Windrose Best Ships Guide: Every Hull Ranked and Compared

Windrose has nine buildable ships, and the expensive mistake most new captains make is pouring rare materials into the wrong hull too early. This guide breaks down every ship, what it actually costs to unlock, and where the community genuinely disagrees on the "best" endgame pick, because it does, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. Ship choice interacts with nearly every other system in the game: crew size, faction reputation, cargo needs, and combat doctrine all pull in different directions depending on which hull you're sailing, which is why "best ship" genuinely doesn't have one universal answer the way some guides pretend it does.

Part of the full Windrose cluster. See the Beginner Guide for what to prioritise before you're even thinking about ships.

All Nine Ships, Compared

The Clean Progression Path

• Start on the Stock Ketch. It's free once you build a Wharf, and it's genuinely fine for early exploration and supply runs. Don't sink resources into upgrading it. Those upgrades don't carry forward to the Brigantine.
• Complete "I Need a Bigger Boat" to unlock the Shipwright's Workshop, the gate to everything past the Ketch.
• Switch to Blackbeard Brigantine once you hit Brethren of the Coast Reputation 2 and have 1,000 Piastre. This is the ship most co-op groups of 2-4 players settle into for the entire mid-game. Strong balance of speed, hull, cannon count, and cargo.
• Complete "Rescue the Crew" and recruit 7 crewmates before your first proper warship performs anywhere near its potential. An undermanned ship underperforms badly regardless of hull quality.
• Push to Frigate at Reputation 4 and 3,000 Piastre once you're ready for endgame content.

The Ship Unlock Quest Chain, In Full

Ship progression in Windrose is quest-gated rather than purely material or reputation-gated, and skipping steps genuinely blocks progress rather than just slowing you down. After your starting Ketch, you need to complete "I Need a Bigger Boat" specifically to upgrade your Weaponsmith Workshop into a Shipwright's Workshop, the actual gate to everything past the starting hull, not just a flavour quest. From there, you need to build a Wharf at your settlement before the Workshop becomes practically useful, since the Wharf is the docking structure that actually lets you launch what you build. Separately from ship-building itself, "Rescue the Crew" and recruiting 7 crewmates is required before you can fully operate your first proper warship, since an undermanned ship performs noticeably below its stated potential in combat, regardless of how good the hull itself is.

Crew Roles During Naval Combat

A full crew genuinely changes how naval fights play out, and assigning rough roles rather than everyone doing everything ad hoc makes a real difference. One or two crew members on cannon duty, someone dedicated to steering and positioning, and at least one player watching hull integrity and handling repairs mid-fight is the loose structure most experienced crews converge on. Boarding actions specifically benefit from this division. Having someone hold the wheel and keep the ship stable while others handle the melee transition from ship-to-ship combat avoids the common new-crew mistake of everyone abandoning their post the moment a boarding fight starts.

Cargo and Trading Considerations

Cargo capacity varies meaningfully across the nine hulls, and it's worth factoring into your choice beyond pure combat stats if trading and resource runs make up a real part of how your crew plays. The Stock Ketch's roughly 28 cargo slots are respectable for an early-game hull, and Brethren variants across all three classes generally trade some speed for improved cargo capacity, a real consideration if your crew is running longer supply routes between islands rather than staying close to a single settlement. If your playstyle leans toward looting and trading runs specifically, a Brethren-variant mid-game ship can be a genuinely reasonable pick over the faster Blackbeard option, even outside the Frigate-tier debate covered below.

Repair and Maintenance

Ships take real, persistent damage from both combat and weather, and neglecting repairs compounds. A hull already weakened from a storm goes into a fight with less of a buffer than a freshly maintained one. Carry wood and nails specifically for at-sea repairs rather than assuming you'll always be near a dock when damage happens; running out of repair materials mid-voyage after a rough naval engagement is a genuinely avoidable problem with a small amount of preparation.

Frigate Choice: The One Real Debate

This is where sources genuinely disagree, and I'm not going to manufacture a false consensus. Two legitimate answers exist depending on what you actually want:

Blackbeard Frigate: 110,000 hull HP, 20 knots, up to 36-pounder cannons. The widest engagement window in the game: you choose when to close distance, fire at optimal range, and disengage if a fight turns bad, all before slower ships can respond. The trade-off is real: 110,000 HP against the Stock Frigate's roughly 160,000 means you take more punishment in drawn-out fights. Levelling Smugglers of Port Royal to Reputation 2 unlocks Keelhold hull bracing, which offsets a meaningful chunk of that gap.

Brethren Frigate: the tankiest hull in the game, slowest of the three Frigate variants. If your playstyle is standing and trading rather than picking fights on your terms, this is the pick. Ranked S-tier ("the best ship overall") by some tier lists specifically because raw survivability matters more than engagement control in prolonged fleet battles.

My honest read: if you're playing solo or in a small crew and want control over when fights happen, Blackbeard. If you're running a full crew and expect to stand in extended fights rather than disengage, Brethren. Neither answer is wrong.

Cannon Choice

Perfectly Ordered cannons are the standard recommendation for Ketch and Brigantine, in the highest pound rating your ship supports. Their passive triggers when you hit an enemy within 4 seconds of reloading, easy to maintain consistently in practice, giving an effective 30% faster reload rate almost all the time. Higher-tier cannon options unlock through faction reputation rather than pure crafting progression. Rogue Buccaneers specifically gates access to 36-Pounder cannons, the heaviest broadside currently available, requiring Reputation Rank 4 with that faction before they can be mounted on any hull that supports them.

Ketch and Brigantine Variants, In More Detail

Within each class, the Blackbeard variant is worth calling out specifically for one reason: it's the only variant in both the Ketch and Brigantine classes that can mount 24-pounder cannons, a real firepower jump over what Stock and Brethren versions of the same hull class can carry. That makes Blackbeard the natural pick any time raw damage output matters more than durability or cargo, which, for most players still working through the mid-game rather than committed to a specific endgame doctrine, is genuinely most of the time. The trade-off is consistent across every tier: Blackbeard variants are faster and hit harder, Brethren variants are tankier and slower, Stock sits deliberately in the middle as the safe default while you're still deciding what you actually want from a hull.

Where to Go Next

• Windrose Roadmap: the full hub
• Beginner Guide: first-hour priorities
• XP & Leveling Guide: exact XP values and the fastest path to level 15
• Talent Tree & Builds Guide: branches, the level 10 commitment
• Co-op & Multiplayer Guide: hosting, crew setup, what carries over
• Crafting Guide: every station, build order, material gating

Windrose is available now in Early Access on PC. $29.99.