Shape of Dreams Memories: All Essences & Tiers Database

Memories are the active half of a Shape of Dreams build and Essences are the passive half, which is why the two have to be planned together rather than picked one at a time. This database lists only what the 1.4.0 patch notes, the Steam store page and the shipped data copy actually document, and says so plainly where they stop short. Where a row reads “name only”, the studio listed the item in the update summary without publishing its behaviour, and we are not going to guess on your behalf.

Core Memory Selection: AD vs AP Synergy Guidelines

Before committing Memory slots during a run, align your choices with your scaling axis:

• For Physical & AD Builds: Prioritize General Memories offering rapid mobility resets, attack speed steroids, and physical armor shred. Avoid socketing pure elemental conversion Essences that split your physical damage scaling.
• For Ability Power (AP) Builds: Prioritize multihit spell streams, Beam of Balance for hybrid AP damage and healing, and heavy AoE skills. Socket Essences that trigger secondary elemental chain reactions.
• Defensive Must-Haves: Regardless of build, maintain at least one defensive Memory granting temporary shields, invulnerability frames, or displacement to navigate elite mob density in higher Lucid difficulties.

Complete Memories Directory

A note on vocabulary first: the captured sources never use the word socket, so wherever this site says an Essence is socketed into a Memory it means only what the data itself says, which is that the Essence’s text modifies “this Memory”. Memories are slotted into the active bar of your Traveler, up to four at once. The v1.4 notes never list the element set outright, but the shipped data does: Essence of Inversion inverts elemental damage in the pairs Fire/Cold and Light/Dark, and the Introduction to Elements achievement asks you to defeat enemies affected by all 4 elements. Burn is a stack status that Fire feeds rather than a fifth element, and the game-data tags add the non-elemental families the same kit choices turn on: Attack, HardCC, Melee, Mobility, Heal, Shield and Summon.

Memory Name	Attached To	Documented Behaviour	v1.4 Change	Evidence
Permafrost	Cold builds, Cetus	Shields and Armor from repeated casts	Shields no longer stack; Armor stacks up to 3 times, applied per Memory	1.4.0 notes
Cold Affinity	Cold builds	Damage reduction line for Cold stacks	Tiered reduction values restated in the balance block	1.4.0 notes
Beam of Balance	General	Beam that deals damage and heals while active	Reworked upward to 460% AP per second damage and 200% AP per second healing, faster tracking, shorter duration	1.4.0 notes
Annihilation Stance	Shell	Sword Wave stance that restores a Dodge charge when cast	Other Memories can now be cast during it; its Dodge charge and Memory Haste bonuses were removed	1.4.0 notes
Chained Bloodlust	Shell	Charges Ultimates while Annihilation Stance is up	Gains a 0.5% charge per Basic Attack or Sword Wave hit during the stance	1.4.0 notes
Frenzied Blade Dance	Shell	Trades Sword Wave power for Dodge charges and Memory Haste	Its Memory Haste boost now increases by 12 permanently whenever you defeat any boss	1.4.0 notes
Sylvan Call	Nachia	Summons Leaf Hounds	Leaf Hound starting Armor raised, summon damage raised to 200% AP	1.4.0 notes
Bestow Willpower	Nachia	Extends a target’s buff duration	Gains a longer duration when the target is a summon	1.4.0 notes
Supernova	Yubar	Charged artillery Ultimate	Now fully recharges all Dodge charges instead of restoring one, and also triggers on recast	1.4.0 notes
Combat First Aid	General	Restores health when you kill	Health restored on kill rebalanced across its upgrade steps	1.4.0 notes
Soulmate	Support and Light builds	Summon Memory tied to Little Baam	Armor reduced to 40 and maximum health reduced by 25%; now correctly counted as a Light damage Memory	1.4.0 notes

Brand New Memories In v1.4

Six Memory names appear in the update summary without published behaviour. The three general additions are Annoying Banner, Hero’s Return and Small Molten Core, and the three new Shell Memories are Death Mark, Deception and Scar of the Wind. Their specific mechanical scalings and interactions unfold dynamically across run drops.

Common Identity Memories

Six new Common Identity Memories were added under the “Fallen Star and Old Memories” heading. They let a Traveler substitute or augment the innate Identity Memory they started the run with, and the 1.4 note ties them to uncovering the secrets of The Rapids as you progress. This is the documented mid-run identity pivot, and it is the reason a single Traveler can now support more than one build line per run.

Complete Essences Directory

Essences are the passive half of the bar. The full set that the v1.4 sources name is listed below.

Essence Name	Status in v1.4	What the Sources Document
Essence of Control	New in 1.4.0	Name only, listed among the eight new Essences
Essence of the Crucible	New in 1.4.0	Name only
Essence of Slipperiness	New in 1.4.0	Name only, no effect printed
Essence of Liberty	New in 1.4.0	Name only
Essence of Lightness	New in 1.4.0	Name only
Essence of the Hedgehog	New in 1.4.0	Name only
Supersymmetry	New in 1.4.0	Name only, listed without the Essence prefix
Essence of Culinary	New in 1.4.0	Name only
Essence of Inversion	Existing, reworked	Cooldown increase fixed at 20%, no longer scales with quality; converts damage into Light damage
Essence of the Abyss	Existing	Conversion effect that turns damage into Light damage
Essence of Shatter	Existing, bug fixed	Now behaves correctly when conversion effects turn damage into Light damage
Inversion Sigil	Existing	Named alongside Inversion as a damage conversion effect

Every row above is traceable to the 1.4.0 patch note text or to the shipped data copy this site reads. The eight new Essences represent experimental build modifiers added in the v1.4 update.

