Hi desert travellers!

We are releasing a bug fix patch following our April update. We located bugs by collecting feedback from the gaming community, and we appreciate your support just as always.



We resolved a list of bugs promptly with the help of you guys, such as fixing the issue of Herbalist quest in the Cotta Town, adding the original price of the product and the information of the specialty in the updated interfaces for players who enjoy running a business a lot, and more.



For more details, please read the patch note below. As usual, join our Discord or send us an email to indie@xd.com if you have further issues or feedback!




Bug Fixes

• Fixed the error where player was unable to complete the quest after handing in 5000 Utar to Ghodja;
  
• Fixed Ghodja’s route back home in the night time;
  
• Revised the text of the pop-up window after failing to persuade the fisherman in Agadir;
  
• Fixed the bug where the cost was unable to be viewed in the Item Details;
  
• Fixed the bug where the information of the specialty was unable to be viewed in the new Trading interface;
  
• Fixed the bug where a few certain models failed to act on the map. (e.g.: The quest of Gulzar, etc.);
  
• Fixed the visual bug of a few certain items in the inventory;
  
• Fixed the anomaly of using items after sorting in the inventory;
  
• Fixed the bug where players were unable to combat with Shaitan again once failed, along with the bug of quest navigation;

Adjustments

• Optimized the sorting function in the new inventory interface, players now could start sorting by one click on the sorting button, instead of by keep scrolling the window;
  
• Optimized the function of dragging items in the inventory, players now no longer need to drag by pressing and holding the button.

G’day our desert travelers!

Since the last update, we’ve kept hearing feedback from y’all, and devoted our efforts to adding new content and optimizing the gameplay experience. Now please meet our new character Spirit Witch, together with new quest lines about NPCs Mathali and Umara, the inventory sorting functions and more!

Spiritmancer is always ranking one of the player-favorite roles, and we’ve kept receiving the expectation for adding a female Spiritmancer in-game from the community. And now our new heroine Spirit Witch is available in-game! For this time, players will be the apprentice of Storm Archmage, and the story follows the adventures for becoming the most powerful and skilled Spiritmancer. In addition to her all-new skill pages and storylines, you can explore a series of new gameplay elements exclusive to this character!





By playing the role of Spirit Witch, you are able to randomly skip the combat with bandits by using her arcana, or, recruit them as your troop. Also, you could have fun with her skill of crafting various potions with items in your inventory at the later stage.



In addition to featuring the new character in-game, here come new quest lines of NPCs Mathali and Umara for you to explore.



Since we continuously received feedback that the sorting function in the inventory is highly expected among the players, by restructuring the inventory system and making lots of changes on the user interface, items now are sorted by types and much more clear to view items in your bag. And especially, we designed a storage area for travelers' food items.



In addition to having your bag better organized, we optimized the quest index as well. Travellers now are able to view and track the quests by clicking “L” as the default hotkey. The compass mark on the mini-map will help tell your current tracking quest with its location info.



And lastly, as our following roadmap, we will commit to achieving a major update including more character stories and side quests. We are also planning to work on enabling playing with controllers, optimization on the gameplay, more interaction with NPCs and other contents that are highly anticipated by you guys, and will share our future development plan with you promptly.

As always, you are welcome to report the in-game issues encountered or give any your suggestions for Sands of Salzaar, join us on Discord or contact us through indie@xd.com.



For more details of this update, please read the patch notes below:


New Additions

• Added the new character Spirit Witch with all-new skill pages, storylines, and a series of new gameplay elements.
  
• Added sidequests of NPCs Mathali and Umara.
  
• Added new portraits and models for Spirit Witch and Spiritmancer.
  
• Reworked skill pages of Berserker.
  
• Added a Repair button to the interface of locations. Click this button to enter the Repair interface. In this interface, you can repair all or a single gear by buying necessary materials and resources.
  
• Added a special food inventory system which expands the old inventory with an additional section specially used to store food items. Food items will be automatically moved to these food slots until filled. When trading or storing food items, players can drag and drop food items from the food slots to the normal inventory slots for further actions. When actions are completed, the rest of the food items will be automatically moved back to fill the food slots.
  
• Added the hotkey to open the Quest interface on the map.
  
