Sands of Salzaar Early Access Update 0.8.0.5 is now live! In addition to what’s included in the update preview, we added a couple more fixes in this update, you can check out the full patch note below.

And just a reminder that our second modding event is still ongoing, which you can read about here. Feel free to contact us on Discord for any modding related questions as well!



You can find a list of known major issues and potential workarounds here.

If you encounter further problems, please join us on our Discord server and let us know in the bug report channel, this is the fastest way to get feedback directly to us, so we highly encourage you to do so!




Additions

• Added a sample humanoid animation set to ModSamples, this includes animation attributes such as how it should react when on a mount, for modding references.

Bugfixes

• Difficulty multipliers now scale AI unit strength correctly.
  
• When inspecting other parties in the world, clicking to inspect party members now correctly closes previous windows.
  
• Typing M when customizing map markers no longer closes the window.
  
• Fixed an issue causing the game to soft lock when persuading NPCs to defect when the player has a full party.
  
• Fixed an issue causing the game to soft lock when displaying messenger dialogue (such as after a weekly faction payout).
  
• A number of item attribute display fixes.
  
• Radiant Staff now properly has an attack visual effect.
  
• Correctly formatted item affix display in English version of the game.
  
• Various UI and text fixes.
  
• Fixed an issue causing the shop to only refresh on hosts in multiplayer.

Adjustments

• Rebalanced how legacy points are earned. You can now gain 20 legacy from the final boss on difficulty 0.
  
• Some gift items are labeled Special Items.
  
• Added an error tolerance mechanic to the dialogue system. Incorrect game logic IDs now trigger error notifications and UI issues, but will no longer soft lock the game.

Hi everyone! We recently launched our second modding event which you can read about here. To better support the modding community and encourage your creativity, in our next update we will be releasing a new set of mod samples which includes reference points on character animation.

The way legacy points are calculated is also getting adjustments in this update, you will be able to gain legacy points when finishing the story mode on difficulty 0.



In addition, we are pushing a small update later today, fixing an issue causing the game to incorrectly launch in Chinese instead of English.

You can find a list of known major issues and potential workarounds here.

As always, if you encounter any further problem, please join us on our Discord server and let us know, this is the fastest way to get feedback directly to us, so we highly encourage you to do so!



Read the patch notes for this update below:


Preliminary, may include additional changes once the update goes live.

Additions

• Added a sample humanoid animation set to ModSamples, this includes animation attributes such as how it should react when on a mount, for modding references.

Bugfixes

• When inspecting other parties in the world, clicking to inspect party members now correctly closes previous windows.
  
• Typing M when customizing map markers no longer closes the window.
  
• Fixed an issue causing the game to soft lock when persuading NPCs to defect when the player has a full party.
  
• Fixed an issue causing the game to soft lock when displaying messenger dialogue (such as after a weekly faction payout).
  
• A number of item attribute display fixes.
  
• Radiant Staff now properly has an attack visual effect.
  
• Correctly formatted item affix display in English version of the game.

Adjustments

• Changed how legacy points are earned. You can now gain 20 legacy from the final boss on difficulty 0.
  
• Some gift items are labeled Special Items.

The newest update for Sands of Salzaar is now live! This update introduces a major redesign of the town infiltration mechanic, addresses difficulty option related issues introduced by our last update, and contains a number of main story bugfixes, you can read the patch notes further down below.

You can also find a list of known major issues and potential workarounds here.

As always, if you encounter any issue, please join us on our Discord server and let us know, this is the fastest way to get feedback directly to us, so we highly encourage you to do so!




Additions

• Redesigned town infiltration mechanics. You can now try to sneak in during day time, but with much lower success rate. Your chance of success is tied to your party size, the more people you try to sneak in with, the less likely you'll succeed. A failed infiltration will trigger a small scale skirmish with guards, defeat them to continue your infiltration.
  
• Added 4 new urban battle environments.

Bugfixes

• The Sultan can now properly upgrade the Sawmill.
  
• Pre 0.8.0.3 saves (before we changed the prerequisite for the difficulty select function) now automatically adds 1 difficulty level a shortwhile after loading.
  
• Fixed an issue causing The Nameless's Arcane Portal to be able to access the Ifrit town earlier than intended.
  
• Fixed an issue preventing players from talking to Husnu after helping the Nasir defeat all other tribes.
  
