This is a guide for Windward. The year is 2018, the game came out in 2015. Things have changed. I figured a new guide was in order. There is no tutorial for this game. Most of it is learn as you go, or learn from other people in multiplayer.

Let's start with factions. You have to make a faction choice before you can start playing. Factions barely impact gameplay. You can switch your faction at anytime by going to your inventory screen and clicking on the flag in the upper left of the window. The four starting factions have different plusses and minuses to stats, these are minor and largely irrelevant to gameplay. They give different experience bonuses. This can impact gameplay.

If you like to trade go yellow. If you like to quest, go green. If you like to explore, go blue. If you like combat, go red.

Or, to put it another way, swap factions when doing different activities.

There are two higher level factions you can't start as, orange and purple. These are the two most common factions in higher level play. They give you mildly better stats (That have no significant impact on gameplay) in exchange for a negative experience modifier that does impact gameplay, making it take longer to level.

If this still didn't help you decide, just go red. Combat is fun. The experience bonus is nice.

Now onto the game itself.

My take on Windward is that it is a bare bones MMORPG. If you've played WoW or SWTOR or Everquest or COH/V or any of the other MMOs out there, Windward is going to feel familiar, especially once you get past level 101. But the game doesn't start out that way.

The game starts out in a little ship with a single mast. You start in a town, and you get missions that get tougher as you level. The missions are self explanatory, and it kind of feels like a tutorial. There's tips at the top of the screen to help you out. You learn as you go, and I highly recommend you play in single player and learn the game.

You can go to multiplayer and join a combat instance and get power leveled quickly and pick up lots of loot. I don't recommend this, but if I'm online I will probably help you out if this is the path you want to take. More on this later.

Back to single player. Every quest you do helps to level up the town that you got the quest from. You can also buy and sell cargo to level up a town. Every piece of cargo you sell in a town helps to level up the town you sell it in.

Quests level the origin town.

Trade levels the destination town.

Towns can be leveled up to ten. You can buy all the ships you have diagrams for in a level ten town. You can upgrade your gear in a level ten town.

There are a three different kinds of quests available in towns. Combat, Trade, and Building.

There are two basic kinds of combat quests: Defeat and Capture. Defeat means the quest is complete when you blow up a specific enemy ship. Capture means you have to defeat the ship and bring it back to the town the quest originated in to complete the quest. There are different titles for defeat missions: Hunt down a pirate, Defeat a pirate Captain, Defend the town, etc. Every Capture mission will have capture in the title.

Trade missions come in three flavors: One-way, Two-way, and Sightseeing.

One-way missions involve taking something from Town A to Town B. Could be passengers, could be cargo, doesn't really matter, you're going from one point to another.

Two-way missions mean you go from Town A to Town B, pick something up and return to Town A.

Sightseeing missions involve ferrying a bunch of tourists to a series of towns. At least three towns. So you start in Town A, go to Town B, then Town C, then Town D and you're done.

Building quests are where you are assigned to build lighthouses, guard towers or towns. Lighthouses and towers need to be built near the town you got the mission from. If you get an establish a town mission it will lead you to where the town can be established.

Yes, you can bring the establish a town mission to another map to establish a town on a new map. If you do this you will not get the reward for accomplishing the mission.

Later in the game you can get a Captain's Tool called Construction Supplies that will allow you to build towers and lighthouses and through demolition charges without a mission. Or you can go on multiplayer and ask someone for them. A lot of us keep Captain's Tools in our vaults to give to newbies, like you.

Let’s talk about maps. First, some terminology. There are two kinds of maps in the game: the regional map and the travel map. The regional map is the map of the region you're in. The travel map is the map of all the regions for this game. On the toolbar on the left hand side of the screen the region map is called the map, the travel map is called the travel map.

You can sail to any region in the game. You can only quick travel to regions your faction controls, and that you are high enough level to go to. Regions have level restrictions.

Some regions are empty. Some are full of pirates, those will be black on the travel map. To capture towns in a region your faction has to control an adjacent region.

Capturing towns, lighthouses and towers is just a matter of being nearby what you want to capture. As long as there are no enemies nearby, it is only a matter of time before you capture the town, lighthouse or tower. There is an onscreen visual indicating how long it will take. It's a circle that fills up with your factions color. If the circle stops filling up it means there's an enemy nearby.

Let's talk about instances. Instances are randomly created regions that you can do different things in. All instances are created at the approximate level of the player who created them. All players who join an instance are brought to the level of the instance. So if you're too high you're brought down, if you're too low you're brought up.

