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Aloftis an open-world sandbox game that allows you to explore hundreds of randomly generated islands, claim them as your own, and get to the bottom of an odd mysteries on these islands in the sky. Collect resources, slay fungus creatures, cure ecological corruption, and make an island home of your own.
While there’s never a right way to play Aloft, there are a few simple tips we think you should know before you get started. Whether you’re speeding through exploration or stopping to smell the assortment of collectible flowers, here’s what we wish we knew before we started Aloft.
Aloft is currently out in early access, so things may change as the game continues to develop. We’ll continue to update our guides on the game as needed.
Establish A Home Island As Soon As You Can
When you begin playing Aloft, you’ll gather some resources scattered throughout the cave you’re in, craft a workbench, and break through the rubble that was trapping you, emerging onto a colorful and vibrant landscape on the beginning island. Here, you’ll find a crucial knowledge stone as you make your way up the mountain to learn therecipe for a glider station.
Justto the right of the main pathleading up the mountain in question, you’ll see aknowledge stonemuch like the one that taught you the recipe for the workbench, thegray stone with a blue glow and flowing red ribbonin the pond nearby. Interact with this knowledge stone, and you’ll learn how to craft ahome kite, which is the tool you’llneed to craft and placetoclaim an island as your home island.
Once you’ve placed a home kite, you’ll respawn there anytime you either deplete your health or use the “Teleport to Home” option in the home island section of your inventory. You can begincrafting storage for your surplus resources, things like stone, wood, and leaf pieces that you’ll rapidly accumulate quite a lot of. You can also craft different types of pots to store any other item from your inventory, and it’s a good idea toperiodically offload resources from your inventory into storagewhen you visit home.
Crafting on your home island, includingmaking prepared mealson cooking plates, will pull any necessary resources from these resource storage bins.
Explore Islands Across Archipelagos, And Know Your Table Map Colors
As you venture between archipelagos, the sections of island chains on your table map, you’ll naturally want tocheck out every island in an archipelago, since there’s no telling what you’ll find and where. Unless you’re tracking them specifically, there’s no clear indication of which island will have important things like knowledge stones, achors, or corruption until you’re near enough to glide there. We’ve found knowledge stones on tiny one-tree islands, and we’ve found nothing on enormous islands all the same.
That said, you canuse a lost atlasto point the way to an island that’s sure to have something to discover! After you’ve set foot on any given island, though, it’ll light up on the table map on your home island, andthe color an island appears in is relative to the ecosystem healththere. If an island is marked ingreen, it means everything in that island’s ecosystem is perfectlyhealthyand there’s no need to do anything before you go.
Yellowislands on the map mean there’s anunhealthy ecosystemon that island, so you’ll want to gosee what’s going on. Consult the Field Guide to see what needs doing to bring the ecosystem on that island back to normal. Finally, apinkisland is rife withcorruption, so steer clearunless you’re looking for a fight. If you need help finding the nearest sick island, you can alwaysconsult your Stormchaseras well.
You may also notice that islands are yellow if you haven’t been there in a while. Something may have been offset since you last visited, so pay a visit and check the Field Guide. It’ll often switch back to green just for visiting and assuring that everything is up to snuff, but you may also need to repair something or plant more greenery.
You Don’t Have To Steer Islands Constantly While Flying
After you’ve set up your home island and taken to the skies to venture off to new archipelagos, to find and cure all manners of corruption, to figure out why the land has turned into islands in the sky in the first place, you’ll need toconsult your table map before orienting the island using the helm. On the table map, your home island has a slight point on one side of the circular icon, and that’s where your helm is relative to the home island icon.
This will help youorient your ship toward the island you’re trying to visit, to get you pointed in the right direction. It’s also helpful toset waypointsin the areas you’re trying to visit, though you can only have one waypoint at a time.
At the helm, you’ll need to situate your island’s height, orientation around a 360-degree horizontal axis, and the propulsion. However, once you’ve finished charting your course and getting the island on the right track,you can leave the helm while you sail between archipelagos, and the ship will maintain the settings you left. You can do anything frombuild up the island, whip up some new dishes,tend to your animals, organize your resources, and more, all while the ship island steers itself.
Keep an eye out in general, though, so you don’t overshoot your destination!
The Map Is Much Bigger Than You Think It Is
When you first take off from the beginning island after unlocking your glider, the map in Aloft feels colossal as you rocket through the sky, dodging debris and checking out all sorts of islands in that first archipelago. Once you build a table map, you’ll see that there are plenty more archipelagos in the area for you to check out.
But what’s beyond the wooden border? For the most part, unless you’re sailing right into the storm on the map, there areplenty of other sectors to explore, each with their own archipelagos to venture into and islands to check on. You’ll eventually even work your way intothree separate biomesthat have different scenery, crops, and animals when you visit. Be sure to grab any new resources you see, since later biomes have more advanced materials to collect.
