Shifting Sands Dev Log #4: Ship Combat, Blueprints, Mods... and More

Two days ago, we went deep on the core idea behind living on your ship—from your very first little wooden boat, to a flying city with a full production line and specialized crew, and even massive fleets linked together into one airborne force.

At the end, I left you with a few teasers:

weapons, community content, and Death Sandstorm.

Well, two days later, I’m finally here to deliver.

If the last dev log was about the ship as your home, then this one is about its deadliest side—and its almost limitless potential for the future.

So get ready, everyone. This time, we’re talking about the really exciting stuff.

Your ship isn’t just your home.

It’s also your most powerful weapons platform.

In the early stages, by assigning your crew, you can mount all the weapons you’d normally use in a land base in the base game of Soulmask onto your ship—ballistas, arrow towers, and more. These make for excellent transitional firepower early on. Even a rough little wooden boat can still send a few nasty shots into a barbarian camp along the shore.

But the anti-gravity engine is capable of far more than that.

As your Sun Ship becomes more complete, it will be able to directly power high-energy ancient-tech weapons, restoring your ship to the kind of combat power once wielded in the age of the gods.

Of course, there’s one thing you should always keep in mind:

don’t overload your anti-gravity engine’s power supply.

Let me show you what your arsenal looks like.

This is the Sun Ship’s most basic offensive weapon. It’s relatively easy to build, but don’t underestimate it—it fires deadly electromagnetic shells that deal heavy damage over a wide area.

You can line multiple Cannons up along the sides of your deck and rain deadly fire down from the sky onto barbarian strongholds below. Watching an enemy camp get torn apart piece by piece under a barrage from above is the kind of satisfaction that’s hard to put into words.

That’s right—ancient mechanical constructs can also be installed on your ship.

As autonomous weapons, Guardians rapidly fire energy projectiles and are especially effective against smaller humanoid enemies. When barbarian warriors try to board your deck, Guardians will give them a very direct lesson in the wrath of ancient civilization.

This is the true reason ancient Sun Ships were so overwhelming in battle

Powered by energy crystals, the shield can protect you from nearly anything—at least until the shield generator overloads.

Whether it’s a rain of barbarian arrows or heavy bombardment from an enemy ship, it all becomes meaningless against an active shield. Of course, shields have limits too. Finding the right balance between offensive firepower and shield power consumption will be one of the most important decisions you make while outfitting your Sun Ship.

This is a large beam turret recovered from the ruins of an ancient civilization.

Unlike the Cannon, the Rockbreaker Turret fires a beam weapon that is especially effective against shields, dealing enhanced damage to both hulls and shield systems alike.

When you face enemy ships protected by Energy Shields of their own, the Rockbreaker Turret will be one of your best tools for breaking through their defenses.

This is the Sun Ship’s ultimate weapon.

Only the Ray-Class Battleship can mount this massive bow cannon. Its cooldown is extremely long—but once it finishes charging, the moment that colossal destructive beam fires, everything in front of it is reduced to ash.

This wide range of weapons isn’t just here to make your ship look intimidating.

On servers, you’ll be able to engage in head-on ship-to-ship combat with other players’ vessels.

But more importantly—all of these weapons ultimately lead to one final trial in Golden Sands:

Deep in the deserts of Golden Sands, an ancient legend is still whispered:

Only a powerful Sun Ship can defeat this demon.

In the deepest reaches of the sea of sand, it lies sleeping beneath the dunes, waiting for some reckless challenger to awaken it.

And now, with your Sun Ship fleet finally complete, that day has come.

The moment your attack begins, this colossal beast starts to awaken. It can control deadly boulders, command lethal sandstorms, and deal massive damage to you from long range. And once it is wounded, it reveals an even more terrifying side...

This is the ultimate ship challenge we prepared for players in Golden Sands—and don’t even think about taking it on by foot.

You’ll need every weapon and every defensive system you can prepare before you’re truly ready to face this monster.

As for the finer details of Death Sandstorm, we don’t want to spoil too much.

We’d rather leave that for you to experience firsthand. It’s one of the large-scale open-world battles we’re most proud of.

Alright, now that we’ve talked about combat, let’s move on to something I’m personally even more excited about.

From the very beginning of the Sun Ship’s concept design, we kept asking ourselves one question:

How could ships become a system that truly unleashes the community’s creativity?

That’s why we designed a brand-new—

With the Upload Blueprint feature in the ship menu, you can save any ship you build as a complete replica design, including all of its installed devices and appearance.

In other words: the sky fortress you spent dozens of hours building piece by piece can now be preserved as a complete Blueprint. No more worrying about losing your masterpiece.

Not sure where to start? Our new Infinite Building mode will give you unlimited building materials directly, so you can create freely without holding anything back.

Even better, you can upload your Blueprints to the Soulmask Workshop. They’ll automatically receive the Ship tag created specifically for Blueprints, so you can share your creations with players around the world.

Here are just a few ships built by some of our incredibly talented test players—and on April 10, every single one of them can be yours:

And Blueprints downloaded from the Workshop can also be turned into fully usable ships by spending materials in-game. In the game settings, you can even decide for yourself whether materials are required at all.

How you want to play is entirely up to you.

We don’t want creativity to stop at the current framework of the Golden Sands DLC.

Golden Sands-exclusive Modkits are also getting an update.

You’ll be able to create your own ship parts and brand-new turrets, build entirely new ship functions that have never existed in the game before, and even create a completely different kind of ship from scratch.

The various flying warships you see in Golden Sands today are only the beginning.

What flies across these skies in the future will be up to all of you.

I honestly can’t wait to see what you all create after April 10.

The skies of Golden Sands are going to be incredible.

Thank you all so much for supporting Maggie’s dev log series.

Next, we’ll still have more launch events and a full game FAQ coming—covering all the questions you’re still curious about.

As for the rest?

Then all that’s left is to wait for April 10—when the full release of Soulmask 1.0 and the DLC will open the door to a brand-new world together.

And more importantly:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2646460/Soulmask/

Every player who purchases Soulmask 1.0 during the first month will receive the DLC for free—which means everything we talked about above will be yours to experience.

I’m Maggie, and I’ll see you in the new world!