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.
Update Highlights
Now in English!
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!
The Desert Legend continues
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…
Multiplayer
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.
English MOD support
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.
And Much More...
For a detailed rundown of additions and changes in this update, read out full release note below:
Sands of Salzaar Early Access Patch 0.8.0.1 (Codename: Battle of the Black Sun)
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.
Final Words
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!