Desert Skies – basics Guide

New game

 
After starting new game (normal mode for example) you need to get these neccesary things to be able to fly to the first location. 
The things are: Hammer, Torch, can of food, 5 wood planks, rotor, toolkit, 6 nails, waterskin, handwheel, bandage and rope (sorted by image below) 
 
You can also get some extra stone from stone piles around which is very usefull from start. So you should definetly pick some rocks before heading to the first location but fast! your hunger and water wont last forever! 
 
 
 
When youre ready, go to your airship, put in one wood and ascend. 
 
 

First location

 
This location is important for your start as you have to look carefully and loot fast because you wont have much food for the start. Water is not such a problem because there is a well which you can drink from 4 times quenching almost half of your water bar each time.there is also bucket in the well which is usefull for storing water in your ship, complete quests or use it to water plants. 
 
 
 
 
In here, the seeker wont bother you until you pick up gearbox near the coal train. So you can open any door, interact with tables or running as you want with no one bothering you unless you pick up the gearbox (so you should pick gearbox as last item before you head out of the location). 
 
 
Remember stones? Now you got great use for them in trading post building using 1 wood, 2 stones and 1 rope. Since crafting update, stone items will eventualy break (after exactly 40 hits, 4 hits for each tree/cactus to break). 
 
 
 
 
 
Also dont forget some buildings may have second floor. (yes trading post does have) 
 
Since seeker wont appear till you pick up the gearbox, it might be great idea to harvest some wood and fibre. But again, dont waste too much time on harvesting since you wont be overloaded with food and water from start. 
 
 

Ready to head out

 
After picking the gearbox and running towards your airship. You can now build Wind up engine! You can search for it by pressing B (default keybind for hammer) -> APPARATUS -> NAVIGATION -> WIND UP ENGINE (Wind up engine can be built only on back side of the airship). 
 
Wind up engine can be charged by holding E on the hand wheel. Then just turn it on by pressing E on the lever. There is also second lever below the other one, which makes your airship rotate and fly north, south or west. Trying to fly for east will result in being pushed away by wind. 
 
Very important is to have WEATHER VANE also found in navigation, requires 1 wood and 1 glue to build. Very usefull for extra information on which way youre curently flying and which way the wind is going (mostly west). 
 
Locations are on west, they repeat after visiting all of them in one biome (for example if first biome has 2 locations, after visiting both of them you can keep going west and finding these locations with restored loot again and again) 
 
Biomes are located North and South. When you start, you have to visit all locations in biome so you can continue North (Big green beacon appears on North when you visit all locations in the biome showing you you unlocked it). If you want to get back in biome you visited before, you can locate it on south. 
 
While landing you will encounter icon showing there is seeker nearby. He comes out if you do a lot of sound by running, walking, opening doors, searching loot, jumping, harvesting and shooting. Only few locations dont have danger of the seeker. 
 
 
 

Beacons

 
While flying, you can see these type of colored pillars, what do they mean? 
 
 
 
 
 
There are currently 4 different beacons. 3 of them are located on west, and 1 on north. 
White beacon: points of interest, they have harvesting area all around but they also have some loot, you can visit them if youre interested in the story. There is no need to visit them at all. Only if you want to harvest but have at least minor loot. 
 
Green beacon: Location, which you havent visited yet. Neccesary to visit to unlock new biome. 
 
Yellow/gold beacon: Location, which you have visited previously, also with restored loot. 
 
Large green beacon on north: This means you have unlocked new biome. Now prepare for a bit longer ride because you will have to fly towards the unlocked biome and look for new locations on west again. 
 
Note: Devs will be removing these beacons in future. Make sure you have spyglass! 
 
 

Resources

 
Workbench, artificier or blacksmith arent cheapest things to build so you will have to loot and harvest a lot. Let me get you trough some basic items you will need and where to get them. 
 
Most common resource is wood of course! very easy to harvest trough trees and sometimes found as loot in locations but most efficent is harvesting. It can be used pretty much at anything from building to crafting. Wood can be stacked up to 30 in one inventory slot and 40 in resource pallet. Can be used as fuel source. 
 
 
Nails are second most common resource that is also easy to loot but cannot be harvested. Can be crafted at blacksmith. Also pretty usefull at anything from building to crafting. They can be found in these small boxes across locations but in inventory they look like a small iron sticks. Nails can be also stacked up to 30 in one inventory slot. 
 
 
Stone is third most used material of what i think. Though stone has only 2 basic uses which are stone tools and distraction. Stone is brutally easy to gather but doesnt have much use at all. 20 stone per inventory slot and 50 in resource bucket. 
 
