Info about Salt 2: Shores of Gold:

Official game description:
**Salt 2 is an open world pirate game with a focus on exploration, crafting, survival and RPG elements.**
You wake up stranded on an island and must find resources to build a raft and head out to sea. Set sail across the world solo or with up to 5 friends. Your ship will act as your traveling base as you explore in any direction you want. Discover islands filled with hundreds of hand crafted caves, ruins, pirate forts, and other mysterious places. Follow the main storyline to uncover the mysteries of the world or join various guilds and earn a name for yourself. Craft powerful weapons and armor, hunt and fish for survival, level up your character unlocking unique skills and talents for your gear, and decorate your ship, making it your home at sea.
What Makes Salt Different Than Other Pirate Games?
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**In Salt 2, we've prioritized the PVE experience, allowing you to play completely solo or cooperatively with friends.**
This game can be as relaxing or as adventurous as you want. You don't have to worry about being attacked by other players while exploring the sea and losing your progress. The core gameplay is built around the solo and cooperative experience. This isn't a game with naval combat, but is focused on PVE content such as decorating your ship, going on quests, and exploring tons of unique locations. A huge focus has been put on making your ship your home base at sea. We've added over 100 different ship decorations you can place anywhere on your ship. Plus, the world is procedurally generated so you can explore in any direction for as long as you want.
Explore an Infinite World
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Salt 2 is about pure freedom. You start in the middle of a vast ocean, pick a direction, and set sail across a procedurally generated world. Navigate the seas with a compass and sextant, using map coordinates as your guide to new locations. Discover uncharted islands with ruins, pirate camps, seaports, and over 200 unique dungeons all filled with loot and lore. Even though the islands are procedural, our points of interests are hand crafted with unique secrets, puzzles, and design.
Travel With Your Base
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Your ship is your home at sea. While exploring the world you will find all kinds of items to craft and decorate your ship making it unique to you. You can place items virtually anywhere on your ship and customize it as you see fit. While traveling the sea you can also craft items, cook food, and fish for survival.
Fish and Hunt to Survive
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You’ll need food to survive. Grab a fishing pole and toss a lure overboard to catch some fish or grab your bow and head into the woods to hunt some wildlife. Once you've got your ingredients, it's time to start cooking. With over 50 different meal recipes to discover, you'll constantly be on the lookout for a new recipe that will not only keep you alive, but give you passive benefits as well.
A World You Can Live In
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We wanted to create a world that you could not only get lost in, but live in. You set the pace of your adventure and decide what you want to do. Maybe you’re in the mood to go on epic quests and hunt down a world boss, or maybe you just want to relax on the shore and catch some fish. The choice is yours.
Fight Legendary Enemies
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The islands are full of dangerous enemies. Fight legendary pirates, skeletons, bosses, and dangerous wildlife in your hunt for adventure.
Craft and Upgrade
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As you explore the world you will discover tons of resources that can be used to craft new items, armor, weapons, and decorations for your ship.
Level Up
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Character progression is an important aspect of Salt 2. Level up your character and skills unlocking new world tiers, crafting recipes, and other upgrades. With each new world tier comes more difficult enemies and rare loot.
Delve Into Dungeons
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We've taken a lot of inspiration from games like Diablo and Skyrim when designing our dungeons. While exploring the world you'll discover caves, crypts, ruins, temples, and other dungeons full of secrets, enemies, puzzles, and unique loot.
Loot Epic Gear
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Salt 2 features an RPG style loot system with different rarities of armor and weapons, and interesting stats to tailor to the play style you want. Each piece of gear also has randomized talents. So whether you are crafting a high level item, or hunting down a pirate captain for an epic sword, you'll always be searching for that new rare item with the perfect roll.
Go on Quests
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Dock your ship at a sea port and pick up quests and commissions from guilds, the townsfolk, and merchants.
About Lavaboots Studios
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We're a two man development team at Lavaboots and our goal is to make fun and exciting games that inspire adventure. We grew up loving games that dropped you in a big world and let you explore and discover things on your own. Our goal is to recreate that feeling and create worlds that give you the freedom to create your own path and lose yourself in the adventure.

