If you get hit hard in Windrose, you are probably making the same mistake I did

Windrose has captured the attention of MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus. However, the start was a bit harsh. Some enemies and especially ships heated things up for him, as he simply overlooked a feature.

A stiff breeze at my nose, warm grog in hand – and a fist in my face. Basically, the stereotypical pirate life, but not necessarily what you want in a game like Windrose.

This is exactly what happened to me. After I finally launched my proud first ship, the “La Fayette”, my journey continued. At sea, heading to Tortuga and battling the nasty zombies from Blackbeard’s crew.

Only on the first island did I notice that the enemies are quite formidable. I’m not a bad player, but I died more often to crabs and undead than I want to admit. (Interestingly, pigs gave me surprisingly little trouble).

Especially with my ketch, I had problems against other ships. One was already a challenge; I couldn’t defeat two or more. This changed radically when I discovered the upgrades…

Windrose is not like survival games when it comes to crafting – More like Dark Souls

I am an absolute survival veteran. Alone in Conan Exiles, I have spent hundreds of hours, and other titles like Enshrouded, Dune: Awakening, and Fallout 76 add even more. They all have one thing in common: to get better equipment, I need to grind and craft resources.

In Windrose, this is only partially true. Yes, I need resources too, but crafting new weapons does absolutely nothing:

• The weapons I have found so far all have the same base damage and only different scalings.
• Initially, this is completely irrelevant. Only the playstyle and possibly the damage of individual hits vary depending on the weapon type.
• To craft new weapons at all, you must have found them at least once. Otherwise, you won’t get any new items – at least initially.

Weapons only get stronger through the upgrade feature. Using a tab above the workbench, equipment items can be upgraded if you have the corresponding materials – just like in Souls games, to which the combat system is heavily reminiscent.

Windrose explains the system briefly in the tutorial, but it quickly falls into forgetfulness, simply because I’m not used to it from survival games. Not to this extent, at least.

After I upgraded my saber and clothing a few levels, everything suddenly became much easier, and it took me another two hours to realize that this also works for the cannons and defenses of my ship. Because: yes, it does.

At the cannon workshop, ship items can also be upgraded, but you have to first remove them from the ship through the shipyard and place them in your inventory. So suddenly, even fights against three of Blackbeard’s squadrons (a total of 7 or 8 ships) became feasible.

New equipment is rarer, but not necessarily better

At some point during my explorations, I found a “blue” sword. You know: Rarity is always green, blue, purple, etc. So it makes sense that the rare sword is better, right? Nope.

Items with higher rarity have, at least in my case after nearly 8 hours, the same starting stats as other weapons and armor. Maybe a slightly better scaling with the player attributes, but this doesn’t matter at this level.

Instead, higher rarities have additional effects. Weapons, for example, can deal more damage under certain circumstances or provide buffs; my current clothing set enhances the use of melee weapons. I still have to upgrade them before they really become “better”.

This requires a lot of grind, especially the poor pigs must suffer for their skins. But well… a tavern keeper also reminded me that some fiend is slaughtering the poor dodos. No idea who he means.

Fortunately, there is the recycling station, which at least refunds the resources for pure crafting. It’s not much savings, but every little bit helps here.

Even though I feel pretty stupid because of this stupid mistake, I’m certainly not the only one who wasn’t attentive enough. Because Windrose is currently attracting more players than the developers expected: Almost 100,000 simultaneous players are overwhelming the new survival game, developers are now asking for help