Airborne Empire — walkthrough: the sky-city maths, the quest order and the first ten hours

Airborne Empire is the sequel to Airborne Kingdom: an open-world RPG city builder from The Wandering Band in which the city itself is the vehicle. It went into Early Access on 13 January 2025 and shipped 1.0 on 17 April 2026. Everything that makes the game hard comes from one fact — your town is a flying machine with a weight budget, and every building you add is a promise you have to keep paying for in lift and coal.

This guide is the order to build in, the quest chain in the starting region, what unlocks what, and the specific mistakes that end runs. It is written for the 1.0 line.

What version this is written for

• Game version: the 1.0 series. 1.0 released 17 April 2026. The newest numbered patch is 1.0.11 (18 June 2026).
• The newest content update is the New Mill Town Center (6 August 2026) — a third selectable Town Center on top of the Classic and Balloon ones. It has not been given a version number.
• Where 1.0 ends and the story does too. The Kingsfell biome, the Jet Engine combat-ability building and the final confrontation with the Pirate Queen all shipped with 1.0, not after it. A later Early Access patch (16 January 2026) then added a Game Difficulty button in the Pause Menu, so difficulty is no longer locked for the whole run.

A note on the sources, because it changes what this guide can claim. Airborne Kingdom has an official wiki at airbornekingdom.wiki.gg. Airborne Empire does not. The only wiki for this game is a community Fandom wiki (airborne-empire.fandom.com, 52 pages), and most of its structure and resource pages are stubs — several literally contain only {{stub}}. Its real value is that it transcribes the game's own tutorial text and carries the cost and lift figures for the handful of buildings that do have pages. Developer statements come from the game's Steam announcements. Where a number has no source it is left out, and the guide says so at the end.

Choose your Town Center before you build anything

The game now opens with a Town Center menu. These are the three options, with the developer's own numbers for the two later ones:

If this is your first run, Classic. The Balloon Town Center is the forgiving start for a small city, and the Mill is the one to pick when you already know the opening and want the production boost — its whole advantage is late-game and its coal burn is a real early-game cost.

The four numbers that run your city

Every panel in the top bar matters, but four of them decide whether the rest of the game is playable.

Lift versus weight. The game's tutorial states it plainly: "Your Town Center can only lift so much weight. In order to expand your kingdom, you must place buildings that generate Lift." Lift buildings are unusual in that "while other buildings pull their side of the kingdom down, Lift buildings will push their side up." That is why lift placement is a layout decision and not a shopping decision — a Fan dropped on the wrong side lifts the wrong side.

Tilt. "When placing buildings, pay careful attention to Tilt, as adding too much weight on one side or the other will tip your kingdom, which may annoy your population and slow you down." This is not flavour text. A post-launch patch note in the Pacifist Mode update reads: "Fixed resource generation rates not updating correctly when city tilts and affects worker speed" — the game code hands tilt a straight multiplier on how fast your workers do their jobs. A tilting city gathers slower, and every "my economy is fine but nothing is arriving" complaint traces back to it.

Drag versus propulsion. "With each building you construct, drag is added to your kingdom, which slows down your movement speed. To get your speed back up, you must create Propulsion buildings." Propulsion is not decoration and it is not free: a patch fixed "propulsion buildings still animating when there is no more coal".

Coal. Coal funds all of the above. A patch fixed the UI bug where "propulsion buildings still animating when there is no more coal" — which is the game's polite way of saying an empty coal bar means an unmoving, un-lifted city. The tutorial adds the second half of the trap: "You're continually using [Coal, Food and Water] — the faster you travel, the less time it takes to get places, and the fewer resources you'll use along the way." Distance is a coal bill.

The opening build order

This is the sequence the game's own tutorial walks you through, expanded with the costs that are actually documented.

