booming Proclamation given our strong perk deck may actually mean it does more damage overall.
- Level 9 Cards: Straight back to powerful options the Soothsinger has some incredible level 9 options although we can unfortunately only choose one and my default recommendation is the Captivating Performance as it is simply not possible to pass up on the bottom 3 target stun that opens up so much flexibility for us in the utility department. The top song is also pretty decent as an option if we have lots of area of effect in our group as an upgrade to Power Ballad to use temporarily before a big attack of a party member is planned. While we don’t take Shadow Puppets it is worth honouring it’s own power with a top move jump allowing for some devastating setups with your bottom actions although we once again have a card that suffers from our success at loading enemies up with curses.
Soothsinger Perks Detailed
Despite being a support focused hero the Soothsinger has some of the best perks in terms of both raw damage through a +4 but also the other modifiers with the likes of wound, disarm, stun, curse and poison lying in wait for our enemies that encourages us to use the few attacks that we do have available.
For the pathway to obtaining all of these if you follow the general Gloomhaven rule of optimising for damage you can’t go wrong which leads us to removing all negatives from our deck quickly before sneaking in the disarm card given it’s wide effectiveness to our team before once again diving into damage. This means the +4, wound and +3 muddle are high priorities before grabbing the poison, curse and rolling card options.
Soothsinger Enhancements Detailed
The Soothsinger enhancements are fairly clear with anything we can do to add extra targets to our area of effect disables a great although expensive investment. They are still worth it if the gold is available though as it’s surprising just how much this extra hex improves our consistency at hitting 3 and sometimes even the satisfying 4 enemies. This means Throw Voice, Provoke Terror and Disorientating Dirge are notable enhancement options.
The effectiveness of these additional hex options lowers dramatically at a 2 player party level to the point I’d probably skip them and instead find ways to boost your damaging cards which will also be significantly cheaper. This could include the bottom of Melody and Harmony and Nightmare Serenade or the top of Booming Proclamation if you went down this route.
Soothsinger Items Detailed
Starting items aren’t particularly interesting for the Soothsinger with the standard Minor Stamina Potion allowing for some strong back to back round combinations to stack curses or stuns on the enemy when needed. The Cloak of Invisibility can also be a useful utility item to play aggressively or a get out of jail free card if we mess up our position on the battlefield.
Beyond these initial starting items and s noted above there is a critical Soothsinger item that allows us to hold all of these non move bottom actions in our small hand size and keep pace with our allies. This is an item that interacts with our default movement value to significantly improve it’s effectiveness and is so critical I’d almost recommend you only unlock Soothsinger once one of these items is obtained. Other items we want to look out for are those that allow us to get cards back, provide us with extra turns and provide various forms of team utility.
