Gaming News

If You Want To Play Windrose Solo, Prepare Yourself For A Big Grind

On Apr 19, 2026 4:54 pm, by NuclearCoffee

Windrose is a game clearly designed for co-op play. From enemy density to distance traveled to the amount of resources required to upgrade your gear, the experience will be infinitely better if you have friends to embark on this nautical journey with. I unfortunately don’t have any friends, and I’m now about ten hours into the game completely on my own, on normal difficulty, slowly coming to terms with how much grinding that awaits.

My biggest sticking point so far has been combat, which has a significant learning curve. The combat system in Windrose is shaped around dodging and parrying, while managing your stamina/health with food buffs and potions. My gear is already upgraded quite nicely, much better than I ever got in the demo, and early game enemies like boars and dodos are a breeze. But as you progress through Windrose, you come across larger and larger groups of enemies, and fighting multiple foes on your own becomes a real pain.

Tips And Tricks

I’ve learned a few tricks and tried lots of different strategies to make tackling large groups of enemies easier. First, you need to upgrade your gear. This isn’t optional. Make sure to explore every island, discovering chests and collecting copper ore from caves, as well as killing boars for hides. Next, find a weapon you like and stick with it. I play with the Saber, but I have heard that the two-handed sword is probably the best solo weapon in the game because it has a large reach and can hit multiple enemies at once. I’ve also opted for the Blunderbuss, because this thing is like a shotgun and deals loads of damage if you hit enemies in the head.

Once your gear is sorted, it’s time for battle strategy. You can build a bonfire anywhere you want, and this will grant you a stamina buff for just being nearby. Likewise, you can build a tent to set your revival point to be just outside an enemy camp. This means you will have infinite stamina buffs and be able to respawn on top of your opponents, slowly whittling them down. This is a bit cheesy and, honestly, I don’t enjoy this aspect of the game. But you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do – at least until the developers think of a way of better balancing the game for solo play.

Alternatively, you can just lower the difficulty to easy. It’s still not super easy but does feel slightly more approachable for a solo player.

Loads Of Quality Of Life Features Make The Grind More Manageable

Despite the game requiring you to hoard copper, travel massive distances, and defeat large groups of enemies all on your lonesome, Windrose does have some great quality-of-life features. Cannonballs are free, you can chop down trees with your cannons from the ship (the wood goes straight to your ship’s inventory), crafting can be completed from storage, there are pre-fabricated buildings options for those who’d rather not engage with the building mechanics, food doesn’t deteriorate over time, items don’t have durability, you get all your resources back if you dismantle upgraded gear, and much more. These make the grind feel not so bad. If you like to grind, Windrose respects your time much more than other games in the genre.

I’d also like to see some improvements to how combat works at sea. Currently, you can board an enemy ship once you’ve weakened it with your cannons. However, if you die on the enemy ship, you will need to travel all the way back to your ship using your tiny boat, and you won’t be able to recover your death box, either. I understand that boarding a ship and dying should be punishing, but it currently feels a bit too unfair, and just a slog to have to go all the way out to sea again to continue fighting.

It would be great to see some more improvements to how a solo player can tackle combat, like stealth attacks, bombs, more crowd control effects, and extra buffs provided by potions. With these changes, I can see Windrose being an awesome pirate game by the time its 1.0 release rolls around. It’s already in a great state.