Best Windrose Server Settings for Your Crew

Windrose gives you a bunch of knobs to turn, and honestly most of them are worth touching. The defaults are fine for a solo run, but once you're hosting a crew – whether that's two mates on a lazy afternoon or a full ten-player fleet – you'll want to dial things in. I've spent a fair amount of time poking at these configs, and I have opinions.

This guide walks through the settings that actually matter, organized by how you and your crew like to play. If you want the full reference for every parameter, check out our Windrose server configuration guide.

Before You Touch Anything

Two things to know upfront.

First, stop your server before editing config files. Windrose rewrites its configs on shutdown, so if you edit while the server is running, your changes get overwritten the moment it stops. Every time. Save yourself the frustration – stop the server from your LOW.MS Control Panel, make your edits in File Manager, then start it back up.

Second, the in-game presets are Easy, Medium, and Hard (plus "Captain's Choice" which is just Custom). The moment you change any single parameter on a preset, it silently converts to Custom. That's not a bug. Just be aware that if you tweak one value on Medium difficulty, you're now on Captain's Choice whether you meant to be or not.

The Config Files

Your world settings live in WorldDescription.json, buried in a path like:

R5/Saved/SaveProfiles/Default/RocksDB/<version>/Worlds/<world-id>/WorldDescription.json

Server basics – name, password, player cap – live in ServerDescription.json in the R5/ directory.

That Weird JSON Format

When you open WorldDescription.json for the first time, you'll probably do a double take. The parameters look like this:

"FloatParameters": {
  "{\"TagName\": \"WDS.Parameter.MobHealthMultiplier\"}": 1.5
}

Yes, the keys are JSON strings embedded inside JSON strings. It's escaped JSON as a key with a plain number as the value. Ugly, but straightforward once you know what you're looking at – find the TagName you want, change the number after the colon. Don't mess with the key formatting or the server won't read it.

ServerDescription.json – The Quick Stuff

This one's simple. You've got ServerName, MaxPlayerCount, IsPasswordProtected, Password, and Note. Set your server name to something your friends can find, slap a password on it, and set the player cap. Our plans support 4, 6, 8, or 10 players – the 4 or 6-player options tend to be the sweet spot for performance and fun. You can check current Windrose hosting plans for specifics.

If you need help getting your crew connected, we've got a guide on joining via invite code.

Settings by Playstyle

Here's where it gets fun. I'm going to be opinionated because vague advice helps nobody.

The Chill Crew (2–4 Friends, Low Stress)

You're here to sail, explore, maybe fight something occasionally but not sweat over it. You want the world to feel alive without it punching you in the face.

My recommendations:

• MobHealthMultiplier at 0.5. Enemies go down fast. You're not here to grind.
• MobDamageMultiplier at 0.5. Getting hit still matters, it just doesn't delete you.
• CombatDifficulty set to Easy. Fewer boss encounters, less aggressive AI. You'll still get fights, they just won't ambush you constantly.
• ShipsHealthMultiplier at 0.6. Naval battles wrap up quicker so you can get back to exploring.
• ShipsDamageMultiplier down to 0.4. AI ships won't shred your hull while you're still figuring out the cannons.
• BoardingDifficultyMultiplier at 0.4. Boarding parties are manageable even if half your crew is below deck doing inventory.

For co-op scaling, set Coop.StatsCorrectionModifier to 0.3 or so. This controls how much enemies scale up when more players are online – at 0.3, a full crew won't suddenly face bullet-sponge mobs. Leave Coop.ShipStatsCorrectionModifier at 0.0 (the default) since your ships don't need to get harder just because your friend logged in.

Turn EasyExplore off (false). I know it sounds backwards for a chill setup, but EasyExplore actually removes map markers and makes you find things yourself. That's the opposite of relaxing for most people. Keep Coop.SharedQuests on so everyone progresses together without having to individually pick up every quest.

If you're running with 2 friends who just want to sail around and enjoy the scenery, you could even push MobDamageMultiplier down to 0.3. Nobody's judging.