 
Fibre, as fourth most important material for me is important for bandages for healing, and building bed for sleeping. Fibre is very easy to harvest, sometimes spawns in locations but cant be crafted. Has some use so why not to get some. 30 fibre per inventory slot and 150 in resource bucket. 
 
 
Rope is probably fifth most used material. Can be crafted and looted but not harvested. Used for building smelter and workbench. Its very easy to get using fibre so if youre having a lot of fibre, you will never have to worry about not having rope. 30 rope per inventory slot and 30 in rope pole. 
 
 
Alcohol is used for bandages and now as fuel for nailrig and in future for other rigs. Pretty usefull and good to have. 5 alcohol per inventory slot and 30 in resource pallet. 
 
 
Iron is very common harvestable resource. Spawns in any biome in first round. Iron is a key ingredient to things like iron tier tools, revolver, nails and lot more! Always harvest when you see this tall rock. Just hit the weak spot few times, get the iron and smelt it into iron ingots. 
 
 
 
 
Now lets talk about more interesting materials. Such as glue. New to game since crafting update. Cant be harvest but can be looted and crafted easily. Its very small so make sure not to miss it. Has important use so you should never leave it behind! 5 glue per inventory slot and 42 in resource pallet 
 
 
Leather cant be harvested or crafted but can be looted. Its not very common material but very usefull for iron/gold tools or sleeping bags. Never leave behind! 10 leather per inventory slot and 30 in resource pallet. 
 
 
Charcoal. Good for making glue and gunpowder but also brutally easy to gather. 20 charcoal per inventory slot and 50 in resource bucket. Looks similiar to coal on ground. 
 
 
Toolkit. Important for building almost any item crafting station. Can be looted, expensive for crafting and cannot be harvested. 5 Per inventory slot 
 
 
Glass. New very usefull resource. obtainable by smelting sand. Cannot be looted. Used to build Artificer, Gunsmith, Nail rig, Still and craft stuff like lamp or glass bottle. 10 Per inventory slot and 180 in resource pallet. 
 
 
 

Fighting Seeker

 
Crafting update gave us new seeker attack in form of animation instead of old attack. If you get too close to seeker, the animation will begin and all depends on if you have knife or not. If you dont have knife, the seeker will always take you around 40% of your health. If you do have knife (can be found in area 51 or crafted at blacksmith), you can always fight him off just by completing easy quick time event everytime he reaches you. 
 
 
You can also scare him off by shooting him with iron bullets. Distract him with rock or noise maker, and even defeat him. 
 
If you want to fight him off to have silence and loot for a few seconds, make sure you dont swap items just before he reaches you. You may encounter weird bug where you have the quick time event going on but your hand is empty resulting in being biten by seeker. Same happens if seeker attacks you from below. If youre standing above the seeker he can still reach you and you may not even be able to do something in the quicktime event so you lose health again. So make sure to stand in front of him. 
 
 

Farming and caves

 
Farming and caves are the newer topics of the game and both have great use in game. I will explain you both as good as i can. 
 
Farming gave us such things as seeds for yuca trees, cactus fruits, dirt, fertilizer and tall planting bed. 
 
In order to start farming, you need 4 dirt, 4 nails and 6 wood to build Tall Planting bed in APPARATUS -> RESOURCE GROWING (should be built in same floor as burner or somewhere without roof blocking you from building it). DIrt can be found pretty anywhere at all locations. Each of these contains 3 dirt. 
 
 
You also need shovel to harvest dirt. Shovel can me crafted at blacksmith and blacksmith can be built using materials found in locations. 
 
After building up the tall planting bed, last thing you need is a bit of water and seeds. Seeds for cactus fruit can be found around locations 
 
 
The 3 red thing you can see are the fruits! yummy and restores both hunger and thirst, around 18% hunger and 16% thirst. The orange thing on right is the seed, it doesnt have quaranteed chance to spawn in each cactus. Also there arent always 3 cactus fruits per each cactus. If youre lucky enough, you might get this seed on first try. 
 
Now after building tall planting bed and getting seed from cactus, you can plant your own cactus and finnaly start farming! Just press action button on tall planting bed and last thing to do is water, you can use water bucket or waterskin for that. Now only thing to is just wait. You can also add fertilizer to grow the cactus faster but its not neccesary. And there you go! Your first cactus grew up and all you can do is collect the fruit all over again. No need to be confused over message saying that you can remove the cactus using axe for fiber, the cactus keeps infinetly growing fruits. 
 
Second seed in game is yuca tree which isnt very usefull to farm for wood because you got wood practicly anywhere. 
 