• Added team BUFF for consuming certain food and adjusted food prices.
  
• Added models for several capitals in Redstone Keep and Crying Rock with three different tiers.

Adjustments

• Balanced cooldown values of consumables that could be used during combat.
  
• Fully adjusted the prices of gears and relevant resources for repairing gears.
  
• Adjusted durability of certain gears in-game and added more types of items sold in capitals.
  
• Now all those medicines for recovery can be bought in major cities.
  
• Reset the Inventory UI and trading UI with the new GUI framework, adding functions like categories to sort items in the Inventory.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed the missing collision layer of a rock in the east of Redstone Keep.
  
• Fixed a few errors in English translation.

Hi guys,

Happy New Year of the Ox!

Our dev team has been back to work after the holiday leave with another new update available now! This update 0.8.2.2 is to patch up the issues players encountered in the last major update and adjust the new siege system for a better gameplay experience for y’all.



Since the last content update, we’ve been receiving some feedback from players that the new siege system is too challenging due to factors like high damage dealt by defending towers and unbalanced numbers of respawn times between the defenders and the attackers. Therefore, we tweaked the damage values of the turret towers and siege weapons as well as limited the number of respawn times of the player and the NPCs on the defending side for a more balanced siege combat system.



In addition to this game patch, we are currently working on another content update, featuring a new character with dedicated storylines and more. Please also stay tuned!

For more details in this update, you could read the full patch notes below. As usual, if you have further issues or feedback, join our Discord server or send us an email to indie@xd.com.



New Addition:

• Added the feature of increasing damage to buildings for a few weapons.

Adjustment:

• Changed the effect of Strength Elixir to control resistance. Now it can temporarily make the player resistant to all control effects for 8s.
  
• Changed the number of times of resurrecting defending heroes to 5 times.
  
• Removed The stun effect of Turret Tower and reduced the damage of Explosive Arrow. At the same time, the attack power of Turret Tower is reduced by 20%.
  
• Hugely increased the damage of siege weapons to buildings and replaced the burning special effect of Ballista Fire Arrow.
  
• Adjusted the attribute value of characters controlled by the player in specific battles in accordance with the difficulty level of the game to avoid the situation that the enemies are too op to be defeated in the battle of high difficulty.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed the missing description of the skill "Call Heroic Soul" of the weapon Broken Sword - First Snow.
  
• Fixed the dialogue error of conversations with the siege weapon maker in the English version.
  
• Fixed the bug where the companions were unable to learn Ice Arcana level 3.
  
• Fixed the bug where Berserker Jump Cut could not trigger the Resilience effect.
  
• Fixed several textual errors in the English version.
  
• Fixed the bug where closing the equipment fixing window would directly skip the fixing for this time and start the monthly cooldown for the next time in the blacksmith quest in Fleur (and in other quest events that use this command).
  
• Fixed the bug in mods where the character's gender was locked as male when it should be female.

Greetings Travelers!
The new content update of Sands of Salzaar is finally here! Apologies for the delay in the planning to have this version released in Jan. However we believe you will find it is worth waiting.

After the last major update, in addition to regular bugfix and hotfix, we have devoted all our efforts to the reconstruction of the Siege Mode and the design of new professions. Right now, the new Siege Mode has been completed and goes live. We hope that this upgraded siege system will bring you more gameplay strategies and fun in the later stage of the game. As for the new profession, it will be officially released after March. Please also stay tuned!
As always, if you encounter any issue in-game, contact us through indie@xd.com, or join us on Discord.



New Siege Mode

In the new siege system, we have added infrastructures such as arrow towers and camps to the siege map. If you already own a land, you can build a “siege weapon” camp in the town. Different defensive towers can also be built, such as frost towers and scattering towers. Players can build different defensive towers depending on different regions their towns are located in.



At the same time, the entire siege warfare rules have been reconstructed: The offensive NPC or player will have 2 chances of resurrection, while the defensive NPC or player can have unlimited resurrection opportunities. In addition, the minions cannot be respawned in the new siege mode, which will challenge the player's strategies and game skills even more.



Profession Redo, Witchcraft for NPC

The skills of Hyena and Sentinel have been reworked, together with some new cool special effects added.



