Configuring Windrose+

Which Windrose+ multipliers actually work, which five are disabled no-ops, the PAK rebuild step most guides miss, and what you can tune without it.

Updated September 28, 2026

Windrose

Windrose+ is an open-source community mod framework for Windrose dedicated servers. Its own description is exact: "Server-side mod framework for Windrose dedicated servers. Adds RCON, server query, live map, and admin commands via UE4SS." It is MIT licensed and lives at github.com/humangenome/WindrosePlus.

It exists because the shipped Windrose dedicated server has no admin console, no RCON and no scripting API, and because the only multipliers the game exposes natively are combat and ship ones. Windrose+ is the de facto extension layer, and it is actively maintained.

Almost every Windrose+ guide online lists the wrong config keys

Windrose+ uses lower-case, underscore-separated keys nested under a multipliers object. Guides that show XPMultiplier, LootMultiplier or StackSizeMultiplier at the top level of the file are wrong, and a file written that way parses fine and changes nothing. The key names below come from the project's own docs/config-reference.md.

What Windrose+ Actually Changes

Five multipliers work. Five more parse but do nothing, and the project is blunt about which is which.

Key	Default	Effect
`xp`	`1`	Experience gain. Faster levelling pays out talent and stat points at the normal rate, so there is no separate points multiplier
`loot`	`1`	Loot quantity from chests, containers and enemies. Equipment drops are deliberately excluded so gear cannot be duplicated
`harvest_yield`	`1`	Resource node yield: berries, ore, wood, herbs. Rounds down to a floor of `1` per node
`craft_efficiency`	`1`	Crafting efficiency, and it runs the opposite way to a cost multiplier. `2.0` halves recipe costs, `0.5` doubles them
`cooking_speed`	`1`	Cooking, fermentation and smelting speed. `2.0` is twice as fast

craft_efficiency is inverted compared to the old craft_cost name

Higher means cheaper. If you have an older config using craft_cost, it still parses with identical semantics, but do not assume a value below 1.0 makes things cheaper — it makes them more expensive.

These five are the whole list. The following keys are accepted so that old config files still load, and the documentation marks each one "Disabled/no-op":

stack_size, crop_speed, weight, inventory_size, points_per_level

They are not oversights. Inventory-affecting changes can become part of player save state after a login or save and can crash Windrose's inventory validator, and non-default crop timing can crash its crop validator. Setting them does nothing, which is the safe outcome.

Windrose+'s multipliers are separate from the ones in WorldDescription.json, which cover combat and ship stats. See World Settings for those.

The Rebuild Step Most Guides Omit

Editing windrose_plus.json is not enough on its own:

Edits to multipliers in windrose_plus.json or to any .ini file need to be baked into a game override PAK before the server launches — otherwise the game loads the unmodified defaults.

That rebuild is what tools/WindrosePlus-BuildPak.ps1 does, and StartWindrosePlusServer.bat runs it as part of launching the server. If the server is started by any other route, your multipliers silently do not apply. This is the single most common reason a Windrose+ config "does not work".

windrose_plus.json

The file sits in the server root and is created on first run. Real structure:

{
  "multipliers": {
    "loot": 2.0,
    "xp": 3.0,
    "craft_efficiency": 2.0,
    "cooking_speed": 2.0,
    "harvest_yield": 2.0
  },
  "rcon": { "enabled": true, "password": "your-password-here" },
  "server": { "http_port": 8780, "bind_ip": "" },
  "livemap": { "public": { "enabled": false, "token": "" } }
}

windrose_plus.json

The rcon, server and livemap sections are what give you the admin console, the query endpoint and the live map. Those are the features most server owners install Windrose+ for in the first place.

xp only ratchets upward

Once raised, lowering xp again is refused unless you set WINDROSEPLUS_ALLOW_DOWNGRADE=1. Pick a rate you are willing to live with.

Preset Configurations

Only the five working multipliers are worth writing. Anything else in the file is decoration.

Casual

Friendly to weekend crews without turning the game off:

{
  "multipliers": {
    "xp": 1.5,
    "loot": 1.5,
    "harvest_yield": 1.5,
    "craft_efficiency": 1.2,
    "cooking_speed": 1.5
  }
}

windrose_plus.json

Grind-Free

For crews who want naval combat and exploration, not resource management:

{
  "multipliers": {
    "xp": 3.0,
    "loot": 3.0,
    "harvest_yield": 3.0,
    "craft_efficiency": 2.0,
    "cooking_speed": 2.0
  }
}

windrose_plus.json

Hardcore

Slower than vanilla. Note craft_efficiency below 1.0 makes recipes more expensive:

{
  "multipliers": {
    "xp": 0.75,
    "loot": 0.85,
    "harvest_yield": 0.85,
    "craft_efficiency": 0.8,
    "cooking_speed": 1.0
  }
}

windrose_plus.json

Installing Windrose+

The project ships a Windows installer script, not a drop-in folder:

Download WindrosePlus.zip from the latest GitHub release. Do not use GitHub's "Source code" zip — the generated tool binaries repak.exe and retoc.exe are only attached to the release asset.
Extract it into the Windrose dedicated server folder, the one containing R5\.
Open PowerShell in that folder and run .\install.ps1. This downloads UE4SS, installs the mod and sets up the dashboard. Re-running it is safe and preserves your configs and mods.
Start the server through StartWindrosePlusServer.bat, as Administrator. The UE4SS proxy DLL needs elevation to load.

