When you befriend an animal and teleport it back home, it may get stuck inside of rocks or walls. This is a known issue that the devs are striving to fix. In the meantime, press F1 to bring up the console and type "noclip on 3" to allow you to ignore collision so you can retrieve the animals. When done, open the console again and type "noclip off".

If you collect too many animals, there will be an icon above their heads saying they are overcrowded (the icon is sometimes used to mean "Multiplayer" in other games -- three heads crowded together). Overcrowded animals will not produce any useful products (wool, eggs, feathers, or milk). The number of animals you can carry is determined by island size.

Don't milk your sheep and shear your goats. :P

After you have claimed a new island, follow these steps:

• Find a nearby uninhabited, uncorrupted island (the "intermediate")
  
• Swap islands back to your old one:
  
  • TAB > Home Island Menu > "Put Home Island Away"
    
  • Spawn Home Island > (old island)
• Park old home above intermediate for easy animal transferral
  
• Transfer desired animals to intermediate island one at a time
  
• Swap back to most recently claimed island
  
• Park new home below intermediate
  
• Transfer desired animals to new home island

If you're having trouble navigating or exploring an island on foot, take to the air! While gliding, the engine can't render as much, making it easier to spot valuable resources and those buried treasure locations. Hold RMB to slow down your glide; this will make it easier to search, as well as make precision landings.

On the subject of gliding: there are two situations where gliding can be dangerous:

• when you've traveled so far by glider that you leave the archipelago
  
• during storms (with or without lightning)

When this happens, a threatening bar comes up. If it fills to completion, you will lose control of your glider and start falling. Sometimes (if you are high enough), you can recover; otherwise, you get the "Must Head Home" screen (respawn).

Use your Dorkip anywhere you find stones in the shape of an X, or O, or at the intersection of two arrows (may take a few tries). This will reveal a "Lost Chest" full of loot (often quite valuable).

Not all buried treasure will be so obvious, though!

Originally posted by Ines:

I found a hidden chest using the dorkip on a single flower, wasn't even close to a tree or any rock formation

Originally posted by Loading Screen Tips:

Standalone flowers, rock circles, windstone triangles, and other environmental hints mark buried chest locations that can be dug up with the dorkip!

Players who make a habit of finding all the buried treasure have no trouble with resources (in fact, the minor inconvenience is where to put all this stuff). If you skip the chest, however, you will find yourself lacking (or even absent) some necessary items.

When choosing a home island, consider the size. Small islands can go faster with fewer sails, but have very limited capacity for animals. Large islands can carry more fur babies, but cost more resources to move efficiently. I prefer a medium-small size with about a dozen sails (when I can afford them), but I also like the simplicity of a tiny island with one or two sails.

You probably have opened the Table-Map and noticed a set of strange, unexplained symbols in the upper-right corner. It looks like a legend, but there's no labels describing what they mean! This is a very undocumented feature that took some fuggering for me to understand.

These symbols are intended to be "make your own meaning" map markers. You can learn a blueprint for Beacons that will allow you to create totem poles that include one of these symbols*. If you do, the map will then recognize that island, though it won't be immediately apparent, since the symbol doesn't show up at the island you marked with a beacon. To find the marked island, you have to click on the thing that looks like a legend. This will dim all islands that do not have that mark on them, and highlight the one(s) that do have the selected mark. The X above the symbols will turn off all the symbols, returning the map to default view.

* Note that the recipes for each beacon are different, but all require dyes, many of which are a bit difficult to make (especially the triangular symbol, which requires dye made from ultra-rare Purple Moonbloom flowers)

So, looking at the "legend" we see seven symbols. The top one isn't really a symbol, but a "disable" button. The middle five correspond to five beacons we can place on islands to "sort" them. But what's that wacky seventh symbol? It shows up on the map as well, and the islands that have that symbol have pre-placed beacons.

The devs have reserved the seventh symbol for themselves. Since this symbol appears on their pre-placed beacons, on the table-map, and on the Atlas stones themselves, I feel that it's safe to say that that this symbol is the Atlas symbol. Presumably, if you use an Atlas at the table-map, it will lead you to one of these pre-marked islands.

Note: Not every island that has an Atlas stone will also have a beacon marking the island.

One of my creative mode characters used the table-map to reveal 23 Atlas-marked islands before it said "no more". I'm guessing that means there are 23 per world.

I have not experienced it, but many people report islands that cannot be cleansed of Corruption. If you press F1 to open the console and type "killnodes" this may solve your problem.

If you or your animals wind up inside walls or solid rock, you can open the console (F1) and type "noclip on 3", then go get the animal, then type "noclip off" when you're done.

The old "turn it off and turn it back on" trick works for home islands, too! If ever you get your island stuck (won't go up, down, or forward no matter how you turn the wheel), or if it's just inconvenient to travel back to it, you can always despawn and respawn the island. Nothing will be lost, and you'll save yourself time and frustration. This is especially useful if you try to teleport an animal back home, but you are told that it's too far away.

I hope you got something out of at least one of these tips. If you have any of your own, leave a comment below and I'll add it into the main guide.

Please see my other guides for more info:

• Aloft Cooking Guide
  
• Aloft Progression Guide
  
• Aloft Combat Guide
  
• Aloft Item & Crafting Guide