In the lore of the game, the Sanctuaries are places of refuge where the player can heal, level up, and pledge allegiance to a Creed. But a game running on an unpatched base ROM is a sanctuary with a leaking roof. The experience was incomplete, fraught with the bugs and glitches that were the "salt" of the technical world—impurities that marred the perfection of the journey.

A common misconception among beginners is that downloading an update NSP replaces the need for the base game. Switch architecture requires a layered file system:

When navigating the digital ecosystem of Nintendo Switch backups, format terminology is highly important.

Salt and Sanctuary is a dark, hand-drawn 2D side-scroller that heavily borrows mechanics from the Dark Souls series. Players control a shipwrecked sailor stranded on an uncharted, eerie island filled with undead monsters, massive bosses, and complex lore. Key features of the game include:

Ensure you have both the Salt and Sanctuary (Base).nsp and the latest Salt and Sanctuary (Update vX.X.X).nsp files ready on your computer.