I feel like the sky islands were meant to be more of a problem-solving adventure, like how to get to certain places that are quite far, but the crafting system was so complicated/poorly implemented, imho, that it made them into a giant pain in the ass.

I ended up just making a platform hot air balloon (three balloons, three pieces of wood, and a fire weapon to light them), and using that for vertical… was the only thing I could get working consistently that didn’t cost a lot of batteries and flame spitters and shit. That plus the gust ability when you’ve reached as high as the game lets you… helps a lot…