On the toolbar on the left hand side of the screen, the bottom button is the instance button. Click it and you'll bring up a window with a drop down menu. There are five options in the drop down menu: Quest/Trade, Combat, Heroic, Raid, Battlegrounds.

Quest/Trade instances are regions for questing and trading. There are no pirates on these maps, unless you bring them in, usually through combat quests. If you want to quest and trade with your friends, this is a great way to do it, especially if there's a level disparity.

Combat, Heroics, and Raids are all Player versus Environment, group oriented instances. They are all a bit different.

Combats are the easiest. There are no level restrictions on Combats. I’ve had level 0 players in my 200+ level combats. They died a lot, but they could join. You can solo a Combat with good gear and good tactics. You can destroy towers in combats or keep them, there is no final boss. Generally I keep and build towers around the towns I've captured, and destroy the other towers. You can only have a certain number of towers in a region, so you may need to destroy enemy towers to build friendly ones. Once you capture all the towns and kill all the pirates, the combat is over.

Heroics have a minimum level requirement of 25. All the pirates in a heroic are imbued with the same elemental attack, plan accordingly. You need at least 4 players to summon the Pirate King, the boss of the adventure. You don't want the Pirate King to have any help when you finally fight him.

The first step in a heroic is to destroy all the towers and build a few lighthouses. Pirates can capture towers and lighthouses. You destroy the towers so the pirate king can't capture them and use them against you. Lighthouses can't attack you, and they let you see if there are any enemies nearby. You especially want lighthouses near towns.

The second step is to capture all the towns. Pirates spawn at towns. If you capture all the towns, pirates can't spawn. Remember, the goal is to isolate the Pirate King.

Once all the towers are destroyed and all the towns are captured, the third step is to destroy the other pirate ships.

The fourth step is to take down the Pirate King.

Simple enough.

All the rules for Heroics apply to Raids. Raids have additional rules.

Raids require level 65. The boss of the Raid is a dragon. The dragon is spawned when there are 8 players in the instance and less than two pirate towns.

In a Raid: Do not capture towns until all the towers are gone. You do not want to spawn the dragon early.

When a dragon’s health goes below 75%, 50%, and 25% it automatically captures a random town. So if a dragon's health goes to 74% then back up to 76% and then back down to 74%, it captures two different towns.

Someone in the Raid should be assigned to recapture towns. Pirates spawn from towns, that's bad. We want to fight the dragon alone. One or two team members should be assigned to recapture towns.

Dragons can curse players. When you are cursed you get a timer. When the timer goes off all nearby friendlies take massive damage, but it does not affect the cursed player. When you are cursed you have 11 seconds to get to an empty part of the region, let the curse go off and then return to the fight.

Just like all the mobs, if left alone a dragon will heal himself. Dragons heal rapidly. Prep the map first, clear all the enemies and then focus on the dragon.

Battlegrounds are PvP instances. There are no level restrictions. I've never played a battleground.

The best part about battlegrounds is that all towns are level ten. If you need to switch high level ships and there are no level ten towns in your region, make a battleground, switch your ship, and leave the instance.

Talents, ships and high level combat

I'm not going to cover low level stuff. You will figure that out very quickly just by playing the game. The cannons autofire. There are different kinds of volleys based on faction. Cannons fire from the sides. Blah, blah, blah. You don't need a guide for that, you will figure it out quick.

By level 101, you will have all the talents. So I'm not going to tell you which order to put your talents in. You can't screw it up. Do what you like. By level 102, it won't matter what order you put your talents in.

Read the talents, know what they do.

The bottom half of the talent window is three boxes with 4 talents in each box. The boxes are labeled Defense, Offense, and Support. You have to click on a box to activate the talents inside the box. You can only have one box active at a time.

This is called your specialization, or spec. You can change your spec at any time by opening the talent window and clicking a different box. I will be talking about the different specs and how combat works for them.

First up is Defense. The standard tank.

Let's start with stats. Your first focus is hull. After that you want a balance of armor, resists, damage and range. Find what works for you.

Let's talk about defense spec talents. You get a bonus to ramming. You get a bonus to damage, resisting AoEs, and turning when you're not moving. Your armor goes up as your hull value goes down. Lastly you have an aura that gives you and nearby ships a hull bonus equal to 20% of your hull stat.

Since you get a ramming bonus, and damage for ramming is based off your hull score, start combat by running into your opponent. This may not be a great idea with a Pirate King or dragon, but anything smaller than that will feel the impact.

