
Kraken Express have taken Steam by storm with the release of Windrose into Early Access. Over half a million players purchased the game in 48h, filling the seas with pirates.
A lot of those have been asking, is Windrose procedurally generated? If you start a new playthrough with friends will the entire world be different? Do you keep your character progression? Here is everything you need to know.
According to this Steam comment by a developer on the game, Windrose is indeed procedurally generated. Here is the full quote:
“Every player in Crosswind has their own world — a large, procedurally generated archipelago composed of multiple unique biomes and islands, handcrafted points of interest, and story locations.”
When you are creating a new world in the main menu, you will have a unique map every time. Even if it looks relatively similar to your first archipelago, points of interest will be in different locations and all the islands will be at least slightly distinct.
So if you start a new world with friends, you’ll have a completely different experience, but you don’t need to start from the beginning, here’s why.

If you want to join your friends in a fresh archipelago you can do so while keeping all your character progress intact. Everything your pirate has learned and is carrying— their Inventory, Curios, Progression, and Talents— goes with you to the new world.
This is, of course, optional. If you want to start completely fresh with your friends in a new world, you can just create a new character that starts from the beginning with your buddies. The crucial thing is that the choice is yours.
Windrose supports co-op up to eight players in total, but that comes with some caveats. Players have had a ton of issues with online connectivity in the game since it launched in Early Access, and even the developers advise against hitting the co-op cap. This is from Windrose’s Steam page:
“Please note: due to performance, especially in the late game, we recommend to play in the party up to 4 players for the optimal experience.”
So if you want to be smooth sailing, we would recommend sticking to a maximum party of four pirates. You can also just brave the seas by yourself, of course, at least until this initial storm passes by.
You can create dedicated servers via Nitrato, but that seems to come with its own host of issues, so there currently isn’t a perfect solution for online play in Windrose.
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