Source basis: this guide is cross-checked from three walkthroughs — Lameazoid's plain-language “Layman's Guide” intro (terminology, the five currencies, first-run tips), AppUnwrapper's long-running walkthrough (the Tips & Tricks list and the video series), and gibbi's 4-star, regularly-updated Steam “Complete Sky: CotL Guide” (the most current source, authoritative for realms, Winged Light, currencies, spirits, Eden, events, seasons, cosmetics and dyes) — plus the official Steam store for details and screenshots, and an embedded beginner's-guide video. Sky is a social exploration game, not a code-puzzle game, so this is a systems reference: what each part of the game is and how it fits together, not a click-by-click route. Nothing here is invented; where the three sources differed on a number, the most recent one won.
What is Sky: Children of the Light?
Sky: Children of the Light is a free-to-play social exploration game from thatgamecompany — the studio behind Journey and Flower — and it feels exactly like that pedigree suggests: serene, wordless, and built around quiet kindness between strangers. It launched on iOS in July 2019, came to Android, Switch, PlayStation and Xbox, and finally arrived on Steam (PC) in April 2024.
You play a Skychild: you fly through seven gorgeous realms, collect light from candles, relive the memories of lost Spirits to earn expressions, and gather Winged Light to grow your cape and fly higher. It's an online MMO — you'll constantly see other players — but pointedly anti-social by default: strangers appear darkened until you light each other, after which you can befriend them. The whole thing is, as the community jokes, “15/10 on the chill scale” — with one famous exception (the final realm) that we'll flag clearly below.
Because Sky has no number codes and almost no fixed step-by-step puzzles, this guide is built differently from a typical walkthrough. Instead of a route you'd skim once, it's a reference to the game's systems — Winged Light, the realms, the five currencies, spirits, the Eye of Eden, events, seasons, cosmetics and dyes — the things that are genuinely confusing the first week. For the actual realm-by-realm flythrough, the video below does that better than any wall of text.
The core loop: light is your life and your flight
Master one idea and Sky clicks into place: your cape stores light, and that light is both your fuel and your health.
- Flying spends light. Take off and you burn a wedge of your stored Winged Light; land near a light source to top up. You recharge from candles, lanterns, light blooms, friendly creatures (butterflies, birds, jellyfish) and from other players.
- Two flight modes. Open cape glides you farther in any direction; closed cape is for slow, controlled floating up and down.
- Calls are how you talk. Tap yourself for a short call — a chirp and a pulse of light. Hold and release for a deep call: a bigger pulse that also knocks over crabs and can recharge nearby players even when neither of you has any light left (a lifesaver in the final realm).
- Hold hands with a friend and you share light between you — one more reason to travel together.
- You can lose light. Rain, polluted water, drowning, falling shards, charging crabs and especially krill all strip Winged Light. Don't panic: lost Winged Light respawns somewhere back in that realm and shows up on your map as a small star, so you can go re-collect it.
Complete beginner's guide video
Winged Light, wedges & wing buffs
The single most confusing thing for new players is the cape, so let's untangle the words:
- Winged Light (often WL, or “stars”) are the little child-souls you collect throughout the realms. Each one raises your cape level.
- Wedges (also called flaps or slats) are those cape levels — how many flaps of flight you have. You start with about one flap and gain more as you collect Winged Light, but each new wedge costs more than the last.
- Wing buffs are permanent extra light levels you earn by ascending spirits (with Ascended Candles). Unlike normal Winged Light, you never have to re-collect wing buffs — they're how you push your cape beyond what the realms alone can give.
thatgamecompany has raised the maximum over the years as it has added content; the current cap is in the region of 13 wedges (around 258 light) when you count wing buffs. Don't chase that number early — just collect what you pass and let the cape grow naturally.
The seven realms & the map
Sky's world is seven realms, played roughly in order:
- Isle of Dawn — the tutorial island.
- Daylight Prairie — bright, open, home of the Sanctuary Islands events.
- Hidden Forest — rain, jellyfish and Granny's clearing.
- Valley of Triumph — the sporty realm (and the Village of Dreams / Music Hall).
- Golden Wasteland — the desert where krill first appear.
- Vault of Knowledge — the towering library, where the Pray expression lives.
- Eye of Eden — the final, harrowing realm (see its own section below).
Each realm has its own constellation, which holds that realm's regular spirits. Complete a constellation and you unlock that realm's Ultimate Gift (claimed in Orbit). Many doors and areas need you to light them up first, and some need a second player to open — if a door has two handprints, grab a passing stranger.
