Everwind drops you into a tutorial tower, hands you a few basic tools, and then sends you into a sky full of floating islands with almost no hand-holding. Developed by Enjoy Studio S.A. and published by Bohemia Interactive, it blends first-person survival crafting with a killer hook: your entire base is a flying ship that travels with you everywhere. That means no sprinting back to a stationary camp, no losing your gear across the map. Just you, your airship, and a world that gets harder the higher you fly. Here is everything you need to know to stop dying and start thriving.
What Should You Do First in Everwind?
Before you sprint out of the starting tower and start punching trees, slow down. That tower is packed with free resources most new players walk right past. Treating it like a supply depot instead of a tutorial obstacle puts you ahead of the curve immediately.
- Grab every crafting station you can carry, including the anvil, furnace, and cooking pot, so you do not have to craft them from scratch later
- Break and collect storage chests for extra inventory space on your ship
- Pick up torches since they double as backup weapons in a pinch
- Search corners and hidden spots for crystals and bonus crafting materials
Once you leave, resist the urge to explore right away. Farm wood and stone near spawn until you have a working stack of both. Then craft your axe and pickaxe immediately since those two tools unlock faster resource gathering and make everything that follows less painful. Your first crafted shield is also worth the materials for the added early survivability.
Beginner airship layout basics
Understanding the Five Core Survival Stats
Everwind tracks five stats that all need attention, not just your health bar. Ignoring any of them can end a run faster than a bear encounter.
The two stats that kill new players most often are Warmth and Hydration. Drinking Tainted Water to fix hydration comes with a brutal trade-off: it cuts your Max Stamina by 50%, which cripples both combat and travel. Always prioritize clean water sources and craft soups early since they restore hydration and provide healing buffs that basic meat cannot match.
Which Combat Path Should You Choose?
Everwind splits combat progression across three skill trees: Warrior, Arcanist, and Engineer. The temptation to spread points across all three early on is real, but it is one of the fastest ways to slow your own progress.
Warrior
Physical combat focus. Boosts damage output, parry effectiveness, and your health pool while unlocking advanced melee techniques. Best for players who prefer direct, reliable damage in close-quarters fights.
Arcanist
Magic and utility focus. Boosts staff damage and includes a standout perk: the ability to reveal enemies through walls using your compass. That single node is worth the investment even if you are not building a full magic character.
Engineer
Crafting, building, and airship focus. Improves crafting efficiency, unlocks advanced recipes, and includes silent movement while crouching for stealth approaches. Pairs naturally with Warrior nodes for solo players who want combat and ship-building covered.
Pick one primary tree and commit to it early. Splitting points between Warrior and Arcanist before reaching the strong mid-tier upgrades in either tree just delays your power spike. Branch out once your main path feels stable.
For solo players, Engineer combined with core Warrior nodes is a strong starting path. In co-op with three or four players, assigning one person per tree is the most efficient setup since everyone's levels carry back to their own world between sessions.
Weapon Progression: What Are You Working Toward?
Every weapon category in Everwind follows the same material tier path: Wood or Stone, then Copper, then Bronze or Gold, then Iron, then Mechanical. The damage jumps between tiers are significant, so upgrading weapons whenever you unlock a new material is always worth prioritizing.
Magic staffs covering Frost, Venom, Flames, and Shock all deal 15-17 damage but only have 50 uses per staff. They hit hard but burn through fast, so save them for minibosses and dungeon encounters rather than wasting charges on regular skeletons.
The Iron Spiked Wooden Bludgeon deserves a special mention: 25-28 damage with only 145 endurance makes it a glass cannon option that hits extremely hard but breaks quickly. Use it for burst situations, not sustained grinding.
Bears at Altitude 1 will kill you in two hits with early gear. Multiple players have reported dying to them repeatedly before realizing the correct strategy is simply to go around them and return with Bronze weapons and actual armor.
How to Build Your First Airship
Your airship is your home, your crafting hub, and your only reliable way to reach new islands. Getting it airborne is the single most important early milestone, and the starting area gives you enough salvaged components to do it within the first hour.
