Pilot Quest is an idle clicker/adventure hybrid, where the goal is to repair your crashed ship and get off the planet. Or as the game puts it: "The Campanella has crashed! Fix it by harvesting resources and exploring the wild zone."

While it's a ton of fun, a lot of its mechanics are not terribly well explained, so I thought I'd put together this guide after many many playthroughs to help answer the questions I keep seeing pop up in discussions.

Objective: Gather resources and collect the parts of your broken ship so you can leave the planet Zoldath
Cherry Requirements: Obtain the Donka Donka Idol before leaving
Garden Requirement: Defeat Unktoma

Please Note: If you only want to play the game once, read the Cherry spoilers BEFORE you leave the planet. Once you leave you will have to do a second playthrough.

Below is the list of the bare minimum you need to do in order to complete the game. If you're going for a 2nd (or 3rd or 4th) playthrough, or if you just want to check this game off your list and move on, this is for you:

1) Collect all 3 ship parts
2) Build both Silos (50 Ingots each)
3) Researched Big Silos (200 Ingots / 150 Silk)
4) Upgraded 1 Silo to Big Silo (200 Ingots)
5) Researched Ship Fuel (1000 Ingots / 1000 Science)

How to get Moon Ingots:
1) Rare drops from hitting the crystal in camp
2) Convert 1000 moon drops at the crafting table
3) Sometimes dropped from monsters/pots/chests in the wild zone
4) Crafted by Friends using the work benches at 1 ingot per 3 minutes

How to get Silk:
1) Purchased for 5z per 15 from a merchant located in a dungeon
2) Spun by Unktoma (1 silk / minute) once she’s been defeated and come back to base
3) Friends without jobs will reduce Unktoma’s spinning time

How to get Science:
1) Purchased for 5z per 10 from a merchant located in a dungeon
2) Friends assigned to Research at the Research Machine will create 1 science / minute each (must repair the machine first)

The Wild Zone comprises the adventure portion of the game. Your goal here is to explore it collecting resources and items for your camp, and then returning before time expires.

The general layout of the Wild Zone is the same for all playthroughs; the forest is always to the west, the ruins are always north, etc. Additionally chest locations, teleporters, and cave entrances are always in the same spots.

However the paths between these areas are either randomized between playthroughs, or else there are a very small number of maps (possibly as small as 2) that the game picks from when a playthrough is started.

Cave entrances are also shuffled between playthroughs; even players who have the same paths between areas are liable to have their caves contain different things.

While it's impossible to tell you where the caves in your specific game are located, I can at least tell you what caves you will find:

1) Dungeons - there are 3 of these, and each one contains a ship part guarded by a boss

2) Chest Gambling - for 1z you can pick a chest, which will contain one of the following: ingots, 2z, 1 moon drop, several moon drops, meat, a slime

3) Isabella - Pilot's sister has 2 chests you can loot, as well as a snarky comment about your progress

4) Blue Giant and Orange Giant - bring Blue Giant's letter to Orange Giant for a blunderbuss. This weapon does the same amount of damage as the basic yoyo, but can be spammed from a safe range as long as you have the moon drops to fire it.

There are 3 Dungeons in the Wild Zone, each of which contain one of the ship parts. While the layouts of the dungeons are always stay the same, the locations of the merchants in them (as well as what they sell) are randomized though each dungeon will have at least 1 merchant.

Orange Pyramid

Boss: A floating head surrounded by four rotating orbs. The orbs can be destroyed to make it easier to hit the boss. The boss will fire a small patch of lightning that slowly moves towards your direction, as well as trying to move into you.

Directions to Boss: North x5, West x4, South x3, West, North

Secret Chest Room: This dungeon also contains a hidden room that has 4 chests and a couple of purple guys. From the entrance, go North x3, West x3, then North through the fake wall/


Brown Stone

Boss: A large stationary plant. The boss launches 3 seeds that will bloom into flowers, that will continue to grow and then explode into 4 fireballs.

Directions to Boss: North x2, West, North x3, East, South, East, North


Blue Stone

Boss: A giant brown pig. The boss will periodically release 3 worms that try to move into you, as well as trying to move into your itself.

