Despite being a cozy MMO, there's definitely endgame progression in Sky: Children of the Light, for which you'll need ascended candles. Sky is all about acquiring cosmetics, props, and other bits of personalization and you'll need ascended candles to unlock the highest tiers of outfits and rewards, as well as advanced interactions with your friends.

The main way to collect ascended candles involves the game's final area, so this guide has spoilers about the ending of the Eye of Eden. Unlike the other types of candles in the game, ascended candles aren't ones that you can gather by lighting candles in the world. Instead, they're earned for completing a couple different activities on a regular basis.

How to get ascended candles

Complete the Eye of Eden 

The original way to acquire ascended candles in Sky is by completing the final realm of the game, the Eye of Eden. This section is hard enough your first time through, so try not to worry about how exactly ascended candles work, but once you've seen the game ending once, it's time to start thinking about maximizing your rewards!

You earn ascended candles by giving your winged light to the children of light who are frozen in stone in the final (third) area of Eden. This is the same winged light you've been collecting through all the game realms prior, so try to always enter Eden with as much winged light stocked up as possible. On your first few runs this may be around 20 winged light—your total is displayed in the top center when you open the emote menu—and on later runs you'll want to shoot for more like 50-70 as you unlock additional areas of the map to collect from.

Each winged light you deposit in Eden will reduce your own winged light count at the top of the screen—the end result of completing Eden will always be losing all of your light. This area of Eden is challenging and constantly beset by storms, so your goal is to shelter at light shrines protected by large rocks and deliver your winged light to as many children as possible without allowing the storm to knock too much of it out of you.

You will not receive your ascended candles immediately though; they will be rewarded to you after you fully complete the realm and return home. You receive approximately one ascended candle for every four winged light you manage to deposit in the Eye of Eden. Eden's reset happens once per week on Sundays—though this is handled per statue in Eden, not for the entire event. This means that if you're feeling particularly grindy and completionist you can enter Eden multiple times a week to catch statues you missed on a prior run.

Find shard eruptions 

Shard eruptions are a type of (almost) daily event that challenge you to clear out darkness plants from an area while also avoiding dangerous crab creatures. Specifically, you'll need a strong shard event, which occurs every other day and rewards two to three ascended candles depending on their location. Strong shard events have more dark plants than others and the crab creatures there cannot be knocked over with your big call, so tread carefully and consider bringing friends.

You'll know which realm a shard event is occurring in each day by the red crystals sticking out of its stone portal at your Home location. Once you've reached the right part of the realm, you'll see the reddish hue in the sky and a plume of smoke should lead you to the shard site. The Sky player wiki has helpfully broken down a predictive schedule of when and where strong shard eruptions should occur.