Salt
Not enough ratings
How to Break Salt
By FunEnjoyer
This guide is for those who want a smooth and easy game through the Hardcore mode. This guide features game breaking strategies such as 100% critical chance and very fast ships (72 knots), along with tips and tricks to progress easily.
   
Award
Favorite
Favorited
Unfavorite
Introduction
Hello all! Welcome to my Salt guide that will cover some tips and tricks when traversing the sea. This guide shows you some recommended gear to get if you're going for a crit build.
Keep in mind that the recommendations are my opinions however with little research it's possible to come up with a goal for what gear you want to have.

Be sure to consult the Salt Wiki if anything I mentioned confused you and don't forget to mention how much this guide confused you.
Early Game
When starting out in salt you spawn with nothing but a short sword, pickaxe, and raft within your vicinity. The pickaxe and raft are the most important things here and I would never leave spawn without the pickaxe, because obtaining a shovel early on is vital. The raft will last until you get the sailboat, which scales great with speed armor and accessories.


I recommend that you head to pirate islands and clear the islands out and complete challenge chests. Especially go to deer stands and complete challenge chests there. Extremely useful gear spawn in the chests such as Helm of the Hunt and Bow of the Lost Hunter. Be sure to do any quests Guild NPCs give you and the main quests.

In the early game, exploration is key. The direction I would travel would be southeast in order to get those staffs earlier.
Mid Game / Obtaining the Scepters and Weapons
Once you have gotten some good gear (Preferably some armor and a scimitar) you can start making your way south and/or east. The reason why you want to head south is to get the Southern Scepter (which is very good) and east for the Eastern Scepter (which takes a long time to upgrade).

In order to obtain these scepters you have to find a pirate king settlement, which is a green island with a fort near the center. You may feel weak against these pirates but with patience (and a bow) you will persevere.

When in combat I only use the bow to aggro and kill pirates especially when I'm underpowered. I don't usually engage in melee combat unless if I have sufficient gear and armor. It is always best to take 1v1s and never be in a 1v2+ unless you're very tanky (which you wont be yet).

I have found a normal shortbow to be sufficient for low level pirates and battle masters even. For bosses and the kings you would want a better bow such as the Ancient Bow or Deer Popper, or better bows that will be mentioned later.

When in combat parrying is extremely important as it guarantees a crit or an enhanced crit (which is orange, has a cool sound effect, and does more damage) This will help keep some fights short, however parrying for me feels random sometimes.

Health potions and Bandages are imperative. You will always want to stockpile on them, and you can easily do so by doing quests with the Sea Hunters and Sea Scholars. After this you can find an island where they both spawn at and buy 2 potions and bandages and reload until you have plenty of healing items.
Other buffs that you can receive from potions, and foods will also be helpful during your first pirate boss or king fights. This is a hardcore guide and it is better to be safe than sorry.

Never leave the king settlements unless if you've finished the challenge chest. Gear you can get that's worth it from here is the Pirate Cutter (My new favorite weapon) and Lost Ring of the Sea.

Pirate Cutter is a powerful sickle that gives you a 10% extra critical chance and 100% critical damage. Pair this with Helm of The Hunt, Deer Stalker Boots (boots you buy from the collector with hunter tokens) and The Ether Amulet, and you get a 35% critical chance.

If you come across tombstones, you may find a ceremonial lock box. Keep it until you find a key then quickly save your game. Turn off auto save before you do this.

Save Trick:
Open the box -> if you get something bad then quit then reload the game.
If you get something that you want then save again.

In the ceremonial lock box you will be looking for Red Captain's Cloak which gives a 5% crit chance and 100% critical damage.

You want to do the Sea Fisher's quests so you can do the repeatable quest (more fish in the sea).
Catch the desired fish then do the save trick until you get The Last Stand which gives a 20% critical chance at low health.

Go to the Sea Collector then get the Strange Staff be sure you're over 100 max health or else you will die when upgrading it. Upgrade it to champion's staff which gives you a 20% crit chance for 40 health (secondary action, You can do it then switch to the Pirate Cutter to have an absurd crit chance) When using this with the other items crit chance stacks to 90% at low health.