Always light the map shrines. Light the candles around a shrine and meditate to unlock that realm's map. From then on, your map marks missing Winged Light as tiny yellow stars and missing regular spirits as small blue shadows — which turns “where is everything” into a checklist. From the Home / Aviary hub you can fast-travel back to any realm you've reached.
Spirits & Traveling Spirits
Spirits (or ancestors) are the heart of progression. You find them around the realms — glowing blue the first time — light them, and then either follow their memory or guide it to relive it. Reliving a spirit grants an expression/emote and adds the spirit to its realm's constellation, where its friendship tree sells expression upgrades, cosmetics, props, spells and wing buffs.
The glow colour tells you what a spirit is:
- Blue — a permanent regular spirit.
- Purple — a past-season spirit (visible after you've completed Eden once).
- Orange — current-season, Traveling, or daily-quest spirits; they turn white/yellow once you've relived them.
Traveling Spirits (TS) are seasonal spirits that return for about four days at the Aviary/Home, teased a few days ahead. Before you can buy from one you must find it and relive its memory. Save candles for these visits: even if you don't want the cosmetics, the spirit's Ascended Wing Light node (just before the first clouded part of the tree) is always worth grabbing, because that's the only window to get it.
One quirk to know: the Skater quest-giver in the Valley of Triumph is bugged and always glows, even after you finish it — so don't worry that it looks uncollected. Every other spirit glows only when it's genuinely uncollected or part of today's quest.
The five currencies
Sky runs on five currencies (six if you count the big candle clusters). Knowing what each is for saves a lot of wasted grinding.
- Candles — the main currency. You forge them from wax collected by lighting candles around the realms. A daily candle run nets most players ~16–20 candles. It's a sliding scale — the more wax you collect in a day, the more each candle costs — and collecting everything takes 3–4 tedious hours, which isn't worth it. You can also buy candles.
- Hearts — the expensive social currency. You get them from friends (gifted for candles), from being lit by friends each day, from people liking a message candle you placed, or from spirits (often 3 candles each). You cannot buy hearts, which makes them the hardest currency to stockpile. They're mainly for cosmetics.
- Seasonal Candles — only during a Season: 5/day free, 6/day with the Adventure Pass. They buy season-only items from season spirits. Leftovers convert 1:1 to regular candles when the season ends.
- Seasonal Hearts — earned at the end of a fully-unlocked seasonal spirit's tree, used for that season's Ultimate Gifts. There are only a few per season, so they aren't a real way to farm regular hearts.
- Ascended Candles — the most valuable currency, earned from Eden runs and Red Shard events. You spend them to ascend spirits (wing buffs), buy resize potions, and trade for some event tickets.
Finally, Treasure / Cake Candles are the large candle clusters scattered around the realms, with a daily rotation in one realm marked by small red candles — a handy bonus on top of your normal run.
Daily quests & the reset
The game resets once a day at a set server time. Each day brings four mini quests, each worth one candle — anything from reliving a spirit to sitting by a tree sapling for a minute. You pick them up from the daily quest totem at Home (there's one at the Aviary too). They're quick, free candles; do them.
One thing that stumps almost everyone: “meditate” is not an expression. When a quest says to meditate, find a stone marker with a white circle in front of it, sit/kneel on the circle, and answer the prompt. There's no special emote to hunt for.
The Eye of Eden, Orbit & the Elders
Mild end-game spoilers ahead. If you want to discover the finale yourself, skip to the next section — but the mechanics below trip up a lot of new players, so most people are glad to read them first.
The Eye of Eden is the seventh and final realm, and it is deliberately the opposite of the rest of the game: flying rocks, dark dragons, polluted water and increasing red-shard rain. In its final area — which you cannot leave once you enter — you give your Winged Light to statues while dodging the rock-rain, which ramps up until you're overwhelmed. The goal is to restore as many statues as you can. This is intentional: once you formally enter (“Storm Lock”), you're meant to give away all your light and “die,” after which you're simply reborn.
You then pass through Orbit, where you see every spirit and friend you've unlocked and collect your reward: Ascended Candles (about ¼ of a candle per statue saved, capped at just over 15), plus your wing buffs and new wedges, and any realm Ultimate Gifts you've qualified for. Eden resets every Sunday, so it's a weekly source of Ascended Candles — doable solo, easier with friends.
