You join your server, everything's fine for a while, then the game starts chugging and you get booted to the main menu. No error, no crash log, just... gone. And when you try to reconnect, it won't let you back in without restarting the whole game.
If that sounds familiar, you're not alone. This has been one of the most common complaints since Windrose hit Early Access on April 14, and the developers have acknowledged it's a known issue they're actively working on. Let's go through what's actually happening and what you can do about it right now.
The Devs Know About It
I want to get this out of the way first. A Kraken Express team member confirmed on the Steam forums that "there are currently some connectivity issues with the servers due to certain things being blocked by providers" and that it's actively being worked on. They're also collecting diagnostic data from players experiencing lag spikes on Discord.
This isn't a "maybe it'll get fixed" situation – it's on their radar and they've shipped stability patches during the demo period already. But it's Early Access, it's day one, and some of this is going to take time. In the meantime, here's what you can actually control.
Restart the Game After a Disconnect
This sounds stupid but it matters. After Windrose disconnects you mid-session, the game's network state gets stuck. You'll sit on a loading screen or get dumped back to the menu if you try to reconnect immediately. Multiple people on the Steam forums have confirmed the same thing – you have to fully close Windrose and relaunch it before you can rejoin.
On Steam: right-click Windrose in your library → Manage → Force close, then relaunch. Just clicking "back to menu" and trying again won't cut it.
The Relay Routing Problem
Here's something that explains the "chugging before disconnect" pattern a lot of people are seeing. Windrose uses P2P relay networking for multiplayer connections, and those relays run through AWS. The problem is that the relay selection isn't always geographically smart – players have reported being routed through AWS servers in Korea when both the player and the server are in Europe or North America. That adds 300ms of latency to what should be a 20ms connection.
When the relay is struggling, you'll see it as periodic lag spikes – the game chugs for a few seconds while the relay catches up, and if the connection drops below whatever timeout threshold the game uses, you get kicked.
There's not much you can do about relay routing specifically – that's on the game's networking layer and will improve as the devs refine their infrastructure. But you can make sure your own connection to the relay is as clean as possible (see the DNS section below).
Check Your DNS
Some DNS providers block the domains Windrose needs for its relay connections. NextDNS has been confirmed to block windrose.support by default, and other filtering DNS services might do the same. If the relay domain is being blocked, your connection will be unstable from the start – it might work for a while, then drop when the relay tries to renegotiate.
Switch to Google DNS (8.8.8.8 / 8.8.4.4) or Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) and flush your DNS cache:
ipconfig /flushdns
Then restart Windrose. If your disconnects were DNS-related, this fixes it immediately.
Your Hosting Provider Might Be the Problem
This one's worth mentioning because it's not something most people think about. Budget game server hosts often oversell their hardware – cramming dozens of game servers onto one physical machine to keep prices low. When that machine gets busy, your server doesn't get the CPU time it needs to keep up with the game's tick rate. The result? Periodic lag spikes as your server fights for resources, and eventually a disconnect when the tick rate drops low enough that clients time out.
The tell-tale sign of an oversold node is that your server runs fine at off-peak hours (late night, early morning) but starts chugging during evenings and weekends when everyone else's servers on the same hardware are also busy. If that matches your experience, the fix isn't a config tweak – it's a better host.
On LOW.MS we run Windrose on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 hardware with guaranteed resource allocations – your server gets its full CPU and RAM allocation regardless of what else is running on the node. You can check your actual resource usage under Current Activity & Stats in the control panel. If CPU and RAM look fine but you're still disconnecting, the problem is upstream (relay routing, DNS, or the game itself) not your server.
Scheduled Restarts Help More Than You'd Think
Windrose is built on Unreal Engine 5, and like most UE5 Early Access games, the server process leaks memory over extended uptimes. After 12–24 hours of continuous operation, performance degrades – tick rate drops, the server responds slower, and disconnects become more frequent.
Set up a daily restart via Scheduled Tasks in your control panel. Pick a time when nobody's playing – 4 AM or whatever your group's dead hours are. The server saves the world on shutdown, so no progress is lost. Most of our Windrose customers who've set this up report noticeably fewer disconnects.
If your group plays long sessions (8+ hours), consider restarting every 12 hours instead of every 24.
Spread Out Less
This one's a theory that's been floating around the Steam forums, but it tracks with how UE5 handles world streaming. When players are spread across the map, the server has to simulate and stream more chunks simultaneously. The further apart everyone is, the harder the server works.
If your group of four is exploring in four different directions and you start getting lag spikes, try regrouping. It's not a guaranteed fix, but multiple players have reported that staying in the same general area reduces the chugging. Makes sense from an engine perspective – fewer active chunks means less work per tick.
VPN and Firewall Check
If you're the only person in your group getting disconnected while everyone else stays connected, it's probably your local setup.
- VPNs can interfere with the relay connections Windrose uses. Try disconnecting your VPN temporarily.
- Windows Firewall or third-party antivirus might be throttling or intermittently blocking the game. Make sure Windrose has full inbound/outbound UDP access.
- Router security features – some ISP-provided routers have built-in "security shields" that interfere with game traffic. Spectrum's has been specifically called out.
It Will Get Better
I know "it's Early Access" isn't what you want to hear when you're getting kicked every 45 minutes. But this is genuinely one of those things that improves patch by patch. The same pattern played out with Valheim, Enshrouded, and Palworld – rough first weeks for multiplayer stability, then steady improvements as the devs collect data and iterate.
Keep your server updated via Steam Update in the panel whenever a new patch drops. Windrose patches have been landing frequently since launch and each one has included stability work.
For other server issues, check our general troubleshooting guide and the connection problems guide.