Be sure to check out jungle islands at night for the Jungle Queen.
This is because you will want to get the Jungle Queen's eye and summon the Heroic Jungle Queen and get the Heroic Spider Leg Chaps. This leg armor is very worth the trouble it takes to get it.
Jungle Challenge Chests are also good to do. Jungle Vine Belt is one of the best belts, Darkwood Charm is a really good charm, and Heart of the Jungle is good for its running speed buff.

Lastly is the Jewel of Night, which you get from the Lost Jewel Quest. You have to open the cursed chest with a Ring of Night in order to get it.

Farm Essences of the Night by putting each one you get in a chest. Do this until you have desired amount of essences. (10% critical chance)

With all of the buffs you should be looking at 100% crit chance, however it lasts until the Champion's Staff Effect wears off. (Not to mention it's bugged and you will have to reload your game to do the staff buff again) Also visible blood is at your feet until you reload the game.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

If you have any critical buff active (e.g. Wide Eyes, Champion's Might, Greedy King Token), then you cannot use the Essence of the Night. In order to bypass this, use the Essence first then use your other buffs.

Upgrading the Scepters
The scepters aren't very difficult to upgrade when you know some tricks, which I will share with you very shortly.

Southern Scepter: This one tells you to kill uncommon pirates. These pirates include: Cartographers, Captains, Captains Navigator, Shipwrights, and Scavengers.

One thing that may be a bug when upgrading this staff is that when you kill these enemies, for a short amount of time after any other kills on pirates will contribute to the upgrade progress.

In the image, I killed a Pirate Captain, and killed the pirates near him quickly after, the common pirates contributed to the scepter's upgrade progress so It was easy to upgrade it.



Western Scepter: This scepter is bugged in my experience. You can find spirits and do it the legit way but last time I tried I didn't see anything, and it also inherently takes a long time.

You can upgrade the scepter by saving at night with it equipped and reload your game 5 or 6 times. Each time you load into your world with it equipped you find 5 spirits. If you do this while you have 29/30 spirits you get more than 1 Channeling Western Scepter and they are polluting your inventory. You can delete them so no worries there.

Eastern Scepter: This one is simple you just get plants. You can always go to an island and reload and pick the same plants but that gets boring, and upgrading it as you travel is your best bet. This is why you'd want to get this one soon.

North Scepter is already upgraded, I save it for last so I can rush back to the spawn island to get the ship of the Fourth Figure. Also it is useful for sailing speed which is extremely broken on the small sailboat.
Farming Draegan and Endgame Gear
The final boss of Salt is the biggest cakewalk of this entire run with this crit build. With 100% crit chance, you can easily kill Draegan without needing to destroy the healing pillars because you do so much damage.

The Boss Fight

The only thing you have to worry about are the three cultists that spawn from the portals. These guys hit hard and crit often which will sit you down in about three hits if you aren't careful. After killing them use your 100% critical chance to kill Draegan and get Robes of the Sleeping in the most easy way.

Draegan's Drops

Now I told you how to get the Robes of the Sleeping easily. In order to get Robes of The Awoken, you destroy the healing pillars and then kill Draegan quickly. He does a lot of damage if you keep him alive for too long, a good thing to do is keep his health low by hitting him after you destroy a pillar.
I've easily gotten all items except the Destroyer's Belt, which is obtained by destroying the dark portals before killing Draegan when he's awoke.

I've used the belt for some time but I'm not sure what it meant by the description. I thought that it would have you get the orange criticals from parrying as normal criticals. The only other thing I can assume it does is increase the parry damage (which is around 2240 with this endgame build with Utter Darkness Active)

Endgame Build

My Endgame build is based on the 100% critical chance strategy. It is my preference, and it can be adjusted to your needs or desires as necessary.