Once combat begins, STOP! You get a damage bonus of 75% of your hull when you're at zero speed. Stop moving. Let the enemy come to you. You get a huge turning bonus when at zero speed. Stay still, turn toward your opponent and destroy them with amazing firepower. You are a tank. Be a tank.

When clearing a map, defense spec has to clear through the whole area. You need to wipe out most of the towers in an area to get to a town. Luckily, towers are very easy for you as your specialists regeneration usually heals more than a single tower can do in damage.

As a defense spec, you have the most options with AoE abilities. Or to put it another way, your use of AoE abilities has the greatest impact on the fight. All AoE abilities reset their cool down counter whenever one of them is used. Let's review them quickly and talk about when to use them.

Grog, Nox, and Fog come from the talent tree. Water Barrel and Fire Mortar come from equipable items.

Grog is a damage over time ability who's damage is based on the stats diplomacy and damage. Damage is one of your important stats, diplomacy is not. If you're looking to do damage, generally Fire Mortar is likely to do more for you. Fire Mortar does all of its damage now, so if a target dies before Grog finishes all its damage, you probably should have used a Fire Mortar. However, there are times you may want to do damage over time, if your diplomacy isn't that low. Additionally, the effects from a dragon essence always hit with a grog. Something to keep in mind.

Noxious Fumes, or Nox, reduces an opponent's defense, speed, mobility, and accuracy. Tanks don't care about speed and mobility, you fight standing still. Lowering their defense means your attacks do more damage, lowering their accuracy means their attacks do less damage. I like to use Nox in long fights against dread lords and pirate kings, for example.

Fog is very useful in multiplayer. It takes ships out of combat unless they have a foglight. If you have a foglight you can hit enemies inside a fog, and they can't target you. Any pirate up to the rank of Pirate Lord will be unable to target you if you fog them. Pirates of rank Dread Lord often have a foglight, almost always. Pirate Kings and Dragons always have foglights, fog is useless on them. Fog can be useful on your own, or when traveling solo and trying to avoid a fight. On the Ship of the Line you will travel solo often. Don't forget that you have this ability.

Water Cannon, or water, is a heal over time that clears all status effects, especially grog. If you hold down shift, it turns WC into a large direct heal. You will use this a lot to get rid of grog. You will probably use this ability the most. Grog kills if you don't have enough resist.

Fire Mortar, or mortar, is an AoE direct damage. When you want to do damage, this is your go to choice.

There are two choices for ships in the defense spec: the Ship of the Line and the Flying Fortress.

The Ship of the Line, or SotL, has the best offense and defense stats in the game. Other ships have better offense, no ship has better defense. Geared properly, you will feel indestructible. When anchored, it's damage is augmented by its hull stat, making it's volleys a fearsome thing. The best tanks play on SotLs. I have personally killed fleets of 5-6 pirate captains on a regular basis with the SotL. The downside is that the SotL is very, very slow; it is the slowest ship in the game. Every battle will destroy your sails, so you will repair your sails after every fight or you won't move. A big advantage with the SotL is that most offense players use the Dragonfly. The Dragonfly can fire at the enemy while flying over your ship.

The Flying Fortress, or FF, is just what it says. It's offensive and defensive stats are noticeably lower than the SotL. It plays much the same but in the air. The FF is one of the two ships that can strafe. This is a huge advantage. Flying ships don't take damage from Grogs unless it's a direct hit, and can fly over grog fire without taking damage. If you're at zero speed, you can strafe by holding down shift and hitting left or right. If an enemy throws a barrel at you, strafe out of the way.

Next is offense. The glass cannon. The hardest class to play. You need to know when to cut and run. You have no defense beyond speed and skill. You must outfight your opponent. You are the king of one-on-one combat.

Your stats is damage. Stack damage. Your skills are based off damage. After damage is crit, balanced by range. Range is more important than crit, but you only need to be out of range of the towers. After you get that, you can't have too much crit. After all that you want speed and mobility. Keep an eye on hull and armor too. But mostly damage.

Let's look at the offense spec. You get a bonus to piercing based off damage, so the more damage you have the more damage you do. You reduce cooldowns for offense skills. Your grog and Nox stick to enemies and reduce their capacity to heal themselves. And your aura, which does help you.

Reducing cooldowns means your volley is going to be going off all the time. Your Grog, Nox, and mortar recharge faster. Mortar is your go to AoE, with Nox a good choice for big enemies. Nox will reduce a Pirate King or Dragon’s ability to heal itself, which is nice. With your volley going off every few seconds, Nox reducing an enemy’s defense may end up doing more damage than a mortar.

