Complete Windrose Ships Guide

Complete Windrose Ships Guide Quick Summary:

• You unlock your first ship by progressing the main quest until Doctor Galen gives you “I Need a Bigger Boat.”
• To repair that first ship, you need 100 Wood, 20 Nails, 20 Fabric, and 10 Rope.
• After that, you must complete “Rescue the Crew” and recruit 7 crewmates to fully use it.
• Windrose currently has three ship classes: Ketch, Brigantine, and Frigate, with Frigate being the strongest.
• Brigantine and Frigate blueprints are bought in Tortuga and require Brethren Reputation Level 2 and 4.
• Blackbeard ships hit harder and move faster, while Brethren ships have much more health for safer battles.

Want to get a ready-made ship for you without spending hours farming materials? Check out our Windrose Ships and get the one that you like right now.

 

 

 

How to Get a Ship in Windrose

A ship is not something that’s given to you right away. You need to progress the questline and reach a certain point where you’ll be given a task to restore a rundown ship. The ship you get is just a ketch, which is the lowest tier of the ships in the game, but as you progress, you’ll have a chance to acquire better ships. Below, you’ll find a step-by-step guide on how to get a ship in Windrose:

1. Progress the Main Quest: You need to reach the point where Doctor Galen will give you a quest called “I Need a Bigger Boat.”
2. Reach the Second Island: The broken ship will be marked on your map.
3. Farm Resources: You need to get 100 Wood, 20 Nails, 20 Fabric, and 10 Rope. You can gather these materials before reaching the second island.
4. Use the Materials: Using these materials on the ship will repair it.

Congratulations, now you have your first ship! It’s a little shabby, but not for long. There’s a little problem with it. You don’t have the crew. When you talk to Dr. Galen, he’ll give you a quest called “Rescue the Crew.” You’ll be tasked to search the island in order to find and free the sailors in trouble. They’ll join your crew after you complete the quest. You need 7 crewmates to form a full crew for your first ship. Now that you have a ship, it’s time to upgrade it.

How to Upgrade a Ship in Windrose

The default ship is far from perfect, but with upgrades, it can become really strong. Can’t jump over your head even if you want to, but the upgraded ketch will serve you nicely for a long time. Here’s how to upgrade your ship in Windrose:

• Upgrade Weaponsmith Workshop: After you complete the “I Need a Bigger Boat” quest, you’ll be able to upgrade the weaponsmith workshop to Shipwright’s Workshop.
• Build a Wharf: To do that, press B to go into the build menu and navigate to the Utilities. You can find the Wharf there. It costs 10 Wood to build it, and it’s needed to equip your ship upgrades.
• Upgrade with Shipwright’s Workshop: Create equipment for your ship and then go to the Wharf to equip it. After you do that, return to the Workshop and select the Upgrade menu. 

I recommend upgrading your ship as much as you can until you hit the point where the materials change. It’s usually a good sign to go and progress further in the game. Upgrading the ship isn’t difficult, but it requires a lot of materials

All Ship Types in Windrose

The first ship that you get is a ketch. It’s not that strong, but you won’t be stuck with it for a long time, since getting a brig isn’t that expensive. Upgrading from one ship to another is a very big power spike, as you increase your potential by a minimum of two times. For instance, a standard ketch is just 50k health, while a standard brigantine is 160k. There are some speed changes, although not dramatic, but most importantly, you get more room for bigger cannons, depending on the ship you choose. Currently, Windrose only has three ship types: Ketch, Brigantine, and Frigate, in order of their potency. Let’s go over them briefly.

 

 

All Ketch Ships in Windrose

Each ship type is split into variations of it. You have the standard, the Brethren, and the Blackbeard variations. All their difference can be boiled down to Brethren ships having significantly more HP than standard and especially Blackbeard ships, and Blackbeard ships having a wider variety of options when it comes to cannons. Here are all ketch ships in Windrose:

Ship	Cannon Space	Health	Speed
Standard Ketch	3 of 12lb	50,000	19 knots
Blackbeard Ketch	3 of 12/24lb	35,000	21 knots
Brethren Ketch	3 of 12 lb	65,000	17 knots

While the potential to install 24 Pounder cannons on Blackbeard's ketch may sound enticing, don’t do that. The Blackbeard’s health pool is very low, and at this stage of the game, you’ll die very fast when using it. If you want advice on what ketch to choose, I recommend sticking to the default one. You won’t be using it for long, and you’ll get a brigantine relatively quickly. Just upgrade a standard ketch a few times and then move on.

To build a ketch, you’ll need the following materials:

• 150 Wood
• 100 Nails
• 40 Fabric
• 30 Rope

If you wonder why it is that we need more materials than during the “I Need a Bigger Boat”, it’s because you’re building a whole ship from the ground up.