I use the Mask of Bone because I think it looks cool, but only two souls are useful, Glowing Soul and Poison Soul. You can stack Dark Souls to make the game insanely bright, and Burning Soul doesn't do enough damage to justify it's usage. Poison Soul does insane DoT (damage over time) of 10. I'm not sure how the poison soul compares to the Heroic Jungle Queen's Fang, but it's definitely better than Heroic Spider Queen's Fang. It also gives 8 armor and 5 stamina regen.

I use the Robe of Sleeping for the 20% Critical Chance. The 20 poison resistance is helpful when you're fighting Awoke Draegan. The healing pillar that spawns when you take damage is pretty cool, but it goes often unnoticed and you have to be near it for it to heal you. The healing pillar will deploy and heal you during a 1v1, possibly making a difference. However I find that the trade off for having to stand still to get healed isn't worth it and I would ignore the feature unless you are tanky. The 40 max stamina is useful.

I use the Heroic Spider Hair Chaps for reasons that I mentioned earlier. The 15 armor, and 15 Max Health are worth all the trouble for getting it. 15 Poison resistance is helpful too, and arguably it is the best leg armor in the game.

I use the DeerStalker Boots for the 5% critical Chance. It has 8 armor and 5 Stamina Regen also, which makes it a really good boot armor, although run speed may be desired.

The accessories I use are as follows:

Bulging Eye Charm for the 10% critical chance at low health.

Skull Quiver for the 3 armor.

Ether Amulet for the max health, stamina and 5% crit chance.

Captain's Earrings for 8 max health.

Darkwoods Charm for 8 max health 6 strength and 3 armor.

Privateer's Eye Patch for 30% crit damage.

Elite Gauntlets for the 8 Armor and 7 Strength.

The Lost Ring of the Sea because it is arguably the best ring in the game, Max Health, Strength, Sailing speed and more.

Cloak of The Dark one for 10% Critical Chance and a buff after landing a critical hit.

Destroyer's Belt because I want to know what it does other than give me 20 max stamina, other than that I would use Jungle Vine Belt.

Champions Staff for the Champion's Might Buff which gives me 20% critical chance.

With this build you can have a 100% critical Chance with Essence of the Night and Greedy King's Token (or Wide Eyes instead of Greedy King's Token)

Note that the previous build does more critical damage while leaving you at half health, and this one can be at 100% with the Ceremonial Mace of the Ancients easily.

The weapons I use are:

Pirate Cutter and Southern Scepter

Heroic Mace of the Ancients is a good alternative, however I prefer Pirate Cutter because it looks cool and the extra critical hit damage.

Dark Blade of the Bounty Hunter or Blade of the Duality can be substituted until you get Pirate Cutter or your preferred weapon.

Bow of Lost Hunter (IF I HAD ONE AGAIN) or the Bow of Poison.

I never tried the Messenger Bow but once I do I'll update my thoughts about it.

Sailing Build and Conclusion
This effectively wraps up my guide that took me a while to create and test it. No worries because I had fun while making this guide (except the part where it took me a long time to get Pirate Cutter from a gold challenge chest).
What I will show you next is a sailing speed build, which gets you up to 72 knots.

I used:
Privateer's Set: Unknown Sailing Speed Bonus (from Silver Lock boxes)
Skipper's Gloves: 2 Sailing Speed (from Merchants)
Sailor's Charm: 3 Sailing Speed Bonus (from Sea Scholar tokens)
Sailor's Lucky Necklace: Unknown Sailing Speed Bonus (from Sea Fisher)
North Scepter: 3 Sailing Speed Bonus
Lost Ring of the Sea: 3 Sailing Speed Bonus (from Gold Challenge Chests)

Sailing Speed with Ship of The Fifth Figure is 55 max but often 54.



This build will make your Sailboat rock side to side very frequently.

Thank You for Reading my Guide on How to Break Salt. I hope you will find the time to try some of these things mentioned in the Guide. If you want to mention anything you use and why, leave a comment about it. If you discovered the secret of the Destroyer's Belt, let me know! Have a wonderful day!