Directions to Boss: North, East, North, East, South, East, North

Metal / Wizard Yoyo – increases damage by 1 per upgrade
Fertilizer – increases moon drop production speed by 50% (from 1 per 2 seconds to 1 per 1 second)
Big Silos – allows you to upgrade your silos to max; you still have to pay 200 ingots for each silo’s upgrade
Stamin Pill – increases ingot production speed by 50% (from 1 per 3 minutes to 1 per 1.5 minutes)
Ship Fuel – needed to win the game

There's a few things you're going to want to find out in the Wild Zone, which are necessary to complete the game:

1) The Gear – Sadly this location is randomized, but it is somewhere out in the open in the wild zone. It seems to replace a chest location (middle of the map in the lake, south-east on the shore, east side of the ruins, western forest maze are all potential spots) Please see LowPinnacle's maps (https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3336345747) for all the chest locations.

2) Unktoma – They’re located on the east side of the Ruins in the center of the map. Go north until you hit the stone wall, then go east/north (or straight north if you’re lucky) until you can turn back west into the Ruins. When you see the little spiders you’re in the right area

3) The Ship Parts – There’s one in each dungeon, guarded by a boss

On subsequent loops you can pick ONE PERMANENT upgrade to help you on this and future playthroughs.

Upgrades stack, but cap out at 5.

1) Productivity – decreases all resource generation times by 10% (max 50%)
2) Defense – decreases time lost from damage by 2 seconds (max 10 second reduction)
3) Metabolism – adds 20 time per meat (max 100 time per meat)

UFO 50 will cryptically tell you "Obtain the Donka Donka Idol before leaving" but what exactly does that mean?

Once you've attained all 3 ship components a new boss, Nozzlo, will appear in the Wild Zone. You must defeat him 6 times without returning to camp in order to get the idol, but the first 5 times you defeat him he will move to a different area of the wild zone.

Where he moves is random; he could move to a spawn one screen away, or he could move to a spot on the other side of the map. He can also move to a spawn he was at previously, so be sure to check the places where you've already fought him (especially if they're close by!)/

Nozzlo is a huge menace; he has more HP than any other enemy in the game, plus he has a variety of attacks. I saw him use: the bubble shot from the water monsters, the bombs from the space pirates, a unique cross-shaped shot, the lightning patches that crawl in your direction, and he can spawn caterpillars.

Strategy

The most obvious strategy, and the only one you can use if you want to beat Nozzlo on a single playthrough, is to grind zoldnaks. You can then spend those zoldnaks at the dungeon merchant who gives energy (2z per 100 energy) until you have enough to defeat him the required number of times.

You CAN go back into the dungeon without losing progress if you need to top up again, so you may be able to get a bit of an extension if you get lucky drops while chasing Nozzo around.

You'll probably need at least 30 zoldnaks (1500 extra energy) but the more you have the safer it will be. Grinding spots will depend on the layout of the caves on your map and if you have any easy to reach chests in the wild zone. I don't know if there is a cap on zoldnaks; I used 108 in my cherry run but that was excessive.

Make particular note of the Orange Pyramid dungeon; it has 5 easy to get chests and could be an amazing grind if you have a quick path to it. Isabella's cave is also good since it has 2 risk-free chests, as long as it doesn't spawn in a terrible location.

You're also going to want to prepare for finding him in the first place: make note of the paths that are open between areas, unlock all the teleporters, and generally familiarize yourself with the layout.

Weapon choice is up to you; the Wizard yo-yo will do the most damage, but like all bosses being up close to Nozzlo is asking to have him walk into you and dish out multiple 30 sec time losses.

The blunderbuss is also a surprisingly good option, allowing you to keep him at a safer range and attacking him across some pieces of the scenery. If you want to get in close the blunderbuss can do 2 hits (once with the projectile and once with the blunderbuss itself) allow you to spam the attack button and prevent Nozzlo from fighting back until he can move away from you.


The other strategy is to keep doing playthroughs to stack the loop bonuses; reducing the damage Nozzo does will help a lot, and boosting the value of meat means you can get away with grinding less zoldnaks for extra energy.

The downside is that it is a LONG process, much longer than just grinding out zoldnaks. Even with a 50% reduction in production time and only doing the minimum amount of upgrades, expect to take at last 7.5 hours to finish a playthrough to get an additional bonus.

Hopefully you've found the answers you were looking for in this guide.

If not, or if you've noticed something I've gotten wrong due to my brain turning to mush after 7 playthroughs of Pilot Quest, please let me know.

Thanks for reading, and good luck!