Release date: Nov 12, 2025

Categories: Open-World Exploration, Crafting, Survival, RPG, Cooperative Multiplayer, Base Building, Procedural Generation, Dungeon Crawler


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Highly enjoyable, great value. (weight 0.99): Players overwhelmingly praise the game as fun, relaxing, and a highly engaging experience offering significant content and longevity, often exceeding expectations for an indie title. Many reviewers highlight its excellent value for money and addictive gameplay loop, with some sinking hundreds of hours.
- Relaxing pirate adventure & exploration. (weight 0.47): The game stands out as a cozy, open-world pirate RPG, providing a satisfying blend of sailing, island exploration, and treasure hunting. It's frequently lauded as a superior single-player or PvE alternative to Sea of Thieves, delivering an immersive pirate experience without the stress of PvP.
- Expansive, dynamic world. (weight 0.24): Reviewers commend the huge, open, and procedurally generated world, which features infinite unique islands, varied locations like caves, dungeons, and ruins, making exploration continuously fresh and rewarding. The sheer amount of discoverable content and the feeling of uncovering uncharted territories are major attractions.
- Major sequel improvements. (weight 0.24): Players widely consider Salt 2 a substantial upgrade from its predecessor, Salt 1. Reviewers highlight enhanced content, improved graphics, better combat, a more vibrant world, and refined mechanics, successfully building upon the original while introducing fresh elements.
- Immersive atmosphere & visuals. (weight 0.22): The game creates a captivating atmosphere through its beautiful and fitting music, ambient sounds, and pleasant, stylized graphics. Reviewers specifically note the calming vibes, stunning sunsets, and impressive water physics, all contributing to an immersive and aesthetically pleasing experience.
- Engaging survival crafting. (weight 0.21): The game offers a balanced and enjoyable survival crafting experience. Mechanics for gathering, building, cooking, fishing, and gear crafting are praised for being simple, solid, and rewarding, contributing to a fun core gameplay loop without being overly tedious.
- Diverse quests & progression. (weight 0.16): The game features numerous diverse quests, often designed with humor and soul, providing clear motivation for exploration and adventure. Character and equipment progression, including intuitive skill leveling through use, are described as rewarding, keeping players engaged long-term.
- Active, passionate development. (weight 0.16): The small development team receives high praise for their continuous activity, frequent free content updates, proactive bug fixes, and responsiveness to player feedback. This dedication fosters a positive community sentiment and suggests strong future potential for the game.
- Customizable ship as home. (weight 0.16): The unique feature of the ship serving as a mobile, customizable home base is highly appreciated. Players enjoy decorating their vessel, outfitting it with crafting stations, and using it for efficient inventory management and convenient quest turn-ins, enhancing the sense of personal adventure.
- Varied loot and puzzles. (weight 0.11): The game offers satisfying treasure hunting and looting, with various rarities and randomized drops that keep familiar locations interesting. Puzzles encountered during exploration are described as engaging and generally well-balanced, adding depth to the gameplay loop.
- Unique underwater exploration. (weight 0.07): The inclusion of deep-sea diving and underwater cave exploration, featuring dungeons and a dedicated sea diver's guild, provides a distinct and sometimes eerie immersive experience. This adds another layer of variety and discovery to the game's overall exploration offerings.

Common complaints:
- Rudimentary & Repetitive Combat (weight 0.7): The combat system is widely criticized for being primitive, basic, and lacking depth, often devolving into simple button-mashing. Players find it clunky, unengaging, and suffer from an inconsistent parrying mechanic. There's also a noted lack of enemy variety and challenging boss mechanics, making encounters monotonous.
- Unpolished & Content-Barren (weight 0.6): Players widely report the game feels unfinished, lacking substantial content, depth, and polish. There are frequent complaints about poor optimization, pervasive technical issues, and low-quality graphics. The core gameplay loop quickly becomes repetitive and unengaging, contributing to a sense of boredom and an 'early access' feel.
- Missing Pirate & Naval Features (weight 0.27): Players feel the game misses the core 'pirate fantasy,' primarily due to the complete absence of naval combat and cannons. There's also a lack of diverse ship types and limited utility for larger vessels, diminishing the sense of being a pirate or commanding a fleet.
- Empty & Repetitive World Exploration (weight 0.26): The game world, particularly the ocean and islands, is described as empty, lacking interesting points of interest, dynamic events, or threats. Islands are procedurally generated but quickly become visually and structurally repetitive. Sailing is often considered boring 'travel time' without engaging activities or dynamic weather.
- Step Back from Salt 1 (weight 0.15): Many players feel Salt 2 represents a significant downgrade from Salt 1, noting the absence of numerous beloved features, magical items, enemy types, and quality-of-life elements. This leads to a perception that the sequel lacks the charm and engaging qualities of the original.
- Flawed Crafting & Economy (weight 0.14): The crafting system is criticized for being confusing, tedious, and having a poorly designed UI that lacks filtering and sorting. Recipes are often illogical or require excessive materials, and the economy is broken, making crafting for profit unfeasible and reducing the motivation to engage with the system.
- Unresponsive NPCs & Broken AI (weight 0.11): NPCs are criticized for being static, generic, and lacking personality or reactivity, which breaks immersion. Furthermore, both friendly and enemy AI exhibit significant flaws, with enemies ignoring players in co-op or being easily exploitable, detracting from gameplay challenge.
- Weak Quest Design & Tracking (weight 0.1): The quest system is largely perceived as a series of repetitive fetch quests that lack meaningful engagement or exploration. Players frequently struggle with inadequate quest tracking, missing markers, and insufficient guidance, leading to frustration and wasted time.

