Everwind Beginner Tips and Tricks

Everwind drops you into a tutorial tower, hands you a stick, and then says nothing as you step outside and find a crashed airship. That's the whole onboarding. Developed by Enjoy Studio S.A. and published by Bohemia Interactive, this first-person sandbox survival RPG built around a flying island-ship has already turned countless early access sessions into three-hour spirals. The core hook is simple: your base flies with you everywhere. The systems underneath it are anything but simple. 

How do builds work in Everwind?

Everwind has no class selection screen. Your build is the sum of your skill tree investments, the gear you equip, and how you approach fights. Three distinct paths exist, but nothing stops you from mixing them freely, and most strong setups end up being hybrids anyway.

Everwind's three skill trees

Warrior

The melee-focused path. Warrior nodes increase your damage output, expand your health pool, improve parry effectiveness, and unlock advanced close-range techniques. If you want to wade into groups and trade hits, this is where your points go.

Arcanist

Magic and utility combined. Arcanist skills boost staff damage, unlock exploration perks, and include one standout ability: revealing enemies through walls using your compass. That single perk alone justifies dipping into this tree even if you never plan on going full magic.

Engineer

Crafting, building, and airship progression. Engineer nodes improve crafting efficiency, unlock advanced recipes, enhance your ship's capabilities, and include silent movement while crouching, which opens up stealth approaches most players never consider. Less about combat power, more about making everything else faster and cheaper.

What's the best build in Everwind?

There isn't one. The sources are consistent on this: hybrid builds outperform pure paths because the skill trees complement each other. Arcanist's compass reveal pairs with Warrior's combat bonuses. Engineer's crafting efficiency keeps your weapons repaired so you're not burning resources mid-expedition. Pick a primary tree, then spend secondary points on the perks from other trees that solve your biggest problems.

How do you get magic in Everwind?

Magic doesn't unlock at a specific story moment. You earn it through three parallel systems that have to come online together.

First, invest skill points in the Arcanist tree. Without those nodes, you won't have access to the spell-based combat tools regardless of what gear you're carrying. Second, equip a staff. Staffs are the primary delivery mechanism for magic abilities, and using a sword while having Arcanist skills active doesn't give you spells. Third, explore. Dungeons drop magic gear, bosses drop stronger weapons, and shops unlock recipes you can't find anywhere else.

Skip any one of these three and your magic build stalls. The skill tree is the foundation, the staff is the activation, and exploration is how you scale.

Staff combat in Everwind

Weapon tiers and what you're working toward

Every weapon category follows the same material progression: Wood/Stone → Copper → Bronze/Gold → Iron → Mechanical. The jumps between tiers are significant, not incremental.

The Stone Hatchet at 7-8 damage and 120 endurance is the most efficient early weapon for clearing smaller enemies quickly. The Mechanical Long Sword at 35-40 damage and 750 endurance is the endgame goal for two-handed melee players. The Iron Spiked Wooden Bludgeon at 25-28 damage with only 145 endurance is a glass cannon: enormous hits, constant repairs required.

Magic staffs cover Frost, Venom, Flames, and Shock variants. All four deal 15-17 damage per hit with 50 uses each. They're powerful but expensive to replace, so treat them like consumables rather than primary weapons.

The rune system explained

Runes are Everwind's enchantment layer. Apply them to weapons or chestplate armor to add permanent bonus effects. The crafting chain runs: 5 Rune Fragments → 1 Small Rune → 5 Small = 1 Medium → 5 Medium = 1 Big → 5 Big = 1 Huge → 5 Huge = 1 Perfect Rune.

Fragments drop from enemies at lower altitudes. Small and Medium Runes drop from enemies at higher altitudes. Elite, legendary, miniboss, and boss enemies have better drop rates across all tiers. Special chests scattered across islands can contain any tier. You can also recycle enchanted weapons at the Processing Station to recover fragments.

To apply a rune, hold it, press Use, select your target weapon or chestplate from the window that appears, and provide the required crafting component. Both the rune and the component are consumed permanently.

