Shifting Sands guide - start, regions, World Portals and map-locked items

Shifting Sands is a second world the same size as Cloud Mist Forest. A new save can start there directly: you repair Celestial Wings on an upside-down platform, glide down to the River Delta and take your first boat from the Exiles. Characters move between the two maps through World Portals, which copy your character, registered tribesmen and carried items into the other save; buildings stay behind.

Getting the DLC

Shifting Sands costs $19.99. Anyone who owned or bought Soulmask between 10 April and 10 May 2026 received it free and keeps it. In multiplayer, players without the DLC can use DLC items someone brings in but cannot craft them or learn their recipes.

Moving between maps

Carries over	Stays behind
Character, level, masks, tech tree	Buildings and placed storage
Registered tribesmen with their stats and talents	Resources left in chests
Items in your inventory, mounts	Ships and ship parts (Shifting Sands only)
Tribe membership and permissions	Bonfire count (6 per map, counted separately)

Single player and co-op (since 26 June): walk into the large portal at the top of the pyramid on Cloud Mist Forest or at the bottom of the Shifting Sands map, then pick the target save. The transfer overwrites the target save’s character data. In co-op only the host can start it; every other character, including offline ones, moves too and online players are disconnected.

To inherit your old buildings and tribesmen in the destination world, load that save at least once first, and make sure your character belongs to a tribe there.

Official servers: each PvE group links one Cloud Mist Forest server and two Shifting Sands servers through the Cross-Server Portal in the bottom-left of the map. Levels carry over in full.

Map-locked items and abilities

• Shifting Sands only: ships with their cannons, shields and hull parts; the Phase Anchor; Celestial Wings flight.
• Cloud Mist Forest only: the Mysterious Mark.
• Tech tree: shared nodes carry over, but Shifting Sands nodes must be unlocked on that map and only work there.

Regions in order

Region	Stage	What is there
River Delta	Start	Fertile oasis, ibises, aardvarks, crocodiles, hounds, hippos; capture hound and mule pups
Dune Zone	Early to mid	Floating pyramids, temples, widespread mines, fennec foxes, scorpions, hyenas, Sand Bandits
Death Desert	Mid	Extreme heat, sandstorms, sulfur pools, cats in the eastern oasis, the Death Sandstorm
Eye of Sand	Mid to late	Permanent sandstorm tornadoes around ruins
Burning Highlands	Late (added 31 August)	Final pyramid held by a Sand Bandit warship, Holy Ruins, Ancient Dungeon
Floating Island	End	Central Core fight

Two new tribes and the Sand Bandit factions hold the camps. The eight tribal leaders with Steam achievements are at River Delta, Moon Bay, Rock Lake, Darkriver Valley, Three River Junction, Rockhenge Desert, Sandcry Gorge and Star Plain.

Ores on Shifting Sands

Resource	Where players find it
Copper	River Delta, Coastal Dunes, above White Sand Lake
Tin	Free River Junction, South River Valley
Iron	Rockhenge Desert, Windrift Canyon
Coal	Rocky Hill
Salt	White Sand Lake pans, Salt Marsh
Sulfur	Sulfur Pools
Niter	Sandcry Gorge
Crystal	Cavern near Darkriver Valley
Meteorite	Meteor Crater, Starfall Fields
Obsidian	Blackstone Cliff cave and the Burning Highlands (north-east)

The desert has fewer resources per area than the rainforest, which is one reason the developers built the ship as a mobile base. Since 31 August the Mist Collector gives water without a well or river.

Heat and sandstorms

• Shelter inside a building, a cave or your ship’s structure.
• Since patch 4 (16 April), protective fields block sandstorm effects.
• Offline characters are not affected by sandstorms (patch 3).
• The Explorer mask’s Mimicry resists heat, radiation and poison; see the mask reference.

Shifting Sands goals

1. Take the Exiles’ boat, then build your own: ships guide.
2. Beat Sobek for the first anti-gravity engine and the Abyss Overlord mask.
3. Anubis Hound and Onyx Scarab for the other god masks: guardian bosses.
4. Gather 14 Divine Crystal Fragments for the Floating Island Central Core.