Plenty of Windrose players have found themselves clicking an empty pistol while Drowned enemies close in, wondering why their bullets aren't firing. The answer is almost always the same: no gunpowder. And getting it isn't as simple as gathering a few rocks.
The co-op pirate survival game Windrose, developed by Kraken Express, gates gunpowder behind a meaningful chunk of its main story progression. You can't just stumble into the recipe early on. The crafting system is designed so that access to the right materials and workstations only opens up after you've put in real work.
What you actually need before crafting begins
The recipe itself is straightforward: 10 sulfur and 20 ash combined at a Millstone. But getting to that point requires completing several main quests in sequence, and none of them can be skipped.
Here's the lowdown on the full checklist before gunpowder becomes craftable:
- Complete the main quests Rescuing the Crew and I Need a Bigger Boat
- Defeat Thomas Richards and finish Revenge is Best Served Cold
- Travel to the Foothills biome and mine Foothills Iron Ore for ingots
- Discover corn in the Foothills, which unlocks the Millstone Parts recipe
- Craft an Iron Pickaxe, which is required to mine sulfur deposits
Beating Thomas Richards is the real bottleneck. Completing Revenge is Best Served Cold unlocks the Discover page for the Foothills and opens up a wave of new resources. Without that step, players can't smelt raw iron into ingots, build a Millstone, or craft the Iron Pickaxe needed to mine sulfur.
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If you're stuck without gunpowder and haven't beaten Thomas Richards yet, the early stages of the Revenge is Best Served Cold quest have enemy camps with gunpowder stashes inside. Worth looting those four Black Mark pieces while working toward the boss fight.
Sulfur, ash, and where to find them
Sulfur appears in both the Coastal Jungle and Foothills biomes, though it can only be mined once you have the Iron Pickaxe. The tricky part is spotting it. Some sulfur deposits look almost identical to regular stone, with just faint yellow marbling. Others are far more obvious, with a clumpy, gravelly texture covered in yellow. Getting closer and inspecting boulders is worth the habit.
Ash is the easier half of the equation. Most players accumulate it naturally from burning wood at the Charcoal Kiln. You can also grind 2 charcoal at the Millstone to produce 6 ash, though that's a trade-off worth avoiding since charcoal is needed for processing ingots.
The key here is that ash is rarely the limiting factor. Sulfur access is what determines when gunpowder production actually starts.
Why the progression gate makes sense
Windrose structures its crafting around story milestones rather than pure resource availability, which means players who try to rush ahead on gathering will hit invisible walls. The Foothills biome and everything tied to it, including iron tools, the Millstone, and sulfur mining, all sit behind the Thomas Richards boss fight by design.
What most players miss is that discovering corn in the Foothills is a separate unlock step. Finding corn triggers the Millstone Parts recipe in the crafting menu, so players who sprint past resource nodes without inspecting them can end up confused about why the Millstone isn't available yet.
For anyone still working through early Windrose content, browse more guides on our site to keep your progression on track. The crafting system rewards players who explore methodically rather than beeline for objectives, and gunpowder is a good example of how the game teaches that lesson the hard way.