Gameplay feedback:
- Diverse Pirate RPG Gameplay (weight 0.42): The game offers a rich blend of single-player (with co-op) pirate-themed survival, crafting, and RPG elements. Players engage in exploration of procedurally generated islands, questing, resource gathering, and combat, all while managing a mobile ship base. The experience is reminiscent of titles like Skyrim and Valheim, set on the high seas.
- Ship as Mobile Base (weight 0.25): The player's ship serves as their primary home and mobile base, where all crafting and building activities take place. Players can purchase and upgrade to larger, faster ships, effectively making their vessel the central hub for their adventure.
- Varied Island Exploration & Quests (weight 0.19): Islands are procedurally generated, large, and come in various biomes, becoming more challenging further from the starting area. They feature NPCs, shops, unique dungeons (caves, towers), combat encounters, and puzzles. Quests range from a main storyline to repeatable fetch tasks, often involving combat or item collection.
- Desire for Naval Combat & Sea Events (weight 0.15): Players frequently request the addition of ship-to-ship combat, boardable enemy vessels, and encounters with sea monsters. There's also a strong wish for a more dynamic and populated ocean world, including random events during voyages and more varied NPC ships. This would significantly deepen the nautical experience.
- Basic NPC Interactions & Economy (weight 0.08): NPCs are found on land and scattered in the world, offering quests and serving as vendors for buying and selling goods. The game provides a short tutorial at the start, guiding players through initial mechanics. Graphics and character models are noted as simplified.
- Simplified Sailing Mechanics (weight 0.07): Sailing is described as straightforward, involving raising/lowering sails, steering with a rudder, and using a sextant for navigation. However, it lacks depth such as realistic wind mechanics, rigging adjustments, anchoring, or hull damage, which some players desire for more realism.
- Extensive Crafting & Skill Gating (weight 0.07): The game boasts a significant crafting system for various items, requiring substantial resource gathering and time investment. Skill leveling is crucial as it gates access to higher-tier recipes and materials, though players desire quality-of-life features like batch crafting.
- Basic Hunger Survival Mechanic (weight 0.04): The game includes a hunger mechanic where food consumption is vital, influencing agility and all player stats. While hunger exists, a thirst mechanic is absent, making food management a key part of the survival experience.

Performance notes:
- Inconsistent overall performance (weight 0.15): While some players praise the game's stability and smooth framerates on various hardware configurations, others report general FPS issues and high resource usage. Handheld devices like the Steam Deck, however, seem to handle the game surprisingly well.
- FPS drops in specific areas (weight 0.04): A notable performance bottleneck occurs around the Cartographer's island or village, where framerates can drop significantly, sometimes to very low levels. This indicates a localized optimization problem requiring targeted investigation.

Recommendations:
- Highly Recommended & Worth Purchase (weight 0.33): Many players enthusiastically recommend the game, praising its value and potential, often rating it highly. They consider it a must-have for its genre, despite some acknowledging current flaws and express willingness to pay full price or more.
- Appeals to Casual Solo/Co-op Explorers (weight 0.16): The game is highly recommended for players who enjoy slow-paced, casual, relaxed open-world exploration, particularly those interested in pirate/maritime themes, survival crafting, and PvE experiences (solo or small co-op). It's often compared positively to games like Raft or Sea of Thieves (without the PvP).
- Future Potential, Wait for Updates (weight 0.13): Many players see significant potential in the game but advise waiting for more updates, content, and polish before committing or returning. They hope for substantial improvements in a year or so, indicating the game is not yet fully 'baked'.
- Salt 1 Preferred Over Salt 2 (weight 0.03): Some reviewers specifically recommend the first 'Salt' game over 'Salt 2' in its current state, suggesting a preference for the predecessor's experience or a perceived step back in the sequel.
- Manage Expectations: Not AAA (weight 0.02): Players should not expect AAA quality, realistic graphics, spectacular naval battles, or grand stories. The game offers a more fairytale aesthetic and a focus on different gameplay elements rather than high-fidelity presentation or complex narratives.
- Specific Feature/QoL Requests (weight 0.02): Players have specific suggestions for features like adding cannons to naval combat for more engagement or basic quality-of-life improvements such as a functional anchor and interactive docks for embarking/disembarking.
- Praises Ship Customization (weight 0.01): The game offers enjoyable ship customization options, which is highlighted as a positive aspect for players who value personalization and expressing creativity through their vessels.
- Lacks Korean Language Support (weight 0.01): The game currently lacks a Korean language version, which reduces enjoyment for Korean-speaking players who rely on localized content, even if the game is technically playable without English proficiency.

