Revision 7

Windrose takes an unusual approach to survival game food: there are no hunger or thirst meters. Instead, eating food provides temporary stat buffs to health, stamina, and combat power. The system resembles Valheim's food model, where eating is a reward rather than a penalty.

How Food Works

Consuming food grants temporary increases to one or more stats. Basic food buffs last around 7 minutes; cooked recipes with specific stat bonuses last up to 30 minutes. Players can stack up to three different food and drink buffs simultaneously, so eating a meat dish, a fish dish, and drinking a coconut provides all three bonuses at once.

Cooking

Cooking is done at a Cooking Fire built at your settlement (3 wood + 3 stone). Ingredients from farming and fishing are combined into meals with different effects. A Fridge is available for storing prepared food and raw ingredients. Better ingredients produce stronger buffs, so exploring more dangerous biomes for rarer ingredients directly feeds into combat capability for harder content.

Cooking Upgrades

The Cooking Fire can be improved with attachments that unlock more recipes:

• Cutting Table: Unlocks intermediate food recipes with better buff values

• Cookware Shelf: Unlocks advanced meals with the strongest buffs

Alchemy

Beyond food, Windrose has a full alchemy system. The Alchemy Table is unlocked after finding a Misty Orchid. Mixing different resources from crops, enemy drops, or naturally gathered materials produces potions with powerful effects.

Known Potions

Preparation Methods

Items used in alchemy can be prepared in one of five ways: whole, powdered, as an oil, as an infusion, or as a tincture in alcoholic spirits. Each item has an "ideal preparation" method. Using the correct preparation prevents the experiment from failing, though the preparation method does not change the resulting effect.

Oils

Oils are a separate buff category applied to weapons before combat, similar to The Witcher series. This layer of tactical preparation allows players to tune their loadout for specific encounters by combining the right food, potion, and oil buffs before entering a dungeon or boss fight.

Why No Hunger?

The developers chose this approach to avoid the tedious survival game pattern where players spend more time managing hunger bars than actually playing. Removing the penalty (dying of starvation) while keeping the reward (stat buffs) means food remains important without becoming annoying. You want to eat before fighting because it helps, not because the game will kill you if you forget.

Demo Observations

Players who discovered the food buff system early in the Steam Next Fest demo reported that well-prepared meals made a noticeable difference in combat encounters. Upgrading armor to 180 defense while stacking food buffs was described as transformative for handling tougher enemies.