Shifting Sands Dev Log #3: Your Ship, Your Home — Your City in the Sky ①

Last time, we talked about Masks and the divine Guardians. By now, some of you have probably already started planning how you’re going to take down those giant beasts—good. Keep that energy going.

But at the end of the last log, I mentioned something else.

Something that becomes your home on the move in Shifting Sands.

Today, we’re finally going to talk about that home—your ship.

In Shifting Sands, a ship is not just a vehicle. It is everything you rely on to survive in this floating world.

If the fixed ground base in the base game of Soulmask was your safe haven, then in Shifting Sands, your home will travel with you into every breathtaking adventure ahead.

Sounds a little unbelievable?

Then let’s start from the beginning.

In Shifting Sands, ships are creations of the Sun God. Mortals have no way of understanding the principles behind anti-gravity engines and Sunstones. That knowledge vanished with the gods long ago, lost to time. To the people of this world, ships are nothing less than miracles.

But anti-gravity engines make the seemingly impossible real—floating cities in the sky, colossal fortresses bristling with weapons, upside-down airships, and suspended pyramid ruins. Everything you see in Shifting Sands stands as proof of how glorious this technology once was.

And you, as the owner of the Horus Mask, are born with the ability to build ships. The Mask’s knowledge grants you an instinctive understanding of anti-gravity itself.

Now, all that’s left for you to do is rebuild this Sun Ship.

Ships are one of the most ambitious gameplay systems we’ve built for Shifting Sands.

Let me put it simply: this is not just a ship.

It begins as an ordinary watercraft, then rolls onto land, and eventually rises into the sky—combining the functions of a vehicle, a home, a production line, and a powerful combat platform all in one. It is your single most important companion in Shifting Sands, and the center of almost everything you do in this world.

Just imagine the possibilities.

You can move all of your tribesmen and your entire production base onto the ship. While traveling across the desert sky, your assembly lines can keep running, and your crops can keep growing. This is not some tiny transport tool—it can become a true home for your entire tribe. Your people are no longer tied to one patch of land. Your home goes wherever you go.

Of course, every great undertaking starts from somewhere a little less glamorous.

You begin with a small boat. After falling into the world of Shifting Sands, you can borrow a modest wooden boat from the Exiles on this lonely island—complete with a few simple production facilities and some materials for expanding it.

*This is where your journey begins—a creaky little wooden tub.

Of course, if you want to build one from scratch, the required components for a ship are surprisingly simple: a ship base, plus a required control console—and just like that, you’ve got something that can sail on water.

Yes, it really is that simple.

We want every Chieftain to be able to start their own live-on-your-ship experience with as little friction as possible, instead of being locked out by layers of complicated setup.

That said, a bare ship base and a control console only make it functional—they don’t make it good.

Different ship parts let you fine-tune how your ship handles. Sails give you extra acceleration when the wind is on your side. A rudder improves steering and control. And sand skids—yes, really—let your ship travel across land. Customize your ship, and build your very first mobile home.

Once your tribe is stronger and you’ve armed yourself with better-quality bone weapons, it’ll be time to challenge Miremaw Crocodile. Remember Sobek’s avatar from the last dev log? After defeating it, you’ll obtain your first anti-gravity engine—the core component that transforms your ship completely.

From that moment on, everything changes.

As one of the most mysterious relics left behind by an ancient civilization, the anti-gravity engine is actually much easier to use than you might expect.

Install it at the stern, power it with anti-gravity energy crystals—you’ll find them in many dungeons and underground ruins—and your ship will fly.

And when you pull back on the controls for the very first time, watching the wooden ship that’s been with you for dozens of hours slowly lift away from the water, with the sand falling farther and farther beneath you and the whole world of Shifting Sands opening up before your eyes—

I promise, in that moment, it will feel like the world is your oyster.

In our design philosophy, flight adds an entirely new dimension to the ship system. Once you leave the ground, you’ll need to factor weight and energy consumption into every voyage. The more ship-mounted weapons you install, the more power your engines consume. The more cargo you load, the slower you’ll fly. And once you can craft anti-gravity engines yourself, different directional engine setups will lead to dramatically different flight experiences.

