Sand is the Mythic unit added in Update 2.0 of the Roblox tower defense game Anime Expeditions, built around the Crocodile character from One Piece. Its evolved form, Sand (Alligator), does almost nothing on placement and everything once it is upgraded. The whole kit revolves around a sandstorm that grows over time, a poison that scales with that storm, and one active ability that can either slow a wave or stun it outright.
Quick answer: Take Sand (Alligator) to Upgrade 9 to unlock Ground Eruption, then leave it running until it reaches 100% range for a 5-second stun and 200% damage. Only re-trigger it early when you need an instant 65% slow instead.
Ground Eruption: The two ways to trigger it
Ground Eruption is the active ability unlocked at Upgrade 9, and it is the reason to run this unit at all. Activating it makes Desert Storm grow by 10% every second up to 100% capacity. While the ability is running, Sand (Alligator) stops attacking entirely, so you are trading its normal damage for whatever the eruption pays out.
Hitting the ability a second time before the storm reaches 100% cuts it short. That early trigger slows every enemy inside the eruption by 65% and deals 125% of the unit’s current damage to everything in range. It is the panic button for a wave that is about to leak.
Letting it run to 100% range is the stronger option. The eruption stuns enemies caught in it for 5 seconds and deals 200% of the unit’s current damage to everything in range, then goes on a 100-second local cooldown. You will know it landed when enemies inside the circle stop moving for the full stun duration rather than just crawling.
How Desert Storm and poison stack
Desert Storm is the passive that makes the rest work. It spawns at the unit’s own location and expands by 5% in size every second, capped at 100%. Anything standing inside it gets the Sandstorm effect. Once the storm has been sitting at full size for 10 seconds, it collapses back down to 10% and starts growing again, so placement matters more than usual — park the unit where the path stays inside the circle through that cycle.
The slow from Desert Storm is small on its own, roughly a 0.2 reduction lasting 5 seconds, but it stacks on top of other slows in the game. Pairing it with a heavier slow such as Salmon Sorcerer’s 0.5 produces a noticeably longer window on the same enemies.
Every hit also applies poison, which ticks damage over time. Golden Hook, unlocked at Upgrade 7, is what turns that from chip damage into real output. It raises poison damage by 20% per tick as a baseline, and if the enemy is standing inside Desert Storm or Ground Eruption, poison instead deals 100% increased damage per tick. When Desert Storm hits 100% range, the unit applies an extra stack of poison for as long as the enemy stays inside.
Upgrade path and costs
Sand (Alligator) has no passives at all when first placed. The four upgrades below are the ones that change how it behaves; everything in between is stat scaling. At level 80 the unit sits at 575 damage, a 3.9-second attack speed, 24.9 range, and 9.5% critical chance before upgrades.
| Upgrade | Cost | What it adds |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | $3,100 | Desert Storm, the expanding slow circle |
| 7 | $11,850 | Golden Hook poison scaling |
| 8 | $19,000 | Desert Knives, a wide cone AoE attack |
| 9 | $45,000 | Ground Eruption active ability |
Upgrade 8 is easy to undervalue. Swapping the single-target attack for the Desert Knives cone means every enemy in the arc picks up a poison stack, which is what Golden Hook then multiplies inside the storm.
Best trait for Sand (Alligator)
Raw damage numbers and practical value point in different directions here. In a controlled comparison against a Berserker enemy, Unbound produced by far the highest total on a single unit, while Primordial landed in second place.
| Trait | Total damage |
|---|---|
| Unbound | 6,918,268 |
| Primordial | 3,249,386 |
| Draconic | 2,931,811 |
| Forsaken | 1,427,660 |
Those totals measure one unit in isolation, which is not how Sand (Alligator) is usually played. Primordial lets you chain the active ability across multiple placements, so several copies can cycle Ground Eruption in sequence and keep stuns and slows overlapping on the path. That crowd control is worth more in a real run than one unit’s damage column. Unbound remains the pick if you are stacking pure single-unit output, and Draconic is the sensible fallback when Primordial is not available.
Tip: because the unit stops attacking during Ground Eruption, chaining across several placements also covers the damage gap — one unit erupts while the others keep applying poison.
Testing traits and abilities in sandbox
Poison Hook equipment
The unit’s unique equipment is the Poison Hook, bought from the Summer Shop with Sand Dollars. It is the only equipment tied specifically to this unit, and since the entire kit leans on poison ticks rather than hit damage, it slots in ahead of generic alternatives.
How to get Sand and evolve it into Sand (Alligator)
Sand comes from the limited-time Summer Capsule, sold in the Tidal Siege Event shop for 100 Sand Dollars each. To reach it, open the Events menu, select the Tidal Siege Event tab, hit Shop, and choose how many capsules to buy. The drop chance for Sand is 0.25%, so expect to open a lot of them.
Sand Dollars come from Tidal Siege quests, but the Summer Fish Fest quests are the far better source, handing out more than 20,000 in total. Most of those missions involve fishing for units.
| Evolution requirement | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| 25x Sprite (Green) | Crafted from Grey Sprites |
| 25x Sprite (Purple) | Crafted from Grey Sprites |
| 1x Sprite (Rainbow) | Crafted from Grey Sprites |
| 1x Desert Fruit | Summer Fish Fest Event shop, 10,000 Sand Dollars |
| 10,000 Gold | Clearing stages across most modes |
The evolution succeeds when the unit’s name changes to Sand (Alligator) and its attack and active ability are replaced. If Ground Eruption is missing from the unit card, you are still on the base form or have not reached Upgrade 9 in the run.
The Summer Capsule and the event shops are tied to the Tidal Siege and Summer Fish Fest events, so the acquisition route is only open while those are live. No official return window has been confirmed for either event.
