At LadiesGamers, when we love a game, we like to make a guide. I reviewed Airborne Kingdom, giving it our highest score of Two Thumbs up. To say I liked the game would be an understatement. I fell in love with the game. You can find the review here.
Airborne Kingdom is a peaceful city builder game where you fly and build an airship in the sky. While the game does have some help in it in a tutorial, I thought I’d write up a few tips and strategies that I learned while playing it. And as it can be daunting to start this game with a tutorial that could really have been better, the first chapter is for absolute beginners!
Airship and Citizens
In the Airborne Kingdom, you have to take care of your flying Airship and citizens. By visiting civilizations on the ground below and buying blueprints, you can research new technologies in the tech tree. In doing so, you can upgrade essential parts of your Airship to keep it flying as you take on more residents or immigrants, as the game calls them.
Absolute Beginnings
Let’s start at the beginning. Airborne Kingdom takes a bit of getting used to when you first start our with your airship. The first thing to do is to build 9 Housing Blocks. You can find them by pressing X for the building menu. Your first choices are Housing Blocks, a Hangar, Path and Academy. My first thought when I zoomed in on my ship with tilting the L-thumb and pressing ZR was “how on earth am I going to build housing on this ship. It’s already chocker full!” Took me a while to figure out that you don’t build on the existing ship, but you hang your Housing Blocks on the railing at the side! As you need to build on more things, it’s a good idea to first work on placing some paths and expanding the area that you can hang buildings on.
Each Housing block costs 5 trees (wood) and you don’t have enough in store. Now what? You want to find more materials on the ground. To do that you have to build a Hangar onto the Airship, which costs 10 stone (which you fortunately have). Once it is built, you point your cursor to the world below (by working with the left and right thumb) and find a forest. There’s a number down there showing how many trees you can harvest. Click on the tree cluster, assign the number of workers that you want to work on this. Press B to go back, and pretty soon you will see little aircraft flying off towards the cluster of trees to harvest them. And to replant them, very important too!
After building the 9 Housing Blocks you now need water for your workers. Find a lake and send the workers out in the same way. Next thing to build is the Academy, to allow you to research blueprints. Meanwhile, keep an eye on the lift and tilt, though for now with adding these buildings at the start you should be fine. It’s a bit of a balancing act!
Time to fly out and explore the world. To move, you just press with A on the map below where you want to go, and a sort of buoy will rise up, that’s where you are going!
Games Menu
Let’s start with the games menu. Along the top of the screen is all the info that you need to have a successful game. Using the D-pad and pressing up, and right you’re able to move along the menu, going left to right they read as such.
Population: First off is your population count the number of citizens on board your ship. It also details their mood, which you will have to keep an eye on. Upset citizens will leave your ship, meaning you’ll have to fly around the map stopping at settlements trying to find more immigrants to take on board, and they will only come on board if their requirements are met.
Games Menu Cont’d
Food Stored: food that your scouts will bring back from foraging in the forage spots on the map. Food storage can be increased by completing the tech in the tech tree. It would be best if you researched extra food storage as soon as possible as your citizens don’t like to be hungry.
Water Stored: Water can be found on the map, look for the blue pools, and you will find it. Like food, you can upgrade the water storage by researching the appropriate tech in the tech tree.
Lift: Lift is significant for an Airship; without it, your Airship will plummet to the ground. Unfortunately, every time you add a new building to your Airship, it slightly reduces the airships ability to lift. By completing the research in the tech tree under Lift, you can build wings, fans, balloons and a vertical rotor to help keep the airship flying.
Speed, Propulsion and Coal
Speed: If your city buildings apply too much weight or your Airship is tilting, it can reduce the speed of your Airship. By completing the propulsion and lift in the tech tree should enable your Airship to maintain speed.
Propulsion: Propulsion is the forward movement of your Airship; without it, your Airship is going nowhere in the sky; it’s a dead duck just floating in one place. Check the tech tree, and you will find a few extras you can add to your ship to give it more forward movement in the Propulsion section.
Coal: Coal is a vital resource that you will need to keep your eyes peeled for on the map. Coal powers your Airship. Without it, you guessed it, your ship will fall from the sky ending in death for all on board. So I’d update the coal storage on your Airship as soon as you can in the tech tree under Storage.
Trees, Iron and Storage
Trees/Wood: These play a vital part in the construction of your Airship plus later on when you have unlocked the tech, you can use trees as fuel.
Adobe Kiln: The Adobe Kiln is where your residents make bricks using Clay gathered from the ground as a resource. But first, you must research the Adobe Kiln in the tech tree before you can build one.
Iron: Iron can be made after you have found Ore on the ground. You might not see it until you have moved off the first map and ventured further into the game. You have to unlock and research the Iron Forge in the tech tree as well.
Glass: Glass is used as building materials for some of the buildings. Quartz can be found as a resource on the ground to use in glassmaking. You have to research the Glass Smelter building in the tech tree.
Canvas: Cotton is found as a resource later on in the game. Researching the Hemp Weaver building in the tech tree will allow your residents to use the help.
Resource Storage: This icon gives you an overall total of each item you have in your Warehouse onboard your Airship.
Relics: You can find relics in different areas on the map. You can send one worker down to the ground to search for a relic when you find a relic building. Relics are used to buy new Blueprints from some of the cities on the map.
Tips to Get you Started
- You don’t have to wait for things to happen in ‘normal time’. Just use L and R side buttons to speed up the time.
- Upgrade your houses in the tech tree to allow you to stack the homes on top of one another. Completing the tech will save a lot of space on your Airship, so I’d do that as soon as you can.
- Another tech to research as soon as you can is the Regain all Resources when moving buildings. Having the tech completed means that if you move a building, you get all the resources back into Storage and not wasted.
- Keep a very close eye on your Airships Lift and Tilt. They are essential, and your Airship can tilt a lot as you add more buildings. Try and space them out well using paths to separate the buildings. And remember the golden rule, residents do not like to be living close to any industrial buildings; otherwise, they will leave your Airship.
- Place farms and Windmills together as well as food and water buildings together for boosts.