Windrose: How to Get Gunpowder – Crafting and Farm Guide

Quick Answer: How to Get Gunpowder in Windrose

Gunpowder in Windrose comes from two main sources: looting pirate camps early on, and crafting it yourself at a Millstone once you reach the Foothills and unlock the recipe. Early on you’ll be ammo-starved and relying on drops; mid-game you can set up a near-unlimited production chain using sulfur and ash.

• Early game: Farm pirate camps (especially the big Coastal Jungle camp) for gunpowder drops and supply bales.
• Mid/late game: Craft Homemade Gunpowder at a Millstone using 10 sulfur + 20 ash to get 10 gunpowder per craft.
• Unlock crafting: Beat the Coastal Jungle boss, reach the Foothills, find corn, build a Millstone, then start grinding sulfur and ash.

Once you’ve got that loop running, guns stop feeling “precious” and start becoming your main problem solver. Below is exactly how I route it in my own runs, including the bits the game quietly expects you to figure out.

Step 1 – Early-Game Gunpowder from Pirate Camps

Before you ever see a Millstone, your best (and basically only) gunpowder source is pirates. In the opening islands and especially in the Coastal Jungle, gun-wielding enemies and their supply bales drop small stacks of gunpowder.

• Where to farm: Blackbeard/standard pirate camps on the first islands, then the big Coastal Jungle camp once you unlock that region.
• What drops: Musket-wielders, lieutenants, and the wooden supply bales/crates around their tents can drop gunpowder (usually 9-15 per bale in my experience).
• Respawn: Camps gradually repopulate, so you can loop them instead of sailing endlessly.

The most efficient loop I’ve found early on is:

• Unlock a fast travel or convenient dock near the main Coastal Jungle pirate camp.
• Approach the camp from high ground, tag musketeers first (or rush them with melee) so you don’t have to spend ammo on them.
• After the fight, loot every corpse and smash every marked bale/crate inside the camp perimeter.
• Fast travel away, do another activity, then swing back later for another clear.

To stretch this early-game gunpowder, treat guns as finishers or emergency tools, not your default opener. Use melee and basic tools for most fights and keep gunpowder for:

• Enemies with firearms
• Elite pirates or captains
• Animals or enemies that are painful to kite in melee

This carries you until you can build your first serious production base in the Foothills.

Step 2 – Progress Far Enough to Unlock Gunpowder Crafting

The game deliberately locks proper gunpowder crafting behind a block of main-story progress. In single-player, you cannot rush straight to the recipe; you’ve got to do the early quests and beat the first big boss.

Here’s the rough sequence that’s worked consistently for me:

• Finish “Rescuing the Crew” to get your core companions and ship basics online.
• Complete “I Need a Bigger Boat” so you can safely reach the Coastal Jungle.
• Progress the story there until you face and defeat the jungle boss, Thomas Richards (quest: “Revenge is Best Served Cold”).
• After the boss is down, the game opens up the Foothills biome as your next main zone.
• In the Foothills, start mining iron ore, smelt it into ingots, and craft an Iron Pickaxe. This is important for sulfur later.

The last gating piece is surprisingly specific: corn. Once you reach the Foothills, you need to actually discover corn in the wild for the Millstone (and so gunpowder recipe) to unlock in your crafting menus.

In my runs, corn has reliably shown up:

• Growing in small patches near ancient village ruins
• In slightly greener pockets in the Foothills rather than the bare rocky slopes

Pick up at least one ear of corn and you should see a notification for new recipes. After this trigger, check your Workbench and you’ll find the option to craft a Millstone.

Step 3 – Build a Millstone and Unlock the Gunpowder Recipe

With corn discovered and Foothills progression done, the next step is to actually build the station you’ll be using to make gunpowder.

At a Workbench, craft a Millstone. The exact material names can vary slightly by version, but you’ll be spending:

• Some form of Millstone Parts or crafted components (usually made from stone/metal and found in Foothills chests or vendors)
• A chunk of wood for the frame

Place the Millstone at your base (I put mine beside storage and my Charcoal Kiln). Interact with it and scroll through the recipes – you should now see Homemade Gunpowder.

In the current version I’m playing, the recipe is:

• 10 Sulfur
• 20 Ash
• Yields 10 Gunpowder per craft

There’s some chatter about alternate numbers (like 25/25), but every test I’ve done across saves has used the 10 sulfur / 20 ash recipe. You can further boost output by hiring the NPC Mortar Joe (cost me 500 silver); when he’s assigned, my batches jump beyond the base 10, so he’s worth picking up once your economy can handle it.