This does not work on a standard hosted Windrose server, including ours

Windrose+ needs three things a game panel does not give you: a PowerShell session to run install.ps1, an elevated Windows login, and a startup command that goes through StartWindrosePlusServer.bat so the override PAK gets rebuilt. A hosted Windrose server gives you a file manager and a console attached to the running game process, and the startup command launches WindroseServer-Win64-Shipping.exe directly. Uploading the files by SFTP therefore gets you a config file the game never reads. If Windrose+ support matters to you, open a ticket and say so — it needs a purpose-built server image, not a manual install.

The developer's own answer to "Can I run on Linux / headless?" is "Currently Windows-only, unfortunately", which is the root of all of this.

What You Can Tune on a Hosted Server Today

Two places, both native to the game and neither needing a mod.

The Startup tab owns the server's identity and connection settings. The panel rewrites ServerDescription.json from these on every boot, so edit them here rather than in the file: Server Name, Server Password, Password Protected, Max players, Invite code, Use Direct Connection and Auto Update.

WorldDescription.json holds the per-world difficulty parameters. There is one per world, at:

R5\Saved\SaveProfiles\Default\RocksDB_v2\<game version>\Worlds\<world id>\WorldDescription.json

The values are gameplay tags rather than plain keys, written like "{\"TagName\": \"WDS.Parameter.MobHealthMultiplier\"}": 1. The full native set:

Parameter	Default	Range
`MobHealthMultiplier`	1.0	0.2–5.0
`MobDamageMultiplier`	1.0	0.2–5.0
`ShipsHealthMultiplier`	1.0	0.4–5.0
`ShipsDamageMultiplier`	1.0	0.2–2.5
`BoardingDifficultyMultiplier`	1.0	0.2–5.0
`Coop.StatsCorrectionModifier`	1.0	0.0–2.0
`Coop.ShipStatsCorrectionModifier`	0.0	0.0–2.0
`CombatDifficulty`	Normal	Easy / Normal / Hard
`Coop.SharedQuests`	true	true / false
`EasyExplore`	false	true / false

Notice what is not on that list: no XP, loot, harvest, crafting or cooking multiplier. That gap is precisely what Windrose+ exists to fill.

World settings need the updater, not just a text edit

After editing WorldDescription.json the developer's guide has you stop the server and run R5WorldDescriptionUpdater.exe <path_to_world>\WorldDescription.json from the server root. A hand-edited file that never goes through the updater is not reliably picked up.

Lua Mods

Windrose+ hosts community Lua mods. From the project's README: "Drop a folder into WindrosePlus/Mods/ with a mod.json and your script. It hot-reloads automatically." The scripting API is documented in docs/scripting-guide.md in the repository.

UE4SS Mods

UE4SS is the loader Windrose+ itself is built on. Mods that target it hook the engine directly, so they can do more than a plain PAK mod and break more often — expect every Windrose patch to break them until the author updates. Test on a throwaway world first, and keep a known-good backup of every working state.

Backups Before Mod Changes

Snapshot through the panel's Backups tab before installing any mod, before a Windrose+ major version bump, and before removing a mod that touched saved game data. A bad mod can corrupt the save, and a backup is the only recovery.

Common Issues

Multiplier changes have no effect: the override PAK was not rebuilt. The multipliers only apply when the server is launched through StartWindrosePlusServer.bat, which runs the rebuild first.
A multiplier is set but nothing changes, and the PAK did rebuild: check it is not one of stack_size, crop_speed, weight, inventory_size or points_per_level. Those are disabled no-ops by design.
Recipes got more expensive after you lowered craft_efficiency: that is the documented behaviour. Higher is cheaper.
Lowering xp is refused: the value only ratchets up unless WINDROSEPLUS_ALLOW_DOWNGRADE=1 is set.
Nothing loads at all on a hosted server: see the warning above — the install needs PowerShell and an elevated Windows session, so an SFTP upload alone will not bring Windrose+ up.
Mods worked yesterday, broke after a restart: Windrose patched overnight and Auto Update pulled the new build before the mod caught up. Wait for the mod author, or see Updates and Maintenance.