Sands Of Salzaar Tips And Tricks

Sands of Salzaar is a vast adventure and one that’s not always happy to tell you how it works. Progress is always a juggling act, balancing combat with relationships, uncovering the desert’s mysteries, and refining your skills. It’s a lot to contend with, so we’ve put together a few handy Sands of Salzaar tips and tricks to help get you started and make life just a bit easier.

Sands of Salzaar tips and tricks

These are mostly designed for newcomers and cover topics ranging from Sands of Salzaar’s slightly confusing difficulty settings to how you should spend your money and more.

Be your own hero

Sands of Salzaar gives you roughly a dozen heroes to choose from when you start out and one recommended for newcomers, the Necromancer. It’s an easy class to get used to, with minimal social penalties, but you’re fine to pick another one if it interests you. In fact, if you don’t fancy the idea of slow combat and ranged spells for several levels, you should probably pick a more melee-oriented hero. The Necromancer is a bit unwieldy in combat for a while.

Just make sure to cover your weaknesses in combat by recruiting the right heroes. Your starting companion – assuming you have one – will likely compensate for your shortcomings, In general, though, you’ll want to find a ranged hero if you’re a melee fighter or a brawler if you’re a ranged hero.

Don’t die

For your first playthrough, and maybe even your second, do yourself a favour and turn permanent death and grievous injuries off. Unlike other games with permadeath, it’s much harder to keep everyone alive in Sands of Salazaar, which means you just end up frustrated. Permanent death is, obviously, a bad thing, but entering battle with an army of mangled heroes is just as problematic.

Be nice, make friends

Sure, you could wage war against all the desert’s tribes. You might not die forever if you follow the previous piece of advice, but you won’t be doing yourself much favour in the long run. Earning their favour instead opens new potential quests and the opportunity for some handy rewards, not to mention a chance at recruiting new heroes to your team.

Always ask if there’s anything you can do for the other person to see if they have any quests for you. “Give a gift” lets you know what items they’ll receive, though you probably won’t have anything of much interest for a while. Better relationships means more help in combat, so it’s worth tending to your followers.

It’s also worth noting your followers will judge you. If you’re challenged to a fight and back down, for example, or make choices they believe are wrong, it’ll harm your relationships with them. You can’t please everyone all the time, but it’s still good to consider.

Except with those guys

The exceptions are the bandit squads you’ll find roaming the map, or more accurately, the ones that find you roaming the map. If you manage to defeat them several times, they’ll eventually stop chasing you. You can choose to fight them or just let them go from then on, which means no more detours just to avoid enemy encounters.

Do the Character Quests first

Or at least just don’t ignore them. You’ll unlock the first part of your character quest before the main narrative questline comes up, and there’s a good reason for that. While you can ignore it and focus on resource gathering or following the main story, Sands of Salzaar’s more interesting plot points are in its characters. You’ll get a nuanced view of the world completing these quests alongside the main scenario tasks. It’s also a solid way of levelling up and recruiting new heroes to deal with challenges the plot throws at you.

Temporary is cheaper than forever

Until you have plenty of spare cash, just buy the temporary trading permits at each trading post you visit. You’re moving around the map so frequently that buying more than one permanent permit is unfeasible, if not impossible.

Listen to the game, for it is wise

Sands of Salzaar tells you what level you should be at before exploring a monster den, dungeon, or any other trial area, and it tends to be a bit too generous. In theory, you can take down a wolf den at level three with two party members. In practice, no you can’t. Aim at least two levels higher than what you’re being told, and you should make it out relatively unscathed.

Travel, but without the effort

If you’re not sure where to go or how to get there, open your map. You can scroll out to the full view to see every area name tag if you need to. Click on the settlement you want to visit, and choose “Move There” to automatically start walking toward the destination. The AI won’t try to escape from enemies, but it’s a convenient way to move around if you’re tired of clicking or can’t figure out how to get there.

That’s it for our Sands of Salzaar tips and tricks. Good luck, and have fun!