1. Lay Paths. "Any buildings must be connected to the Town Center via Paths." Paths are the connectivity rule, not a cosmetic — an unconnected building is not working. They also double as structure: "These walkable platforms also act as sturdy connections between buildings."
2. Build a Hangar. The tutorial is explicit that this comes first: "A Hangar should be one of the first buildings you construct!" It is 10 Wood and 10 Iron, adds 7 Lift, and "contains aircraft, used by workers to gather resources and interact with people in the world below." With no Hangar and no plane, ground resources are simply out of reach.
3. Assign workers to ground nodes. "Left Click on that nearby Forest and assign your people to gather some Wood." The tutorial's own rule of thumb: "The closer you are to a resource, the faster you'll gather it." Position is throughput.
4. Build a Housing Block. It is 15 Wood, adds 3 Lift, and holds up to 5 people. The stated rule: "we cannot hire any new recruits until they already have space in a home." Housing before recruitment, always — a Tavern visit with no free bed is a wasted trip.
5. Build an Academy and research the Iron Forge. The tutorial: "Beyond basic and storage buildings, you must research any new constructions at an Academy." Its suggested first target is exact — "Your people don't have many ideas for building yet, but an Iron Forge would be a useful addition, so that you can transform Ore into Iron. Create an Academy and start researching an Adobe Kiln!"
6. Build the Iron Forge and staff it. Ore is worthless until it is Iron, and Iron is what the Hangar already wanted 10 of.
7. Add Lift and storage deliberately. The Lift-building page on the wiki (Fan) exists but has no figures filled in; the Warehouse page likewise. Add Lift next to the mass that is causing the tilt, not wherever there is room, and add storage before your resource bars cap out.
8. Recruit at ground Taverns. "Potential migrants can be found at Taverns in cities or small settlements. You'll need housing for any potential inhabitants, and probably Coin to encourage them to join, too." Taverns are a property of settlements, not of your city — recruiting means travelling.
9. Match propulsion to the city you have actually built, or upgrade the Town Center. "Build enough propulsion to get close to your max speed. Or upgrade the Town Center to go even faster!"

Where every resource comes from

Dyes are separate from the resource economy: there are 11 dye colours to find from dye houses plus the 2 you start with, found by exploring the map and investigating ruins, and they unlock the "Fresh Coat of Paint" achievement.

Research and blueprints: two different gates

There are two ways a building becomes available, and confusing them wastes trips.

• Research at your own Academy. Basic and storage buildings can be built directly; "beyond basic and storage buildings, you must research any new constructions at an Academy." Some buildings — Iron Forge, Adobe Kiln, Warehouse — come out of your own research tree.
• Buy the blueprint at a city's Academy. Other buildings can only be unlocked by purchasing their blueprint during a visit. The developer describes it directly for the Tropicos buildings: "You can purchase the blueprint for this building from the Academy at Costa Tropicos." Two examples with documented sources: the Turbine Engine (the largest Lift building in the game at the time it shipped, but "a bit of a coal chugger") and the Bird Cage Bar (a morale building) are both bought at Costa Tropicos. The Ferris Wheel is a third morale building and "can only be unlocked by finding and completing a hidden quest within the Tropicos Islands biome" — some blueprints have no price at all, only a quest.
• One blueprint is a quest reward, not a purchase. The Street Lamp comes from repairing Havenmill (below).

Blueprint prices at the Aeyrie academies

The community wiki lists these as the prices at each city's Academy. The wiki's template does not label the currency; blueprints are bought in-game, and Coin is the game's money, but treat these as wiki figures rather than a developer table.

The practical read: Coal Storage is cheap (250) and should be bought early, because coal is the failure state; the Clinic is the most expensive early purchase and the one you can defer.

The Aeyrie main quest chain, in order

The starting region is the Aeyrie — an archipelago of temperate forest and grassland, with the Barrens to its north and the Blackspine to its north-west. Its capitals and cities give the quest chain, and the wiki records the order.

1. Havenmill — the game's real tutorial. An agricultural city, governed by Magistrate Agatha, and the largest settlement in the region outside the capital, Litalos. Its main quests are Safe Haven, Defend Havenmill and Arm the Kingdom. You repair the city's Academy and Market; the reward is the Street Lamp blueprint and 10 Glass (research it before you can build it). From there you are sent onward — this is the chain, in order:

• Havenmill → Castra Regnum for the Defense Tower blueprint. Castra Regnum is the region's fortress city and military headquarters, led by Captain Marner of the Knights of Littos. The towers you learn here defend your own city and can be built in Havenmill itself.
• Castra Regnum → Orrenspyre to discover the Cannon, the weapon that can target ground buildings. Orrenspyre is the university city; the cannon comes out of Chief Engineer Regina's quest line (Search & Rescue) — she is ambushed by pirates while retrieving cannon blueprints, and you must locate her, repair her aircraft and escort her home.

