When the Soul Urn spawns, how melee picks it up, the deposit timers, the steal play and the runner's bounty, all quoted from official patch notes.
Deadlock When Does Urn Spawn? Soul Urn Rules
The Soul Urn first spawns at the 10:00 mark and returns every 5 minutes after that — 10, 15, 20, 25 and so on for the rest of the match. That schedule has survived every rework; what changed in 2026 is everything around it. Since Valve's June 30, 2026 patch the urn is its own objective: it spawns at one end of the map, you deliver it to the opposite end, the deposit is instant, and the runner is no longer revealed to the enemy team.
Official source: Minor Update - 06-30-2026, Valve on Steam News — "Urn running is now its own objective. Spawns on either end of the map (where the previous neutral pickup locations were), and gets delivered to the opposite end. Spawns at 10/15/20/25/etc."
When the Soul Urn Spawns
Three numbers cover the timer, and all three are official:
| Event | Timing | Source patch |
|---|---|---|
| First urn | 10:00 into the match | Restated in Gameplay Update - 05-22-2026 ("the first urn at 10:00") |
| Respawn interval | Every 5 minutes — 10/15/20/25/etc. | Minor Update - 06-30-2026 |
| Walking phase | 3 minutes after spawn, the urn starts walking slowly toward the deposit point on its own | Same June 30 patch |
Two community details from the deadlock.wiki Soul Urn page, not published by Valve: the urn alternates between the Yellow and Green lanes with the first one always in Yellow, and it descends from the sky for about 12.5 seconds before it can be picked up. Treat both as community documentation — the in-game announcement is the authority.
The 10:00 first spawn matters for planning: it lands in the same window as several other objectives, so a team that groups for the urn around minute 10 is usually giving up pressure elsewhere. Our Mid Boss and Rejuvenator page covers what else is live at that moment, and the lanes and Districts map has the end-of-map pickup zones.
How Melee Picks It Up
There is no channel and no interact key. The May 22 patch replaced the old stand-in-place channel: "To pickup the Urn, rather than standing in place to channel, you now light or heavy melee the Urn to pick it up." A light melee is enough; heavy works too. If you are used to the old pickup, this is the single change that kills the habit of walking up and pressing F.
What carrying looks like now, per the June 30 notes:
- You are not revealed. "Urn runner is no longer revealed and is not disarmed or silenced." You keep your weapons and abilities. Going through a doorway or a Mirage teleport still drops it.
- You cannot parry while carrying, and you cannot manually drop the urn.
- Melee, stuns and death force the drop. A light or heavy melee hit on the runner, a stun, or a kill makes them drop it — and it stays where it drops. It no longer walks back to its spawn position.
- Your passive bonuses scale with how far behind your team is, on the same 0%–15% net worth linear ramp as the Unstable Rift, instead of the old on/off toggle.
The July 9 tuning pass then moved those bonuses: move speed bonus cut from +3.5m to +2m, the flat sprint bonus to zero (still +5m when your team is trailing), and stamina recovery raised from +15% to +25%. An unfavored team's runner is now noticeably slippery; a leading team's runner is just a hero carrying a jar.
The Deposit: Instant Now, Timers Then
The description of this page promises deposit timers, so here is the honest history — because as of June 30, the deposit has no timer. "Urn is deposited immediately at the drop off point."
| Patch | Deposit rule |
|---|---|
| 05-22-2026 | "Depositing" phase of 3s / 5s / 10s for Favored / Neutral / Unfavored teams; the enemy could Heavy Melee the urn to claim it, adding +1.25s to their timer |
| 06-04-2026 | Replaced the flip-the-urn play with a king-of-the-hill capture point: 20m radius, fixed progress rate, 6/12/18s for favored/neutral/unfavored, and if progress ran past 75s the urn gave up and threw all its souls into the sky as orbs |
| 06-30-2026 | Deposit is instant on arrival; the capture point is gone |
Official source: Minor Update - 06-04-2026, Valve on Steam News — "Delivering the urn now starts a king of the hill style capture point, rather than using melee to flip the urn back and forth."
So if a guide tells you to heavy melee the urn during the deposit to steal it, that rule died on June 30. The steal play now happens on the road, not at the drop-off: hit the runner with melee, stun them, or kill them, and the urn is theirs to contest where it fell.
The Runner's Bounty, and Why Speed Pays
The June 30 numbers, all from the patch itself:
- 250 + 70/min — the urn runner's deposit bounty, growing with match time, plus the comeback bounty component that has always ridden along with the urn.
- All souls release as orbs into the air on deposit. If a teammate secures those orbs, they share the bounty with the runner — so arriving to a teammate's deposit is worth money, not just congratulations.
- The runner gets +4 permanent buffs on deposit, up from the old +3 Golden Idol package.
- The bounty decays while you carry it. Value starts draining 45 seconds after pickup, over another 45 seconds, and once empty the urn is removed from the map entirely.
That decay window is the real clock. The spawn timer tells you when the urn exists; the 45+45 decay tells you how long a stolen or stalled urn stays worth taking. A runner who detours for 90 seconds is delivering a fraction of the value, and a team that leaves a fumbled urn sitting for the same span may be better off returning to lane.
The comeback rules around the urn are unchanged in spirit: the urn enters a Favored/Unfavored comeback state once the soul difference crosses +15% on the first urn at 10:00 and +10% on every urn after, thresholds Valve restated on May 22 and has not touched since. In that state the favored side's area around the urn grants Bullet, Spirit and Debuff resistance — the aura was cut from 60m to the 20m objective radius in the June 4 patch, which now matches the old capture point.
Since May 22, after enough aggregate carry time the runner takes 5% max HP damage per second — "Urn damage is lethal." June 4 added 10 more seconds before that damage starts. Combined with the enemy knowing roughly where you must run and no reveal needed anymore, the correct read is that an open-street delivery into a set-up team is a coin flip. Use the routes and movement tech in our movement guide, and remember the enemy no longer needs the game to hand them your position.
Where those souls land for the rest of the team — the orb release, sharing, and what "unsecured" means when you die mid-carry — is the same economy as everywhere else on the map, covered in the souls economy guide. What the urn buys your team's overall standing connects to the Patron and objectives page, since the urn is now fully detached from the Unstable Rift event: the rift "no longer requires an Urn delivery to trigger the start of the event" as of June 30.
FAQ
Does the Soul Urn still get delivered to the middle bridge? No. The middle-bridge drop-off was a May 22 experiment; June 4 moved the drop-off above the side-lane bridges, and June 30 simplified it to the opposite end of the map from wherever the urn spawned.
What happens if nobody picks the urn up? It waits, then three minutes after spawning it starts walking slowly toward the deposit point by itself (June 30 patch). If it is carried but never delivered, its bounty decays starting at 45 seconds and the urn is removed once the value hits zero.
Can the enemy still steal a deposit with a heavy melee? Not anymore. The heavy-melee flip was part of the May 22 deposit-timer version and the June 4 capture point replaced it; the June 30 patch made deposits instant. Stealing now means dropping the runner with melee, a stun or a kill, then winning the urn where it falls.
How much is one urn delivery worth? The runner's cut is 250 + 70/min at deposit, plus the comeback component when your team is behind, plus +4 permanent buffs for the runner. Teammates who secure the orbs released at deposit share in the runner's bounty.
Does the Unstable Rift still need an urn delivery to start? No. Since June 30 the rift — the reworked King of the Hill — runs on its own variable timer and the urn is an independent objective. Neither one gates the other.
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