Also, in old versions, if an NPC with a high level has learned all its own skills, the extra skill points can only be wasted. However, this update has equipped arcana talent for every NPC, and now you can take NPC to learn witchcraft from those witchcraft masters in every town.



Units AI Upgrade, Automatic Combat for Encounters

As some of you reported that the siege units won’t attack the next stronghold after they’ve occupied one, we have upgraded the AI of these units to make them more flexible on the battlefield.



Also, when encountering combat in the desert, players can now choose either to lead troops to fight, or to fight automatically. Please note that the auto combat option can only be available when you turn on the new Real Injuries mode in the settings.



In addition to the above updates, we have also resolved a couple of issues that our English players are most concerned about, such as adding the skip dialogue option and enabling the player's camera to free-roam the map after the character is defeated. For details on more adjustments and bug fixes in-game, please check the full patch notes below:

New Additions:

• Added and replaced new siege modes and maps (if MOD authors want to use the new siege mode, they need to change the siege mode to "capture mode" in the corresponding siege war map settings to take effect), new rules linked with siege weapons, defense towers, barracks, warehouses and other buildings, and external town construction. In the new siege mode, heroes from both sides can be resurrected, but the resurrection time is extended, and each hero of the siege party has only two chances to resurrect.
  
• Added a new Real Injuries mode for our hardcore players. Now you can choose between the new and the old mode at the beginning of the game.
  
• Added auto-battle feature for encounters (note: the auto-battle option of encounters is only available when the new Real Injuries mode is turned on).
  
• Added an auto-skip button in the conversation interface (this function is only valid for continuous dialogue commands, and will automatically terminate when encountering non-dialogue commands).
  
• Added lots of new equipment icons.
  
• Adjusted stats of most equipment and added descriptions for them.
  
• Adjusted entry values ​​and descriptions, added some new entries. Most of the previous errors and descriptions of entries that were not displayed have been fixed.
  
• Reworked the Hyena skill page, balanced the values, and replaced Rocket Rain with SwitchBlade.
  
• Reworked the skill page of Sentinel, added a series of shield-type skills, and removed skills like Enlarge and Hook that do not match the character settings.
  
• Replaced the models of Hina and Nura.
  
• Added models for Batu, Princess Bellen, Fadia, Tasha.
  
• Added the definition of armor type.
  
• NPCs now have an arcana talent level, and they can be assigned to major arcana learning sites!
  
• The special effect position type in the BUFF table added the position type parameter for special effect positions of the left and right hand.
  
• Players can now choose whether to open the Land of Ifrit in a certain period of time at the beginning of the game (no need to complete the main storyline).
  
• Added a simple MOBA PVP multiplayer MOD under MOD samples (SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\DesertLegend\ModSamples\MultiplayerMod).
  
• Added two new points of interest related to siege weapons near Redstone Keep and Diresprings.
  
• Added a NPC with warehouse function and backpack expansion in the spawn point of Redstone Keep.
  
• Players can now join the AI camp and can be granted as a Sultan. The probability and quantity of grants are related to the relationship between the forces and the number of territories the player has obtained. The more territories obtained, the lower the probability of granting.

Adjustments:

• Adjusted the mana cost and damage values of some skills, nerfed some skills that were too overpowered, and buffed some skills that were too underpowered.
  
• Minor adjustment for the skill pages of some heroes.
  
• Increased the distance between the initial points of the two sides on several small battlefield maps.
  
• Adjusted the talent tree values.
  
• Adjusted monster types in some dungeons.
  
• You can now choose to retreat in a siege.
  
• Enabled free-roaming camera that allows players to observe the battlefield freely after death.
  
• Minor adjustments for the interaction value between weapons and armor.
  
• The dialog box of the leader will no longer pop up when wages are paid for working for factions.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed the problem where the AI automatic battle result judgment might be abnormal.
  
• Fixed the bug where the basic attack skill field of the specified character in the character configuration table failed abnormally.
  
• Fixed an issue where AI would not automatically attack the next stronghold during a siege.
  
• Fixed an issue where some sound effects played too many simultaneously.
  
• Removed the invalid reminder of "goods are hard to sell".
  
• Fixed the problem where bleeding did only 1 damage.
  