Confirmed rune effects in the current build

• Life Steal — heals for 2% of damage dealt. Sustains you through long fights without burning food buffs.
• Battle Feast — restores 5 stamina on kill. Keeps your attack chain going through mob packs.
• Acceleration — increases attack speed by 5% for 5 seconds on hit. Stacks well with fast weapons like daggers.
• Poison — inflicts 1 poison damage every 5 seconds. Chip damage that adds up over extended fights.
• Doom — instantly kills any enemy at 20 HP or below. Does not work on bosses or minibosses. Slap this on a fast dagger and mob clearing becomes trivial.

The developers have confirmed 13 weapon rune effects and 10 chestplate effects are planned total. The list above covers what's available in the current Early Access build.

Building your first airship

Your airship is your base, storage hub, crafting workshop, and only reliable transport. Everything you place on it travels with you. This is the mechanic that makes Everwind click: you never trek back to a stationary base because there is no stationary base.

The five components you need to get airborne:

• Cockpit — steering control. Without it, you have a floating platform.
• Engine — provides thrust. Better engines reduce travel time significantly.
• Balloon — provides lift. Non-negotiable.
• Power source — fuels the engine. Early game, craft basic fuel from gathered materials.
• Blocks — the ship's body. Attach everything to blocks, then add more blocks to expand.

Salvage parts from wrecked airships near your spawn point. The game provides enough salvaged components to get a bare-minimum ship airborne within the first hour. It won't look impressive. It will fly.

The Airship Core determines base speed, maximum build space, and altitude ceiling. Upgrading it is the highest-priority goal in the early-to-mid game. Higher altitude means better loot and tougher enemies. Faster speed means less time staring at clouds between islands, which is a real problem.

The travel time problem

Every early access review mentions it: getting between major islands takes 5-10 minutes of real time. Clear a small island in 15-20 minutes, then spend 10 minutes flying to the next one, and your session feels slower than it should. The fix is straightforward:

• Upgrade the Airship Core first. Speed cuts travel time in half or more.
• Use travel time to craft, sort inventory, and repair weapons. Don't stand at the cockpit watching clouds.
• Use the Spyglass before departing to mark Points of Interest. Aimless flying wastes more time than anything else.

Bohemia Interactive's 2026 roadmap includes airship upgrades and quality-of-life improvements specifically addressing travel. Dedicated servers are also planned for smoother multiplayer.

What are all the crafting stations in Everwind?

Nine stations handle different item categories. Build them all on your ship eventually, but prioritize in this order:

1. Crafting Station — basic tools and components. Build this first.
2. Furnace — smelts ore into ingots. Essential the moment you find copper ore.
3. Smithing Station — forges weapons and armor from ingots.
4. Cooking Station — food provides health regeneration and combat buffs. Don't skip this.
5. Block Station — produces building blocks for ship expansion.
6. Carpenter Station — advanced wooden components and ship parts.
7. Alchemy Station — potions and consumables. Healing potions are worth stockpiling before boss encounters.
8. Repair Station — fixes damaged weapons. Cheaper and faster than re-crafting constantly.
9. Wooden Flower Pot — grows plants for alchemy and food ingredients. Low priority until you're established.

Place your most-used stations near the cockpit. You'll be switching between steering and crafting constantly, and the fewer steps between them, the better your session flow.

Crafting stations on your airship

Quick-start tips for your first few hours

• Don't fight bears. Come back with bronze weapons and actual armor. Early bears kill in two hits and no amount of skill compensates for that gap.
• Pick up everything. The crafting system consumes materials constantly.
• Hover over objects before harvesting them. The game tells you the best tool for each resource, and using the wrong one wastes endurance.
• Cook food before every expedition. Buffs stack and health regen mid-fight can save you from a death you didn't see coming.
• Build crafting stations on your ship, never on islands. Anything built on an island stays there.
• Save magic staffs for tough encounters. 50 uses goes fast if you're firing at every skeleton you see.

For more on what Everwind includes and any technical issues you run into, the Everwind Wiki on Fandom is a growing community resource, and the PCGamingWiki page for Everwind covers PC-specific fixes and configuration options. For more guides across all genres, browse the full guides library at GAMES.GG.