Windrose Ship Crafting Guide: Unlocking the Ketch, Brig, and Frigate

Sailing in Windrose offers a lot more depth than waving a cutlass and hoping for the best. Your hull, cannon count, and cargo room all come down to which vessel sits beneath your boots. Some captains want a nimble runner for evasive exploration. Others want a floating cannon battery. Every ship in the current Early Access build is reachable, provided you know where to look and what to stockpile.

How Ship Crafting Works in Windrose

Right now Windrose ships in Early Access with three available hull types, and the developers have confirmed more are coming during the EA window. You begin with a rowboat. The tutorial then pushes you toward your first proper ship through the I Need A Bigger Boat questline.

After that, expanding the fleet means tracking down ship recipes. Those turn up while you raid islands, crack open treasure piles, or barter with merchants in Tortuga. Once a recipe is yours, you set up a Wharf. Gather the listed materials, dock at the Wharf, and the ship snaps into your fleet like any other crafted structure. The Wharf also doubles as the management hub for everything you currently own.

The Ketch

The Ketch is your first real ship and the payoff for finishing the tutorial chain. It is not fast, not menacing, and not flashy, but it floats. Rather than crafting it from raw boards, the I Need A Bigger Boat quest has you restore a marooned hull back into a working Ketch. The repair list:

• Wood: 100
• Nails: 20
• Coarse Fabric: 20
• Ropes: 10

Finishing the repair drops the Ketch into your possession and kicks off the next quest, which sends you out recruiting a crew. The Ketch fits eight cannons and offers modest storage. Enough to leave port, not enough to start fights you cannot finish.

The Brig

The Brig is the obvious step up from the Ketch. The in-game description pitches it as versatile, and that is fair. It can island-hop quietly or trade volleys at distance without falling apart. The Brig holds 14 cannons and offers noticeably more cargo space than the Ketch. Buying the recipe from a merchant runs 1,000 Piastre.

With the recipe in hand, here is the full crafting list:

• Nails: 200
• Wooden Plank: 200
• Coarse Fabric: 120
• Copper Ingot: 80
• Timber: 40
• Linen Fabric: 40
• Rope: 40
• Shipwright's Tools: 30

The Frigate

The Frigate is currently the apex predator of the Windrose seas. It carries an absurd 36 cannons, dwarfs every other hull on the water, and handles whatever role you throw at it better than the Brig does. The trade-off is the price tag. The merchant recipe runs 3,000 Piastre, and the build sheet is heavier in every direction.

Crafting requirements:

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

Faction Variants: Brethren and Blackbeard

Beyond the base hulls, the Brig and Frigate both come in two faction flavors: Brethren and Blackbeard. Each variant is tied to an in-game faction and rebalances the ship's strengths in a different direction.

Blackbeard Brigs and Frigates are raiders. They mount higher-caliber cannons and sprint across the map, but they carry less cargo and run thinner hulls. Hit fast, slip away, do not get cornered.

Brethren Brigs and Frigates are the opposite philosophy: thick hulls, generous holds, and the turning radius of a glacier. If you plan to hoard plunder or trade blows in long engagements, Brethren wins on paper. If you need to outrun trouble, it is the wrong pick.

Pick the variant that matches how you actually want to play. The recipe you unlock first quietly defines your role on the open sea before a single cannon shot lands.