You need five core components to get off the ground:
- Cockpit for steering
- Engine for thrust
- Balloon for lift
- Energy Generator as your power source
- Blocks as the structural body connecting everything
Place the cockpit first and build outward from there. Keep the engine directly behind the cockpit so the layout stays clean and expandable. Balance your balloon placement carefully since uneven placement causes the ship to tilt and drift, making it genuinely annoying to fly.
A few habits that pay off immediately:
- Build vertically to save deck space for crafting stations
- Use pipes to connect your generator, engine, and balloon neatly
- Place your most-used crafting stations near the cockpit to minimize running back and forth
- Carry spare materials so you can upgrade mid-flight without detours
- Add extra engines later when you want better speed
The Airship Core determines your base speed, maximum build space, and altitude ceiling. Upgrading it is the highest-priority mid-game goal. Faster travel cuts the 5-10 minutes of flight time between islands significantly, and higher altitude access unlocks better loot and tougher enemies. Use travel time productively by crafting, sorting inventory, or planning your skill tree instead of just watching clouds.
Anything built on an island stays on that island when you leave. Anything placed on your ship travels with you permanently. Always build your crafting stations on the ship.
What Are the Nine Crafting Stations and Which Come First?
All nine crafting stations serve distinct purposes, and building them in the right order saves you from bottlenecks.
- Crafting Station first, always. Basic tools and components start here.
- Furnace the moment you find copper ore. Without it, ore is just inventory weight.
- Smithing Station to forge weapons and armor from smelted ingots.
- Cooking Station for food buffs and health regeneration before tough fights.
- Carpenter Station for advanced wooden components and ship parts.
- Block Station converts raw materials into proper building pieces for ship expansion.
- Alchemy Station for healing potions, especially valuable before boss encounters.
- Repair Station near your Smithing Station to fix gear before it fully breaks.
- Wooden Flower Pot low priority, but useful for growing alchemy ingredients once you are established.
Copper is the material that unlocks your first real gear tier. When you spot those orange-tinted ore veins on cliffs or in cave walls, harvest everything you find. Copper tools and armor last longer than stone equivalents and mark your first step toward survivable combat at higher altitudes. Smelt extra ingots before you think you need them since you will always need more than expected.
How Does the Rune Enchanting System Work?
Runes are Everwind's weapon and armor enchantment system. They add permanent bonus effects to weapons and chestplate armor, turning functional gear into something genuinely powerful.
Getting Runes
- Enemies at lower altitudes drop Rune Fragments
- Higher altitude enemies drop Small or Medium Runes directly
- Elite, miniboss, and boss enemies have better drop rates
- Special chests across islands can contain any rune tier
- Combine 5 Fragments to craft 1 Small Rune at a crafting station
Rune Tier Crafting Chain
5 Fragments, then 1 Small Rune, then 5 Small equal 1 Medium, then 5 Medium equal 1 Big, then 5 Big equal 1 Huge, then 5 Huge equal 1 Perfect Rune. Reaching Perfect is a serious grind, but even Small Runes provide noticeable combat benefits worth pursuing early.
Exploration Tips: How Do You Find the Best Loot?
The world of Everwind is procedurally generated with floating islands spread across an open sky. Each island mixes terrain types and packs resources, enemies, dungeons, and loot chests. The best loot consistently spawns at the highest altitudes, which is another reason upgrading your Airship Core early accelerates your entire progression.
- Equip your Spyglass from the ship and scan distant islands before flying toward them. It highlights Points of Interest and saves you from wasting 10 minutes on empty terrain.
- Hover over any object long enough and Everwind tells you the best tool to harvest it. Use the right tool every time to preserve endurance.
- Smash barrels and crates, dig near flags and graves, and look for cracked walls that hide secret areas.
- Smaller islands take roughly 15-20 minutes to clear fully. Do not skip nearby islands just because a farther one looks more exciting.
- Dungeons scattered across islands contain rarer materials and better loot. They are where meaningful gear upgrades come from.
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