• Fixed a rare issue preventing players from progressing the main story after defeating all five tribes.
  
• Fixed an issue causing certain skills to become unlearnable in the Book of Fire quest.
  
• Players can now talk to the Ifrit mother again after interacting with the fruit first.
  
• The Ifrit towns now have more building variety other than Caster Watchtowers.

Adjustments

• (Multiplayer) Improved bare handed attack speed and adjusted attack range.
  
• (Multiplayer) Improved attack speed for sword, knife, spear, hammer and boardsword weapons. Adjusted their attack range and added new visual effect.
  
• (Multiplayer) Improved attack speed for bow and sub weapons.
  
• You can now pay the Sultan of a tribe that has you wanted to call off the contract without needing to talk to the leader.
  
• Chaka of Limestone Village now has a specialty gift item.

We are releasing another update soon, this update addresses difficulty option related issues introduced by our last update, and a number of main story bugfixes, you can read the patch notes below.

You can also find a list of known major issues and potential workarounds here.

As always, if you encounter any issue, please join us on our Discord server and let us know, this is the fastest way to get feedback directly to us, so we highly encourage you to do so!




Preliminary, may include additional changes once the update goes live.

Bugfixes

• The Sultan can now properly upgrade the Sawmill.
  
• Pre 0.8.0.3 saves (before we changed the prerequisite for the difficulty select function) now automatically adds 1 difficulty level a shortwhile after loading.
  
• Fixed an issue causing The Nameless's Arcane Portal to be able to access the Ifrit town earlier than intended.
  
• Fixed an issue preventing players from talking to Husnu after helping the Nasir defeat all other tribes.
  
• Fixed a rare issue preventing players from progressing the main story after defeating all five tribes.
  
• Fixed an issue causing certain skills to become unlearnable in the Book of Fire quest.
  
• Players can now talk to the Ifrit mother again after interacting with the fruit first.
  
• The Ifrit towns now have more building variety other than Caster Watchtowers.

Adjustments

• Pressing F5 (default quick save hotkey) now automatically saves the game to the autosave slot without having to click the save game dialogue.
  
• Improved bare handed attack speed and adjusted attack range.
  
• Improved attack speed for sword, knife, spear, hammer and boardsword weapons. Adjusted their attack range.

Dear desert travelers,

Since the launch of the English localization edition, we’ve been receiving lots of attention, kind support, and feedback from our players worldwide, among which we notice that many of you are asking about the English mod support.

Currently, the English Mod Editor is still under testing but fully open to our modders. Our devs are working on fine-tuning English modding tools and updating the mod developer manual. In the meantime, we hope to encourage our players to take a shot at creating some English mods, which will help the devs better troubleshoot potential modding problems as well as bring new energy to our global modding community.



During the first Sands of Salzaar Modding Event in May, our incredible modders fully unleashed their power of creativity and imagination, developing a variety of inspiring mods. This time, we decided to open the second Special Modding Event to players worldwide, encouraging our English players to get started on mod development as well. Here are the general event rules:

• The Modding Event is open from Sept. 26th to Oct. 18th to players worldwide.
  
• All Event mods need to be uploaded to Steam Workshop.
  
• For English mods, modders need to tag their Event mods with “[Mod Event]” at the beginning of their mod names, e.g. “[Mod Event] Medieval map”.
  
• We will select some best mods among the entries and offer their modders special prizes, including one First Prize worth $1100, two Second Prize worth $740 each, three Third Prize worth $370 each, and 10 Participation Prize worth $70 each.

To help English modders understand how to use the Mod Editor, the devs have prepared a full documentation of English mod development in the official wiki and will keep updating the manual with instructional videos in the future. If you encounter any problems when creating English mods, please join us on our Discord and our team will be there ready to answer any questions and help solve your modding issues.

There are already hundreds of mods available in Steam Workshop, featuring custom maps, new characters, themes, perks and more. To provide English players with a more diverse gaming experience, some of our modders have uploaded their localized mods to Workshop. If you wanna subscribe to these mods, go to the Workshop in-game and select “English Localized Mods” in the drop-down menu at the upper-left corner of the screen to browse the list.



Please note that these mods may contain some untranslated parts and bugs, but the modders in our community are willing to listen to your feedback and optimize their work. There will be more translated mods coming in the future. If you want to see your favorite mod or a particular type of mods to be localized, leave your comments below or in our Discord!

