It’s the mark of a great game that you can lose hours and days in it, occasionally seeing the time and wondering where all those hours went.
They went down to Davey Jones’ Locker, of course, along with the pirates, ships, ghosts, boars, goats, wolves, crocs and so much more that got between you and that iron ore you needed.
Nothing gets between me and that iron ore. Once I was wandering through a mine in the Foothills, turned a corner, and came face to face with a Goat Leader. I was surprised. It was surprised. I blasted it in the face with my blunderbuss. It exploded. Because my blunderbuss deletes goats.
Especially since I started wearing the Marksman outfit. Windrose doesn’t have classes as you would normally think of them; in Windrose, your class is what you wear, and changing your class is as simple as putting on a new outfit. Gear upgrades don’t drop. The game right out tells you that you can buy the patterns for whatever set you like in Tortuga, the common hub that opens up near the start of the game. Each set has bonuses for wearing two or four pieces of a five piece set, and these bonuses increase as you upgrade your gear. Upgrading your outfit and weapons requires lots of resources, so see above about the iron mine.
Your outfit, stats and talents all converge on your choice of weapons. In the beginning, we all got the starting Fistibuliar outfit, kind of a generalist class; now, two weeks in, we’ve all gravitated to different outfits (and therefore classes). Me, I’m in the Marksman gear; aside from my iconic Reliable Blunderbuss, I wield a Steady Cutlass and dual wield Drake’s Double-Barreled Pistol. Cutting something with the cutlass gives a Take Aim buff that lets the next few shots have better accuracy. This does mean giving up my prized Rapier of a Thousand Cuts, but that really demands a lot of meleeing.
Our boss fights have been a mixed bag. They are all meant for you to dodge attacks, then rush in with Perfect Blocks to stagger them, do some damage, then rush away to repeat. But man, that timing on the Perfect Block is something I cannot get. My blocks are just regular blocks that damage my poise, and then I’m staggered. I probably need to pick on some low level pirates to figure it out.
The game rewards careful attention to what your opponent is planning. Israel Hands is a bad dude, but he has a spectral second self that, once summoned, does some nasty stuff depending upon what weapon it is holding. But the penalty for missing or not dodging is heinous. We just ended up kitting him, letting our pigs tank a little, and shooting him when we had the chance.
Have I not told you the tale of Truffles the Pig? There is a mysterious temple hidden in the Footlands; it requires an offering. A blood offering, as if there was any other kind. Three tokens hidden in nearby pirate camps, and all the bloody meat you can carry. If your offering is accepted, you’re given a special whistle that can summon Truffles, a boar with a lot of poise, if not much health. Truffles wants to tank for you. You should let him.
Truffles is a literal game changer. It instantly doubles the size of your party. In the Hands fight, we staggered our Truffles summons in waves, keeping Hands fighting pigs while we all shot him, execution style. Unfortunately, there is a delay to resummoning dear Truffles.
And the ships! Everyone gets the starter ketch as part of the main quest; building the new, better ships requires a lot of money and resources. In my case, it was my money and about three quarters my resources, one quarter other people’s. All of us upgraded to at least the second ship level; after beating Hands and gaining swamp access, he used the mats to which he now had access to get the truly enormous third tier frigate.
I’m sailing the second tier Blackbear’s Brig, an attack ship with little cargo space but a lot of guns and a lot of speed, mirroring my Marksman loadout. It comes with fourteen 12 pound cannon. I don’t think I can put 24 pound cannons on this one; but it does the job. If I come across any lone ship, I can take it down, board the enemy and unload shot into their faces until they accept their inevitable fates.
It’s a cruel world.
There is quite a lot left to do; I haven’t even finished with the Coastal Jungle stuff yet, much less the Foothills. I have some time before I’ll finish all Windrose has to offer.