As for play style, an offense spec is a sniper. You can kill almost anything one-on-one, from a distance.

Let's talk classic MMO tactics: kiting and reverse kiting.

Kiting is when you run in front of your enemy, doing damage to him as he chases you. I have killed dread lords on my own with kiting. Reverse kiting is when you chase down your opponent as he runs from you. Both of these are techniques a offense player uses. Both require a lot of open space to use, so clear out enemy towers.

Attacking towers is a damage verses hull game. You need to do more damage to them than they can do to you. I start with a volley while closing, then a mortar then volley until the tower goes down. After two towers, I need to repair. If you have enough range to hit a tower outside of the tower's range, then you don't need to close. Just sit back and volley. Unless there's time pressure.

When attacking a fleet of pirates solo, attack and strafe away, keeping them under your guns. Whatever chases you, kite them one ship at a time. Repeat as necessary.

When attacking a fleet as part of the group, you will move less. Stay behind the tanks, make the enemy come through the tanks to get to you. If enemies start chasing you, run towards a safe area and kite them one by one.

Pirate Lords and Dragons are group slugfests. You have mobility and range. Stay behind the circle of tanks. Move out of the way of cannon fire. Land your Nox and mortars.

Your specialists regeneration healing amount is based on your hull stat. It won't be much. You will have to sit and repair after battles, or go to a town and repair.

There's only one ship for offense, the Dragonfly or DF. The DF has the highest offense in the game. It can fly and it can strafe. Strafing makes kiting much easier. Kiting is your go to tactic. Kiting makes offense amazing. Strafing makes kiting amazing. Hence the DF being the only ship for offense.

Strafing is not affected by your sails or mobility stat. A corvette, with the second best offense in the game, has to kite by making an s-pattern in front of the enemy as the enemy chases them. Once it's sails are damaged too much it cannot stay ahead of its enemies and dies. Range becomes much more important for a corvette.

Support. Let me tell you what a support spec isn't. A support spec isn't a healer. A support spec isn't a controller. Now let me tell you what support is:

You are a ninja assassin, master of stealth, master of hit-and-run, behind enemy lines, AoE, killing machine. Grog, grog, grog, grog, grog.

Also, you can heal and do some controlling. But that only comes up in boss fights.

Your stat is diplomacy. Stack diplomacy. Your secondary stat is offense and grog cool down timer reducers. Then crit and damage. Mostly Diplomacy. All diplomacy. Then more diplomacy.

Let's look at your spec talents.

Enemies aggro radius for you is reduced by your diplomacy. Your cannon range is decreased by the same amount. You can get close enough to an enemy to throw a grog on them and they won't see you coming until the grog hits and you're already out of cannon range, you sneaky ninja! That is, if you have enough diplomacy.

You produce a regen aura without it being equipped. This impacts you. With a regen equipped in your specialist slot you heal a ridiculous amount each tick. I have a hard time clicking hasty repairs if I'm only mildly damaged I regen so fast.

Your AoE abilities are increased by 32% of your diplomacy, support skill timers are reduced, and capture timers are reduced. Grog damage is increased by 32% of your diplomacy.

Your grog is increased by another 32% of your diplomacy. Fog and water are improved too, allowing you to throw water more often. Your fogs last longer. You will probably never use fog, as it's on the same timer as Grog.

So you can get incredibly close to your enemies without being spotted. You regen faster than other specs. You can hang out near enemies and heal without getting attacked, even while your grog is burning a nearby pirate. Your grog is increased by your diplomacy over and again to where you can start one-shorting enemies and towers. That's the upside.

The downside is you have no range, making your cannons mostly useless. You have little defense, so a good volley will kill you. You're going to die a lot. A lot. Your only weapon is grog, so while it's on cooldown you have to twiddle your thumbs and wait.

I like to spend that time capturing a town or tower.

Tactics seem simple enough. Hit and run. Fly in, throw a grog and fly out. Don't get shot, regen if you do. Repeat as necessary. Hang out near enemies.

With a high enough diplomacy you can one-shot most enemies. With my current build, I one-shot all towers in combats and about two-thirds of the towers in heroics and raids, depending on crit. I one-shot all pirate captains, some pirate lords. I two or three shot most dread lords, depending on ship type. I killed a SotL dread lord this week, solo, with 4 grogs. I killed five pirate captains with one grog once. They were trapped by bad pathing, but it happened.

