Ashlands: Windrose First Major Update
Windrose took the world by storm when it came out in early April. It has now sold over 2 million copies and became one of 2026’s gaming sensations.
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The Kraken Express studio spent these months post-launch consistently patching the game to fix issues and add quality of life features, but they’ve finally announced Ashlands, Windrose’s first major content update. Here is what we know so far.
What Is Ashlands?
Announced today, July 1st 2026, Ashlands will be the first major content update coming to Windrose. According to the developers, the update “is still in its early stages”, so information is subject to change.
Ashlands Release Date
There currently is no release date or window confirmed for Ashlands. We’ll update this article when Kraken Express shares more information.
A New Chapter
Ashlands will bring a new chapter to Windrose’s main story and a few more side quests. We will keep hunting for Obols, and the next one will be found in “the ruins of a long-forgotten Spanish colony”.
The main story and side quests will bring the new factions into the mix. Kraken Express are also working on refreshing the existing factions, starting with the Buccaneers, and working on “possible character armor sets”.
A New Biome
Windrose came out in Early Access with three distinct biomes:
- Coast Jungle
- Foothills
- Cursed Swamps
Each of these were capped with a main boss that unlocked the next progression tier, which also gave way to the next ship upgrade. Ashlands will be Windrose’s fourth biome.
As the name implies, the islands in this biome “suffered from volcanic eruptions long ago”. Kraken Express promise “new enemies, items, resources, recipes, points of interest” and a new main “challenging” boss.
While they don’t go into details, they promise new “biome mechanics”, likely akin to the corruption in the Cursed Swamps, and new factions.
Building
The Ashlands major content update will bring new decorations, more building sets, and quality of life improvements. More camp NPCs (the ones you assign to your stations) are also planned.
Ships
While Windrose pleasantly surprised us, its ships had some issues. Thankfully, we weren’t alone in that boat (pun intended) and Kraken Express took notice. Here is what they’re promising:
- Enriching and deepening ship gameplay in ways inspired by both your feedback and our own plans
- More ship classes, with at least one being added in Ashlands, plus more faction ship variants
- Giving combat gameplay more care and attention
- AI improvements, such as NPC ships behaving more naturally, sailing in formations, and so on
We especially hope to see a rework of the boarding system, but only time will tell.
The developers haven’t yet confirmed which ship will make it to Windrose with the Ashlands update, but we know it will be one of these:
These are the Brigantine, Fluyt, and Galleon. One of them will join our fleet with the update. For now, that is all we know about Windrose: Ashlands. Do leave your comments in the original Steam post as Kraken Express will be answering some of them in an upcoming Q&A.
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