Windrose already has its first major early access destination: Ashlands. Kraken Express says the pirate survival RPG's next big content update will introduce the new biome, though the studio is setting expectations early by warning that the update will likely take at least six months to deliver.
The plan comes after a massive Steam launch for Windrose, which entered early access on April 14 and quickly became one of the platform's breakout survival hits. In a Steam News update, Kraken Express said the game was still drawing more than 210,000 concurrent players on Sunday, even after dipping slightly from its first launch weekend.
Windrose is a PvE survival adventure set in an alternate Age of Piracy, with solo play, co-op, ship combat, crafting, building and procedurally generated biomes. Its Steam page describes the early access build as a 50 to 70 hour main story with three biomes, three playable ships, naval boarding, factions, bosses, settlement systems and NPC workers.
Ashlands Is Next, But Fixes Come First
Kraken Express said some players have already finished the current story, which has made the next major content drop one of the community's biggest questions. The answer is Ashlands, a new biome planned for the first large update after the studio finishes its immediate repair work.
That repair work is coming sooner. The next update is focused on connectivity, performance, stability, CPU usage on idle clients and servers, disk usage during gameplay, more than 40 new building pieces and more than 50 fixes and quality-of-life changes. Kraken Express also said it may address Steam Cloud save problems in that update, but warned that game settings could reset if the fix is included.
The Ashlands roadmap is still high level. Kraken Express said it is filling the update with internal plans and popular community requests, then expects to cut some ideas so the final scope is deliverable. The studio expects to share more information in a month or two.
Kraken Express also framed Ashlands as more than a simple map expansion. The studio said it wants to enrich Windrose's existing gameplay systems alongside adding new biome content, calling the scope ambitious enough that six months is currently its best estimate.
Windrose Is Building Its Feedback Loop
Alongside the roadmap tease, Kraken Express has opened windrose.support in beta as a new hub for support, bug reports and feature suggestions. The site is meant to help players troubleshoot common issues, report bugs into the right categories and vote on ideas from other players.
That feedback system fits the early access pitch on the game's Steam store page, where Kraken Express says player feedback will help decide which content and systems the team should prioritize. The developer estimates that Windrose will need roughly 1.5 to 2.5 years in early access before full release, with the 1.0 version planned to include around 50% more content than the current build.
No PlayStation 5 or other console version was announced in the latest update. Windrose remains a Steam early access game, and Kraken Express is concentrating first on stabilizing the current PC version before moving into Ashlands and the larger expansion of the game's story.