We used this to clear all the towers in a nether raid today, 4th of July, 2018. A bunch of us switched to support, grogged the towers and then switched back to our other builds. Took about ten minutes. That's Excellent for a nether raid.

During boss encounters you hang behind the tanks, throwing grog and water as necessary, letting people soak up your diplomacy regen aura.

Support is great for capturing towns behind enemy lines. Sneak in, take out a few towers, and capture the town. When pirates show up, grog them.

The ZPL, or blimp, is the go to choice for support builds. The royal corvette has a little more support in it's stats but can't fly. It is still an excellent choice.

People argue over which essence is best. The answer is Frost. A more accurate answer is that it depends on the situation. But it's frost.

I got this information from another guide.

Fire essence
40% ignore armor
-10% damage to normal ships
+10% damage to flying ship
-30% damage to structures
+30% damage to sail
deal damage overtime, preventing enemy out of combat

Frost essence
20% ignore armor
+10% damage to normal ships
-20% damage to flying ship
+30% damage to structures
-30% damage to sail
Slows enemy on hit, making he is losing speed and mobility to turn that can make his shot predictable

Acid Essence
50% ignore armor
-20% damage to normal ships
+20% damage to flying ship
-20% damage to structures
normal damage to sail
adds Sick effect on critical hit, making the enemy cant hasty repair, and add poison effects to hitted enemy

Shock Essence
70% ignore armor
+20% damage to normal ships
-30% damage to flying ship
-50% damage to structures
-60% damage to sail
Debuff Specialization and Resistance and add +vunerability effect on critical hit (volleys), weakens enemy (offensive)

Nether Essence
80% ignore armor
-30% damage to normal ships
-30% damage to flying ship
-30% damage to structures
-60% damage to sail
gain 10% health on damage dealt, no need to critical (defensive)

See? It's obviously Frost! You don't see it? Let me explain.

Frost is the only essence that gets a bonus to damaging structures. All the other essences get a penalty against structures. That means frost does more damage against towers. Clearing out towers is a constant part of the game. Frost gets a minor bonus against sea ships and a minor penalty against air ships. Air ships have less hit points to begin with, so it's not a bad penalty. Sure, frost gets a hefty -30% damage to sails, but frost slows the enemy anyway, so no big deal.

Offense and Defense specs, in Heroics and Raids you are going to want to run frost until the Towers are cleared off the map. After the towers are clear switch to an essence that does the damage you want to do against the boss. Shock if it's a sea based king, Acid if it's an air based king or dragon. Defense specs may want to equip nether for the healing. As you will note in the above sections, Unless they have an unexpectedly high diplomacy, Offense and Defense should be throwing nox and mortars so their essence choice is based solely on the amount of damage it gives to their normal shots and volleys. Defense will likely be reserving some of their throws for water so they can clear negative status effects on themselves.

Support should coordinate with the other supports in the fight and make sure you each have a different essence (Except Nether) equipped so that the boss is being affected by all the different bonus effects from your grogs. You will have a rainbow of grog colors on the boss all at once.

A note on fire. You've noticed I haven't recommended using it. Fire doesn't have any huge bonuses to damage. It's effect is a dot (damage over time) on critical hits and volleys. The only time to use fire is when facing multiple opponents, not when focusing on one opponent at a time. The reason is to get the dot cooking on as many enemies as possible.

If you're Offense and like to zip through the battle hitting as many different enemies as possible, you may want to use fire. Personally, I see that as a tactic of last resort, useful mainly for getting away when you've been ambushed or underestimated your enemies. Offense is the king of one-on-one combat, as noted above.

If you're Defense you may want to consider equipping fire. With Indomitable you will be standing still and facing multiple opponents. You will be hitting multiple enemies at once and they will be moving in and out of combat range. This is an ideal situation for getting multiple enemies dotted with crits and volleys.

Above all of this analysis remember, this is a game. You're playing to have fun. Equip whatever makes the game enjoyable for you.

Those are the three main specs and how they are normally played. I may have sung the praises of the support spec a bit too much. It is the odd man out. It's a little different. But all three specs are fun to play. All three are needed in raids and heroics.

There are other ways to build. There are other interesting ships. The turtle ship combines hull, diplomacy, and a flamethrower attack that's unique to that ship. The clipper has the best all around stats, good offense, defense and speed. One guy I played with put together an offense build based on speed instead of damage and it worked well. Cash flows easy. In a month or two of play you'll have all the ships and plenty of gear to try out whatever zany build you want to build.