A guide to exploration in A Highland Song

You’ll be mostly climbing and walking in A Highland Song, and so if you want to stay alive and not miss any days, then you’ll need to know how to navigate the highlands like a pro.

Traveling tips and tricks for A Highland Song

Below is a list of things you need to know if you’re to survive and explore in A Highland Song. I’ve completed the game a couple of times, and my skill has improved vastly, so you may want to keep a couple of these notes in mind.

Rest fully!

The number one thing I’d say is that when Moira gets exhausted, don’t be so eager to get going. Allow her to fully breathe and catch her breath. She’ll stand up tall once she’s rested. In my experience, this has given her more energy to go further without stopping, which allowed me to scale some decent walls.

You don’t need maps to progress

One thing I thought I believed until late into my first run, was that I needed maps to point out a path to progress to the next level. This is not true. On each level, you’ll find a path that you don’t need a map for, and you can walk to the next level. I was only in a couple of the levels for mere moments as I stumbled into the next path.

Look out for cairns, the pretty piles of stones you’ll find throughout. They don’t always tell of a path to the next level, but they did most of the time for me. If you’re stuck, just travel across the surface and you’ll stumble across a path eventually.

Hold one button at a time

When climbing, I got into the habit of holding both the up and sideways arrows when climbing at an incline, to simulate pushing diagonally on an analog stick. In A Highland Song, this is rather counter-productive, as Moria won’t have an easy time knowing where you want to go.

In all scenarios, make sure you’re only holding one of the arrow keys at a time. More advanced climbing maneuvers won’t be possible with conflicting movement keys.

Always leap when you climb

I found that upon pressing space when I’m climbing, Moira will leap upwards. I imagined that this would exhaust her quicker, and wouldn’t be worth it. But actually, it allows you to scale much quicker while not using that must more energy.

This allowed me to scale walls and cliffs that I previously couldn’t. It also allowed me to reach the edge of a cliff before Moira collapsed out of exhaustion several times. Try it!

Pick up everything

Don’t leave anything behind. Make sure to pick up everything that you can. Most items will either contain a map fragment or a useful item that you’ll want to use later down the line.

The last thing you want is to discard a biscuit tin that had a map fragment or throw away an item that you need later. I can just barely get across the hills, I couldn’t imagine backtracking for items I’d left behind.

You don’t need to hold anything when sprinting

For a small while, I thought that I had to hold the shift button when entering sprint sections, with the deer. This wasn’t a huge issue, but thankfully I noticed that you don’t need to hold Shift or the movement button at all, as both are accounted for when you start sprinting.

I imagine learning that saved me lots of effort during those longer sections near the end of the journey.

Teetering is more dangerous than I thought

I made the mistake of thinking that teetering on an edge was safe and that Moira would either take a step back or would simply be teetering forever. However, if Moira is teetering, make sure to get off that edge immediately, or jump to the next spot.

Otherwise, she will fall, and she will get hurt. It’s not a great way to go.

There we have it! Everything that you should know to make your journey a little easier. I hope you make it on time!

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