How do I fly? You cannot - prop climbing is what you actually mean
Also searched as: how to fly / prop climb / can you fly / how do I get higher / getting over walls
The short answer
The game has no flight ability and no gliding. But the community does have a technique that gains height on demand and looks like flying from outside, and it is written up under the title How to fly - it is called prop climbing.
The core is a three-step loop: let go of the item, jump onto it, pick it back up. Repeat it to a rhythm and you bank a little height every time.
- Players
- 1 player or more (once you have it, you can do it alone)
- Time
- 5-10 minutes of practice
- Coordinates
- No fixed coordinate
- Reward
- The ability to gain height repeatedly - reach anchors, clear walls, take shortcuts
This site previously answered the question by saying those guides were only positioning tricks. That was not accurate, and it has been corrected.
Before you start
- Any light portable item - a ball, the map, that sort of thing
- Patience - both too fast and too slow fail, just differently
- Know what this is first: it is emergent physics and pickup behavior, not an official mechanic. Using it to travel can strand teammates - it does not replace the chairlift, tunnels and trains.
Step-by-step 4 steps
- 1
The three-step loop
1 Let go and drop the item, 2 jump on it, 3 pick the item back up. Repeat.
What you are standing on is the height available in the instant the item is still airborne. The gaps between the three steps decide whether it works, which makes this a rhythm technique rather than a speed one. - 2
What item to use
Anything light works. The author of the guide says outright that "the best item is the map". Orbs work too.
- 3
PC: bind jump to the mouse wheel
If you have no rhythm - and the original author says they do not either - you can bind jump to the mouse wheel and let the wheel's continuous input stand in for frame-perfect timing. Some people go further and macro the whole loop.
- 4
When the height is not enough: switch to grab chaining
If the target is very high, or what you need to clear is a wall or a railing, prop climbing is not always the answer. Have a teammate get a firm hold on you, then have a second person grab the first, one link at a time upward. This appears in multiple guides as a general technique, and places that look like they need three people are often fine with two chaining.
Where it goes wrong
These are the places players actually get stuck most often. Working through them in order usually finds the cause.
Other System puzzles
After finishing: - (a technique; it unlocks nothing)
Where this solution came from
The three-step loop, the rhythm requirement, the three failure symptoms with their causes, and both "the best item is the map" and the PC wheel bind all come from the Steam Community guide How to fly / prop climb by Guliker. A second Steam Community guide titled How to fly points at the same mechanic, but we do not have its URL, so we cite nothing from it. Grab chaining comes from the general-technique section of the 100% achievement guide; there is no page-specific prop-climb clip in the video library, so the clip below only shows the game's movement and physics systems themselves. That there is no flight mechanic is agreed between the official FAQ and the community, and this page keeps "no mechanic" and "there is a technique" deliberately separate.
Puzzles in this game are not assigned in a fixed order: each tower needs a set number of gourds and has more challenges around it than that, so you choose which ones to clear, in any order. That is why two guides list different puzzle line-ups for the same tower — neither is wrong. Unless a coordinate is credited to a named source it is a community measurement, and later versions can shift it; once you are in the area, trust the landmark over the number.