I’ve been enthralled with this game since I started playing the demo a few months ago. The full game is now in Early Access and it’s very promising. Please share your experiences and tips here. As time goes on, perhaps we can also share private servers for co-op play.
I was just made aware of this two days ago… so it’s good? It SOUNDS like it is right up my alley…
I’m pretty sure you can still try the Demo. I was hooked immediately and played through it several times.
This is going to be a work in progress, but it should be helpful to get you started in Windrose:
- First priority after establishing the basics (cook fire, workbench, tent) is upgrading your clothes and weapons.
- Make a sail cloth bag as soon as possible to increase your inventory slots.
- Workstations (clothing, weapons, etc.) require a roof. Don’t overbuild your first base. You can put these in simple open huts with 3 walls and a roof. Save buildings for your permanent base, which should be near the ship you are going to repair, not on the starting island.
- To make and upgrade weapons you need lots of copper. Before mining, set up storage at your base.
- Hint: as you explore and find sweet potato patches, peppers, bananas, etc. build a torch nearby so you can find them again when they respawn. You’ll always find a few boars near a sweet potato patch.
Storage - Cloth storage bales (not bags) are the most efficient, you only need cloth and rope to build them and they hold 28 slots (same as a chest). Don’t waste nails on chests. You’ll want storage bales conveniently located for the following categories first:
- Raw materials like Wood, Plant fiber, Stone, Clay, Copper Ore, Charcoal (after building the kiln). Place it near your workbench so you know what’s in it (storage can be labelled with signs eventually, but in the early game it can get confusing what supplies you put in your bales)
- Supplies for building and upgrading, like nails, boar hide, animal fat, copper ingots, cloth, rope. Place it near your workstation huts.
- Tools, weapons and clothing. You won’t want to carry around all your tools and weapons because they take up inventory slots.
- Food ingredients, like crab meat, coconuts, boar meat, sweet potatoes, peppers, dodo eggs etc. Place it near your cook fire.
Note: There is a handy quick store button for adding similar items to a container that already has some inside. It won’t store them if they are on your shortcut bar (first row of your inventory)
Later on you can set up storage bales for alchemy items, trade goods, decorations, ship supplies, etc.
Beach-combing - you can gather a lot of useful supplies just by running along the beach. Gather stone and wood as needed. Leave the Triton shells for later - they are just for decorations. Catch crabs for crab meat. Pick up scallop shells for pearls, which can be used as bullets. Once you have the stone axe always break up every piece of a shipwreck - it is the best source for nails and you’ll need a lot of them later in the game.
Copper mining - Once you locate the copper mine you’ll need a stone pickaxe to mine copper ore. Build torches inside the mines for light (later you get a lantern, but torches are easier early on). If your inventory fills up, make separate piles of copper ore and stone near the exit. Mine everything in the cave and then carry it back to your camp. The mine will respawn after a couple days, but whatever you leave on the floor near the entrance will stay there.
Smelting - To make ingots you need a kiln (Clay) to make charcoal, and a Smelter (Stone). Add wood to the kiln to make charcoal, and once you have charcoal you can smelt ore into ingots. It takes time and you’ll need a lot of them for making and upgrading weapons and fast travel bells, and for building workstations. Don’t waste copper ingots making nails or bullets until you have a good supply of them.
It’s a good idea to stay on the starting island until you have fully upgraded clothing and weapons. Build a fast travel bell on the shore at your starting camp, and then bring another one with you to build at your next camp, which should be nearby the ship you’ll repair (Also, don’t forget to reset your spawn point when you start setting up your permanent base - getting killed and starting from your first base is a pain if you don’t have bells built). Use your pistol sparingly, powder is hard to find (you’ll use the ash from the kiln to make it later in the game). Make use of the Ctrl key to back off from combat - a lot of enemies like to swarm and will kill you quickly when you are surrounded. When you’re ready to explore other islands, focus on finding the shipwreck to repair before trying to rescue your crew. Avoid gun boats when in your sailboat - they will attack you when they spot you.
The game looked really good in the video I saw yesterday.
I have a dedicated server running if you want to jump in. I set it for a max of 8 players, and I assume they start everyone on different islands, so I’m guessing there are 8 starter islands surrounding the archipelago. Information to connect is:
Invite Code: sdmbwindrose
Password: Cecil
If you want to try setting up a dedicated server you can find instructions here:
How to setup a dedicated server in Windrose
My server should stay up most of the time, but let’s see how it goes. Note that when your character changes worlds your inventory comes with you, so you can port supplies and weapons between worlds if you want to (including offline worlds). This was my first try of Co-op mode so I don’t have any information about communicating with each other.
