Revision - modding - Windrose Wiki

Modding in Windrose is community-driven during Early Access. The studio Kraken Express has stated that it wants modding to be technically feasible even before the team can afford full formal mod support, and an active community modding scene has formed on third-party platforms within days of the April 14, 2026 Early Access launch. The official position from the studio's own FAQ is that mods can be a great way to enhance the experience but are used at the player's discretion, and the developers will not investigate mod-related bug reports or guarantee compatibility across patches.

There is no first-party in-game mod manager or workshop integration in the launch build. Players who want to use mods install them manually through community-developed mod managers or by following per-mod instructions, and most server-side mods require simultaneous installation on the dedicated server and on every connecting client to avoid desyncs and connection failures.

Official Stance

The official stance is split between three positions, all of which appear in studio communications:

Modding is allowed. Players can install and use mods at their own discretion. The studio does not enforce a no-mods policy on dedicated servers or solo play.
Modding is unsupported. Bug reports involving modded clients or servers will not be investigated by Kraken Express, and the studio cannot guarantee compatibility with future patches.
Modding is on the roadmap. The studio has publicly stated it wants modding to be technically feasible during Early Access, with formal mod support discussed as a longer-term goal rather than a launch feature.

The practical effect for players: mods work, mod authors are actively maintaining their work, but the user assumes the support burden. Backing up world saves before installing any server-side mod is the standard recommendation.

Mod Categories

The community mod scene at the end of the launch fortnight clusters into six broad categories, each with multiple mods covering similar territory:

Category	What These Mods Do	Typical Use Case
Quality of Life	Larger backpack and chest stack sizes, faster crafting, expanded build limits.	Reduce inventory management friction without changing game balance dramatically.
Loot Multipliers	2x to 100x or 1000x multipliers on resource drops or crafting outputs.	Servers running shorter campaigns or solo players who want a faster pace.
Movement and Travel	Higher fast-travel point caps, expanded stamina pools, optional first-person camera.	Long-session players who do not want to rebuild fast travel networks every world.
Server Tools	Mod managers, scripting frameworks, REST APIs for dedicated server administration.	Server admins running public Nitrado or self-hosted dedicated servers.
Visuals and Performance	Engine tweaks for stutter reduction, brighter lanterns, expanded minimap radius.	Players running on lower-end hardware or wanting smoother traversal.
World Behavior	Day-night cycle retuning, wind power adjustments, AI aggression overhauls.	Long-session servers customizing the rhythm of a private campaign.

Notable Community Mods

The mods listed below are the most-discussed entries on third-party mod sites as of late April 2026. Mod stability and version compatibility change with each Windrose patch, so always verify the mod's stated patch compatibility against the current live build before installing.

Mod Name	Function
Expanded Horizons (QOL Plus)	Increases build limit by 10x including fast travel points; doubles backpack, chest, and ship inventories; quadruples resource stacks.
Max Stack Sizes	Allows resource stack ceilings up to 999 or 999,999, with multiplier variants from 2x to 100x. Effectively removes inventory micromanagement.
MoreStacks	Stack size increases of 10x, 100x, or 1000x depending on the chosen variant. A cleaner alternative when Expanded Horizons feels too sweeping.
More Stamina	Stamina pool multipliers from 2x to 50x. Useful for relaxed-pace solo runs or players who find the launch stamina cap punishing.
Fast Travel Plus	Raises the fast-travel bell cap from the default 10 to 20, 30, or 50 depending on the variant. Client-side, configurable per player.
More Fast-Travel Points and Signal Fires	Increases caps on plantable fast-travel points and Signal Fire pieces for larger personal networks.
First Person Camera	Converts gameplay to a first-person perspective with adjustable field of view. Client-only, individual preference.
Definitive Engine Tweaks	Engine configuration adjustments that reduce stuttering, improve shader compilation, and smooth traversal. Client-only.
BetterLantern	Increases lantern illumination range and fuel capacity. Has an infinite-fuel variant for long Cursed Swamps expeditions.
Better Minimap Range	Widens fog-of-war reveal radius and expands minimap display area for easier navigation.
Fast Craft	Kilns and furnaces produce one item per second. Some users report journal and discoveries menu issues, so test on a temporary world before committing.
Living World	Two presets that retune day-night cycles, wind power, moon cycles, and AI aggression in a coordinated overhaul. Best installed on a fresh world.