Elders are the spirits at the end of each realm, met after meditating at the realm's temple. Each elder's Ultimate Gift is a unique hairstyle (three also offer masks), bought with Ascended Candles in Orbit. Those masks can absorb a single hit from a crab, krill or rock until they shatter; recharge a mask by reliving its elder's memory at the temple.
Shard events & daily wax events
Beyond the daily candle run, Sky has timed events that hand out extra currency.
Shard events
There are two kinds. Red Shards give around 2–3 Ascended Candles; Black Shards give wax (roughly four cake candles' worth). You burn off nearly all the darkness to restore the shard — sometimes dodging buffed crabs — then claim the reward; red shards add a meditate-and-collect-light-fragments step. Red shards also open a memory (random for everyone), and each of the six memories holds a single Winged Light. The events cycle through realms in a set monthly order — Daylight → Forest → Valley → Desert (Golden Wasteland) → Vault — skipping ahead if there's a gap day. Most players track them with a community shard-timing site.
Daily wax events
- Geyser — at reset, at the polluted geyser in Sanctuary Islands, Daylight Prairie. After a five-minute grace, spiky dark-bloom balls erupt every minute for ten minutes; burn them. Visit about three times for maximum wax.
- Granny — in the Elevated Clearing, Hidden Forest, starting about 30 minutes after reset (five-minute grace, ~10 minutes). Visit about twice. Geyser and Granny both run every other hour.
- Turtle — about five minutes after Granny, back at Sanctuary Islands: burn the dark blooms off the turtle to reveal a giant clam, with smaller clams in the water too. Once per cycle.
There are several smaller hourly wax sources as well; the community wiki maps them all.
Seasons, events & in-app purchases
Seasons are Sky's battle-pass-style content, running roughly three months each and adding new quests, spirits and items. Free players earn a few items; the paid Adventure Pass unlocks everything and adds a daily candle. During a season, your dailies give seasonal candles, and each seasonal spirit's tree ends in a Seasonal Heart that buys the season's Ultimate item — which never returns. After a season ends you can still do its quests and grab the hearts and a few items from the season guides left in the realms; only the spirits come back (as Traveling Spirits). Collab and Ultimate items don't return (collabs only very rarely).
Days-of / holiday events add a temporary event currency (tickets) — and unlike seasonal candles, leftover tickets do not convert to regular candles, so spend them. You usually collect about five tickets a day (four out in the realms, one from the event guide). Events bring new and returning cosmetics, props and spells, some bought with candles and some with real money.
In-app purchases (IAPs) are optional — mostly candle packs, Adventure Passes, and cosmetics. You can complete the whole game without spending; IAPs just save grinding. Because seasons and events rotate constantly, check the in-game calendar or the official Sky news board for whatever is live right now rather than trusting any fixed dates online.
Expressions, cosmetics & dyes
Every spirit you relive grants an expression — a stance, a call, or an emote — and its friendship tree adds upgraded versions. A note on etiquette: bowing after someone lights you, or after you help with a spirit or a dark-bloom tree, is the community's standard thank-you. It's never required, but you'll see it everywhere.
Cosmetics & props are deep: outfits, shoes, masks, face accessories, necklaces, hair, hats, capes, props, and playable instruments (from spirits, Traveling Spirits, or the Music Hall in the Village of Dreams). You earn them from spirits, TS, elders, events and IAPs.
Dyes (added in Season of Radiance) let you recolour most cosmetics at the clothing shops in the Aviary. To get dye, burn the dye dark-plants to release butterflies, then use the butterfly-charmer emote (or a medium honk) to collect 1–4 jars; plant locations rotate hourly, and different realms offer different colours (Daylight = red/yellow/white, Hidden Forest = green/cyan/white, Golden Wasteland and Vault = blue/purple/black, Eden = black). When you dye an item, the first colour is the base and the second tones it; you can keep up to two styles plus the original. Dyes are consumed and can't be recovered, so experiment carefully.
Heights & the chibi mask
You can change your Skykid's height. Resize potions (from the home shops, bought with Ascended Candles) permanently set your height — but the result is completely random, with no trick to target a specific height. A few spells temporarily grow or shrink you. To go as short as possible without a spell, buy the chibi mask from the Hide n' Seek spirit in the Hidden Forest for 20 hearts.
Friends, creatures & threats
The gray figures you pass are real players (“Skids”). Take out your candle and light one so you can see each other; then offer a candle to befriend them, or share a friend code to skip the candle cost. Friendship trees unlock high-fives, hugs and chat (chat also works at special benches). One catch: there's no “unfriend” button — to remove someone you have to block them.
