Exploring the floating world of Solarpunk, you’ll quickly notice distant winter islands and supposed secret islands. Some of these are marked on community maps, but seem impossible to reach by airship. Right before you get there, the ship automatically turns around or gets stopped by an invisible boundary.
In many cases, you’re simply missing an airship upgrade. Other islands, however, don’t appear to be regularly accessible yet in the current version of the game. Here’s how to increase your range, reach the winter islands, and tell whether an island can actually be unlocked.
How Do You Unlock New Islands in Solarpunk?
New islands in Solarpunk aren’t opened one by one through specific quests. What matters instead is your airship’s range. Every major upgrade expands the area of the world map you can fly to. The first islands lie right around your starting area. For regions further out, you’ll need upgrade items from the Trader Bot. After trading for them, you also have to install them at the airship dock.
Trading with the Trader Bot alone doesn’t increase your range yet. Only once you install the upgrade you received at the airship dock does the new flight area unlock. This is exactly where a lot of players get stuck: the upgrade is already sitting in their inventory, but the map appears unchanged. If that happens, head back to your dock, fully dock the airship, and open the upgrade menu there.
Editor’s note: Based on community experience so far, an uninstalled airship upgrade is one of the most common reasons players can’t reach new islands. If the upgrade isn’t installed at the airship dock after trading for it, your flight range won’t expand despite the successful trade.
All Airship Upgrades for More Range
You get the key range upgrades from the Trader Bot. Its offers build on your progress. That means you can’t buy all the upgrades right away — you first need to explore the islands you can already reach and gather the resources required there.
| Resources Needed | Reward | Where to Get Them |
|---|---|---|
| 32 Copper | 1 airship upgrade | Copper can be found on one of the early resource islands. |
| 6 Eggs | 1 airship upgrade | You get eggs by raising animals. |
| 10 Truffles | 1 airship upgrade | Well-cared-for pigs can dig up truffles. |
| 30 Algae | 1 airship upgrade | Algae becomes available later in the game. |
After every trade, you should head straight back to your airship dock and install the new upgrade. Then open the map again. Your usable flight area should now be larger and include additional islands.
If the upgrade doesn’t show up despite having the item, save your game and reload the world. A restart can help if the dock or the range display hasn’t updated correctly for the moment.
How Do You Reach the Winter Islands?
The regular winter islands are among the later areas in Solarpunk. You can’t reach them with your first airship yet. You first need to buy several range upgrades from the Trader Bot and install them at the dock.
If your airship turns around already in front of a visible winter island, you’re usually still missing a range tier. Check with the Trader Bot whether another trade is available, then check your inventory and the dock’s upgrade menu.
On the map, you can see whether the island you want lies within your current flight range. At first, only try to fly to islands that clearly sit inside that boundary. Islands visible further beyond it can look reachable even though they’re still outside your range.
The winter islands provide new plants, animals, trees, and rarer raw materials. So clear out your inventory before you set off and fully charge your airship’s energy. You should also bring food and water along, so you can thoroughly explore the new areas without an unnecessary trip back.
Are Secret Islands and Donut Island Reachable?
Most of the confusion comes from islands that show up on interactive community maps but aren’t clearly accessible on the regular in-game map. That includes the frequently searched-for Donut Island. Maps like these can contain content from earlier test builds, development builds, or datamining. So an island shown on a map isn’t automatically a regular, reachable location in the game.
Based on community reports so far, the airship still automatically turns around shortly before Donut Island, even with fully upgraded range. So far, there’s no confirmed way to regularly get past this boundary. That suggests the island isn’t meant as a regular destination in the current version of the game.
Note: If your fully upgraded airship reliably turns around at the same spot, you shouldn’t keep searching for a secret flight route. That island is likely not regularly accessible in your current version of the game.
You can reach regular islands visible within the unlocked map area through the normal range upgrades. Islands that only appear on external maps and remain blocked even at maximum range, on the other hand, should be treated as content that isn’t currently accessible.
Airship Turns Around Automatically – Causes and Fixes
If your airship turns around on its own right before an island, check your progress first. In most cases, either the destination is still outside your current range, or an upgrade you already received hasn’t been installed at the dock yet.
Open your inventory and check whether there’s an unused airship upgrade sitting in it. Then head back to the dock and install it. If the flight area stays unchanged, save the game and reload the world.
If the map shows the island as being within your range, a mix-up could also be the cause. Several islands can look like they’re sitting right next to each other from a distance. You might be heading not for the closer one, but for an island further behind it that’s still outside the unlocked area.
If the only remaining destination is a secret island marked on a community map, and your maximally upgraded airship still turns around, it’s very likely a region that’s currently locked. As things stand, a higher flight altitude, a different direction, or approaching faster doesn’t reliably get you past this boundary.
How to Reach All Currently Available Islands
Progressing through the island world follows a simple loop: you explore all the islands you can currently reach, gather new resources there, and trade them in with the Trader Bot for the next airship upgrade. After installing it at the dock, your flight range expands, giving you access to more raw materials and production options.
Start with the islands around your starting area and gather the copper you need first. Later on, animal husbandry and other production systems become important, since the Trader Bot also asks for eggs, truffles, and algae, among other things. Install every upgrade you get right away, so you don’t accidentally keep flying with an outdated range.
Once you have the later upgrades, you can explore the regular winter islands. Islands that lie outside the maximum unlocked area, or that remain blocked by an invisible boundary, likely don’t yet count as part of the accessible game area.
Can You Get Around the Wind Barrier?
As things currently stand, there’s no regular mechanic that lets you break through the wind or world boundary in front of a locked secret island. A different flight altitude or direction doesn’t reliably solve the problem either.
Glitches or edits to the game files aren’t a clean solution. Even if they let you get into a locked area, you might run into unfinished content, missing collision, or save-file issues there.
Whether Donut Island and other currently blocked locations will be officially unlocked later hasn’t been confirmed so far. The fact that they already appear on community maps or in game data may hint at planned content, but it’s not solid proof of an upcoming update.
Conclusion: Build Up Your Range and Spot Locked Islands
You reach the regular islands and winter areas in Solarpunk through your airship’s range upgrades. Trade the required resources with the Trader Bot and then install every upgrade at the dock.
If your fully upgraded airship still turns around in front of a supposed secret island, it’s probably not because of a missed upgrade. Locations like Donut Island may show up on community maps, but they don’t appear to be regularly reachable yet in the current version of the game.
You can find more Solarpunk guides in our Solarpunk overview. There, we collect all our current guides on research, islands, animal husbandry, resources, and other game mechanics.
