The open ocean quickly turns from peaceful cruising to a grinding naval chess match in Windrose. Success hinges on three pillars: positioning, picking the right ammo and weak spots. Get upgrades for your ship at the Shipwright’s Workshop, stock repair kits and grog and learn to dance around enemies so you can hit sterns and board at the right moment. This walkthrough breaks down pre-battle setup, combat rotation and boarding priorities – everything you need to dominate the high seas.
Tip 1 : Upgrade Your Ship
The first and foremost thing you need before entering the high seas is upgrading your ship. Throughout your gameplay, you’re going to travel seas where you’ll face high level enemies, if you don’t upgrade your ship, you won’t last long. I’ve made a detailed guide on ship upgrades at Shipwright’s Tools and Ship Upgrades, you can check out the guide.
Tip 2 : Choosing the Right Ammo
At the bottom middle, you’ll notice that you can switch between 2 kinds of ammo. The first one is cannon shot and the second is chain shots. Whenever you’re using cannon shots, make sure you hit the body of the ship and not anywhere else. And when you’re using the chain shot, always aim for the enemy ship’s sails, it’ll slow them down.
Tip 3 : Identifying Weak Spot
The weakest part in a ship is the rear end. If you aim and hit the ship’s rear, you’ll do the maximum amount of damage to the enemy ship and they’re practically defenseless around the back.
Tip 4 : Boarding The Enemy’s Ship
When the enemy’s ship is down to the last bit of its health, an icon will appear on the ship indicating that the ship can be boarded as shown in the above image. Get closer to the enemy ship and slow down your ship, you’ll get an option to begin boarding. Before you hop on the enemy ship, make sure to consume food items to give you that extra health boost.
Tip 5 : Carry Repair Kits and Grogs
Always carry repair kits and grogs along with you before entering sea battles. And the best repair kit is the Combat Repair Kit, which repairs a significant amount of the ship’s health. You can even craft combat repair kits at the workbench. Coming to grogs, some grogs offer 10-15% damage boost while some offer defense, use them before entering battles, you’ll have some support during your battles and these last around 15 minutes.
How I Fight : The Edward Kenway Technique
I initiate the fight with a good ol’ ramming technique, it does some damage to the enemy ship. Then I use the front cannons on the enemy, then I go around their side and blast the ship with my side cannons, I always aim at their ship’s rear because that’s the weakest spot of any ship. I ram a lot, like a lot ( side-effect of playing too much black flag ) but it works for me, so I’m not complaining.
Windrose’s Naval Combat is so similar to that of Black Flag’s, it brings back the fun of traversing the High Seas. Hope you’ve enjoyed this guide, let’s meet again in our future guides.