Hi everyone! Since Sands of Salzaar’s latest content update that brought the game to English players, we have been receiving countless great feedback and kind words. Everyone on the dev team is thrilled to deliver the game to a new audience, and we thank you for all the support!

We are actively going through all the feedback and bug reports to address the issues as soon as possible with daily updates. Yesterday we released patch 0.8.0.2 to fix some urgent issues like ultrawide users not being able to start a new game and missing final boss model. Today we will be releasing another update, you can read the patch notes below.

As always, if you encounter any issue, please join us on our Discord server and let us know, this is the fastest way to get feedback directly to us, so we highly encourage you to do so!




Bugfixes

• A small number of players may encounter issues when playing the in-game cinematics, causing crashes at game start or the ending cinematic. We've re-encoded the cinematics and added a detection mechanism. If you encounter this issue, please try again, the game will automatically detect the previous error and offer a skip option to avoid this.
  
• You can now properly select higher difficulty after completing the main story once.
  
• Non-host players can properly spawn enemies after interacting with certain mechanics in multiplayer.
  
• Made an attempt to address AI enemy units moving out of bounds in battle, causing players to not be able to defeat them.
  
• Certain abilities now properly break invisibility after use.
  
• Fixed an issue causing repaired items to still show as broken.
  
• Random quests that require defeating certain heroes can now be properly completed.
  
• Some open world map collision fixes.
  
• Various translation and text fixes.
  
• You can now talk to the female Ifrit to skip being stuck in the wrong map for the quest "Rivers and Goddesses".
  
• Fixed a map collision issue around the Jade Stone chest in one of the Ifrit camps.
  
• Fixed an issue causing players to trigger the battle with Olum twice if clicked too quickly.
  
• Fixed an issue causing certain swappable abilities to not function properly when changing maps in multiplayer.
  
• Fixed some UI issues caused by certain buffs in multiplayer.
  
• You can now properly continue the conversation if you choose to keep Ox's secret in Jihan's quest.
  
• The quest log will now correctly reset after Beastmaster/Shaman completes the story quest of Husnu.

Adjustments

• Added a ritual marking to the entrance of Knight-Errant's main story dungeon.
  
• Deserters now spawn in smaller areas for deserter hunt quests.
  
• Added items scattered on the map for "Rivers and Goddesses" level.
  
• Dyed Shawl and Mastigure Knight Emblem now have a durability of 50.
  
• Geometry and collision fixes for multiplayer map B.
  
• Reduced cast time for Swordcraft: Arc Swing, Aftershock, Archery: Barrage, Archery: Cloudpierce, Archery: Icy Barrage, Archery: Fireblast, Archery: Firehail and Archery: Icehail.
  
• Adjusted attack range for Duress, Swordcraft: Arc Swing, Aftershock and Ancient Machina: Boomerang.
  
• Redesigned Swordcraft: Flash.
  
• Increased attack speed for these weapons in multiplayer: Fireball Wand, Frost Wand, Radiant Wand, Ultimate Staff, Ultimate Wand, Death Wand and Bone Staff.
  
• Reduced cast time for these skills in multiplayer: Bubble Trouble and Earth's Refuge.

Optimizations

• Pressing the map hotkey in battle now closes the map.
  
• Added a more distinctive indicator for the player character in battle maps.

Since the Early Access launch, we have been constantly adding new features, new content and all kinds of fixes to Sands of Salzaar to improve the player experience. Today, the newest chapter in the desert saga begins!


The Battle of the Black Sun Update launches on Steam at 9am PST, September 22nd, bringing the highly anticipated English localization to the game, along with a wide range of new content, optimizations, and a best-ever discount of 40% until Oct. 6!

We have also released the original soundtrack for our game, available below:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1416310/Sands_of_Salzaar_Soundtrack/

You can join the discussion of Sands of Salzaar by following us on Twitter, and hang out with like-minded players in our official Discord server.


Sands of Salzaar is now officially out in English! Over 500 thousand words worth of content have been fully translated into English for players from all over the world to enjoy!

Main Story
The main story of Sands of Salzaar receives significant additions in this update, with 60 thousand words of new content that further progresses and fleshes out the story. The secrets behind Ilayda and The Ifrit will be there for you to discover...

The five factions now have more significant roles to play. New battle additions also further tie up the gameplay element with the narrative.