All Brigantine Ships in Windrose

Brigantine is a ship that you’ll have to unlock yourself. You won’t get it during the main quest, as you did with the ketch. This time, you need to go to Tortuga and talk to a Brethren vendor. They will sell you the blueprint for 1,000 Piastre. More importantly, to even get it, you need to have a level 2 of faction Reputation with them to even unlock the blueprint. Earning rep is quite easy, just do the quests and kill the pirates, both at sea and on land. Now, let me list all brigantine ships in Windrose:

Ship	Cannon Space	Health	Speed
Stock Brigantine	6 of 12lb	70,000	20 knots
Blackbeard Brigantine	6 of 12/24lb	50,000	22 knots
Brethren Brigantine	6 of 12lb	90,000	18 knots

Let me give you a recommendation about what ship you should choose instead. At this point in the game, you should be pretty familiar with how to control the ship well. If you are, then I recommend giving a Blackbeard brigantine a try. It’s the only ship to have access to 24 Pounder cannons in this category, and you’ll quickly realize how big of an improvement it is. However, Blackbeard brigantine has 40k less HP than the Brethren one, which is the same amount as the default ketch. This is something I would consider when deciding if I want this ship or not. The brig makes up for low HP with its speed and firepower, but all of this means nothing if you catch a couple of nasty hits to your mast.

To build a brigantine, you’ll need these materials:

• 200 Wooden Planks
• 200 Nails
• 120 Coarse Fabric
• 80 Copper Ingots
• 40 Linen Fabric
• 40 Rope
• 40 Timber
• 30 Shipwright’s Tools

You can get the Shipwright’s Tools from the vendor in Tortuga, each for 10 Piastre, so the total amount you’ll spend on the brig is 1,300 Piastre.

All Frigate Ships in Windrose

Just like with previous ships, you have three variants of frigate, and you also need to earn enough Rep with Brethrens. You need a Reputation Level 4 to unlock a blueprint, which you can then buy from the very same vendor on Tortuga for 3,000 Piastre. You might scream robbery, but I’d say it’s a fair trade cause what frigate offers, no other ship does. Below are all frigate ships in Windrose:

Ship	Cannon Space	Health	Speed
Stock Frigate	12 of 24lb	160,000	18 knots
Blackbeard Frigate	12 of 24/36lb	110,000	20 knots
Brethren Frigate	12 of 24lb	200,000	16 knots

I gotta be real with you, the default frigate isn’t an option here. The ultimate choice lies between the two other frigates. While 110k HP isn’t small, it’s considerably smaller than Brethren, which has almost twice the pool. If you are stuck in a big sea battle, the Blackbeard frigate's chances of surviving are dropping every second you’re there. Then again, if the Blackbeard frigate catches a single ship in the open, the 36 Pounders will send them to Davy Jones before they even react. Honestly, there have been no times when I would see a huge naval clash in Windrose yet, so I’d go with Blackbeard even with such a low HP pool.

Here are all the materials needed to build a frigate in Windrose:

• 320 Wooden Planks
• 300 Nails
• 240 Linen Fabric
• 160 Timber
• 120 Foothils Iron Ingot
• 80 Tarred Planks
• 80 Tarred Fabric
• 80 Rope
• 50 Shipwright’s Tools

And that’s how you get the best ship in the game. Prepare to farm a lot, or just get a frigate from our pros.

 

 

Ship Battle Guide for Windrose

The ship battles in Windrose are no rocket science, and you’ll be able to pick up most of the tactics by yourself fairly quickly. My goal here is to walk you through them so that you have a nice little checklist to pick up good habits of sea battles. Here’s a ship battle guide for Windrose:

1. Pop your Grog: Grog is a consumable that increases the reload speed of your cannons. It’s essential if you want to deal more damage and actually win in the fights, especially later on.
2. Change Sides when Fighting Ships: Quickly change sides after one of them shoots the cannons. That’s what Blackbeard ships do best. Don’t forget that your front also has a cannon.
3. Use Chained Cannonballs when Outnumbered: Chained cannonballs can be selected by pressing 2 on the keyboard by default. They slow down the enemy’s ship, practically stopping them in their tracks. This will allow you to either circle around them and bomb them with normal cannonballs or switch your attention to another ship attacking you.
4. Destroy Ships During Long Fights: If you start running out of repair kits, that’s probably because you don’t crack the enemy’s ships. No point in boarding each of them, unless they have pirate loot. Just destroy the ship and loot the kits from them.

These simple tactical tricks will help you to come out as a winner in every naval fight you have, so don’t forget to use all the aces you have up your sleeve. Fight dirty, fight efficiently.

Read our other Windrose guides:

• Best Weapons
• Best Armor Sets

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