The Balanced Run (3–4 Players, Default-ish)

This is where I'd start if your crew has some experience with survival games but you're new to Windrose specifically. It's close to the Medium preset but with a few tweaks that smooth out the rough edges.

• MobHealthMultiplier at 1.0. Leave it stock.
• MobDamageMultiplier at 0.8. Slightly less punishing than default. Windrose's combat can spike hard in certain encounters, and 0.8 takes the edge off without making it trivial.
• CombatDifficulty on Normal. The intended experience.
• ShipsHealthMultiplier at 1.0. Stock.
• ShipsDamageMultiplier at 0.8. Same logic as mob damage – AI ships can be surprisingly brutal early on, and a 20% reduction keeps things tense without being cruel.
• BoardingDifficultyMultiplier at 1.0. Boarding at default is genuinely exciting with 3–4 players. Keep it.

Co-op scaling is where you should actually pay attention here. Set Coop.StatsCorrectionModifier to 0.7. Full scaling (1.0) can make some encounters frustrating when not everyone in your group is equally geared. 0.7 still scales things up noticeably but leaves room for your crew to carry each other a bit.

Coop.ShipStatsCorrectionModifier at 0.3 – just enough that naval encounters feel slightly beefier with a full crew manning the guns, without turning every ship battle into a 15-minute slog.

EasyExplore off, SharedQuests on. Same reasoning as above.

The Suffering Enjoyers (4–10 Players, Maximum Pain)

You want Windrose to hurt. Your crew has beaten the game on Hard and found it wanting. Cool. Let's make it miserable.

• MobHealthMultiplier at 3.0. Enemies become genuine threats that demand coordinated focus fire. At 5.0 it starts feeling tedious rather than hard, so 3.0 is the sweet spot for "difficult but still fun."
• MobDamageMultiplier at 2.5. Two hits and you're in trouble. Three and you're down. Position matters.
• CombatDifficulty on Hard. Full boss aggression, more encounters, the works.
• ShipsHealthMultiplier at 3.5. Naval battles become actual engagements. You'll burn through cannonballs.
• ShipsDamageMultiplier at 2.0. Your ship can and will sink if you ignore incoming fire. Someone needs to be on repairs full-time.
• BoardingDifficultyMultiplier at 3.0. Boarding parties are a genuine threat. You'll want a dedicated below-deck defense team.

Crank Coop.StatsCorrectionModifier to 1.5. With a big crew, enemies should scale hard. At 10 players you want encounters to demand actual coordination, not just number-rushing everything.

Coop.ShipStatsCorrectionModifier at 1.5 too. More players means more guns, so AI ships should be able to take the punishment.

Here's where EasyExplore gets interesting – set it to true. Strip the map markers. Make your crew actually navigate and communicate. "I think the island was southeast of where we fought that galleon" is way more engaging than following a waypoint, and with a large enough crew you can send out scouting parties. It transforms the game.

Keep SharedQuests on unless you genuinely want each player tracking their own quest lines independently, which can be fun for a competitive-cooperative dynamic but gets chaotic fast with 10 people.

A Note on Crew Size

With 2 players, the co-op scaling modifiers barely matter – there's not much to scale. With 4, they start mattering a lot. With 10, they're the single most important settings you'll configure. If your big group is finding combat too easy or too hard, adjust Coop.StatsCorrectionModifier in increments of 0.2 before touching anything else. It's the lever that has the most impact.

Same goes for naval – Coop.ShipStatsCorrectionModifier at 0.0 means a 10-player crew will obliterate every AI ship in seconds. Bump it up.

Tweaking After Launch

Don't try to get everything perfect on the first pass. Run your settings for a session, see how they feel, and adjust. The stop-edit-start cycle takes a couple minutes. I'd suggest starting slightly easier than you think you want – it's more fun to crank difficulty up because things feel too easy than to dial it back because your crew keeps wiping.

If you run into issues after changing settings, our Windrose troubleshooting guide covers the common gotchas.