Hi everybody! Liftoff is a First Person View drone simulator that most people use to hone their skills before they fly their quadcopters outside IRL. Liftoff was given Steam achievements a while ago and I figured I would make a guide after having obtained these myself.

Some basics before we get started: Liftoff is primarily used to get better at flying drones without needing to worry about crashing, repairs and mechanical adjustments. It will get you used to controlling a drone, and potentially save you a lot of money by avoiding some initial crashes to your real life drone. If you have the option to, it really helps to play using a real drone radio controller. There are plenty of guides already out there on how to set these up, so I'll skip over this for now. Basic controls are shown below:



Liftoff does not simulate everything perfectly. When you start flying quads IRL you will find that gravity's effect might be a bit stronger than you expected. Liftoff also does not simulate wind, so you will find that you might drift a lot more if it's windy outside. Drones are also a lot louder in real life! :)

A couple things I would advise everyone to do
The first thing to do when you start flying is to figure out a camera angle that you enjoy flying with. You can adjust your camera angle with the up and down arrows. Generally, the faster you want to fly, the higher your camera angle will need to be. Changing your camera angle will change how your quad feels to fly.

Part of why FPV simulators are so great is because you can easily find a camera angle that you like, and get used to flying with it. Your yaw and roll controls will start to blend together more and more as you increase your camera angle, and will be completely swapped if you would fly with an angle of 90°. If you want more information on choosing a camera angle, check here: FPV Camera Angle[www.getfpv.com], or other places online. There are plenty of places online to find more information on this topic!

Freestyle flying tends to be around 25°-35°, racing can use angles of 45°-55° or even higher. Some people even fly at angles in excess of 75°! I would advise you find an angle you like, and practice with it. In real life, I use an angle of around 30° for my drones, and in Liftoff I race at about 45°.

Secondly, Liftoff has a progression system known as Liftoff Pro. Sign up from the start to start making progress for the Liftoff Pro achievements. More details on this in the Liftoff Pro Achievements section.

Alright, let's get started with the section that will take the longest to complete. Liftoff has date-specific achievements (hooray), but thankfully they aren't too bad to complete. They simply involve finding some hidden objects scattered around each environment.

You only have to find these objects in ONE environment for the achievements! Most objects aren't too hard to find. If you are struggling to find them, I would suggest looking on the 'Hall 26' map. It has very little visual clutter and is easy to scout.

The achievements:
Heart Collector - Collect all the hearts in a single environment during the Valentine's Day event.
Leprechaun Madness - Find all pots of gold in a single environment during the St Patrick's day event.
Fool's Gold - Collect all the coins in a single environment during the April Fool's event.
Easter Egg Hunting - Find all easter eggs in a single environment during the Easter event. (Editor's note, there is 1 big golden egg and 5 smaller egg baskets per map. The objects are hidden in such a way that a person could hide it with ease.)
LuGus Fest - Activate all LuGus cubes in a single environment during the LuGus festival event.
Trick or Treat - Trick all the pumpkins into giving you treats in a single environment during the Halloween event.
Snow Spotter - Spot every snowman in a single environment during the Christmas event.

The dates:
Feb 14th - Heart Collector
Mar 17th - Leprechaun Madness
Apr 1st - Fool's Gold
Apr 15th - Easter Egg Hunting
Aug 1st - LuGus Fest
Oct 31st - Trick or Treat
Dec 25th - Snow Spotter

Put a note in your calendar and set a reminder so you don't forget. You won't have to play exactly on the dates listed, events usually seem to run for a week or so and usually start a few days before the specified date.

Liftoff has their own progression system tied to their account. You'll want to make an account before you start playing and honing your skills. You can sign up/log in in Liftoff by clicking the icon in the top right corner of the main menu.

The Liftoff Pro progression achievements are as follows:
Takeoff - Reach level 1 on your Liftoff Pro account.
Ascend - Reach level 10 on your Liftoff Pro account.
Soaring - Reach level 20 on your Liftoff Pro account.
Rare Goodies- Open 10 gift boxes in the drone workbench.
Epic Goodies - Open 20 gift boxes in the drone workbench.
Legendary Goodies - Open 30 gift boxes in the drone workbench.

Each time you level up you will earn a gift box, which can be opened in the workbench. These gift boxes give you cosmetic loot for your drones. I may be wrong but I think the only source of these boxes is from leveling up, so you will need to reach Level 30.

As you play you will automatically level up. The total XP you will need is around 28500.

You can get bonus experience from doing multiplayer races, improving your best times and laps on races, and by completing a race on each track once a day. There might be better ways to earn more XP, if you know of any please let me know in the comments!

Making Your Mark - Place a time on Liftoff Pro tournament leaderboard.
This achievement can only be completed at specific times. Throughout the year there will be tournaments organized my Liftoff which you can find under the Multiplayer section. When one of these is active, simply join the tournament and complete the race. (Some tournaments have limited entries. Just focus on completing the race and not crashing.) The achievement should be awarded when your complete the race.

Spread Your Wings - Complete all tutorials.
Natural Talent - Finish first in both races of the 'Final Test' tutorial.
Simply go through the recently updated tutorial section to get the first achievement. There are two races near the end of the tutorial in which you must place first for the second achievement. These aren't too terribly hard, but if you are struggling you can come back to this achievement once you get more experience flying.

Tinkerer - Create a custom drone setup from scratch.
Track Builder - Create a custom track.
Sharing is Caring - Share a Track, Race or Drone setup on the Steam Workshop.
These are pretty simple. To create a custom drone, head to Tools -> Workbench -> Drone editor. Then click 'My Fleet' and make yourself a fresh new drone! You can share your drone once you've finished it.
To create a track, head to Tools -> Track Builder. Place some objects down and press save, and there's your achievement!