Step 4 – How to Farm Sulfur Efficiently

Sulfur is the hard cap on how much gunpowder you can make, so this is where your route matters. You must have an Iron Pickaxe to mine proper sulfur nodes; lower-tier tools just bounce off.

Once you’re kitted out, here’s where I consistently find sulfur:

• Foothills – The best farm. Look for yellow-marbled boulders or clumpy yellowish gravel deposits in rocky outcrops and cliff bases.
• Coastal Jungle & early islands – Small amounts from scattered nodes; good if you’re passing by but not worth a dedicated trip once Foothills is unlocked.

After you unlock the Foothills and do a bit more story content, certain Natural Resources merchants also start selling sulfur for currency. I treat merchant sulfur as a top-up when I’m short for a batch, not the backbone of my supply.

My usual sulfur loop:

• Start at my Foothills base, then ride a clockwise circuit hitting every known sulfur rock cluster.
• Mine until my inventory is mostly full of sulfur and stone.
• Warp or sail back, dump sulfur in a dedicated chest right beside the Millstone.

Do this every time you’re in the area and your sulfur stock quietly snowballs without feeling like a grind.

Step 5 – How to Make Ash (Without Wasting Charcoal)

Ash is technically easier than sulfur, but it’s tied to another important resource: charcoal. You’ll need charcoal for smelting ingots, so it’s worth setting up a clean system from the start instead of randomly burning everything.

Use a Charcoal Kiln as your main ash factory:

• Burning wood in a Charcoal Kiln produces charcoal and ash as by-products.
• Then, at the Millstone, you can grind 2 charcoal into 6 ash if you’re short, at the cost of that charcoal.

Because charcoal is also your fuel for smelting ores, I try not to grind it unless I’m bottlenecked on ash but swimming in logs. A simple, low-micro setup that’s worked nicely:

• Build one kiln dedicated to gunpowder, another for ingot production.
• Feed the “gunpowder kiln” with cheap, abundant wood only (no rare fuels).
• Let it run in the background while you’re off mining or questing.
• When you return, collect all ash, keep some charcoal, and only grind charcoal into ash if your ash stack is still lower than your sulfur stack.

Because gunpowder uses twice as much ash as sulfur per batch (20 vs 10), it’s normal for ash to be your more volatile number. Keeping that extra kiln humming smooths things out.

Step 6 – Set Up a Gunpowder Production Hub

Once you have sulfur, ash, and a Millstone, the last real optimization is simply layout. A tight base layout turns gunpowder from a chore into something you casually top up between adventures.

• Cluster key stations: Put your Millstone, Charcoal Kiln, forge/smelter, and a couple of storage chests within a few steps of each other.
• Dedicated storage: One chest labeled (mentally or with placement) for sulfur and ash only. Another for finished gunpowder and ammo materials.
• Batch crafting: When you return from a sulfur run, dump everything, then stand at the Millstone and queue multiple gunpowder batches at once instead of trickling them out.

After a couple of play sessions using this setup, I usually stabilize at a few hundred gunpowder in reserve, which is enough to freely use firearms for most encounters instead of hoarding shots “just in case.”

Multiplayer and Patch Quirks to Keep in Mind

Two last notes based on recent runs and community chatter:

• Multiplayer progression sync: If you’re playing co-op, joining a friend who’s already in the Foothills or beyond can sometimes “skip” some gating for you, effectively giving you earlier access to zones and recipes than a strict solo run would. Don’t be surprised if gunpowder feels easier to unlock in a co-op world.
• Corn spawn oddities: A lot of players report corn being weirdly scarce in the Foothills. If you’re stuck, systematically sweep around ruin clusters and green patches rather than the bare rock; it’s easy to miss a single tiny field and assume the game bugged.
• Future balance changes: There’s been noise about tweaking corn and sulfur availability. If a patch lands, the broad flow (pirate drops first, then Millstone crafting with sulfur and ash) is still likely to hold, but exact node density could change.

With these systems in place, gunpowder shifts from being your most precious resource to just another thing your base quietly churns out. From there, the real limit is how many bullets and bombs you feel like crafting.

Related Guides

• Windrose: Beginner Guide – 5 Things to Know When Starting Out
• Windrose: How to Get Copper Ores and Copper Ingots – Fast Guide
• Windrose: How to Get Lamp Oil and Refill Your Lamp Efficiently
• Windrose: How to Get Rough Hide Fast – Best Farming Routes
• Windrose: How to Fast Travel with Bells – Crafting & Usage Guide