• Fixed the problem where Rusen’s conversation disappeared when the Rusen quest was completed.
  
• Fixed a bug where switching of non-weapon equipment during battle might not cause attribute changes.
  
• Fixed a bug where Legendary Blacksmith could not perform basic attacks.
  
• Fixed the bug where the basic attacks of harp, bow and sub-weapon were not considered as long-range attacks.

Hi, our desert travelers. A late happy new year to ya’ll! We are glad to share with you that there’s another major update upon us that will be live on Feb. 5th!



In this content update, we reworked the siege system, adding more elements of tactics to offer players a deeper gameplay experience on battlefields, so prepare yourselves and deploy your intelligence to occupy the next base!



As we know that siege plays an important role in the late game, our team has always been keeping an eye on feedback from you guys within our community about the siege mode. The rules of the new siege system are quite different from the old version and will pose a challenge to players regarding gameplay strategies. There will be all-new military structures for you to construct, including the ballista workshop to manufacture siege weapons. As players upgrade the workshop, those military structures on the siege map will be upgraded as well.



In addition, this update fixed a couple of issues that our English players are most concerned about, and more surprises will be revealed in the upcoming update announcement.

As always, if you encounter any issues in-game, please join us on our Discord server. We will be there listening to your advice and trying our best to offer support.

Stay tuned and see you next week!

Update 0.8.1.3 for Sands of Salzaar is now live! In this update, we are continuing to patch up issues for the November update, most notably the Bazaar not correctly showing up for some players.



We also slipped in a small QoL improvement by adding checkpoints to all regions of the world map, you can set one of them as a rally point, which will respawn your army after a defeat, so you don’t have to run across the map to retry a certain encounter.



There are also a few balance changes this update, you can read the full patch notes below. As usual, join our Discord or send us an email to indie@xd.com if you have further issues or feedback!

• Added checkpoints to all major regions on the map. Your army will rally at the nearest checkpoint after being defeated.

• Mana cost adjustment for Shaman's skill page, reduced power for some skills.
  
• Defense bonus for heavy armor troops increased to 12, up from 3.
  
• Reduced power of Nasir Ace Crossbowman.

• Bazaars now correctly spawn for some players.
  
• Berserker's Skull Bash now correctly gains bonuses from skills.
  
• You can now inspect enemies' army composition before going into battle.
  
• Fixed missing translations for certain UI interfaces.
  
• (Mod) Fixed an error in the custom trading interface when comparing items.
  
• (Mod) Custom item information interface now properly displays rich text.

We are releasing a small update for Sands of Salzaar today. This is part of our bug fixing process after each major update. You can read about the November major update here.

In this patch we are addressing the issues that emerged after the November update. A couple bugs related to dragons have been fixed, including Fire Wyverns not being able to be promoted.



The long standing glitch that troops can be added to the roster without sufficient resources has also been fixed (sorry farmers!). Neutral towns (that are not affiliated with any faction) can now be taken by the player.



The full patch note can be found below. If you encounter further issues or have any questions and feedback, join our Discord, or contact us through indie@xd.com.




New Additions

• Added staff as a new weapon type. Certain heroes now use staff as their weapons.
  
• Added mod function for inventory GUI reset.

Adjustments

• Players can now siege neutral towns.
  
• Adjusted basic attack for top tier dragons.
  
• Shaman now has casting animation after transforming into dragons.
  
• Modified terrain near Snow Caverns.
  
• You can no longer cancel the action after joining a friendly siege preparation.

Bugfixes

• Beastmaster and Shaman can now correctly trigger the story for Yaksha.
  
• Fixed an issue causing players not being able to recruit Tasha, Threnody and Omar.
  
• Fixed an issue causing Fire Wyverns losing the ability to be promoted.
  
• Fixed an issue causing Bladedancer's movement abilities to dash at longer distances than intended.
  
• Reviving after being knocked down when transformed no longer retains the transformation.
  
• Fixed an issue causing troops to continue being shown as added to the roster when the player actually doesn't have the resources required to recruit.
  
• Numerous English translation fixes.
  
• Added missing translations for some UI elements.

The first major update of Sands of Salzaar’s next stage of development is now here. But before that, we have some other news to share with you: Sands of Salzaar won the Best Game Award at the 2020 IndiePlay Awards! We are honored by our players’ support and feedback, and will continue to improve the game during Early Access and beyond.