Two side quests worth doing immediately, in Havenmill and around it:

• "Resupply the Outposts" (market, after the Defense Tower is built): deliver 10 Food to each outpost, food you supply yourself. This is a stockpiling quest, so start holding food back as soon as you accept it.
• Havenmill-adjacent camps, all of which convert into daily free resources — the best value in the region:

Orrenspyre also carries the research branch. High Scholar Isidore governs the city (Archives, and a city under constant bandit raids). Scholar Cornelius gives the side quest The Temple of Aelius: rebuild the temple and you unlock additional research opportunities. If you want an easier mid-game, this is the quest to do before pushing on.

The Wonders — four city-wide abilities, three of them in the starting region

Wonders are unique buildings: one of each, unlocked by their own quest, each with an achievement. They are the strongest return on a quest in the game, and they are easy to walk past because the quests live in cities, not on the map marker trail.

Two of these change the shape of a run. The Scales of Aelius is the answer to the tilt mechanic — build it and the thing this whole guide keeps warning about stops existing. The Great Orrery is the single best quality-of-life unlock in the game: it is the difference between flying around hunting quest markers and having the world handed to you as a list. Both are gated behind liberating or rebuilding a city first, so they are mid-game, not early.

Region order: travelling the world without running dry

Five biomes in total, and the geography dictates the order.

The developer's own stated mistake, and it is the expensive one: do not move the whole city on a hunch. Moving is coal, and arriving somewhere barren is how a run dies. Fill storage before crossing into a resource-poor region, and remember the gathering-speed rule — the closer you park to what you need, the faster it arrives.

The mission list

Airborne Empire has 58 missions; a player-made Steam guide lists 57 of them and groups them under region headings — Kingsfell (containing The Hydrotheque, The Conservatory and The Deepwell), the Blackspine, the Aeyrie and the Barrens. It is a useful completion checklist, though it is a player's list rather than the developer's, and the ordering below is that guide's, not a guaranteed sequence:

Dangerous Archeology, Dangerous Archeology II, Dangerous Archeology III, Skydock at Sainte-Verde, Skydock at Costa Tropicos, Skydock at San Cabara, A Fallen Star, Banished, Beasts of the Deep, Black Beak's Treasure, Building Bridges, Dragon of La Mesa, Farming on the Rocks, Fuel for the Fire, Gone Fishin', Hitting the Slopes, Honoring the Ancients, Knights of the Desert, Lumber Mill, Loopy Land, Resupply the Outposts, Soft Landing, Stacking Lumber, Scrolls of the Ancients, Storms over Tropicos Islands, Shrine of Serapha, Smelt the Waters, Taking a Break from your Worries, The Nesting Cliffs, The Lost Artifact, The Scales of Aelius, The Great Orrery, The Watchfort, The Lost Caravan, The King of Nassab, The Giving Tree, The Island Bandits, The Pit, The Glass Factory, The Serpent Cult, The Wedding, Timber, The Temple of Aelius, The Last Air Show, The Garden of Life, The Draconis Wing, The Lost Expedition, The Divine Reliquary, The Royal Library, Zombie Crabs.

Three of those names are the endgame chain worth planning around: The Great Orrery and The Scales of Aelius are Wonders (above), and Dragons of La Mesa is a quest the developer had to patch for getting stuck — if it refuses to advance, you are not doing anything wrong.

