Windrose Plus Guide - On Every Windrose Server, Managed by GameGrid

What Windrose Plus is

Windrose Plus is a free, third-party community mod for Windrose dedicated servers, published on GitHub by HumanGenome. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Windrose developers, and GameGrid does not write it — we install it, expose its settings in the panel, and keep it updated.

A Windrose dedicated server on its own has no admin console, no map and no way to read its own status. Windrose Plus adds all three, plus a large set of gameplay values the game does not otherwise expose.

What you get: a web dashboard with an admin console for the 30-plus console commands Windrose Plus ships, a live Sea Chart map, an item catalog of 840 Windrose items, a status module the dashboard serves as JSON, and 127 settings in the GameGrid panel across 14 sections.

It is entirely server-side. Your players install nothing.

It works by injecting code into the game server through UE4SS. That is worth knowing: some of its settings change your world in ways that cannot be undone (multipliers in particular), and a third-party mod can affect stability. GameGrid watches for the second one — if Windrose Plus ever stops your server from starting, GameGrid starts the server without it and tries it again after a few clean starts or the next game update, and you can turn it back on yourself from the Windrose Plus tab.

It is already on

GameGrid installs Windrose Plus on every Windrose server, by itself, and keeps it there. Each server's live Sea Chart is drawn from its own world by Windrose Plus, so it is not an option you switch on and there is no switch to switch it off.

• A new server gets it before its first start, usually within a few minutes of being created, so it boots with Windrose Plus.
• A server that did not have it gets it automatically. If the server is running at the time, it is installed without a restart and loads the next time the server starts.
• If the install cannot finish (GitHub unreachable, for example), your server starts and runs normally without it, the Windrose Plus tab says it is being installed, and GameGrid keeps retrying on its own.

The Windrose Plus tab shows a badge reading "On" (with the version) and "Managed by GameGrid", or "Being installed" while that is still happening. If the badge reads "Installed · not loading", Windrose Plus is on your server but GameGrid paused its loader to keep your server starting, and the live map, live positions and item delivery are off until it is turned back on: if the box has a Turn UE4SS back on button (it does when UE4SS crashed your server at startup), press it, once a day; otherwise open a support ticket and mention WindrosePlus (see Windrose Plus Troubleshooting Guide). The RCON password Windrose Plus uses is generated for you; reveal it any time with the eye icon beside the RCON Password field.

Using it

The tab shows a "Live Dashboard" row with an "Open Dashboard" link and the port it is on. The button opens the dashboard in a new tab on its own secure address, wpdash.wdcgamegrid.com, separate from the panel — the dashboard’s own HTTP port is firewalled to the game host and is not reachable from a browser directly. It opens already signed in: the panel gives the tab a one-time link (it works once, and only for about a minute), so there is no password to type, and only an account with access to this server can open it. The sign-in lasts up to 8 hours, or ends after 2 hours without use; if the tab says the link has expired, press Open Dashboard again. Running commands from its console needs the permission that lets you change server settings, and it is checked every time.

The dashboard has two tabs: a console with autocomplete and a command reference, and the live Sea Chart. GameGrid draws the chart for you, with nothing to run: Windrose creates its world's terrain when the first player joins, so the chart is drawn about a minute after the first player joins, then kept, and drawn again after a game update or on a new world.

Below the dashboard link, the 14 settings sections appear in a sidebar. Pick a section, change what you want, and press "Save Changes" — the panel then tells you whether the change is live or needs a restart.

Windrose Plus is set up on its tab only. Its files are hidden from the Files tab on purpose, because deleting one silently stops the mod loading, so the tab covers all of them: the 127 settings in the sidebar; a read-only "Set by GameGrid" block, which shows the dashboard port and the bind address GameGrid manages for you; and "Per-item overrides (advanced)", a text box for each of Weapons, Food, Gear, Creatures and Ships where you write lines shaped like Weapon_Cutlass_Damage = 1.5 (an illustration of the pattern). A line that does not fit saves nothing and is named by its number, and overrides apply at the next server start. See Windrose Plus Settings Catalog for the details.

It is also what carries your economy. There is no separate economy toggle for Windrose: Windrose Plus is where the player list, the 840-item catalogue and the playtime tracking come from, so every Windrose server has an Economy tab with a shop whose purchases are delivered live into the world. See Windrose Economy and Shop.

The settings, in one paragraph each

Gameplay Multipliers (restart): loot, XP, craft efficiency, cooking speed and harvest yield.

RCON / Admin Console: the dashboard switch and its password.

Server Query: the status module. It is not a Steam server-browser responder — see Windrose Plus Server Query & Status API.

Admin Steam IDs: the Steam64 IDs Windrose Plus treats as admins.

POI Scanner: the background scan behind the map’s point-of-interest markers.

Live Map: the Sea Chart’s update rates and its public-map mode.

Diagnostics (restart): Log Level, how much Windrose Plus writes to its own log.

Player Stats, Co-op Scaling, Rest Effects, Swimming, Shared Combat Effects, Hearth and Talents (all restart): the INI-backed half, written into an override PAK the game loads at start.

Talents: the talent trees of the four specializations (Crusher, Fencer, Marksman and Tough Guy), the largest section by far.

Full defaults and ranges are in Windrose Plus Settings Catalog.

It stays on

There is no off switch for Windrose Plus on GameGrid, because your map comes from it. Its settings are yours: leave the gameplay values at their defaults and Windrose Plus changes nothing about how Windrose plays — it reads your world for the map and the panel, and adds the console.

If you ever need it out of the way — say a problem you suspect it of — open a support ticket and we can pause it for you on our side.

Updates

GameGrid polls GitHub for new Windrose Plus releases every 30 minutes, and pushes a new release to every Windrose server. You do not have to do anything, and restarting your server does not trigger a check — the schedule is the platform’s, not your server’s.

A Windrose game update can leave the mod behind for a while. Your server still starts: if the game stops while loading Windrose Plus two starts in a row, GameGrid starts it without Windrose Plus, the Live Map says so, and Windrose Plus is tried again automatically after the next game update or Windrose Plus release. You do not have to switch anything.

What an update cannot take away is the install itself. Part of Windrose Plus has to live inside the game's own folder, which an update replaces. GameGrid puts that part back on your next start, before the game process runs — so the dashboard, the Sea Chart, the player list and the shop's item delivery come back with the server instead of quietly staying gone. You do not press anything.

Release notes are at github.com/HumanGenome/WindrosePlus.