Back to today’s update! In case you missed it, you can read about our update plan and roadmap for the next few months here.




In the November update, one of our biggest priorities is to address a very frequent feedback: the quests lack direction and are often too vague for their own good. To address this, we added a new quest guidance system. You can now either pinpoint a main quest objective on the map, or follow a compass to find your destination.



For players that wish to immerse themselves in the game world, there is an option for you as well. Tavern hostesses will have rumors for your mysterious quests, and the clues will expand over time, in case you need them for late steps.




Another major addition we’ve included in this update is the first of the major changes to the combat system. New battle scenario maps are added for better visual variety in combat. Troop AI behavior in battle has also been adjusted, in particular to cavalry units and ranged units, which will now attempt to fight with melee weapons when necessary, instead of constantly trying to run away, much to the annoyance of players. Finally, there is a major rebalance of troops, especially at the higher tiers.



Some of the combat changes were part of work previously slated for later, but we’ve decided to bring them forward. These are things we are constantly working on, and we’d love to hear your feedback on the changes. In addition, we are focusing on single player mode features at this time, so the multiplayer map expansion previously planned for this update has been moved to a later date.


Last but not the least, to further support the English speaking modding scene, we’ve further expanded English tool support by localizing table headers of the reference excel files, and made them easier to access. A couple of untranslated modding tools are also localized. This is another field we are still in active iteration process, so let us know your modding experience as well.

Speaking of mods, some modders in our community are also working on localizing their award winning mods of the second modding event, you can take a look at the winners here.

If you encounter any issue in-game, contact us through indie@xd.com, or join us on Discord!



The full patch notes are as below.


New Additions

• Brand new quest guidance system, with map coordinates and compass options.
  
• You can now ask for rumors at taverns for certain active quests. Options for the rumors will expand and change over time.
  
• 12 new battleground maps, which will spawn randomly depending on army composition and related environment.
  
• New combat moveset for sword, dagger, spear and staff.
  
• New animation set for dragons.
  
• AI and animation improvements for cavalry units.
  
• Added English headers for modding resource excel files and rearranged configuration tables.
  
• Teammate position indicator widget added to multiplayer mod.
  
• You can now set password for your multiplayer session.
  
• Added custom item slot feature to the mod editor. You can custom item slot and type name of any number, define slot exclusivity logic like differentiating between one and two handed weapons and more. Refer to GUI and LUA reference mod for more information.
  
• Added trade GUI reset function to the mod editor.

Adjustments

• Some persistent NPCs (Mysterious Witch and Haberdasher, for example) now show up in the town roster.
  
• Adjusted ranged unit AI and their movement behavior. Certain ranged troops will also attempt to fight with melee weapons when necessary.
  
• Removed the time limit of Bazaar.
  
• Adjusted combat roll animation.
  
• Updated Beastmaster’s dragon form model.
  
• Tasha, Threnody and Omar are now automatically assigned “in the wild” status once certain side quests are completed. You no longer need to use Legacy to bring them into the game.
  
• Significant troop stats and skill revamp. Certain high tier troops have also been redesigned, this include Dakn Elder, Dakn Priestess, Nasir Crossbowman, Nasir Healer and more.
  
• Adjusted the following skills: Wild Wolf Bite (Beastmaster), Beast Stampede (Beastmaster), Slam (Beastmaster), Lunging Chop (Berserker), Primal Dance (Berserker), Aftershock (Sentinel).
  
• Cooldown and mana cost adjustment for some skills.
  
• Most dungeon with chest rewards now change their battleground map accordingly.
  
• Added missing illustrations for certain quest NPCs.
  
• The multiplayer lobby now shows all available and in-progress multiplayer sessions. Players will also be returned to the session itself instead of the main menu after finishing or failing a multiplayer game.
  
• All mod configuration table files are now arranged in two languages, this includes file names and column titles.
  
• All open source configuration tables can now be found in "Example_ExcelReference" folder under game installation path. Mod developers no longer need to extract them from open source mods.