Elemental Loops and Synergy

The four-slot bar is stated by the game’s own achievement text, which several times over conditions on a set of four Memories: one record asks for four active Memories that can Stun, Root or Knockback, another for four active Memories whose cooldowns all run 6 seconds or longer. Essences socket into those casts. The store page adds the design intent without numbers: when different Travelers’ abilities and builds come together, combinations emerge that could never be created alone. No per-loop multiplier is published anywhere, so none is quantified here.

Cold Loops

Cetus is the documented Cold engine of v1.4: he accumulates Cold in his own blood to spend it on burst damage, and his Glaciers and Blizzard zones hold enemies inside that window. Permafrost is the defensive partner, and its v1.4 rework is the one to plan around, since stacking Shields into invulnerability is no longer a legal line and the Armor ceiling of 3 stacks now applies to each Permafrost Memory separately.

Fire Loops And Burn Stacks

Burn is the status Fire drives, and it is a stacking mechanic rather than an element: in the shipped data the Eternal Flame essence scales the damage of the Memory it is socketed into for every Burn stack on the target, and a Way of Stars node called Crimson Flame raises Burn damage by 30%. Any Traveler can lean on it, but the payoff arrives through Fire damage that applies the stacks, which is why Burn reads as a Fire build’s second meter rather than as a school of its own. The v1.4 reworks that matter for Mist here are the removal of Astrid’s Masterpiece - Priorité’s cooldown, and the change to its movement speed bonus from a flat 25% to 10% plus 5% per level, which turns uptime into the stat you level rather than the stat you happen to roll.

Light And Dark Loops

Light and Dark are the second inversion pair, and Light doubles as a conversion target: the 1.4 note fixes a bug where Essence of Shatter did not work correctly when elemental conversion effects such as Essence of the Abyss, Essence of Inversion and Inversion Sigil convert damage into Light damage. That same note records the Soulmate Memory not being treated as Light damage, which blocked the Twinkle Twinkle achievement, so the game clearly classifies Light on its own with achievement consequences. Cetus specializes purely in Cold and Ice zone control rather than the inversion system, so his dedicated loadouts are detailed separately in the Cetus Glacial Build Guide.

How Difficulty Changes What Drops

The store page states the game has four difficulty levels and that they, the boss encounters and the Lucid Dream modifiers demand different tactics and build choices with every run. It names none of the four, and it publishes no drop-rate or rarity weighting for them, so this section carries no claim about what climbing pays out.

Three of the level names are confirmed in v1.4 updates: the announcement’s Heroic-pattern section details Ominous Dream, Nightmare difficulty, and Limbo, while the Vivid Dream achievement requires entering the Pure White Dream on Nightmare difficulty.

The same band of difficulty elevates boss behavior: “World Bosses now use more challenging and powerful abilities in Ominous Dream, Nightmare difficulty and Limbo.” When progressing into these tiers, survivability Essences like Permafrost and evasion-resetting Memories take precedence over pure glass-cannon scaling.

What is Memory Haste? (Does it Affect Ultimates?)

One of the most frequent stat questions among Travelers is how Memory Haste scales and whether it impacts Ultimate abilities.

Cooldown Recovery Formula:

Memory Haste does not provide flat linear cooldown reduction (which would eventually break the game at 100%). Instead, it acts as a Cooldown Recovery Speed Multiplier:

$$\text{Effective Cooldown} = \frac{\text{Base Cooldown}}{1 + \frac{\text{Memory Haste}}{100}}$$

• At 50 Memory Haste: Abilities recover 50% faster, reducing a 10s cooldown to 6.67 seconds.
• At 100 Memory Haste: Abilities recover 100% faster, exactly halving the recharge time (a 10s cooldown becomes 5.0 seconds).

Does Memory Haste Affect Ultimates?

Yes, directly. Because Ultimate abilities operate on a charge-accumulation meter rather than a standard tick-down timer, Memory Haste increases your Ultimate gauge gain rate by the exact same percentage. With 100 Memory Haste, all combat actions and innate charge ticks build your Ultimate twice as fast, enabling devastating frequent casts in prolonged boss arenas.

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Room Events: Remnants of Destiny vs. Remnants of Luck

Introduced in the v1.2 “Luck and Destiny” content milestone, Remnant shrines appear as distinct room events when navigating The Rapids:

Remnant Shrine	Identifying Icon	In-Game Mechanic	Tactical Utility
Remnants of Luck	Golden Coin / Clover	Pay a scaling Gold fee to permanently add +1 choice slot to subsequent reward draft interfaces.	Best taken early in a run to widen drafting pools and find build enablers.
Remnants of Destiny	Three blue souls circling	Sacrifice the current Essence Quality of your equipped slots to reroll them into brand-new random Essences.	Crucial late-game salvage mechanic when drafted Essences fail to synergize with your core Memories.

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Obliteration: Banning Memories to Curate Drop Pools

As your profile unlocks dozens of Memories and Essences, the global loot pool dilutes significantly. Obliteration is the core roguelite mitigation system designed to combat RNG bloat.

• How it Works: Accessible before embarking on an expedition (and through specific room events), Obliteration permits players to select and ban unwanted Memories or Essences from appearing in reward drafts for that run.
• Synergy Strategy: By banishing conflicting elemental types (e.g., banning Fire and Dark cards when pursuing a Cetus Cold burst setup), you dramatically concentrate the probability of rolling high-tier synergies like Permafrost, Cold Affinity, and the new v1.4 Guiding Compass.