This here is a list of other builds/playstyles I want to try in this game. This is Salt 2 hype for me while I wait for it to come during 2021.
Assassin (Shadowblade with Assassin's hood and cape)
Archer (Messenger or Bow of the Lost Hunter with Ancient Shard Arrow with stamina/running speed)
Strength Build (max strength, I wanna see how it compares to the crit build I demonstrated)
Tank (max armor and/or health)
10 Comments
Mowglia 8 Jan, 2024 @ 7:50pm 
Ah thanks, I assumed the "robe" was a cloak, but obviously not :D
FunEnjoyer  [author] 8 Jan, 2024 @ 7:25pm 
Robe of Sleeping, You get it from killing Draegan without breaking any of the towers. Before that you can use Red Captains Coat which is obtained from Ceremonial Boxes. You can save/reload in order to reroll the box until you get that.
Mowglia 8 Jan, 2024 @ 1:39pm 
Thanks, some good information here :)

Did you list what body armour (tunic) you use for this crit-based build? I can't find it.
FunEnjoyer  [author] 4 Apr, 2021 @ 10:14pm 
Thanks for these helpful tips! I'll be sure to check out the blue feather cape, and white stag gear and try to record how fast a player can really go.
Nikodaemos 10 Feb, 2021 @ 12:53pm 
Crates are commonly found in pirate villages and batlemaster settlements. They have low storage space but can be used to sort and store excess gear for those hoarders like myself. With storage crates on ships it allows you to easily sort and carry lots of gear that would otherwise be stuffing your personal inventory and making your life difficult.

The square grid like lines on the bigger ships that attach to the masts and down to the rails, called ratlines, allow you to climb them up to the crows nests. You can also walk on the masts. By placing torches on the ends of the masts, it allows you to easily see where your ship is at from a long ways off at night, and use it as a location marker when exploring islands. You can do this with multiple ships to get multiple location markers, especially if they are all set up differently.
Nikodaemos 10 Feb, 2021 @ 12:53pm 
Sharks for me have been very common in deep water. They make an excellent meal and buff, which stacks if you eat a second.

Each ink you get allows you to save another gear set. Next to your avatar there is a colored person icon and by using it you can save a set of items. You can use one for your high crit set, sailing speed set, fishing set, crazy fast run set, merchant sell set, etc.

There are multiple tabs in the inventory and you can use them to organize what you have, using each tab for different purposes such as main gear, food, craft items, sell junk, etc.

The game saves the position of items in your inventory. You can use that and the inventory tabs to greatly help with keeping your inventory from getting cluttered.
Nikodaemos 10 Feb, 2021 @ 12:44pm 
Another thing to add, is with the white stag gear, Big Blue feather cape and other gear/buffs that add to your speed and stamina, you are able to easily outrun dear by just regular walking, and when running and jumping off a hill, you are often able to reach adjacent islands faster than a boat, and without using a boat.

Additionally, it helps IMMENSELY to rapidly explore and scavenge items on the large islands.

Turn off grass effects to be able to find more loot that would otherwise be hidden.

Fish are great for buffs and just simply keeping you alive with food. You can use deer guts (from all the deer you are able to chase down with ease now) and fish up most fish. While traveling from island to island, you can fish over the side of the boat and gather up many meals and buffs while sailing.
FunEnjoyer  [author] 5 Aug, 2020 @ 6:34pm 
Thanks for mentioning it! I've never considered the potential of that staff. You should definitely make a detailed guide of it if you have the time.
Alshogan 5 Aug, 2020 @ 5:57pm 
I've been thinking of making a guide about something like this but I'll just put it in a comment. Apparently the rare basic cultist staff (the one that uses a portion of health to double the power) can be used over and over again to rack up some crazy damage. I've been able to get it to one or two shot most bosses, and it can be even crazier if you stack items that give you bonus health and buffs when low on health. I've had some crits that hit for over 2k, but I'm sure you can get the damage even higher than that.
WillieSea 26 May, 2020 @ 11:05am 
If you ever get one, Willie's Favorite Arrow will get you through the game with little trouble.
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=891542615