Caves are now exchange for points of interest and can be located using white beacons. From what ive heard there are only few types of caves. There should be types of caves like coal, iron, gold, saltpeter and sulfur. Also this update gave us back red mushrooms which partially heal you and are not bad as food source. New drop flare item was also added. When mining, you can drop these flares to light up surroundings so you can mine in peace for a while. They can be found randomly spawned near entrance or inside the cave. There are 2 caves for every biome and the caves have often small water pool. 
 
Some caves has a lot of blue mushrooms inside of them. There are also few green mushrooms hidden between blue ones that launches spores around it damaging you very fast. Around 15% health per tick. Blue mushrooms are just hiding them. Some caves have holes with spikes instantly killing you if you fall into them so i dont recommend sprinting when youre first time in the cave. 
 
Big up for caves is that seeker dont spawn near them. 
 
 

Defeating seeker and whats after

 
If youre asking whats neccesary to finish the game, then its a gun. As in the story, seeker is meant to be defeated in abandoned manor using gold bullets you can make at gunsmith. Seeker has weak spot in his chest between his arms. It takes 3 shots to kill him which after each shot he becomes invincible for a few seconds. Just simply wait until his chest is red and shoot him again. 
 
Note: Seeker moves faster and attacks faster with each shot in his chest so make sure youre far away from him when youre about to kill him (You can also crouch to see his chest better and hold right mouse button for closer look). 
 
Also make sure to switch from iron bullets to gold bullets if you were using them previously (Default key for switching ammo type is T). 
 
After youve seccufully shot seeker 3 times, he should lie down and there you go! You can take his head by pressing E on his corpse and put it on wall in your airship. 
 
You can go for round 2 and get all locations all over again by going north. Some locations are renamed like Farm 2, Lone supply 2 etc. and after defeating seeker in 2nd round, you get message on your screen from devs. That means you can now only go west or south only. 
 
 

Tesla tier tools

 
When you finish the first round there is one important thing youre missing and that are the best tools in game right now. Resources to craft tesla tools can only be found in second round (simply after visiting Abandoned manor and going north again). They can be crafted at tesla workbench. Resources for crafting tesla tools are: 
 
Leather (Can be found pretty much at any location) 
Battery (Found in Leaning rocks) 
Meteorite ingot (Harvestable. Anywhere in second round. Requires gold pickaxe to harvest) 
Alien crystal (Harvestable. Around Abandoned manor in second round and requires gold axe to harvest) 
 
This is how Tesla tools looks like. 
 
 
 
 
They work a bit differently from other tools. They dont have durability, cant be sharpened and after 3 hits, they gain overcharge for around 20 seconds. While overcharged, they harvest trees, cactues etc. in one hit. Also tesla axe gives extra charcoal when harvesting wood. They both provide purple light while equiped so you dont have to use flares at night. 
 
 

Other usefull tips

 
-Stamina bar wont regenerate for few seconds when fully depleted but if you stop running before that happens, the stamina will regenerate right after you stop running. 
 
-Grinder isnt neccesary because iron/gold tools doesnt break even after depleting the red bar. Sharpening the tools takes you too much time for saving only 1 hit. 
 
-Harvesting at points of interest is better due to some bonus loot and even light source sometimes. (Theyre removed for now in exchange for caves but they will come back soon) 
 
-Tap is mostly uselless along with barrel cactuses. Tap is made at blacksmith for one iron ingot and can be used to get water from barrel cactuses. They give little water and only good use they have is to use them for water is if youre traveling between biomes with no water around so you take some from barrel cactus to water plants. 
 
-If you have 4 charcoal already in grill, blacksmith or smelter. You should think about taking them because no more charcoal will appear in the box after smelting/forging/cooking. 
 
-You can build 5x floor from each side of the burner until being ,,Outside the bounds of the airship.” 
 
-Make sure to have a lot of useless things. You never know when it gets rare/more usefull in future. 🙂 
 
-Be carefull if you loot, you may miss some good stuff hiding from you. But also dont spend too much time in one location unless youre in oasis (only place with infinite food and water) 
 
-You dont need to have sleeping bag/bed built. You can just build it, sleep and deconstruct. 
 
-If you want to harvest/loot as quick as possible, store some items into chests to make sure you dont have to come back into location because you dont have inventory space. 
 
-If youre missing an anvil, toolkit, cloth or any important item. Try to head to the first 2 biomes. Theyre most probable to spawn in their locations. 
 
-Loot is always randomized with some exceptions. Important things like anvil, battery or crucible have quaranteed spawn chance in certain locations. 
 

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