Sands of Salzaar News

Update Log 4-20 (Spirit Witch is Arriving)

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!

[h3]Spirit Witch Coming to the Desert！[/h3]
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.

[h3]Pack Up Everything Nicely[/h3]
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.

[h3]No More Getting Lost[/h3]
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 [email protected].

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

[h3]2021-4-20 Codename: Battle of the Black Sun (0.8.3.1)[/h3]

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.

Update Log 2-23 (Siege System Balance)

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 [email protected].

[h3]2021-2-23 Codename: Battle of the Black Sun (0.8.2.2)[/h3]
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.

Update Log 2-5 (New Siege Mode, Profession Redo and More)

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 [email protected], 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:

[h3]2021-1-30 Codename: Battle of the Black Sun (0.8.2.1)[/h3]
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.

Upcoming Update 1-29 (New Siege System Preview)

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!

The best game you missed in January 2020: Sands Of Salzaar

As 2020 goes kicking and screaming into that good night, we’ve rounded up some of the best games from the year that we didn’t end up covering. Check the Best Game You Missed tag for more.

Good things, they say, come to those who wait. Like clichés in the first sentence of an article, this is often a load of toss, but a stopped clock is (“That’s enough of that, thanks.” – Ed).

Sands Of Salzaar leapt into Early Access this January, its huge success in China prompting promises of an English translation soon. But 2020 did a lot of things to the word “soon”, so we’ll forgive them for delaying that translation. Besides, it was worth the wait. Sands is a superb game that blends the hack and slash chaos of Dynasty Warriors with the open world RPG skirmishes of Mount & Blade.

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