Because of the size of the map in Aloft, you’ll want to spend timeimproving your home island and optimizing it for flight. Consider different sails to make the island faster, and build additional lifts or rudders to help turn or lift that much quicker – it makes a difference before long.
Gliding Is Unlimited Until You Leave The Archipelago
While it’s quite cool to soar through the skies and check out different islands within an archipelago, you’ll need to be certain tostay within an archipelago’s boundaries while you glide. If you should get turned around and leave the boundaries of an archipelago,your glider will quickly deplete, and when the meter on the screen is empty, you’ll sink through the sky.
To get between archipelagos in Aloft, you’ll need to use your home island to sail into the boundaries of another one before you’re free to take flight and explore on foot. While you’re in the sky gliding between islands, though,your glider is unlimited until you leave the boundariesof that archipelago. You’ll also want tobe mindful of extreme weather like lightning storms, since your glider can and will take damage before too long in such conditions.
Keep A Lost Key Or Two On You
Your first introduction tousing lost keyscame during the Forgotten Legends quest in the tutorial, when you had to unlock a door on one of the islands to locate the second fresco and learn to make the helm for your home island. Butlost keys are used for many thingsin Aloft, so you’ll want to keep one on you while you’re exploring.
Not only are keysused to unlock doorslike the one concealing the second fresco, but you’ll also find somelocked treasure chestsas you explore caves across the islands. These chests often have pretty good loot, so they’re usually worth opening, and there’s nothing more annoying than backtracking when there’s so much new stuff to see.
Keep Your Sketchbook Handy
With so much going on as you learn the ins and outs of playing Aloft, it can be easy to overlook certain elements. You’ll findyour first sketchbookduring the Forgotten Legacy quest, but if you’re anything like us, you’re too focused on exploring and expanding your horizons to pay it much mind. But if you’re planning to decorate at any point, you’ll want to carry your sketchbook so you cansketch new decorative furniture as you explore.
Without much in the way of instructions on how to use it, it’s easy to tuck this little book away, but if you find what looks to bethe remains of a dwellingof any kind - whether that’s single houses on small islands or massive ships crashed onto colossal rocks in the sky - you’ll find plenty of cool furniture and decoration all around the sky islands. Find something you like? Whip out yoursketchbook anda piece of paper(one piece per decorative item) and draw it so you can craft your own back at home.
Explore Unhealthy Ecosystems While Holding The Field Guide
Whether it’s simply a sadder saturation when you arrive on a new island or a corrupt island you’ve only just healed, you’ll likely come across islands whoseunhealthy ecosystems need work to repairand restore to full health. While things like planting trees, bringing over animals and bugs from your home island, and planting Reishi Mushrooms as decomposers are straightforward, you’ll sometimes need to do a little extra labor to bring things back up to snuff.
Some of these tasks includecutting down decayed trees, which appear as grayish, craggy trees with a black and red vein running through them, orfixing habitatsdotted around the island, require a bit more hunting. You could plant trees and drop animals anywhere on the island, but if there are things to find, you’ll want towalk around with the Field Guide equippedwhen you’re looking for them.
The reason for this is that holding the Field Guide seems tohighlight the items that need attention in transparent red, which makes themmarkedlyeasier to find than they are if you’re just walking around searching. Keep the Field Guide out until you spot one of these highlighted objects in the distance and then head over to fix it before checking the Field Guide itself to see what needs doing next.
Leave Breadcrumbs So You Don’t Get Lost In Caves
While they begin pretty small and simply, the caves you’ll find in later areas of your map in Aloft can become colossal before long. There’s always the option to teleport home and try again from the entrance, but there are a few different ways to help guide yourself through caves you’re exploring.
One easy way to ensure you don’t backtrack is tocollect everything the first time you pass through an area. All the stones on the ground, all the face statues, everything that glows white periodically to alert you that a collectible is nearby, grab it. That way, when you have to turn around and choose a new direction, you’ll see one direction with glowing objects and one direction without any.
The best way to get around caves is with a torch, which illuminates any dark area for you onceyou’ve crafted one. You can still get turned around, but navigating is always easier when you’re not doing it in the darkness!
Send Sick Animals Home And Keep Them As Pets
As youcure corrupted islandsin Aloft and restore order to the ecosystem there, you’ll occasionally findbright purple fungus sacson the ground that you may interact with. While these will sometimes contain additional Mykter Fibers, you’ll most often findanimals covered with corruptionafter you’ve broken the shell. If you’ve got any on you, you canuse an antidote to cure the animalright away.
Since antidotes are tougher to come by, with you relying onfinding them in treasure chestsuntil you’ve made progress at the Research Lab, you’ll likely spend the first several hours of Aloft relying on found cures. If you’ve left your home island near the corrupted one, you can send these infected animals to your home island. Curing an animal befriends them, and you’ll be able to treat them as a livestock pet, which means you’ll be able to routinely grab their animal resources to use elsewhere as you explore!