Mod Managers and Tooling

Manual mod installation is workable for one or two mods but quickly becomes painful with a stack of QOL mods plus a server-side framework. Three categories of tooling have emerged in the community to handle that complexity:

Tool	Role
Windrose Mod Manager	Drag-and-drop installer for .zip and .7z mod packages. Auto-detects game install paths, creates backups before applying mods, and tracks installed versions for upgrade and removal. Works against dedicated servers over SFTP or SSH on port 8822. Open source.
CertiFried Windrose Mod Manager	Alternative mod manager with a different user-experience design. Useful as a fallback when the primary manager has compatibility issues with a particular mod.
UE4SS for Windrose	Scripting framework that any non-trivial mod uses as a foundation. Required dependency for most server-side mods that go beyond a simple .pak drop, including the Server REST API and most world-behavior mods.
Windrose Server REST API	Adds an HTTP API to dedicated servers for external dashboards, Discord bots, and admin tooling. Currently work-in-progress with a limited endpoint set, built on UE4SS.
WindrosePlus	Server-side framework with a live web sea chart, an admin dashboard with RCON-style commands, server query support, and configuration tweaks. Designed for community-run public servers rather than small private groups.

Server vs Client Installation

Whether a mod needs to be installed on the server, the client, or both is the single most common source of installation failures. The pattern depends on what the mod modifies:

Server-only mods: Mods that change world generation, AI behavior, server admin tools, or server-side configuration only need to be installed on the dedicated server. Client connections still work with a vanilla client.
Client-only mods: Mods that change UI, camera, graphics, or local-only settings install on the client. The server does not need any modding to accept a modded client of this type. First Person Camera and Definitive Engine Tweaks are typical examples.
Both server and client: Mods that change item stack sizes, drop tables, build limits, or anything affecting persistent world state must be installed on both the server and every connecting client. Skipping the server install causes desyncs; skipping a single client's install causes that client to fail to connect or to see incorrect inventories.

Most QOL mods (Expanded Horizons, Max Stack Sizes, MoreStacks) fall into the third category. Read the mod page carefully before installing and confirm that every player in the group has the same version installed before launching a session.

Compatibility With Patches

Game updates frequently break existing mods until authors release compatibility patches. Three rules of thumb apply during Early Access:

Always back up the world folder before installing or updating any mod. The full R5 directory under AppData is the safest backup target. Saves are not automatically migrated when a mod removal corrupts an entry.
Check the mod page for a stated patch compatibility version before installing. A mod last updated for 0.10.0.2.54 may or may not work cleanly on 0.10.0.3.104 depending on what the mod hooks into.
Stacking multiple mods that affect the same system (loot multipliers plus stack size mods plus build limit mods) can produce unpredictable behavior. Test on a temporary world before applying the full stack to a live campaign.

Risks and Caveats

Three risks are worth flagging up front. First, the studio explicitly does not investigate bug reports involving modded clients or servers, so any save corruption, crash, or connectivity issue caused by a mod becomes the player's responsibility to debug. Second, the rolling 30-backup save system added in Hotfix 0.10.0.3.104 is the player's primary recovery path if a mod corrupts a save, but it covers only the last 30 game launches and does not protect against a mod that corrupts saves on every launch. Third, achievement tracking and leaderboard interactions with modded play are not formally documented at this stage; players who care about completionist progression should run separate vanilla and modded characters rather than mixing the two on a single save.

None of those risks are unique to Windrose, but the Early Access status amplifies them. Mods released against the launch build may break with any of the connectivity, save-system, or content patches expected during the rest of the Early Access window.

Where Mods Are Hosted

Most Windrose mods are hosted on third-party community mod platforms rather than on the official Steam Workshop, because Workshop integration is not part of the launch build. Specific platforms and per-mod download pages change frequently during Early Access, but the major hosting categories are:

Community mod sites: Centralized indexes for mods, reviews, and downloads. Most popular QOL mods, mod managers, and visual tweaks live here.
Open-source repositories: Mod authors who share source code and accept community contributions often host their work alongside or instead of mod-site listings. UE4SS and several server frameworks fall in this category.
Server hosting partner pages: Some Nitrado-style server hosts publish their own server-mod guides for customers running public worlds.

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