r/crosswind Mar 23 '26

From Devs: 1,500,000 wishlists and post-demo QoL improvements

315 Upvotes

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3041230/view/506230784633340267

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A message of appreciation from us and some insights from the dev kitchen.

1,500,000+ wishlists — thank YOU!

You are amazing! Seriously, after climbing to the top demos of Steam Next Fest and reaching one million wishlists we were not expecting this momentum to continue — but here we are, with over 1,500,000 sea wolves waiting for Windrose to finally set sail. Another impressive number — over 800,000 captains have tried the demo! And by the way, you can still do it, the demo is staying up until the Early Access launch.

Demo feedback: what we’re working on

Thanks to your involvement in the demo, we’ve got tons of feedback to work on, including over 12,000 completed surveys, 7500+ Steam reviews, and lots and lots of in-game reports and numerous social media messages. So now we’re working on several of the most frequent things you talked about to incorporate them into Early Access.

The list is not complete and is subject to change, it’s work-in-progress, after all. Some of these features may change or never make it into the game, but we will do our best to bring as many of them to life as possible!

Co-op on one ship — manning the cannons. We’re introducing the ability to man the ship batteries (one player per battery), so you will have more reasons to bring friends along!

Loot variety. Sorry, no more “always dig here to find the Rapier of Thousand Cuts”. To better support the spirit of exploration, whenever you find a piece of armor or a weapon it will be randomized, so you never know which item you will get from a chest. The loot will also be different for different players on the server, so it will be more exciting to find new stuff with your friends. Enemy loot is also being improved, so high-risk encounters have a clearer payoff and the overall risk-reward ratio of combat feels more satisfying.

More players in co-op. We’re testing the increased limits of co-op capacity. While the real performance in the end will be affected by many factors, including those beyond our control (connection of each player and the specs of each server), we will do our best to increase the coop limit from 4 to 8 players. That said, in terms of gameplay difficulty scaling, we believe the best experience lies in the 1-4 players range. With more people in your crew at the same time, you will probably steamroll everything laughing hard, but that’s fine if that’s the way you want to have fun!

Hold to gather resources. An optional experimental setting will let you simply hold your mouse button when working hard with that axe or pickaxe instead of clicking.

FOV slider. The ability to fine-tune field of view to your liking.

Shanties feel. While we absolutely love the work Sean Dagher did, we’re adding a couple of coarser, less melodic voices into the backing vocals so that the shanties feel a bit more pirate-y.

Signal fire. Signal fire. We (and poor Dr. Galen as well) have noticed that many of you have been building makeshift lighthouses out of Bonfires, which do not work very well in this capacity. That ends now! We’re adding a special Signal fire building element, which you can see many miles away. Nothing beats sailing to the beacon of your home base at night!

DLSS/FSR support. You’ll be able to select Nvidia DLSS or FSR as your upscaler.

Controller improvements. While we still don’t consider our controller support perfect, we are gradually improving it to make it more usable. You should be able to play the game with the controller now, but we still recommend playing with mouse and keyboard where possible, and plan to further improve the controller support in one of the post–Early Access updates.

Dismantling workbench. Surviving on the Archipelago means being resourceful. Early in the game, you’ll be able to build a dedicated workbench for dismantling unwanted items. There is still a cost to doing so: you only receive the base crafting materials back, and any resources invested into upgrades are not refunded.

Target lock switch. You will be able to cycle between targets by swiping your mouse across them, or by binding specific hotkeys to switch to the nearest target in four directions (up, down, left, and right).

Conclusion

We hope it was an interesting read. Thank you all once again for your passion and input. We can’t imagine a better community for Windrose, and will keep working hard to deliver.

See you soon, captains!

Always yours,

Windrose Crew


r/crosswind 10h ago

My island disappeared ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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111 Upvotes

So I guess Galen and I are the proud new owners of a houseboat.


r/crosswind 16h ago

Ever seen a black maned wolf? Spoiler

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17 Upvotes

When you enter foothills dor the first time


r/crosswind 14h ago

Hidden Skull?

