Items

# Loot & Items

## Quality Levels

There are eight quality levels in Windward. Depending on the type of item, each has a different affix. Quality goes from "damaged" to "legendary", also shown in a well-known color scheme (from other ARPGs) from grey to orange.

Don't confuse this with things such as "Sly", "Witty", "Scowling", and the like on crews. The quality prefix is still there on the line under the crew's aesthetic name. (Needs confirmation as to whether the aesthetic names are purely aesthetic!)

## Loot

Windward is an ARPG like Torchlight and Diablo but with a very different, unique setting and gameplay style. Nevertheless, its core mechanic is built around finding new loot and developing your ship/skills based on those items. They are randomly generated and have a wide variety of attributes and quality levels.

*All loot is local. It's not shared between players.* *[source]*

*Customization equipment is baked in after 30 seconds away from port.* *[source]*

*When you obtain an item that you can't physically pick up, it becomes a floating crate. If you free up some space, you will pick it up.*  *[source]*

# Theorycrafting

## Experience

*Actually... as you get more players in the instance, you start getting lords and dread lords instead of captains, which not only drop better loot but also give quite a bit of XP. I'd advise you to try a heroic in a 15-man group. If nothing else it's a hell of a lot more fun than soloing. :)*  *[source]*

*Do hired AI ships get XP? - Out in the world each will take 20% of experience from kills. In instances there is no penalty.* *[source]*

## Stars & Skull icon over ship

*What do the star icons mean? - Stars show how many kills (up to five) you've obtained since you died.* *[source]*

*What does the skull icon mean? - Actually... it does increase the critical strike chance. Equals six or more kills.* *[source]*

## PVP

*When PvP begins, everyone gets scaled to level 39. Even if you are level 750, you will still be 39 for the purposes of PvP.* *[source]*

## Sabotage

*10 minutes spent in combat gives you a one-time "kill every enemy in sight" ability. Use it wisely. However, this ability has no effect against other players or pirate bosses.* *[source]*

## Buildings

*Guard towers need to be built within a firing distance of the town. Lighthouses need to be built within sight distance.(Note: seem to be placable everywhere currently 5/25/15.* *[source]*

## Mortar barrel

*Mortar just deals HP-based damage. Assuming you're in a ship with a large amount of HP and are playing at 100% difficulty, nothing should ever come close to two-shotting you with them in defensive spec. 8-shot, maybe. The damage is an HP-based, so a fixed amount.* *[source]*

## Corrosive barrel

*Corrosive shots flat out ignore 50% armor value and debuffs armor by 0.35 \* diplomacy of the ship that fired it.* *[source]*

## Explosive barrel

*Explosive shots ignore 25% armor value.* *[source]*

## Water barrel

*By default Water Barrel can only heal up to 60%. Support specialization can raise it to 90%.*  *[source]*

## Sticky Tar Coating

*Near hits will act as if you landed them directly on top of enemy ships, and will cause the AoEs like Grogolov to stick to their target.* *[source]*

## Ship speed

*There is a hard cap, but you won't encounter it until much later... roughly 400% Speed effectiveness if I remember correctly.* *[source]*

## Gold prices

*Every 3 levels rewards increase by 25%. So if you were in a level 30 region you would be getting 1 + 30/3\*0.25 = 350% of what you would be getting in a region with level 0. In other words it's very beneficial to go to the highest level region you can.*  *[source]*