Dear desert travelers,

After sifting through a variety of high-quality entries for Sands of Salzaar’s Second Modding Event, we are excited to reveal today the list of cool mods selected by our official team! Before announcing the results, we’d like to thank all the participants. It was such a pleasure to explore everyone’s creations!

Compared to the First Modding Event in May, the second comp has inundated us with more diversity, more professional mods with higher technical requirements, more multiplayer maps, and even massive story overhauls that totally remake the game with all-new gameplay and storylines. Such progress not only comes from the constant technical updates on modding toolsets, but also owes a great deal to our passionate modders always dedicated to improving modding skills to realize the full potential of our humble indie.

So, without further ado, here comes the complete list of selected mods:

The Excellence Prize:

乌坦城之变 (The Wu Tan City Uprising)
Mod Author: skyswordkill



The whole multiplayer map based on the IP of the popular Chinese fiction Battle Through the Heavens is remade with an all-new GUI, leaving a strong first impression on players. The re-designed skill system consists of passive and active abilities to be ranked up. The gameplay is more of a stats-based RPG, with huge potential in future updates.

空界之传v2.0版 (Hollow Chronicles 2.0)
Mod Author: KK大魔王Acrab



Based on the Japanese novel series Sword Art Online, this mod includes two fictional characters with exclusive plots and quests, adds several new maps, and introduces skills like crafting equipment and items. The mod overall is very polished with frequent updates. Some newly-added dungeons are also well-designed.

The Merit Prize:

墨家传人正式版 (The Descendants of Mo)
Mod Author: M3小蘑菇



If you like game storytelling and martial arts, this is the mod you can’t miss. A new character The Descendants of Mo is added and the original storylines about Mohism will soon get you immersed in the game. We really look forward to seeing the ending of the story!

少女与弯刀 (Femme Salzaar)
Mod Author: HA会长



This campaign mod is the base mod for “The Weaker Sex”. These two mods feature an original female character, new female NPCs and a variety of female combat arms. The recent update remade characters’ portraits and added a slew of new storylines. Strongly recommended.

动态人物互动与势力交互大修 (Dynamic Character and Faction Interactions)
Mod Author: skyswordkill & 勃兰登堡



This mod expands the base game’s Favor system and interactions with NPCs and factions. Now you can have chit chat, practice fighting with other fellow characters, make confessions of love to your crush, trade cities with other factions, and even beg for goods.

数码宝贝 (Digimon)
Mod Author: 宇文kong



This mod adds a variety of Digimons as combat arms in-game which can be upgraded with different progression routes. The Digimon library is comprehensive with unique signature skills , and the models are so exquisitely-designed that sometimes cause frame drops in the troop upgrade interface.

• Horde and Tank
  
• Grant Instant death to your enemies-Kara No Kyoukai -The mystic eyes of death perception
  
• 情比金坚3.0 (Heart of Gold)
  
• “星”世界 (Starworld)
  
• 弯刀塔防肉搏 (Melee Tower Defense)
  
• 命运传承 (Fated Legacy)

• 神兽坐骑大礼包 (Bizarre Mounts)
  
• Summon Skills and 3 Passive Skills
  
• 双花之禧 (The Wedding of Roses)
  
• 更有用的商品 (More Useful Trade Goods)
  
• 新角色：剑侠 (New Character: Sword Master)
  
• 月饼【商人卖】(Mooncake)
  
• 北斗导航寻人系统 (Global NPC Positioning System)
  
• 部落暖暖 (The Wardrobe)
  
• 自动翻译器 (Auto Translator)
  
• 装备大师与炼器之心 (Craftmaster and The Heart of Craft)
  
• 潘多拉魔盒 (Pandora’s Box)
  
• 告别抽卡 (Troops, on Demand)
  
• 技能魔改篇 (Skill Enhancement)
  
• 每日获取玉石 (Daily Jades)
  
• 我有一个菜园 (My Own Garden)
  
• 一些功能 (Misc Features)
  
• 有我就够了 (All You Need)
  
• 旅行药剂商人 (Travelling Potion Vendor)
  
• 灵剑角色MOD (Spectral Blade)
  
• 渣男语录~约会表白羞羞交互mod (Dating and Confession)

Congrats again to all the authors who made these awesome mods above! You guys will receive our prizes in the following weeks. If you haven’t gotten in touch with us yet, no worries, we will contact you on Steam, or you can join our Discord or email us (indie@xindong.com) so that we can send you the prize.

