Cutter

Cutter is a small, fast ship class in Windrose, used primarily by factions as a scouting and raiding vessel. Player-facing Cutter entries exist in the game database, but they are not built at the Wharf like the Brig, Frigate, or Ketch. At sea the Cutter appears most often as an AI-controlled scout belonging to a faction, where it is a fodder encounter during patrol flags: low hull, good speed, quick to sink in a fair broadside.

Overview

Mobility

Cutters share a single mobility profile across all variants. The top gear reaches 21.5 knots in calm wind. Turn-rate values per gear are listed in the Mobility table below; comparative rankings against other ship families are not published in the in-game data export, so treat the Cutter's reputation as a quick-turning raider as a role description rather than a numeric claim.

Variants

The Cutter family includes eight entries in total: faction-flagged AI scouts that patrol open water, a scripted Quest Cutter used in mission context, a player-classified Default Cutter, and a higher-hull Default variant.

Role at Sea

Cutters fill the scout slot in faction fleets. Their low hull (200 HP for faction scouts) means they fall to a couple of well-aimed broadsides from a stock 12-pound battery; they are the ship you sink to clear a patrol marker rather than the ship you fear in a head-on fight. The Quest Cutter is the exception: its 500 HP and 21.5-knot top speed make it closer to a player-tier ship when scripted missions call for it.

No hull in Windrose can be captured and added to the player roster. Boarding an AI Cutter lets the player clear the deck in melee, but loot drops into the inventory and the hull either sinks or remains as a static wreck. The same rule applies to every other class; see Boarding for the general boarding and crew-clearing ruleset.

Acquisition

Player-kind Cutter entries exist in the game data but are not produced at the Wharf and have no published unlock method at the current Early Access version. Unlike the Brig, Frigate, and Ketch classes, no Ship Plans entry has been surfaced for the Cutter family, and the Shipwright's Workshop does not list Cutter hulls as a buildable keel. Encounters with the AI scouts are therefore the only reliable way to see a Cutter at sea in the current build.

See Also

Ships for the top-level ship index

Ship Types for the broader class overview and lore context

Naval Combat for the general ship-vs-ship ruleset

Boarding for the boarding and crew-clearing mechanic

Brig for the next-size-up player-buildable class

Brethren of the Coast, Smugglers of Port Royal, and Blackbeard for the factions that sail AI Cutter variants

Game Data

Build Cost