The traps that cost new players their first ten hours

• Building without paths. Everything must connect to the Town Center through Paths. If it is not connected, it is not producing, and a "why is this building idle" question is almost always a path question.
• Ignoring tilt until it is severe. Tilt is a worker-speed multiplier. It is cheapest to fix when it is small, and at the point where the game warns you, you are already paying for it every tick.
• Researching the wrong thing. Basic and storage buildings are free; everything else needs the Academy. Rushing combat or aesthetics before the Iron Forge and storage means an economy that cannot build what you just unlocked.
• Buying Lift instead of placing it. Lift is directional here — lift buildings push their own side up. More total lift placed badly can make the city harder to fly. Put it under the heavy side.
• Recruiting before housing. Housing first; the game will not let you hire a recruit without a bed, and Coin spent on a trip you cannot complete is Coin gone.
• Flycatching a resource deficit at the source. Resources are gathered faster the closer you are. Parking badly and waiting is a slower, more expensive version of moving.
• Treating coal as a logistics detail. Coal is the failure state. Buy the cheap Coal Storage blueprint (250) early, and never enter a barren region with a shallow coal buffer.
• Ignoring weather. Storms shipped with the Tropicos update and were applied to the other regions too. Storm regions are not just scenery.
• Losing track of the Wonders. The Scales of Aelius and the Great Orrery are quest-gated and located in cities. If you never visit Litalos, Nassab, the Watchfort or Sainte Verde after their liberation quests, you simply never get the two abilities that remove the game's two hardest systems.

Combat: what the pirates actually do

Combat in this game is positional, and three enemies define the counterplay:

• Barrage Balloon — "Hidden on the ground until a player's city moves in range. Then the balloon quickly flies to altitude, pulling a cannon up in the air with it. Their strength is the element of surprise." Answer: you cannot pre-empt what you cannot see; keep weapon cooldowns ready rather than spent.
• Pirate Cruiser — a water-based ship with a cannon, "constantly moving, but in simple patterns." You have to lead your shots. Freeze-type weapons are the natural answer to a moving target.
• Pirate Tractor Beam (the old Pirate Tesla Cannon, redesigned) — "uses electromagnetism to create an electric burst that pulls the player's city towards it. This sets the pirates up to be able to move the player's city into position where more ground weapons can attack it at once." The counterplay is explicit: "If the player destroys the Tesla while being pulled their city will immediately stop." Kill the tractor, not the cannons it is feeding you to.

Two tuning facts that change how you spend: a fully upgraded cannon now outranges pirate ground cannons (that was the point of the range increase in the Tropicos update), and the Barrage Cannon trades range and recharge for area damage "projected out in front of it a little more" — it is for dense pirate setups, not duels.

There are bosses as well — the Gladiator in the Blackspine (a submarine, per the 1.0.11 patch note), the desert boss in the Barrens, and the Pirate Queen in the Kingsfell. One structural warning: freezing effects hit your infrastructure too. A frozen lift or propulsion building stops working, which matters more mid-fight than a frozen weapon.

Skydock mode and the free rebuild

The Skydock is the city-editing mode, overhauled in November 2025, and it is the cheapest way to fix a bad layout. Inside it:

• Buildings can be moved anywhere, without being connected to a road, and can float while you rearrange — but everything needs a valid placement before you leave.
• Buildings and upgrades complete instantly, and you no longer wait for roads to be constructed before moving buildings onto them.
• Storage is temporarily infinite, so you can disassemble a lot at once and still get the full refund price. The catch: any resources still above your real storage cap are dumped when you leave the Skydock. Spend or re-store them first.
• You can tilt past the normal limit inside, but you must be within normal tilt limits to leave.
• The game force-pauses and you cannot unpause.

Disassembling also refunds upgrades — which makes the Skydock the correct place to perform major surgery on a city you have outgrown, rather than patching it in real time.

