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The core gameplay loop in SAND: Raiders of Sophie centers on deploying onto the surface of Sophie, scavenging for loot and resources, surviving encounters with other players and AI creatures called Upiors, and reaching an extraction point to return to the orbital station. Players can fight or attempt to talk their way out of confrontations with rival players. For a new-player walkthrough of this loop, see Getting Started.
Game Modes
Expeditions run in one of two modes. See Game Modes for the full breakdown.
Mode | Description |
|---|---|
Voyage Mode | Lower-stakes exploration with no time limit, letting players test Trampler builds and scavenge lower-tier items at their own pace |
Storm Dive | High-risk expeditions where an encroaching sandstorm shrinks the playable area until it reaches the map center; higher-tier loot is available but PvP encounters and the risk of losing your Trampler and loot are greatly increased |
Combat
Combat takes place in both first-person on foot and in vehicle-based Trampler engagements. Players use early 20th-century-style firearms during on-foot skirmishes, while Tramplers can be equipped with mounted artillery and weapons for larger-scale battles. The supernatural Upiors are hostile AI creatures that players must fight or avoid during expeditions. After a July 2026 update the Upiors can also crew mounted cannons, adding ranged fire to the threat they pose, though they abandon a cannon when a player closes in. A second type of AI threat, the Ironclads, drop into the expedition area and then begin tracking players who linger.
On-foot movement is tied to what you carry and how you move. A July 2026 update made characters move more slowly while holding items such as weapons, grenades, artifacts, or tools, slowed strafing and moving backward, and added a movement penalty for repeated consecutive jumps.
Multiplayer
SAND: Raiders of Sophie supports both solo and cooperative multiplayer. You can play alone or in a crew of two to six players. Squads share a Trampler, pooling resources and dividing roles such as piloting, manning weapons, and managing storage. Solo play is fully supported and balanced independently of team play. Matchmaking is based on crew size, and the number of players on a server scales with it: 15 on solo servers and up to 45 on full six-player-team servers.
Characters and Progression
Your inventory and tech tree are tied to the character you create, and each character is locked to the region you choose at character creation, so progress does not carry across regions. Trampler blueprints are the exception: they are shared across all of your characters. If you lose every Trampler and all your resources, you can start over with a new character or join a team that still owns a Trampler to recover.
Online and Anti-Cheat
The game is always online and requires a broadband connection. It runs BattlEye anti-cheat and offers full controller support. More detail is on the Servers and Online page.
Extraction
Each expedition ends when players successfully locate an extraction point and escape to the orbital station with their Trampler and gathered loot. Dying during an expedition risks losing the loot carried on that run, though Trampler blueprints can be saved and rebuilt.