Other player notes:
- Enhance Naval & World Content (weight 0.45): Players desire a richer and more dynamic oceanic experience. This includes requests for more challenging sea conditions, the implementation of naval combat with cannons, diverse sea creatures like sharks and a Kraken, and more interactive elements such as recruitable NPC crews and encounters with other ships. Specific weapon types like flintlocks were also requested to enhance combat.
- Anticipated Co-op Multiplayer (weight 0.42): A significant portion of the feedback highlights the strong desire and anticipation for co-op multiplayer. Many players are explicitly waiting for this feature to engage with the game, often with friends or family, and believe it will be a huge and fun addition. The community is aware that multiplayer is planned for future development.
- Game's Early Access Potential (weight 0.4): Players acknowledge the game is in an early, unfinished state and have high expectations for future development, updates, and content additions. There's a strong desire for the game to reach its full potential, although some express skepticism about the scope of future improvements.
- Graphics and Optimization (weight 0.39): There are calls for better overall game optimization and more granular graphics options to improve performance and smooth gameplay. Players acknowledge the simple graphics are consistent with the game's early access state and price point, but still desire improved visual fidelity and smoother operation.
- Quality of Life & Progression (weight 0.37): Players seek various quality of life improvements, including a clearer sense of long-term progression and story objectives. Specific requests involve enhanced map functionality (filters for resources, dungeon status, island naming), adjustments to character movement speed and stamina, and expanded skill trees. Minor additions like adoptable pets were also suggested.
- Define Game Identity (weight 0.19): Players frequently compare the game to titles like Raft, Sea of Thieves, and Valheim, indicating their expectations and reference points. There's also discussion around the game's core identity, distinguishing it as a survival/adventure game focused on exploration rather than a typical pirate game, while also acknowledging its roots as a successor to Salt 1.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 0.38): Players are highly satisfied with the game's core gameplay loop, including exploration, sailing, combat, crafting, and progression systems. The addition of co-op mode, frequent updates, good optimization, and the game's ability to fulfill a niche for a calm, PvE-focused pirate adventure also contribute significantly to positive player experiences. Many appreciate its improvements over its predecessor, solid content volume, and overall 'chill' atmosphere, considering it a well-made, rewarding, and fun experience.
- Disappointment (weight 0.17): Disappointment stems from the game's perceived lack of content variation, repetitive quest design, and absence of key features expected in a pirate game, such as naval battles or deep ship combat. Players are also let down by technical issues, unpolished features, and the game's failure to meet expectations, often comparing it unfavorably to its predecessor or other genre titles regarding depth and world-building.
- Frustration (weight 0.16): Frustration is primarily caused by poor optimization, leading to stuttering, freezes, and performance issues even on high-end hardware. Players also express annoyance with clunky UI, a confusing weight system, absurd crafting recipes, and repetitive or broken combat mechanics. Game-breaking bugs, an unscaled economy, and difficult navigation due to poor quest tracking further contribute to player irritation.
- Excitement (weight 0.14): Excitement is driven by the thrill of exploration, discovery of lore, and the game's engaging gameplay loop, especially when experienced in co-op. Players are captivated by the game's potential for future content and development, seeing it as a hidden gem with excellent value. Anticipation for new features, continuous updates, and comparisons to other popular pirate games also fuel enthusiasm.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.09): Players enjoy the game for its varied gameplay, including exploration, sailing, crafting, and combat, which creates a relaxing and engaging experience. The game's fun atmosphere, beautiful graphics, and continuous development contribute to a positive overall impression. Many find pleasure in discovering new islands, collecting items, and the leisurely progression, making time pass quickly.
- Joy (weight 0.07): Joy arises from the game's fun gameplay, pleasant graphics, and many small, nice touches that enhance the overall experience, such as effective mapping and the whale encounter. Players appreciate the indie developer's work, the engaging RPG systems, and the enjoyable fishing mechanic. The absence of forced PvP and the freedom to explore contribute to a very positive emotional connection, with many calling it a permanent favorite.
- Desire (weight 0.07): Players express a strong desire for specific new features and improvements, most notably cannon functionality, naval combat, and more in-depth sailing mechanics. There is a frequent wish for multiplayer/co-op support, more diverse random events, and a livelier world with NPC ships and improved customization options. Localization into additional languages is also a common request.
