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You’ve no doubt noticed the abundance of flora and fauna on various islands you’re visiting as you explore the skies in Aloft, but with the Field Guide in hand, it’s up to your adventurer to tend to the ecological balance of the islands you encounter. No pressure, right?
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There’s a lot that goes into an island’s biodiversity and ecosystem health in Aloft, such as the number of trees and mushrooms there, the animals that call it home, the diversity of the plants, and so much more. Using the Field Guide, you can keep the ecological harmony in Aloft with ease.
Restore Ecosystems To Bring Life Back To Planets Big And Small
As you explore each sector in Aloft, you’ll explore the ups and downs of plenty of different islands all around the skies! As you do, though, be sure to check an island’s ecosystem when you visit, since it’ll be up to you to fix it! There are plenty of factors that go into an island’s ecosystem score, all of which are listed in your Field Guide when you’re analyzing an island. These factors contributing to an island’s ecological health include:
- The number of trees that have been planted on the island. If this number is too low, you can always plant more – the number shown in the Field Guide is the minimum number required for the ecosystem. Feel free to chop wood to your heart’s content, so long as the tree count stays above the number listed.
- The diversity of the plants on the island, denoted by the Flora score. You’ll need a few different types of plants around the island to help an ecosystem flourish, but you can have as many as you’d like provided the diversity score is met!
- The number of decomposers on the island. These are the Reishi Mushrooms at the base of trees – you can collect them to take home and process or use in cooking, but be sure to leave at least as many are shown in the decomposer count.
- The number of animals present on the island. You’ll see a minimum number of animals required to sustain the ecosystem, but if there are more than that present on the island, you could always take a few creatures home and raise them as livestock.
- The diversity of the insects on the island. You can look at this info in more detail, but you need to have a set number of bugs present on the island, though you’re free to collect a few.
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The presence of corrupted trees or cores, if any which appear on the island as barren gray trees with reddish veins running up through them. Simply cut these down with your ax to take care of the problem.
- There will often be several on a sick island, and finding them can be frustrating as the islands you visit increase in size. Corrupted trees and cores are highlighted in red when you walk around holding your Field Guide, so if you’re lost, equip it and do another lap around the island.
Once an island is free of corruption (if it was when you arrived – more on that below), you’ll see a more vibrant color palette on an island, meaning you’re at least close to a perfect ecosystem score! To make sure you’ve hit every benchmark there is as you work toward improving an island’s ecosystem in Aloft, though, be sure to check the Field Guide to see what needs doing before the island you’re on is at a perfect ecosystem score before you take off toward someplace new.
In the Field Guide, you can see all the above-mentioned details at a glance for each island, along with an overall ecosystem score on the top of the page, as well as which area you’re in at any given time. Feel free to flip between the pages of your Field Guide to see different information about each island, which expands as you venture into new biomes and find new islands in Aloft. Healthy biomes have the most vibrant color palette of all, making it easy to see when an island is flourishing.
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Corrupted Islands Require Cleansing First
You’ll have found your first one as part of the Forgotten Legacy quest, but as you explore the skies in Aloft, you’ll occasionally come across an island overtaken by corruption. This corruption is apparent as soon as you land on an island overrun with it: you’ll see a hazy and yellowish atmosphere on an island with red and purple mushroom plants, all of which surround a large central structure – a yellow tree with nodes on its tendrils, sometimes several on one corrupted planet.
What’s worse, you’ll also find several monsters guarding this fungus-like corruption, as well as the occasional large tree limb swinging about to protect the spores on the tree as you approach. They appear with yellow spores on their heads and each one functions differently. You’ll need to get used to defending yourself in combat if you hope to cleanse the corruption on these islands!
Before you can work on improving the planet in any way or gathering its resources, you’ll first need to cleanse the corruption before you can repair the ecosystem. To do this, you’ll need to destroy every corruption node on the island with a weapon of sorts, all before you hack at the center of the corruption while it’s exposed. You’ll need to do this twice over on the same plant to cure the island of its corruption.
Once the corruption has been cleared from an island, you can begin revitalizing the ecosystem as normal. As the island returns to normal, you’ll begin finding the usual spread of collectible resources there, as well as several animals that you can take home with you after taming them to begin your work on raising livestock.
That said, you’ll also find leftover corruption-covered pods around the ground, called Fungi Barriers. These are pretty radiant purple blobs on the ground once you’ve healed the corruption on an island, and a good many of them contain sick animals that you can cure once you’ve found the recipe required to do so. If you don’t have any cures on you when you find a sick animal after clearing an island of its corruption, you can still bring them home and keep them nearby until you’re able to cure them.
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