The Ifrit’s Domain
Ifrit Void Master returns to his crusade against humanity with his eight henchmen and ten fortresses. The barrier imposed by the River Goddess eons ago has been broken, revealing the Ifrit Domain and connecting it to the desert.

Will you continue to uphold your guard for humanity, or will you create a new world order with The Ifrit?


New Side Quests
Side quests involving Olum and Book of Fire are added. New mysteries are also unearthed alongside The Ifrit’s conspiracies, waiting for the most steely-eyed adventurers to discover and challenge. Beware, your choice might make them unnecessarily complicated…

In this update, we also introduced multiplayer for the first time to Sands of Salzaar. We provided an official campaign called “Battle of the Black Sun” as a demonstration.


In Battle of the Black Sun, you can play alongside up to 3 other players (4 total), select from 10 characters with 5 different archetypes to begin an adventure. Gain levels and skill points by completing combat challenges, learn increasingly powerful skills, loot and purchase gear with different powers, explore the world and unearth mysteries with your friends.

The Multiplayer Arena feature is highly experimental, the current iteration is meant to be an example for MOD developers, showcasing the possibilities. There will be some issues including crashes and instabilities. We will be constantly monitoring how this feature performs, making changes and adding new content to fully flesh out this experience.

This feature is also fully MOD compatible. MOD creators can design their own characters, skills, items and level designs, upload them to the Steam Workshop to share them with the community.


Our commitment to the modding community also expands to the global audience with the English update. The in-game MOD editor is fully translated, and we have localized our full MOD development documentation which you can check out here.

The ability to create multi-language MODs is also added in this update, this feature is currently still under development, we will continue to improve the tools for modders around the world to fully unleash their creative muscle.

A number of popular MODs have been translated into English, so you will be able to enhance your experience from the get go.


For a detailed rundown of additions and changes in this update, read out full release note below:

New Additions:

• Sands of Salzaar is now in English!
  
• Added an experimental Multiplayer Arena mode, with an official multiplayer map: Battle of the Black Sun, which supports a maximum of 4 players.
  
• In this official co-op map, there are 10 characters with 5 archetypes, 88 learnable skills, and 100+ items in the shop. We will keep optimizing the map and add new content to the mode.
  
• Added new storylines worth about 60k words, which replaces the original storyline (you can still use the old saves to play old storylines).
  
• Several main story boss fights and some small-scale systems.
  
• Several sidequests that may spawn as the main storylines unfold.
  
• Added a new side quest related to Book of Fire, with a new skill page and boss fight.
  
• New map: Ifrit Domain, and new Ifrit faction which will be revealed as you continue your main story progression.
  
• Added several new random quests.
  
• Several new heroes have been added to factions, starting as their Sultans.
  
• Secondary outposts have been redesigned, they can now station troops, can be occupied, and can build a limited amount of buildings.
  
• Strategic AI logic has been rewritten. Now AI factions will spontaneously form army groups for offensives and can intelligently select targets to lay siege upon.
  
• Redesigned underlying logic of diplomatic strategies. Al factions can now form alliances and build relationships.
  
• Added a series of staff weapons that scatter around the desert map.
  
• Added some new character models and illustrations.

Gameplay Adjustments:

• A balance pass on soldier recruitment fees.
  
• Some specialties can no longer be given as gifts.
  
• Rebalanced loot from certain monsters and dungeons.

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue where specialties could not respawn in some traveling merchants’ inventories.
  
• Fixed an issue where Bounty Hunters are not able to complete their main storyline dungeon.
  
• Fixed an issue that prevents Sultan from upgrading the Jade Mine.
  
• Fixed an issue where NPC could not obtain mounts.

This update is a very important one for Sands of Salzaar as it opens up the game to a brand new audience. We hope you enjoy our additions and features, and thank you very much for the continuous support.

We would also like to shoutout our passionate beta testers on our official Discord server who helped us polish and improve the update in the past several weeks: Thank you, from the deepest of our hearts.

That’s all from us today, we’ll see you in the desert!

Hey all,

We are very excited to announce that our English language launch date is confirmed! You will be able to play the English version on September 22, alongside a rich variety of new content!

