Greetings Adventurers!
We’re excited to share a detailed walkthrough of the Friendship System, a brand-new feature we introduced this season in Sky: Children of the Light. If you’ve already hopped into the game since the beginning of the Season of Migration, you may have noticed that the spirit trees look a little different… and that’s not just a visual change!
This new system is all about offering more flexibility with how you spend your hard-earned seasonal candles, while also giving you the opportunity of deepening your connection with the spirits you meet along the way.
Let’s dive in!
What’s New?
In past seasons, spirit trees were straightforward but we felt they were also a little limiting. If you wanted an item at the top of the tree, you had to unlock every item leading up to it, even if you didn’t want them all. That meant more candles spent, but with the new Friendship System, that’s no longer the case!
Now, you have options on how to progress through the Spirit Friendship Menu:
Traditional Unlocking: Spend candles to unlock items in order.
Friendship Path: Spend time with the spirit, take them on adventures, and build your bond to unlock items through friendship.
With season guides, progressing quests will also grant friendship progress.
A mix of both: Because a balanced relationship is what most aspire to.
New Content - Spirit Moments
To deepen the emotional connection between players, spirits, and the evolving story, we’ve introduced new special friendship moments that will be available after Spirits feel connected to you.
How Does It Work?
Invite a Spirit Companion
You can take one spirit per day on an adventure. Including the spirit in your Sky activities is how you become better friends.
When the spirit is ready to leave they will let you know. Say goodbye from the friendship menu and see your friendship grow.
Over time, you’ll see the friendship path on the left side of the spirit tree begin to fill.
Currently, it will take about 4 days of adventuring to unlock the lowest friendship tier, and longer for higher tiers.
This means that if you’re aiming for a specific item —and not everything — you can save some candles by taking the spirit with you on your adventures.
Taking control of your path
Giving players more control over how they progress is just the start.
This new system also brings a few broader changes:
Blessings and dyes are now optional purchases, which means they’ve also gotten significantly cheaper.
The average cost of cosmetics has gone up slightly to balance this—but overall, most players will spend fewer candles across the season.
Season hearts can now be earned without unlocking every spirit item.
Season pass exclusive items don’t progress friendship, keeping the pace equal between pass holders and non-pass players.
To unlock the 4th friendship tier with a spirit, they’ll ask you to journey to their favorite place—a special adventure needed to unlock their most treasured items.
Ultimate items can now be skipped if you have enough quest progression. We hope this will mean more players feel free to join the season late and still get some of the most important keepsakes. - This is something we’re testing and it might change in the future.
By spending time with spirits:
A player who wants to get an ultimate gift as fast as possible and doesn’t care about other cosmetics can do so by skipping any cosmetics they don’t want and purchasing blessings and dyes to unlock season hearts.
A completionist player who wants to get as many cosmetics as possible can now unlock higher friendship tiers and skip over unwanted blessings and dyes to save candles
A player who wants to pick and choose what cosmetics they want can focus on building friendship with the specific spirits they want and only spend season candles on the desired items.
We Want Your Feedback!
This is a first pass at a fairly large system, and we know it might take some time (and adjusting!) to get everything feeling just right.
Your feedback is incredibly important to us. We want to hear how you feel about the following:
How does the unlocking feel?
Is the system fun and meaningful?
Are the trade-offs between candle cost and time commitment fair?
So, if you’ve taken the time to read through all this, thank you!
We hope you’ll give the new system a try and let us know about your experience.
Here’s to more meaningful connections, both with spirits and with each other.
See you in the skies!
~thatgamecompany