A pirate survival crafter? Guess I’m going to break my early access rule, because this sounds awesome.
I’ve installed and now I’m at the beach setting up my initial camp. I’ve paused to review @Thumper668 tips.
Just a word of advice, which may seem obvious - if you start the game offline and then start playing on a server, you won’t have anything you’ve built, just what’s in your inventory (you can switch between worlds to transport anything that will fit in your inventory). What I was not aware of is that quests completed offline don’t need to be repeated. That’ll make more sense after you’ve played a bit.
I’ve finally made it to Tortuga. This game is so good!
I’ve finally got a ship, and I learned a hard lesson fighting the initial ketch: you can steer and fire at the same time, just right-click while steering.
Just saw this thread; I’ve been too busy being addicted to playing. Thanks for starting the thread and for the tips @Thumper668 . There are some great ideas I didn’t think of
I’m pretty far along on the Jungle world and just wrapping up the side quests. The sea shanties are awesome! I love setting out on my ship and starting them up.
I’ll share a couple of random things:
- You’ll get items that you can sell to the people of Tortuga. These people are not actually IN Tortuga so don’t waste time looking for them there.
- When you complete a quest, click through the Leave option. If you just end the dialog (with E for instance), it won’t complete the quest.
- The pink tombstones on the sea don’t automatically disappear when you recover your items. Right click on the map to remove. I kept searching for stuff and getting killed.
- You can have the effects of 2 foods and 1 elixir at the same time. They last a while so use them liberally. It makes a difference for combat.
- This one might be obvious, but I keep forgetting to build to (a) wall off enemies, (b) navigate tricky areas, (c) get unstuck. The last one was important. I got stuck in a small hole with a chest. I couldn’t ‘land’ on the ground so there was no way to dig out. Even the official Unstuck option that kills you couldn’t complete. But I was able to build.
- For cannon hits, aim low for the waterline. For chain, aim for the sails. Grog makes a big difference for combat and boarding and it lasts a while. Even across your death.
- If you’re having trouble surviving boarding ships, pick a less crowded area to jump over. Or stand on a ledge or cabin.
- You can recover all the resources from builds so don’t hesitate to use them. Like @Thumper668 said, build Bells and Tents liberally. At first when it said only 10 Bells can be built I was afraid they were permanent. I could have saved a lot of time sailing back and forth.
Those are great tips! The persistent death cache at sea had me wasting a lot of time.
This is the single biggest tip for combat.
I’ll add a few more:
- Aside from using Ctrl to back-off, don’t be afraid to just run away.
- Don’t spam left-click and hope for the best. You can’t really tank combat.
- Get used to blocking attacks. Aim to compete fights without taking damage.
- If you’re having trouble with combat, reset your stat points and go all in on Vitality (health) and Endurance (stamina). This will give you a buffer to run away and regroup.
Thanks for this! I just started playing on it. Haven’t run into anyone else yet except some sort of NPC doctor. Is there text or voice chat in the game?
Good tips, thanks! (And thanks for leaving the torches on the starter island… they were quite helpful for wayfinding).
Actually, on that note, you don’t even have to enclose them. Just a single wall and a roof over the station is enough:
Well, that was fun… I was trying to do some quest to save some shipmates or something. Killed a few zombies then had to find the next camp, and ran into some pirates along the way. Thought they were friendly (honor among thieves and all that..), but they weren’t. They couldn’t quite aim accurately enough to hit my little boat, so I just kept circling them and trying to board them for combat, but couldn’t figure out how. Then this other ship showed up and starting shooting at them. While they were distracted, I jumped out and swam towards the first pirate, still trying to board. Then drowned 
Guess that’s not the way to do it…
I love the immersiveness of the game. The water animations are superb (even better than Sea of Thieves!), and so were the sound effects. Bobbing up and down with the waves, every time my head came up for air I could hear the roar of the cannons in surround sound between the two pirate ships fighting each other. Then a wave would crest and all would be silent except for the sound of water. It’s a good drowning pirate sim so far.
Yeah, that was me, hehe. I guess your character is Arr. You can’t mess with pirate ships until you repair your ketch. I sunk them both so you can safely go retrieve your post mortem loot. I was trying to get your attention in the Blackbeard camp, but I can’t figure out communication either - maybe we need a Discord channel or something.
My favorite part is when you get your ship your crew will sing you sea shanties 
I set up a camp on @Thumper668 's server on the (now) 3-person island. Looks like there are quite a few camps. Mine is the one with the diving board. Help yourself to take any resources in the various chests.
Agreed, the only bale I’d prefer people not take from is the Trade bale near my travel bell.