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Getting Started
February 21, 2026 at 09:23 AM
Comprehensive beginner guide from demo experience and developer materials
This guide covers the first few hours of Windrose based on the Steam Next Fest demo. The game starts you with nothing on an island after Blackbeard wrecks your ship. Here is what to focus on.
Gather basic resources. Pick up sticks, stones, and fibers from the ground. Punch trees for wood. Standard survival game opening.
Craft basic tools. A stone axe and pickaxe are your first crafting targets. These speed up resource collection dramatically.
Build a shelter. Even a basic hut gives you a respawn point. Place a bed and a storage chest. See base building for details.
Cook food. Food does not prevent starvation because there is no hunger bar. Instead, eating buffs your stats. Cook any meat or fish you find and eat before combat for health and stamina bonuses.
Dodge > block. Dodging gives invincibility frames and repositions you. Block when you cannot dodge in time.
Pay attention to enemy wind-up animations. Most attacks are telegraphed.
Keep a pistol as a secondary weapon for pulling individual enemies from groups.
Do not fight skeletons in groups early on. Kite and pick them off.
The main quest line gives you a basic ship within the first couple of hours. Once you have it, the game opens up significantly. You can press K to summon your ship to any shoreline, so you will never lose it. See naval combat for how ship battles work.
One thing that surprises most players: crafting stations pull from all storage at your base. You do not need to carry resources to the workbench. Just dump everything in chests and craft from the station. This is by design, not a bug. See crafting for the full system.
The demo supports up to 4 players in self-hosted co-op. Dedicated servers are planned for Early Access. If you are playing with friends, coordinate who builds the base and who gathers. One person handling construction while others explore and fight makes the early game much smoother.
The game supports 12 languages including English, German, Russian, Simplified Chinese, French, Japanese, and Korean
Minimum specs require a GTX 1080 Ti and 16 GB RAM, so this is not a lightweight game
SSD is recommended for loading times
If you get low FPS, lower shadow quality first, as it has the biggest performance impact
