Shifting Sands (DLC Desert)

Shifting Sands is the DLC desert, a separate Egyptian-themed region that sits apart from the main continent and plays by its own rules. It is built around two ideas the base game never forces together: a region large enough that crossing it on foot is a slog, and a clean set of god-bosses each tied to a mask. From there the desert is a story of heat, sandstorms, and three gods standing between you and their masks. It launched alongside the 1.0 release and was free to claim for owners in the first month before returning to a paid price.

How you get here and why it is different

The desert is reachable early: you can start a fresh character in it, sail in by boat, or, since the June 26, 2026 update, cross through a giant World Portal (at the top of the base map’s Pyramid or the bottom of the desert map), so it is not gated behind clearing the base game. The portal crossing works in single-player and co-op by save duplication: your character, registered tribesmen, and backpack are copied to the target world, overwriting that world’s character data, and in co-op only the host can start the crossing. Pack before you travel. If you start the DLC content fresh you drop into the desert wearing the Celestial Wings, the flight mask, and the Horus mask is granted right at the start with no fight. That is the only thing the desert hands you for free. Everything else, the gods, the masks, the airship that makes crossing the place painless, you have to earn. Unlike the main continent’s soft tier gate, Shifting Sands gates progress on traversal tech and bosses, which is why it feels like a distinct campaign rather than another biome on the ladder.

Why airships matter

The desert is large and harsh on foot, so airships are the DLC’s core in-desert traversal and mobile-base system, not the way you first reach the region. You cannot unlock them on a whim either: the Shipbuilding Technique node needs Awareness Strength 30, and the anti-gravity engine that enables flight comes online only after you defeat Sobek. Once unlocked, you build a large airship, fit it with benches, storage, sleeping quarters, and a campfire that serves as a mobile respawn, and treat it as a moving base. You can attach smaller scout ships to a main Battle Cruiser, arm larger ships with guns crewed by tribesmen, and you must fuel them with Power Crystals. Run out of fuel and the base is stranded. See airships for the build-out.

Flight and airships both run on energy, and running dry is dangerous. The Celestial Wings burn energy in flight, and emptying them mid-air drops you for fall damage, so keep Sunstones stocked to refill mask energy before you cross open desert and keep Power Crystals aboard the airship so the mobile base never strands.

The gods and their masks

The desert’s bosses are clean and each one drops a mask, so killing them is how you build out your DLC mask kit. They are the spine of the region.

Boss	What it is	Mask reward
Horus	Granted at DLC start, no fight	Horus mask
Sobek	Giant crocodile, guards an Ancient Pyramid	Sobek mask (water movement, damage mitigation)
Anubis	Hound boss near the Sunken City portal	Anubis mask (raise slain enemies as a temporary undead army)
Amun-Ra	Scarab boss at an Ancient Pyramid near Rock Lake	Amun-Ra mask (solar damage and support)

Sobek is the first real DLC boss and the gate to airships, so it comes first in practice. A Burning Highlands boss and its ultimate mask were announced for September 2026 but had not shipped as of this writing, so treat that as the region’s announced frontier rather than current content. For the full fights, see the Shifting Sands gods.

Surviving heat and sandstorm

The desert’s climate problem is heat plus sandstorm traversal, the same pairing the wasteland uses but across a far larger, more open space. That is precisely the problem the airship and the Sobek and Celestial masks are built to solve: flight and a mobile base let you cross the worst of it instead of grinding through on foot. Carry proper heat gear, keep mask energy and airship fuel topped up, and use the masks for what they are designed for. The Sobek mask’s water movement and damage mitigation, for instance, earns its keep in a region built to wear you down. See survival and temperature for the underlying system.

Where it fits

Shifting Sands is a self-contained desert campaign rather than a step on the metal ladder: its own traversal tech, its own bosses, and its own masks to level. You can come early or fold it in alongside the base game, and treat the gods as power spikes that expand your mask kit rather than as a tier you must clear to progress elsewhere.

Next: the Shifting Sands gods. Related: airships.