Friendly creatures help you get around and stay charged:
- Butterflies — hold the charge near them and they recharge your light and lift you up.
- Birds — fly alongside them to recharge.
- Mantas — ride on their backs.
- Jellyfish — float atop them and recharge.
And the threats:
- Crabs — they charge and bonk you over. Flip them with a deep call. A buffed shard-crab variant can't be flipped and is drawn to calls, so stay quiet near those.
- Krill (a.k.a. Dark Dragons or “shrimps”) — the big one-eyed monsters in Golden Wasteland and Eden. They hunt by line of sight: if their light turns red on you, get a wall between you and the eye before they strike, or you'll lose several Winged Light (commonly 3–4). You can't outrun them; a shield spell buys you a few seconds.
The community shorthand (glossary)
Sky's players use a lot of slang. The essentials:
- Moth — a new player (brown, few cape flaps, “runs to the light”).
- Skid / gray kid — an unlit player.
- Butterfly / Sparrow — a mid-level player, between moth and veteran.
- Cape flaps / slats / wedges — your flight levels.
- WL — Winged Light. CR — candle run. AC — Ascended Candle.
- Krill / Dark Dragon / shrimp — the eyed monsters.
- Ikeman / Ikejou — a tall masculine / feminine Skykid.
- Spells — temporary expression-menu items (cosmetics, props, size or trail changes).
First-run tips that actually matter
- Don't rush your first run — enjoy it. Note the spots you can't reach yet and come back when your cape is stronger (or with a friend). Every realm is revisitable from Home.
- Do not do the Eye of Eden on your first trip. Build up your Winged Light first (around 100 helps), and set aside a real block of time — Eden is long and rough.
- Light every map shrine so Winged Light and spirits appear on your map.
- Do the daily quests for easy candles, and once you're grinding, use the Geyser and Granny wax events.
- Break a krill's line of sight with a wall; don't rely on exploit-y dodges that may be patched.
- On your first playthrough you can't see seasonal spirits unless they're the current season or current Traveling Spirit; after you finish once, they all become visible.
- Make a few friends. Random friend requests are normal and good — daily light-ups are the steadiest path to hearts, and you don't have to chat if you don't want to.
Frequently asked questions
Is Sky: Children of the Light free?
Yes — it's free to play, with optional in-app purchases (cosmetics, candle packs and season Adventure Passes). You can complete the entire game without spending a cent; purchases only save grinding.
Can I play Sky solo, or do I need other people?
You can play almost everything solo — exploration, spirits, the candle run and even the Eye of Eden are all doable alone. But Sky is built to be social: a few two-player doors need a stranger's help, holding hands shares light, and friends are the main way to earn hearts. It's an online game, so you'll always see other players around.
What order do the realms go in?
Isle of Dawn → Daylight Prairie → Hidden Forest → Valley of Triumph → Golden Wasteland → Vault of Knowledge → Eye of Eden. You can fast-travel back to any realm you've reached from the Home hub.
How do I meditate for the daily quest?
There's no “meditate” emote. Find a stone marker with a white circle in front of it, sit or kneel on the circle, and answer the prompt that appears. That completes the quest.
What are Ascended Candles for, and how do I get them?
They're the premium currency used to ascend spirits (for permanent wing buffs), buy resize potions, and trade for some event tickets. You earn them by completing the Eye of Eden (resets every Sunday) and from Red Shard events.
Why does the Skater spirit keep glowing after I've finished it?
It's a known bug — the Skater quest-giver in the Valley of Triumph always glows even when complete. Every other spirit glows only when it's genuinely uncollected or part of today's daily quest.
What's the hardest part of the game?
Mechanically, the Eye of Eden — it's the one realm designed to be tense, with relentless red-shard rain. Don't attempt it until you've built up plenty of Winged Light and set aside time for a full run.
Sources & further viewing: Lameazoid's “Layman's Guide” intro, AppUnwrapper's walkthrough and video series, and gibbi's regularly-updated Steam “Complete Sky: CotL Guide,” cross-checked; official details and screenshots from the Steam store page, and current events from the official Sky news board. For a realm-by-realm flythrough, the embedded beginner's guide above covers the whole game; AppUnwrapper's older full-playthrough series and a community chibi-fall guide are here. More relaxing-game and puzzle walkthroughs are on 9puz.com.