Windrose Demo Beginner Guide: How to Survive the High Seas

Most pirate games throw you onto a ship and tell you to start blasting. Windrose decides to throw you onto a beach and forces you to fight a boar for your life just to gather some basic materials.

This game leans heavily into the survival crafting genre, and it does not hold your hand. If you do not understand the resource economy, the punishing combat system, and how the game handles ship management, you are going to spend hours running in circles. The demo offers a massive slice of the early game, but it also features a few frustrating mechanics and hidden requirements that can easily road block your progress.

I spent my time exploring the archipelago, dying to oversized pigs, and figuring out exactly how to bypass the most annoying parts of the tutorial. Here is the complete beginner guide to surviving the Windrose demo.

Essential Resource Gathering

Before you can sail anywhere, you need to build up your base camp. The game requires you to craft several specific workstations, and the materials for them are not always obvious.

How to Find Clay

During the "Islander" tutorial quest, you have to build a Smelting Furnace and a Charcoal Kiln. Both of these structures require a massive amount of Clay (15 and 20 respectively). You will not find clay on the beaches. You have to travel to the center of the starting island, right between the Ancient Ruins and the Copper Deposit. Look for dark, cracked, muddy patches on the ground.

To actually harvest the clay, you cannot just use your hands. You need a Stone Pickaxe. Build a Workbench first using 5 Wood, then craft the pickaxe using 3 Wood and 3 Stone. Equip it, walk up to the mud patch, and swing repeatedly until the clay pops out.

The Gunpowder Problem

If you are trying to use your flintlock pistol or musket, you are going to realize very quickly that you have no ammo. In the full game, you will be able to craft gunpowder using Ash, Sulfur, and a Millstone. In the demo, the Millstone is completely disabled.

The only way to get gunpowder right now is by murdering other pirates. You have to raid the Pirate Camps scattered around the islands. Killing the pirates themselves will occasionally drop gunpowder, and you can usually find supply boxes in their camps that drop 2-3 extra units. Save this precious resource exclusively for boss fights inside the dungeons. Do not waste it shooting dodos.

The Hidden Chest Puzzle

While exploring the starting island, you will eventually stumble across a random camp with a piece of paper on the ground. If you click on the paper, the game might give you a frustrating "You already have this item" error. Do not panic; this is just a buggy UI notification. If you check your "Curios" tab in the menu, you can actually read the note.

The note tells you about a buried chest. Do not just start digging randomly around the campsite. Look around the immediate area for a dead, white tree that is leaning at an angle. It will have a red rag or "scarf" tied around the trunk. You need to craft a shovel, switch your stance to "Dig" mode (not weapon mode), and dig directly underneath that specific tree to unearth the loot.

Managing Your Ships

There is a lot of confusion regarding how boats actually work in this game, primarily because the game uses two different systems for your starter vessel and your actual combat ship.

Your Free Starter Boat

You do not have to build your first boat. Once you complete the initial Islander questline, the game simply gives it to you. If you ever lose track of it or need to cross the water, just press the 'K' key on your keyboard. This instantly summons your starter boat directly to your location in the sea.

Rebuilding the Big Ship

Later in the demo, you will acquire a much larger ship capable of actual naval combat. If you sail out of bounds or get destroyed in a fight, this ship will explode, leaving all your loot floating in the water.

Do not freak out. You do not have to rebuild the entire ship from scratch. To get it back, you need to build a Wharf at your base. Note: The Wharf building option is locked until you complete the specific quest to craft cannons. Once you have the Wharf placed, you can simply walk up to it, pay a tiny fee of 20 Wood to "Repair/Salvage" the wreck, and then press 'K' to respawn the fully repaired ship.

Combat and Exploration Tips

Windrose is surprisingly brutal. If you play this like a casual hack-and-slash game, you will die constantly.

The Soulslike Combat

The melee combat relies heavily on stamina management and dodging. Enemies hit incredibly hard. If you see an enemy that is two levels higher than you, just walk away. The most dangerous enemy on the starting island is not a pirate; it is the level 3 Sows (wild pigs). They can and will one-shot you in the early game. Stick to hunting Dodos for meat and avoid the pigs until you have better gear.

Fast Travel Bells

Do not run back and forth across the island manually. You will eventually find a Fast Travel Bell inside the smuggler den. Once you have access to these, you should always place a fast travel point at your main base, and carry the materials to drop a second one right outside the entrance of any dungeon or major Point of Interest (POI). This allows you to instantly warp home to drop off heavy loot and immediately return to the dungeon.

Naval Supplies and Contraband

As you loot ships and clear caches, you will fill your inventory with boxes labeled "Naval Supplies," "Medical Crates," and "Contraband." You cannot open these. They are not loot boxes. They are trade goods. You are supposed to hold onto them and sell them to dedicated Traders for profit. Unfortunately, the main trading hub (Tortuga) is not accessible in the demo, so just dump these crates into a storage chest at your base for now.