We are glad to see there are English mods on the list. Given some coding issues in English modding toolsets, it is quite difficult for our English modders to get their creative juices flowing this time. To fix these problems, we are currently working on localizing all the Excels containing Chinese item IDs for modding. Besides, we will optimize English modding support in the next major update, which you can read about in our roadmap update blog, and more popular Workshop mods including the prize-winning mods in this comp will be localized into English for our English players to enjoy a variety of custom gaming experiences.

For Sands of Salzaar, mod not only substantially expands the original gaming experience with innovative custom content, but also helps us find out what players would like to see and change in this game. Therefore, in addition to improving modding support in future updates, we will continue to add new content to the base game, rebalance and optimize in-game systems in accordance with feedback from our Community. The desert world will keep evolving. Stay tuned for more!

Sincerely,
Sands of Salzaar’s Team

After the launch of Sands of Salzaar's latest major update “Battle of the Black Sun” which brought English localization and a slew of new content, now we are ready to reveal what’s coming up next in the development of Sands of Salzaar.




The current iteration of multiplayer in Sands of Salzaar is just a framework of what is possible, and for the next major update we want to address the issues discovered during this period and further polish the current content.

• New additions to the multiplayer framework and “Battle of the Black Sun” map

This includes refinements for the co-op map, and various multiplayer specific item/gear changes.

• Continuous development of mod tools and expanded support for English language mod tools

There will undoubtedly be increased demands on mod tool features and stability after the English launch and the multiplayer feature, this is something crucial for talented mod makers to unleash their creativity. We are also looking to optimize the support for English mod makers so no matter what language you choose to play in, you could always share the freedom of modding.

• Quest system improvements

We also want to address some of the most emergent pain points like the quest system and further refine quest content.

• Additional mod developer support for multiplayer
  
• More battleground map variations in singleplayer

We are targeting a 1-2 month development time for this update, the features listed above are more urgent, with additional challenges from the multiplayer.


One of the most frequent feedbacks we received is the lack of variety in siege battles, especially during endgame and repeated sieges. More siege command options, and unit pathing are also we are specifically working on to fix and improve.

• Siege battle improvements

The current siege battle design is not interesting enough, the lack of AI challenge makes endgame a bit on the tedious side of things. A revamp to siege battles would significantly increase the quality of battle experience throughout the game.

• A new starting class

I mean, who doesn’t like new playable characters? Although we’d love to keep the details on this in wraps for now. Plus, we are also making improvements to other classes and tuning the overall balance.

• PvP multiplayer map sample.

After the previous additions to the multiplayer framework and Battle of the Black Sun co-op map, we are planning to add a simple competitive multiplayer map as a sample.

• Existing classes optimizations
  
• Existing troop balancing
  
• Troop AI improvements

For this kind of open world game, nuances in character interaction is a very interesting aspect. To achieve what we want from the system, a few major changes must be made, including a redesign of favor/reputation system, more character side stories and more variety in NPC actions.

• Nuanced character relationships

We envision Sands of Salzaar to be leaning towards the RPG side of a game, and we want it to feel like a proper one. The depth, characteristics, and the resulting possibilities in their interactions are what make every playthrough unique and interesting, and we want the players to have the desire to understand the world, the people and their backstories.

• More faction activities

Factions within the story will become more active in their trading, plundering and under table dealings. They will be much smarter when it comes to decisions, which leads to many more uncertainties and possibilities. You might want to change how you approach that certain Sultan a little, or a lot.

• More character side stories
  
• Controller support

This is a very important feature for us, and is something necessary for Sands of Salzaar to expand to other platforms like the Nintendo Switch. It’s relatively simple to support controllers for combat, but a total UI overhaul is necessary for full controller support, so this is something we are doing a bit later into development.


That’s what we have today for the next chapter in the world of Sands of Salzaar. We will also continue to update the game, fixing bugs and adding key features during this stage of development.

We are truly humbled by the tremendous amount of support since our last major release, and all the constructive feedback is incredibly valuable for us to determine what to do next for the game. We hope you like our showings here, and see you in the desert!