Wayfarer

Description

Status: actively in early development.

Wayfarer is an all-in-one, modular co-op enhancement mod for Windrose. Instead of one narrow fix, it's a growing set of independently-toggleable "arms"  Water, Crew Survival, Crew & Social, and Climbing — built on a shared, server-authoritative Core, so a host can turn on exactly the systems their crew wants and leave the rest off. Everything hooks into systems the base game already has — existing items, crafting tiers, real combat attributes — instead of bolting on a parallel economy, and every mechanic is designed co-op-first: solo play is just a 1-player session, not a separate code path.

The flagship first arm, Water, goes after Windrose's most-complained-about mechanic: buoyancy currently forces you back to the surface and there's no real way to dive. Wayfarer breaks that. Genuine 3D underwater movement, a dedicated breath system, and real drowning stakes (including a full downed/rescue-window state, not just an instant death) if you push too deep for too long — plus a saner surface-swim stamina cost that helps every swimmer, not just divers.

Sitting alongside the arms in Core is a global damage resistance — Windrose's own combat can feel brutally punishing, especially early on, and this is a direct fix rather than a workaround: 0% (vanilla) up to 80% damage reduction, defaulting to the max. It's not tucked away as a debug option — it's a real, first-class, host-configured setting, because for a lot of groups it's the difference between "this game is unplayable" and actually being able to enjoy it.

Every host-facing setting in Wayfarer — Combat Balance, dive/oxygen/drowning timing, per-arm on/off — is configured through one plain-text file, ServerConfig.lua, that ships with the server package. No in-game menu round-trip, no per-client desync risk: the host edits a commented Lua table directly and restarts. See Installation below.

Diving, swimming, breath-holding, drowning damage, and the full downed state are all live and playable in co-op today. See Main Features below for exactly what's live vs. in progress vs. planned.

Installation Instructions

• []Download the Wayfarer installer package. It's self-contained — UE4SS is bundled, so there's nothing else to download separately.[/]

  []Close Windrose if it's running.[/]

  []Run the installer script. It auto-detects your Steam Windrose install; if it can't find it, it'll ask you to point at the folder that contains the R5 subfolder.[/]

  []Launch Windrose normally through Steam — no extra steps, no manual file copying.[/]

  []Everyone in your co-op session needs Wayfarer installed, including the host. The mod checks versions on join and shows a clear warning on a mismatch instead of silently desyncing.[/]

  []Running a dedicated server? Download the separate Wayfarer server files package — not the client installer, the two are deliberately different — and copy it into your server's R5\Binaries\Win64 folder next to the server executable. It ships with its own UE4SS config tuned for dedicated-server stability; the client and server configs are not interchangeable, since the server one disables a set of hooks that are safe for a windowed client but not for a headless server process.[/]

  []Configuring the server? Open ue4ss\Mods\Wayfarer\ServerConfig.lua in a text editor — it's a short, commented file covering Combat Balance, the Water arm toggle, and dive/oxygen/drowning timing. Change what you want, save, restart the server. This is the only way to configure these — there's no in-game slider for them, deliberately (see Requirements for why).[/]

  []Updating later: just re-run the installer (or re-copy the server package). It safely overwrites the mod's own files and leaves the rest of your install, including your ServerConfig.lua edits, untouched.[/]

  Main Features

  []Modular Core — safe version-handshake on join, per-arm toggles, in-game diagnostic dump for bug reports, all host-side settings in one ServerConfig.lua file.[/]

  []Combat Balance — a global damage-resistance setting, 0-80%, defaulting to the max. Hosts who want a gentler fight can dial it down or off entirely in ServerConfig.lua. Independent of the Water arm — works whether or not Water is enabled.[/]

  [*]Real 3D diving