Windrose Wood Farming Guide: How to Deforest the Islands
Spending your entire play session roleplaying as a medieval lumberjack is a miserable way to live a pirate fantasy.
Survival games demand an ungodly amount of raw timber. Windrose is certainly no exception to this rule. You need an endless supply of wood to build basic tools, construct massive coastal fortresses, and constantly fuel your industrial furnaces. If your strategy consists of walking up to the thickest palm tree you can find and blindly hacking at it with a sharp rock, you are wasting valuable daylight.
I got incredibly sick of running out of wooden planks right in the middle of building my base, so I spent some time figuring out how to optimize the deforestation process. Gathering basic materials does not have to be a tedious nightmare if you know exactly what to hit. If you are struggling to even survive the starting beach long enough to build a hatchet, take a quick detour and read my beginner's survival guide first.
The Tool Progression Trap
When you first wash ashore, your only real option is to sprint down the beach pressing your interact key to scoop up scattered logs off the sand. Do this exactly once to build your first set of primitive tools, and then never do it again. Scavenging is not a sustainable business model.
You need to craft a Stone Axe immediately. It is terrible, but it is better than using your bare hands. However, you should not stick with stone any longer than absolutely necessary. Your primary goal is to upgrade to metal tools to reduce the sheer number of times you have to swing your arms to fell a tree.
If you have no idea how to actually acquire the ingots required for these upgrades, I have mapped out the best mining locations in my copper gathering and smelting guide.
The Secret of the Ficus Tree
This is the most important piece of advice regarding resource management in Windrose. Do not chop down giant palm trees.
Your instinct is to aim for the biggest tree in the jungle because you assume it yields the most wood. In reality, large trees take an agonizing five or more swings to bring down, draining your stamina bar and durability for a mediocre payout.
Instead, you need to hunt for the Ficus tree. These are much smaller, thinner trees scattered heavily throughout the islands. Seeking out the Ficus is the absolute most efficient way to farm for two reasons.
First, they are incredibly weak. A Ficus tree usually only takes one to three chops to destroy.
Second, they are notoriously social plants. Ficus trees spawn in tight clusters, and they are almost always surrounded by dense patches of bushes. If you position yourself correctly, a single horizontal swing of your axe will connect with multiple Ficus trees and several bushes at the exact same time. You will instantly flood your inventory with massive stacks of both Wood and Plant Fiber simultaneously. Plant fiber is vital for crafting ropes and fabrics, so farming both resources in a single motion is a massive time saver. If your pockets fill up too fast while doing this, look into upgrading your bags via my inventory and storage guide.
Advanced Deforestation Tactics
Once you understand the basic mechanics, you can start abusing the game's physics engine to speed things up even further.
The Domino Effect
Windrose features physical collision for falling trees. If a chopped tree lands on another standing tree, the impact causes massive damage and can knock the second tree over.
You can exploit this heavily on hillsides. If you find a dense cluster of trees on an incline, position yourself so you are cutting the highest tree at a downward angle. When it falls, it will crash into the tree below it, triggering a chain reaction that can rip through an entire grove. You basically just stand at the top of the hill and let gravity do your logging for you.
Naval Bombardment Logging
If you are entirely tired of swinging an axe, there is a much louder alternative. You can simply shoot the forest.
Once you have a functional ship equipped with decent cannons, you can pull up right next to a heavily wooded shoreline and unleash a broadside barrage directly into the tree line. The explosive damage from the cannons will instantly obliterate the trees, reducing them to collectable wood logs on the ground.
This method is incredibly satisfying and completely eliminates stamina drain, but it comes with a catch. The range and targeting of ship cannons can be clunky, and you are burning precious ammunition just to get some wood. I usually only do this when I have a massive surplus of powder and want to clear a beach quickly to build a new dock. If you want to try this out but your vessel is currently unarmed, check out my ship upgrades and repairs guide to get your cannons mounted.