Practice Rounds - Finish first in a race against bots.
Practice Makes Perfect - Finish first in 10 races against bots.
Infinity Loop - Complete 10 consecutive laps in a Infinite Race session.
The bots seem to be harder to beat on some maps than others. Find a map you like and practice until you can beat them! Turn on God mode so you don't have to worry about damaging your propellors. I would advise using a custom drone optimized for speed so you can more easily beat the bots. The drone I used had a top speed of 200KPH and I used a camera angle of 45 degrees.

As for maps, Hannover - 1. The Biggest Yet is pretty good since you can max throttle most of the race.I had fun trying to beat the bots on Pine Valley - 4. Wildcamping. A couple quick and easier options are Bardwell's Yard - 3. Stuff That works and Autumn Fields - 1. A walk in the Park. Try and find a map that suits your flying style if you're struggling.

Rapid Sightseeing - Finish a race in every environment available in Liftoff.
This one is relatively straightforward, just complete one race in every environment in Liftoff. This includes 'The Drawing Board' too! Either make your own race in the drawing board (it will take some getting used to the UI) or download one from the Steam workshop.

Freestyle Novice - Score at least 10.000 points in a single Freestyle session.
Freestyle Pro - Score at least 50.000 points in a single Freestyle session.
Freestyle Master - Score at least 100.000 points in a single Freestyle session.
Freestyle mode puts you in a map with a 60 second timer with the goal to get as many points as you can. You can chain together points for a score multiplier. Load up Straw Bale - 1 (Field Day) and complete a lap without crashing. This should give you enough points for the achievements! :)

Bando Dive - Dive through the tallest elevator shaft in the Bando City environment. Perform the dive in 5 seconds or less.
Duga Dive - Dive through the climbing stairs of one of the side towers in the Woodpecker environment. Perform the dive in 5 seconds or less.

These sound harder than they really are. Maneuver your way to the right locations and simply drop your drone down the shafts. I just turned off my props and let my drone free fall all the way down and this seemed to work just fine, no need to power dive through!
The Duga one is kind of tricky since it is quite a narrow shaft, it might take some time to get the right approach. I just kind of nudged my drone down the shaft, be careful to not give too much horizontal speed. This one might take a bit of patience.

Surtur's Sacrifice - (.-. .- -.. .. --- / - --- .-- . .-. ...)
This last one is a bit of a treasure hunt, which can be fun to try to solve if you're into that sort of thing. As the achievement description suggests, Morse code will be involved in the solution.

Here's some hints if you just want a little nudge in the right direction:

Hint 1:
This treasure hunt takes place on the new Surtur map. The achievement description is in Morse code, see if you can translate it!

Hint 2:
The radio towers around this map provide the next steps, see if you can find radio towers which look like this:

Hint Image:
Tower:


That's it for hints. If you just want the quick rundown, here's a brief solution!
This treasure hunt takes place on the new Surtur map, and has to do with this mysterious structure found at the center of the map:

Mysterious structure:

The main piece of the puzzle is the radio tower found on top of the Western mountain ridge:
Being near it will produce a Morse code sequence, which translates to N E S W S E W N.

Fly through the stone arches in this order to unlock the achievement:
North
East
South
West
South
East
West
North

Little Helper - A breath of fresh air in the Permafrost glass igloos.
Load up the map Permafrost and from where you spawn you will be able to see a tower. Head towards it and you will find a cluster of glass igloos.




Next, simply fly to the top of the igloos and touch the tops to open up their windows. The igloos are all clustered together and the game will track how many you have opened already.


Once you touch the 20 unopened tops, the achievement will unlock!

The multiplayer achievements might be hard to get depending on the playerbase's activity. If you can't find anyone to play with, these achievements are easily done if you have 2 friends with a copy of the game.

Applause - Give 20 likes to other players in multiplayer games.
Applauded - Receive 30 likes from other players in multiplayer games.
These first two are relatively simple. You can give likes to players after a multiplayer race ends. Since Infinite Races don't end, you can't give or receive likes in this mode. You'll have to play standard Races or Dropout Races to progress these first two achievements.

The Fast & The Furious - Finish first in a multiplayer classic race with at least 2 other players.
2 Fast 2 Furious - Finish first in 10 multiplayer classic races with at least 2 other players.
Last Man Flying - Finish first in a multiplayer dropout race with at least 2 other players.
These achievements might be hard depending on how active the playerbase is. It seems that historically there has been a peak in player activity around March, April and May as people want to practice for IRL drone flying. So if you can't find any people to play with during other times in the year, check back during these months!

If working on these achievements solo, improve your chances of winning by customizing your own drone so it is fast and you are comfortable flying it. I created a drone with a top speed of 200KPH and a camera angle of 45 degrees.

In multiplayer most people usually run Infinite Race lobbies, this game mode won't work for obtaining the race achievements. You will have to win 10 classic Races and 1 Dropout Race.

I would advise hosting your own lobbies and turning off God mode (this turns propeller damage on and makes it harder to fly with damage). This sets your lobby apart from other lobbies, making it more likely for people to join yours. An added bonus is that even if you are not the fastest racer, you might just win because someone else destroys their propellers because they were pushing their drone too hard. All you have to do in this case is finish the race!

In my experience the Liftoff community has been pretty friendly. Have some fun in your lobbies, you'll probably be able to make some new friends if you want to. :)

Alright, I believe that was all of them! Good luck hunting guys, go get 'em!

If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to leave them below!