Aloft: Where To Find & Use The Sketchbook

The Building system lets players build their dream home amongst the clouds using the blueprints they've obtained and learned to craft an array of pieces. From Machinery pieces to aid them in producing various items to creating their Farming Plot on the floating island or Skyship, some pieces can't be unlocked through progression, for which the Sketchbook comes in handy.

This tool lets players scan their environments and sketch building pieces to produce blueprints, which they can craft and use to build their homes. In this guide, we've explained how they can find the Sketchbook and highlight its best uses before putting pen to paper in Aloft. 

How To Find And Use The Sketchbook In Aloft?

The Sketchbook is one of the many tools players can discover by exploring the starting floating island. While some players are confused about how it can be used, before explaining its main purpose, they'll need to find it first, which we'll try our best to detail.

While on the starting island, they exited the cave and started the game from there to find the open field area where they could spot a waterfall ahead or south of the cave. Look to the right of the waterfall to find the grove of trees and head towards this grove, where they can see a path leading to an abandoned house.

Head around the back of the abandoned house, taking the left pathway to find remnants of shipping parts and wooden crates, which they can head towards this area. Follow the path here to the right and find a large oak tree to their left before walking towards it; they'll find more wooden crates on the platforms below, which they can jump down.

Continue heading down by walking across the wooden platform until they find a wooden ship hull to the left, where they can make a left turn. They can spot a path leading to a wooden platform at the edge of the island, where an Abandoned Chest can be found; opening the chest, they can find the Sketchbook and other items.

Using this Sketchbook isn't entirely clear, but according ot its in-game description, it's "a woodbound booklet with charcoal sticks, used to learn building pieces by sketching them from the environment." When equipped with an available hotbar slot, the Sketchbook can be used to learn any building pieces they may discover by selecting the Sketchbook by hitting its assigned key.

Once the Sketchbook is in their hand, they can press the right mouse button to scan or enter Sketch Mode and the left mouse key to Sketch the building piece. Sketching requires paper, which can be found in the open world but most commonly drops inside the ruins as paper cannot be crafted.

The best use of this is learning the building pieces they may find inside the ruins and shipwrecks, as players will already have building pieces unlocked by finding specific tools like the Stone Axe and Hammer or crafting other tools like the Stone Pickaxe. The Sketchbook would be best served to sketch building pieces that cannot be unlocked through these means to gain access to more rare pieces to use when building their home base on their floating island or Skyship.