Your first sortie — nobody's first minute should end in a hillside
For a long time your first ninety seconds in the Brick Sea went like this: press TAKE OFF, meet thirty-six strangers, get shot down by one of them, and read a respawn card that told you nothing. That is no way to greet anybody. Your first sortie is now yours.
One instruction at a time
Press TAKE OFF for the very first time and you don't land in the furball. You land in a quiet piece of sky over the Brick Sea, already airborne, already level, already pointed at the fight — and a single line at the bottom of the screen tells you the one thing that matters right now.
MOVE YOUR MOUSE TO FLY.
That's it. Not a wall of keybinds, not a manual, not nine drills to pick from. The trim gauge and the ordnance counter step aside — you haven't been taught them and they have nothing to say yet — and the line waits, patiently, until you actually move the stick. Not until a timer runs out. Until you fly.
A bandit you can actually hit
The moment you do, one shows up. He's called something like Wobbles McGee or Nervous Nigel, he's dead ahead about six hundred metres out, he's flying flat and slow, and his airframe is made of tissue paper. The gold diamond floating in front of him is your lead pip — it's where he will be, not where he is. Put your crosshair on the diamond and hold the trigger.
One good burst and he goes down.
FIRST BLOOD. The screen stamps it, the chatter picks it up, and — this is the part that matters — it goes on your record. Not a practice score in a sandbox that evaporates when you close the tab. Your career, the real one, with the First Blood paint scheme unlocked the moment that first kill lands. It's yours from the first minute you ever played and it's still yours tomorrow.
Then a second one shows up, and this one runs. He jinks, he turns, he doesn't sit still and wait for you. Lead him. The diamond is doing the teaching now.
The ground gives your plane back
Here is the thing everybody does on their first flight: they fly into a hill. Chasing the bandit down, pulling too hard, watching the gunsight instead of the horizon — straight into the green.
In your first sortie, that doesn't kill you. The hill is still there and you still meet it, but instead of a killcam and a respawn screen you get put back in the air, level, with altitude under you and a warning that tells you what to do about it: ⚠ THAT WAS THE GROUND — PULL BACK TO CLIMB. WE PUT YOU BACK UP ⚠
Nothing shoots you down in there either. The tracers still crack past, and you should absolutely learn what that sounds like — but your plane doesn't come apart, because nobody's first ninety seconds in this game should be spent on a respawn card.
Then the war
Down the second bandit and the line changes one last time: YOU'RE READY — GOOD HUNTING, and then DROPPING YOU INTO THE BATTLE. No menu. No loading screen. No going back to the hangar and picking again. The sky simply becomes the real one — thirty-odd pilots, both teams, the golden Sky Ring turning over the island, and the daily missions waiting on your next respawn card.
You arrive with a kill already on the books, a paint scheme you earned, and some idea which way is up.
And if you'd rather skip all of it? SKIP TO BATTLE sits under the coach line the entire time. One click and you're in the deep end, which is exactly where a lot of you want to be. It never asks twice, either — the first sortie happens once, and every visit after it is the game you already know.