Ships

Ships are Windrose's player-owned naval vessels, built at the Wharf from salvaged timber, ingots, and fabrics. Every ship falls into one of three hull classes, Brig, Frigate, or Ketch, each available in Stock, Blackbeard, and Brethren variants. This page indexes all nine hulls and links each one to its cannon, hull bracing, naval tactics, and boarding party options.

Ship Class Overview

Stock ships are the balanced baseline: moderate hitpoints, cargo, and battery. Blackbeard variants sacrifice armor and cargo for speed and heavier-caliber guns; Brethren variants double down on hitpoints and cargo at the cost of sail speed. Pick the class that matches your preferred playstyle, then build all three variants over time so you can swap hulls for different mission types.

Complete Ship Roster

Ship Family Taxonomy

The Windrose ship database indexes ten distinct ship families, though only three of them (Brig, Frigate, and Ketch) are the player-buildable combat ships described in the Complete Ship Roster above. The other seven families appear in the game's content database as either AI-only variants encountered at sea, starter-tier vessels given during the tutorial, or future-content entries with placeholder stats. The table below summarizes the state of each family at the current Early Access build so that captains can tell at a glance which hulls can actually be crewed from the Wharf.

In the current build the only ships a captain actually commissions at the Wharf are the nine combat variants in the Complete Ship Roster above. Everything else in this taxonomy is either content you already own by default (the starter Boat), content you only ever sink (AI variants of Cutter, Brig, Frigate, and Ketch belonging to Blackbeard, Brethren of the Coast, Buccaneers, Smugglers of Port Royal, or Civilians), or data-side placeholder entries for future hulls that the developers have not yet finalized. When in doubt, check whether the hull's profile includes real per-gear mobility values and a listed Ship Design plan; placeholder hulls share a single default mobility curve and have no plan requirement.

Ship Equipment Slots

Every ship has four equipment slots that captains fill at the Wharf interface: a cannon slot, a hull bracing slot, a naval tactics slot, and a crew equipment slot. The items you can fit in each slot are gated by the hull class and by whether you've learned the corresponding Plan paper.

See Also

• Naval Combat, ship-vs-ship combat overview

• Boarding, crew-vs-crew boarding mechanics

• Ship Plans, recipe papers for ship equipment

• Wharf, where ships are built and rigged

• Shipwright's Workshop, where cannons, hull bracings, tactics, and crew gear are crafted

Ship Design Plan Acquisition

Before a hull can be built at the Wharf, the matching Ship Design plan must be learned. The three hull classes use two different unlock routes: the starter Ketch is a main-quest reward, while the mid-game Brig and end-game Frigate are both reputation-gated purchases from the same faction vendor. The table below summarizes where each blueprint comes from so that captains can plan the piastre economy around the target hull.

Hull Blueprint vs Craftable Hull

Buying or earning the Ship Design plan only unlocks the recipe at the Shipwright's Workshop. Actually laying the keel still requires the hull's full material list, which scales with class. The Ketch draws on starter-island Wood and Copper. The Brig adds Foothills-tier materials, and the Frigate adds Cursed Swamps materials. Buying a higher-tier blueprint before the matching biome is a reliable farm locks the piastre investment behind weeks of real-time gathering, so the standard order is to push the biome's story arc first and only then commit to the blueprint.

Upgrading Between Hulls is Permanent

Each Ship Design plan is a one-time unlock: learning the Ketch design does not cost the slot for the Brig or Frigate plan later, so there is no risk of a wasted purchase beyond the piastres already spent. Captains typically keep all three hull recipes unlocked on a single character and switch between them at the Wharf based on the mission: Ketch for coastal scouting and low-risk trade runs, Brig for mid-game fleet engagements, and Frigate for late-game boss patrols and faction flagships.

Variants

A complete list of Ships variants in Windrose is shown below, with thumbnail, build cost, and comfort bonus for each entry. Click any name to open its dedicated page.