Since the Early Access launch on Jan. 3 this year, our game has seen a series of major updates adding new characters, crossover events, side quests and modding functions, while this time's update will be even more unprecedented:



RICH NARRATIVE
The upcoming English version will feature a full translation of nearly 500,000 words, together with new story content including 30 new quests. The game tells a desert epic tale in the Orient where the Old Empire has fallen amid the Battle of the Black Sun, leaving five warring tribes fighting over territories and treasures, while greater disasters are awaiting…



OPEN DESERT WORLD
Alongside the main storyline, you roam around the huge map and explore six vast regions of distinct landscapes, you can plot your own rise from a nobody to a powerful warlord, a knight-errant, a notorious bandit, or a shrewd merchant...In our English update, multiple in-game values will be adjusted to optimize the mid/late open-world gaming experience.



BATTLE & STRATEGY
Sands of Salzaar features both large-scale wars and skirmishes. In top-down real-time combat, you fight hostile forces, besiege their bases, explore perilous dungeons for loots and hunt wild beasts. You can recruit and upgrade your basic combat arms into elite troops, customize your hero’s skill trees, and deploy your armies to slay the foes!



HIGH REPLAYABILITY
With each playthrough, you become stronger and discover different questlines, using Legacy points to unlock bonus characters, abilities, and rare items. Every time you play, a new adventure unfolds.



FULL MODDING SUPPORT
Our game includes full mod support via Steam Workshop, with hundreds of mods adding a variety of in-game perks, new characters, and custom maps. The mod editor will soon support multiplayer as well with official example maps allowing you to embark on the battlefield with your pals.

Also, our English beta test is now underway. Don’t miss out. Come join us on our Discord (https://discord.gg/q5r9PEy) to apply for the playtest!

Cheers,
Sand of Salzaar’s team

Hi guys,

Our official Discord server is open now! We’ve brewed a pot of tea waiting for all desert travelers to come by and have a nice stay. So beat the dust and sands off your clothes after the long journey and come visit our desert inn. Feel free to say hi and leave some emotes to greet your fellow travelers!



On the Discord server, we will be offering a bunch of players opportunities to test the beta version of the localized game. You will have a chance to get involved in the playtest, discuss your freshest gaming experience in the channels, and report any in-game issues to help improve the localized version.

Also, in the general channel, you will not only stay up to date with the freshest game news and events, but also be able to freely chat with other players. The mods channel will provide you with the latest updates on the mod editor’s ever-expanding functions and allow mod authors to share your fantastic mods with each other. If you encounter any issues when playing the game, our members of the team are here in the support channel to receive your bug reports and suggestions as well as help you solve the issues...So don’t hesitate. Join us and have fun!
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Follow us on:
Our Official Twitter: https://twitter.com/SSalzaar
Our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/q5r9PEy

And don’t forget to follow the game on our Steam store page and add to your wishlist to keep yourself in the loop on our latest game news and special offers!

Hey guys,

Steam Summer Sale is approaching. Sand’s of Salzzar will be having a 20% discount from June 25 at 10:00 am PDT to July 9 at 10:00 am PDT. Also, in this post, I’d like to share our recent progress on the localization project and our upcoming Discord channel.

We are still working on our localization project. The current total translation amount is about 324,000 Chinese words including intricate storyline, rare item and skill names as well as various exotic toponyms. Additionally, a 60,000-word new storyline will be added to the English version later. As our devs are continuously adding new content to the original game, our translation amount is also ever-growing.

Such a huge translation amount poses a real challenge to an indie game studio like us. We need to allocate enough time and manpower to localize the game with the goal of offering a compelling gaming experience as same as the original version to English players. Therefore, it takes months for us to finish the project.

In the past few months, when we constantly got questions from you guys about the English launch date, we had mixed feelings about that: we were really grateful for all your interest in our game, while we also felt quite sorry to keep you waiting. However, you won’t be waiting long from now. We will dedicate ourselves to bringing out a high-quality localized version expected to launch around this summer.

Another news is that we are currently preparing for our official Discord server! Please follow the game on our Steam store page and add to your wishlist to get notified in the first place when the Discord server is open.

On the Discord channel for Sands of Salzaar, we will constantly provide you guys with exciting game news and fresh updates. Also, when the English translation is done, we will select a bunch of players on our Discord channel for the beta test of the English version.

Therefore, you will have the chance to obtain a free key, test the localized version in advance, share your gameplay experience with other English players, and report any potential issues directly to our team on Discord to get prompt feedback and help us refine the game!

That’s all for the update! As the localization project progresses, we will reveal more details about our English version, so please stay tuned and prepare for your fantastical journey into the desert!

Sincerely,
Sands of Salzaar’s team