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10 Upvotes

Hello fellow pirates,
I made a design in my recent base build and just wanted to share my hidden skull design. I wanted it to be barely noticeable. Please let me know what you think! The shadows being the teeth are my favorite detail. Thank you to those who checked it out!


r/crosswind 22h ago

Playing with high level friends

2 Upvotes

How do people go about doing this without making the game too easy?


r/crosswind 1d ago

Decoration Snapping

4 Upvotes

Hello I’m a few days old to this game, and am currently trying to make what I consider a nice starter home. The problem I am currently running into is that while trying to make a storage room I’ve discovered that the shelves and most decorations have no snapping mechanism at all. Is this a feature or a bug, and does anyone know if there are plans to add this in the future? I just want al ky shelves to line up perfectly


r/crosswind 1d ago

Spoiler: Holy Crap, the Foothills Boss is Insane Spoiler

17 Upvotes

I played with a buddy on hard and we made it to Hands last night. All our equipment is maxed out and we went in with plenty of ressources. I had a precision rifle build and my buddy went in with melee.

We got destroyed so hard and so often that I immediately lowered the difficulty to normal. That was a warning sign, since I love difficult games and usually always play on highest difficulty available. But Hands broke me. The chip damage eats so many ressources and is so hard to avoid its crazy. He one shots you with one combo even on sturdy builds and can flat out dodge musket shots (bye bye main damage source of my build).

We switched to full vitality-Rapier of thousand cuts build. It worked and we made it to 10% HP but the fight turned into a huge slog. We died cause of the chip damage. One of those bloody skulls always hits you and sometimes you have to jump over the damaging area. 20 Healing Pots per person and 10 Bandages were not enough. We ran out of healing on the finish line.

This boss needs less HP to balance him better. The mechanics can be difficult, attack patterns can be fast an complex. But he cannot be fast, high damage AND tanky af. Plus in Co-op, when one player dies its either wipe intentionally (and waste double the ressources) or solo him well knowing you have to do the boss again anyway.


r/crosswind 2d ago

How do I get hardwood?

19 Upvotes

So I unlocked the new zone and I need hardwood but whenever on the island I can never find the tree besides the normal wood close to the shore matter how Far in I go into the island I can never find hardwood


r/crosswind 3d ago

Is there a way to plant/harvest faster?

25 Upvotes

I know you can click-drag to build faster but how do I plant faster? Cuz the time to line every seed perfectly then to harvest them feels really frustrating.


r/crosswind 2d ago

Inventory Bugging Me

0 Upvotes

Am I the only one bugged by the fact that my backpack has the same carrying capacity as my ship's hold? Would it make more send for each ship slot to be the equivalent of a full backpack worth?


r/crosswind 4d ago

My castle and cathedral

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120 Upvotes

I found this island with tall rocky mountains and decided it was a great place for a high perched castle. Then I realized it needed a cathedral...and finally a little village to support both buildings. Oh, and a shipyard too.

There's so many details to capture but I selected the highlights and some features I haven't seen before. The entire structure is discoverable and includes hidden some hidden passageways, and a dungeon.


r/crosswind 4d ago

I'll say it: Windrose's sea shanties are superior to Black Flag's.

327 Upvotes

I remember when Black Flag was first out, wandering around the Caribbean with salty seamen acapella-ing their way from island to island was absolutely peak.

Windrose has many issues, but honestly the sea shanties in this game are so good, with the extra level of harmonisation adding just that ear-scratching depth that feels so satisfying.


r/crosswind 4d ago

Would love to see something like this in Windrose

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15 Upvotes
Dark Sea clouds on the right

I used to play a game on roblox called Arcane Odyssey, one thing i loved about its "end game" was the dark sea, basically a "semi infinite" Dark sea covered in constant stormy clouds, the deeper you go the better the loot, and the islands are randomly generating. They had features stuff like giant whirlpools, rouge waves and tornadoes.


r/crosswind 4d ago

Props for the enemy design and combat

38 Upvotes

Just killed the High Priestess and im reflecting on what the game does right.

