Advice to new players

[starfox]

It took me a week to finish Windbound. Lessons learned:

Save the game after every bit of progress you make, preferably when your character is at full health and stamina. THE GAME WILL CRASH FREQUENTLY and you will lose any progress you've made when this happens.

Save the game before leaving any island. If your boat takes any damage while sailing (by crobsters or by hitting rocks or coral), exit immediately and re-load. It's not worth spending precious resources to repair your boat when you can just exit and re-load.

Save the game before each between-chapter sailing challenge. Your boat will likely take a lot of damage during these stupid challenges, and it's not worth spending precious resources to repair your boat when you can just exit and re-load.

Replenish your health and stamina and save the game before attacking any Gorehorn, Plainstalker, Gloomharrow, or Pondwomper. If your health drops below one-third and the beast is still attacking you, exit the game immediately and re-load, otherwise you may die and lose everything.

Make a shovel at your earliest opportunity, so you can dig Bleenk burrows and collect their fronds, so you can use them to make bone-tipped arrows. You also need a shovel to dig clay on beaches so you can make a kiln to forge metal armor and a metal helmet.

Make a hammer at your earliest opportunity, so you can mine soul gems and metal ore and forge metal. Your hammer will almost certainly break and need to be replaced before you finish the game.

Make an axe at your earliest opportunity, so you can chop dead trees for wood to upgrade your boat. Your axe will almost certainly break and need to be replaced before you finish the game.

You will need to strip every island bare of every resource, except perhaps rocks. You can use rocks for slings, but slings are useless against large beasts. With a hammer you can crush rocks into pebbles, which are apparently good for using your sling to kill fish and crobsters, but I haven't tried this.

I managed to collect about 7,000 sea shards before finishing the game, but the only worthwhile blessings I found to spend them on were the ancestral bow (unbreakable) and ancestral spear (also unbreakable), which cost 500 each (and you can only have one blessing active at a time). So don't worry about collecting sea shards, they are nearly useless.

Make a small (7-item) bag at your earliest opportunity, because otherwise inventory management will be more of a pain in the ass than it needs to be.

Upgrade to a heavy-duty (18-item) bag at your earliest opportunity.

Build four bag racks on your boat at your earliest opportunity. I like to keep all animal parts and animal products in my first bag, all plants and plant products in my second bag, all minerals and mineral products (stone, crude metal, clay, clay pots, soul gems) in my third bag, and all edible items in my fourth bag (craft a "food bag" to minimize spoilage).

Edible items will not begin to deteriorate until you pick them up. Use this fact to your advantage. Consider having multiple fires (each with its own drying rack) on your boat so you can preserve cooked meat until you need it.

Avoid eating raw meat. It's easy to eat by accident, since in your inventory, it looks similar to cooked meat.

It is worthwhile to build a Gloomharrow figurehead for your boat at your earliest opportunity, as it can help get your boat moving when the wind isn't cooperating or when you get stuck on a coral.

It is worthwhile to add metal armor to your boat's hulls at your earliest opportunity.

Look for tiny islands, especially near the edge of your map. They often have shrines that can give you a permanent health or stamina boost.

[Smeggit]

I'd add: wait for the Gloomharrow on chapter 3 to respawn and kill it multiple times. I only saw 1 Gloomharrow in Ch3 then no more till the last level. I missed out on sooo much wood.

[dancingjoker]

I would add to think about how you want to play through. You can go big and you can go small. If you want to play with the stuff like potions, and the bomb ammo, you'll probably need more space, but if you're more for the exploring, a simple catamaran or even canoe provides you with the nimbleness to show off in the crossings and even dodge the sharks once you get a handle on the sailing.

The small boats have the advantage that at least in my experience, the crobsters don't have the best aim, and unless you're going really slow on a boat that's only one hull length they'll miss you. A canoe also can slip through really small gaps in rocks and coral formations. The trade off of course is inventory space and access to fire stuff. I think that works in your advantage with the sharks, if you're moving fast enough and your boat is small enough it's harder for the shark to hit you, or you can actually outmanuever them (dunno if it was just luck but once when I managed to pull a u turn and get behind one I stopped hearing the encounter music)

You can put a figurehead on the front of each of your hulls. So if you have a canoe with 2 outriggers that lets you get all three if you luck out. I like the Gorehorn and Plainstalker ones since the first gives you a certain amount of damage protection with a recharge between uses, and the second basically zaps any critter that gets too close to your boat.

If you're going sparse, I find the axe is the most important tool to keep around, there's a decent chunk of wood around, and they are the most durable of the hulls, plus in survival, you'll find wood in chapter one, so keep an axe or the mats to make one in the inventory you'll keep.

Once you get silk the glider is a nice little quality of life thing. Mainly just to skip trying to climb down the towers. But it's nice for the taller islands, and there are a few small islands made of the tower stone that have an area that you need to glide to that has more pots to break.

Play around with the sailing, if you learn it it becomes your friend. Tack into the wind (zig zag up the wind with your sail tight), you get the most speed when the wind is coming from the side. And learn how to handle the waves. Point your boat directly at the wave and it'll slow you down (or speed you up the least) but a boat in water mainly wants to go forwards and backwards as that's the easiest, so if you want the waves to help you, you want them to be pushing more on the side of the boat. Play with the sailing, see how the wind effects your boat differently based on how the sail is angled.

There is such a thing as too much sail. With a plain canoe, the grass sail works well, the wood one is gonna toss around a small boat and make it a lot harder to handle. Don't be afraid to downgrade your sail if you find a new one is giving you trouble.

Remember you can take apart boat parts without a loss. If you don't have a ton of stuff stored on it and you're finding the crossings difficult on a large boat, try taking it apart and trying with a smaller one that has more space to work with in avoiding obstacles and dodging sharks.

When you do the crossings, the waves are the key to success, at least in a small boat. The wind can be the key to failure. For the most speed and to ride over a lot of the obstacles you want to ride along the tops on the big waves as long as possible, they'll push you more than the wind does. But keep an eye on your sails, with the water as rough as it is there, if the wind starts to blow you around it can push your boat underwater and toss you around a bit. And when you're between waves try to avoid sailing straight into a tall wave, that can pop you too. You just have to try and remember where the obstacles are while you're up high and pay attention when your wave is coming down.

[Swayz]

biggest tip i have is find a sentinal soul gem and make the figure head with it

[slash]

Food tips:

Whenever you get to an island, wait a bit and you'll have fish around the shore, you can easily kill them with a bow, sling or a spear even. Good source of food no matter what island you're at.

You can keep your cooked food in the fire and it won't degrade, only get it once you know you'll need it.

Food bags are good at slowing degradation.

[gorF]

I think I have a bug, but for me saving does nothing. I have to start over again at whatever chapter I'm on and collect new materials to build a new boat. I've never lost my held inventory though.