- Hope (weight 0.06): Hope is centered on the game's future development, with players wishing for continued content and feature updates, especially additions like base-building, cannons, and more lively NPCs. There is a strong desire for performance optimizations and the reintroduction of beloved systems from Salt 1. Players hope the game's full potential will be realized, becoming a great adventure title with community support.
- Love (weight 0.04): Profound affection for the game stems from the overall gameplay experience, especially the procedurally generated, infinite world and the constant feeling of discovery. Players love the game's design, its immersive atmosphere, and its ability to fulfill a specific desire for a particular type of pirate adventure. The lack of forced online PvP is also a significant factor in fostering this positive emotion.
- Anticipation (weight 0.04): Anticipation is driven by the game's early access status, leading players to look forward to new content, updates, and especially the full release of co-op functionality and potential naval battles. There is excitement about the game's future development and the fleshing out of existing features. Players are optimistic about the game's potential to become a top-tier sea adventure title.
- Relaxation (weight 0.04): The game provides a sense of relaxation through its simple, easy-to-learn mechanics, slow-paced gameplay, and calming atmosphere. Players enjoy the ability to chill and explore without external pressures, finding the ambient sounds and activities like fishing and sailing particularly soothing. It's seen as a pleasant way to unwind and enjoy a down-paced adventure.
- Boredom (weight 0.02): Boredom arises from the game's repetitive nature, with monotonous enemies, similar locations, and a simple gameplay loop that quickly becomes tedious. The grind often leads to no satisfying payoff, and players find the sailing experience bland and featureless. A general lack of sustained engagement and new content after extended play contributes to a loss of interest.
- Appreciation (weight 0.02): Players appreciate the active and responsive developer team for consistently fixing bugs, considering suggestions, and providing regular updates. The inclusion of additional language support, such as Simplified Chinese, is also noted with gratitude. This recognition of the small indie team's hard work and ongoing support fosters a positive sentiment.
- Relief (weight 0.02): Relief comes from finding a game that perfectly satisfies a specific gaming desire or 'itch,' especially one that offers a peaceful alternative to stressful online experiences. The absence of aggressive or forced PvP is a significant source of relief for many players. The availability of desired language support, such as Chinese, also contributes to this feeling.
- Admiration (weight 0.02): Admiration is directed towards the developers for creating a high-quality game, especially praising the beautiful graphics, realistic ocean system, and effective random generation. Players commend the team's active work, passion, and skill in combining survival, exploration, and sailing elements. Many consider the game a masterpiece, highlighting the detailed underwater world and design philosophy.
- Confusion (weight 0.02): Confusion stems from illogical game mechanics, such as the weight system, which detracts from realism and intuitiveness. Players also struggle with unclear objectives, game goals, and unexpected in-game events like pirate attacks during fishing. Some express puzzlement over the developer's market strategy or specific design choices that seem counter-intuitive, alongside overly complex crafting and inconvenient inventory management.
- Engagement (weight 0.02): Players feel engaged when the game becomes addictive after overcoming an initial learning curve, making them want to keep coming back for more. The compulsion to stop at every island due to fear of missing out, alongside the game's overall ability to hold interest, signifies strong engagement. Many believe the game is worth buying despite its flaws because it successfully captures and retains their attention.
- Anger (weight 0.02): Anger is provoked by unacceptable technical performance, with players experiencing unplayable states even on the lowest settings or high-end hardware. Some also express strong frustration at being attacked by the developer's community for providing critiques. Perceived early access scams due to slow development and unfair combat mechanics, like enemies hitting from impossible angles, also fuel this emotion.
- Mild frustration (weight 0.02): Mild frustration is caused by minor quality-of-life issues, such as a simple leveling system, lack of graphics settings, and occasional bugs. Players also note inconvenient UI elements, fragmented quest tracking, and the absence of local maps. Minor usability issues, particularly on devices like the Steam Deck, contribute to these small but noticeable annoyances.
- Enthusiasm (weight 0.02): Enthusiasm for the game is driven by its high overall quality, genre representation, and resemblance to other well-regarded titles like Daggerfall. Players are excited by the game's content variety, value for money, and strong potential for recognition. The overall positive experience and features, leading to strong recommendations, also contribute to this feeling.}