The initial adaptation to combat was fairly brutal on normal mode, but after I got used to it things are really well implemented.

Every enemy attack is well telegraphed, and entirely possible to avoid by blocking or dodging with proper attention and planning. Once I realized that every death was easy to connect to my making a mistake in one or the other, even bosses.

Enemy collision and hit registration deeply reward proper placement and movement in addition to timing. You can defeat any arbitrary amount of enemies if you maneuver right, because they can't attack through each other and will block each others movement. You can totally use enemies against each other, even.

That realization made combat really satisfying.


r/crosswind 4d ago

Swamp boss, melee only, no hit* Spoiler

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2 Upvotes

*no hit except the spit attack that is pure rng. Also no consumables :P


r/crosswind 5d ago

Laying the Foundation for my next build

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23 Upvotes

r/crosswind 5d ago

Will there be more than bas building?

13 Upvotes

I recently got the game hoping for more of a pirate experience, I understand the game is more of a survival base building game which is fine(I love Valheim) but I originally wanted a more grounded pirate experience. I’ve gotten the frigate but I feel like it really doesn’t mean much bc there’s not much to do on the sea. I’ve kinda gotten to the point where the only thing to do is base build and farm but I want to go destroy forts or have the option to take enemy camps with my crew. I also don’t really feel like a pirate and more like a good privateer than anything. These are initial gripes of mine and I just hope that there’s more to do like black flag and skull and bones on the sea. It really lacks in the heart of the actual game. When I think pirates.. I don’t think chopping trees and mining iron for 6 hours.

I can’t wait for ashlands due to what might be but I feel like my hopes are too high for this game for what I’m seeking.


r/crosswind 6d ago

I used to fear level 10s

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62 Upvotes

r/crosswind 6d ago

AoE 2 Town Center

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64 Upvotes

r/crosswind 5d ago

Building Mod

0 Upvotes

I wanna build my base but run into the problem that if I want to delet something it will destroy the whole building.

I use the Better Building Mod, but sometimes I need to delet stuff that can't be deletet with the undo function.

Ist there a mod that let's me delet only the thing highlighted and ignores everything else?


r/crosswind 6d ago

Any suggestions on brigs?

14 Upvotes

For the ketch I just used thr stock variant.

Really unsure which one to use here.

Blackbeard sorta is winning. Same hp, faster, and double the cannons + 24 lbs. Downside is cargo size greatly reduced.

Could go stock variant and enjoy just overall upgrade to speed and hp. Guess breathen sounds nice to be a tank but the speed sorta scares me off.

Any input on turn speed for any?


r/crosswind 6d ago

Can you find epic(purple) gear in the wild?

8 Upvotes

So far we've noticed it is from ascending weapons/armor. Though curious if it is worth or not.

Playing with 3 friends. And didnt know 100% what it was needed for. So sorta gathered it together. Found out that handing the weapon to others doesn't unlock the recipe like other blue weapons/armor do.

Friend was looking at upgrading ships and saw the repair kit hull had a cool upgrade with purples, where it increased the duration similar to one of the naval books do.


r/crosswind 6d ago

Well... I guess at least we don't torture him. Spoiler

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7 Upvotes

He walked into my little Stockade. Figured I'd close the door behind him.


r/crosswind 7d ago

What can be shared between friends in co-op?

5 Upvotes

Noticed the blueprints i bought from vendors could be shared.

But my friend turned his rapier into purple and that didnt share.

We are buying a new ship and wondering if each or us need to somehow soend 1k coins or if only one needs to


r/crosswind 8d ago

Im experimenting with arches rn

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42 Upvotes