Which brings us to a core question: what kind of ship do you want to build?

Do you want a slow but massively weight-bearing material factory, with production lines that never stop while it drifts through the sky?

Or would you rather build a light, fast exploration ship, darting between desert canyons and floating islands?

Or maybe a super battleship built to provide massive weapon power, ready to rain fire on anything foolish enough to stand in your way?

Thankfully, you don’t have to choose—you can have all of them.

We support customizable limits for how many ships each player can own in-game, so if you want to build it, go build it.

And of course, your ship doesn’t just have to be useful—it can be beautiful, too.

You can decorate your castle in the sky with everything from furniture carried over from the base game of Soulmask to brand-new Egyptian-style building pieces.

The new Dye Ball system also lets you recolor your ship parts and make the whole vessel feel unmistakably yours.

After all, this is your own city in the sky.

Depending on your playstyle, different ships can end up feeling completely different from one another. The game offers three tiers of customizable ship bases: the early-game Small Wooden Boat, the mid-game Falcon-Class Airship, and the late-game oversized Ray-Class Flying Battleship.

From small and agile to enormous and imposing, each one serves a very different role.

The Small Wooden Boat is flexible and mobile, perfect for early exploration and fast relocation. The Falcon-Class Airship offers a larger deck, enough room for a more complete production line, and more crew. And the Ray-Class Flying Battleship... well, that one feels less like a ship and more like a city drifting through the sky

And through the Ship Linking System, you can even attach smaller ships to larger ones.

You could build a full-power assault fortress and a large industrial factory ship, attach them both to a giant mothership, then add multiple smaller shuttle craft on top of that. Each ship can have its own assigned crew and its own role to play—a flying fleet that belongs to you and you alone.

Just imagine it: your Ray-Class mothership cruising slowly through the upper skies, armed Falcon-Class escorts hanging from both sides, and light scout craft below, ready to launch at any moment.

At that point, this is no longer just a ship.

This is your city in the sky.

This is our linked-up fleet, by the way—and when everyone has their own opinions on color schemes... things get chaotic fast.

As your ships grow larger and larger, it’ll be time to recruit a few hardworking deckhands—I mean... crew members—to keep your city in the sky running.

So let Maggie introduce a few of the lovable tribesmen currently aboard my ship, just to give you an idea of how a crew can come together.

See these laborers here?

Their one job is simple: when the gangplank drops, they never stop scavenging plants and mineral resources from nearby islands and landmasses and hauling everything back to the ship. All you have to do is wait for them to fill the storage for you.

And this busy worker at the loom is an intermediate craftsman. He knows a little bit of everything, but doesn’t specialize in any one thing—so his job is to turn fiber and animal scraps into semi-finished materials like thread and cloth. Every powerful piece of equipment starts with humble materials like these.

Weapons and armor are handled by this weaponsmith here—she’s a barbarian artisan with maxed-out crafting proficiency, and she took me forever to find. She turns those semi-finished materials into all kinds of finely made armor and weapons for everyone aboard the ship.

As your ship and tribe continue to level up, technological progression will unlock even more crew roles: farmers, breeders, blacksmiths, dedicated hunting teams, and even turret operators who defend your home.

At that point, your ship is no longer just a ship—it becomes a self-sufficient tribe in the sky.

And all you really need to remember is one thing—

give them a seat, and let them move aboard your ship!

Because without a seat, your crew can’t truly settle in.

Honestly, what I talked about today is only the basic gameplay of ships, and it already filled an entire dev log. We still have so much more we want to show you.

In the next issue, we’ll talk about the ship weapon system, and the thrilling combat side of ship gameplay—where you’ll come face to face with the most terrifying boss of all: Death Sandstorm.

Bring your fully armed air fleet, and go meet the colossal beast that legend says destroyed an entire kingdom.

More importantly, we’ll also introduce the Blueprint system and the Mod community. The possibilities for ship customization and community-created content are incredibly exciting:

Want to try someone else’s ship? Want to share your proudest build with players around the world? Or maybe... do you want to create an entirely new set of ship parts from scratch?

We’ll have more on all of that next time.

I’m Maggie, and I’ll see you again the day after tomorrow!