Game modes and difficulty

Sources

Community wiki — airborne-empire.fandom.com, read as raw wikitext through its own API (/api.php?action=parse&page=PAGENAME&prop=wikitext):

• Tutorials — the game's own tutorial text: paths as connectivity and structure, tilt, right-click movement and closer-is-faster gathering, Academy research and the Iron Forge/Adobe Kiln first steps, Hangar-first, resource gathering, Tavern recruitment and the housing requirement, drag and propulsion, upkeep and travel cost, lift and the rule that lift buildings push their side up.
• Hangar (10 Wood + 10 Iron, 7 Lift), Housing Block (15 Wood, 3 Lift, 5 people), plus the Fan, Warehouse, Path, Iron Forge, Adobe Kiln and Academy stubs (present, no figures).
• Resources and the individual Wood, Ore, Iron, Coal, Water, Food, Cotton, Cloth, Coin, Glass, Relics pages; the Forest, Ore Deposit, Coal Deposit, Lake, Thicket, Cotton Meadow and Ancient Ruin node pages.
• Aeyrie, Barrens, Blackspine — regional geography and borders.
• Havenmill, Castra Regnum, Orrenspyre, Litalos, Watchfort — city roles, characters, main and side quests, and the Academy blueprint prices used in the table above. Gladiator (Blackspine boss). Dyes (11 found + 2 starting, "Fresh Coat of Paint" achievement).
• Queen of the North and Research Tree are stale or empty on the wiki: the former still describes an unreleased biome boss that 1.0 shipped as the Pirate Queen confrontation, and the latter is a bare stub — which is why this guide contains no research-tree cost tables.

Developer — Steam, app 2438680:

• api.steampowered.com/ISteamNews/GetNewsForApp/v2/?appid=2438680 (The Wandering Band's own announcements): New Mill Town Center (6 August 2026) — 20 workers in the Town Center, city-wide production boost, reduced Lift/Propulsion/Health and higher coal burn; Balloon Party Update (25 June 2026) — Balloon Town Center at 100 Lift with no coal, 150 Health, 10 Propulsion; Patch Notes v1.0.11 (18 June 2026) — the Gladiator submarine fix, and the newest numbered version; Patch Notes v1.0.09 (7 May 2026, Dragons of La Mesa and the Barrens relic); Patch Notes v1.0.03 (21 April 2026, Jet Engine health 100 → 400); Airborne Empire is Now Fully Released (1.0) (17 April 2026) — Kingsfell, Pirate Queen, Jet Engine, Mac support, the post-Early-Access feature timeline; Airborne Empire 1.0 Launch Date Revealed + New Survival Mode (19 March 2026) — the 20-stage Survival Mode, its accelerated research and building speeds, and the Kingsfell teaser; Patches v0.6.04–v0.6.06 (23–24 February 2026) — Pacifist Mode's introduction and the save-corruption hotfix; Hard Difficulty Settings (12 January 2026) — presets, sliders, friendly fire, and the original "chosen at the beginning, cannot be adjusted" note; Allow changing difficulty during playthrough (16 January 2026) — the Pause Menu difficulty button; New Creative Mode, Improved Skydock + Game Performance (28 November 2025) — the Skydock rules quoted above; Storms over Tropicos Islands (1 September 2025) — the Turbine Engine, Bird Cage Bar, Ferris Wheel, Barrage Balloon, Pirate Cruiser, Tractor Beam redesign, the cannon range increase and the "+3X speed is now truly 3X" note; Ancient Wonders Update (24 May 2025) — the four Wonders, their abilities and their quest locations; Spring Update (13 March 2025) and Halloween Theme Pack (22 October 2025) — the worker-free morale buildings (the Shrine/Flame Shrine, which a later patch also gave Light coverage, and the Park, which uses a little Water), and the Birdcage Bar's health coverage.
• store.steampowered.com/app/2438680/ — the developer's feature list: five biomes (Aeyrie, Blackspine, Kingsfell named explicitly), lift/balance/propulsion, the research and relic loop, and the four game modes.

Player-made, Steam Community:

• Guide "The Quests!" (steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3730462094) — the 57-of-58 mission list and its region groupings used in the mission section. Credit to its author, and treat the grouping as theirs.

Not verified, and flagged as such in the text: the blueprint prices in the Academy table are community-wiki figures whose currency the wiki does not label; the mission list is a player's transcription and is one mission short of the full 58; the wiki's structure pages for Fan, Warehouse, Path, Iron Forge, Adobe Kiln and Academy carry no figures, so this guide gives no build costs for them; and no source found states research-tree costs, so there is no tech-cost table here.