Windrose Oil Lamp Guide: Get Refill Animal Fat

Finding your first lamp in Windrose is a wonderful early milestone, and the game generously provides a couple of ways to pick one up for free right on the starting island!

Here is a friendly guide on where to find your lamp, how to unlock its crafting recipe, and the best way to keep it fueled for your adventures.

Where to Find a Free Lamp

There are two confirmed pickup locations in the starting area. You can choose whichever one fits your current exploration route best:

1. The Smuggler's Cache (Southern Starting Area)

Located near where you initially spawn, look for a hole in the ground hidden by a covering of wood and leaves.

• What to do: Break the debris with your axe or pickaxe and head down.
• Note: Be ready for a quick battle with a Drowned enemy guarding the area! Once defeated, open the Smuggler's Chest to claim your Empty Lamp.

2. Pirate Remains (Eastern Coastal Jungle)

If you head toward the eastern edge of the Coastal Jungle, you will find a point of interest featuring a small boat.

• What to do: Next to the boat, you'll find a Decrepit Chest. Opening it rewards you with a lamp, a new weapon, and a Blurry Sketch of the Island (which beautifully kicks off the Fifteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest side quest).
• Bonus: There is also a nearby Cache containing a Fast Travel Bell, which is highly recommended to pick up early to make traveling across the islands much easier!

Unlocking and Crafting the Recipe

The moment you pick up your very first lamp from either location, your character will automatically learn the blueprint! If you ever happen to misplace your lamp later on, you can easily craft a replacement at your Workbench using the following materials:

• 4x Copper Ingots
• 1x Rope

How to Refill Your Lamp at the Workbench

When you first pick up the lamp, it will be completely empty. To fill it up so you can safely explore dark caves and dungeons, you will need to use Animal Fat at your Workbench.

Because the refill option lives in a specific menu tab, here is a simple step-by-step walkthrough to help you find it easily:

1. Gather Animal Fat: Defeat wild Boars or Sows on the island until you have collected 3x Animal Fat.
2. Access the Workbench: Walk up to your Workbench and press E to open the menu.
3. Switch Tabs (Press D): By default, the menu opens to the standard crafting screen. Press the D key to switch over to the Refill/Repair tab (the second tab).
4. Select Your Lamp: Look through the list in this specific tab, select your lamp, and confirm the action.
5. Success! Your 3 Animal Fat will be used, beautifully restoring your lamp to 100% fuel.

A Quick Tip on Lamp Efficiency

To get the absolute most value out of your resources, it is best to let your lamp's fuel level run relatively low before refilling it. Each refill restores the lamp completely to 100% regardless of its current charge, so waiting until it is close to empty ensures you aren't accidentally missing out on potential burn time. Just be sure to top it off before heading into a dangerous new dungeon!

Animal Fat drops from pigs. Specifically from Boars, Sows, and their more aggressive evolutionary descendants. Nothing else confirmed in the early game drops it: you may kill every bird, crab, and Drowned on the island and return with absolutely nothing useful for lamp fuel.

Starting Island: Boars and Sows

Both animal types roam the starting island freely, with a notable concentration near the Smuggler's Cache. Sows are technically a source, but they are inefficient: the drop is not guaranteed, and some players report killing two or three in a row without a single piece of fat. Boars are the priority target. They drop Animal Fat at a noticeably higher rate and are the most statistically reliable investment of your violence. They hit harder, but early-game combat is not a personality test you are allowed to fail by being cowardly about a pig.

Boars drop 2 Animal Fat per kill. Sows drop 1. You do the math, then you do the right thing.

South and Southeast Islands: Savage and Charging Boars

Once you have a ship and basic gear, the islands to the south and southeast of the starter zone introduce Savage Boars and Charging Boars. These variants drop two to three chunks of Animal Fat per kill, making them significantly more efficient to farm than anything on the starting island. They also drop Rough Hide, which is required for a large portion of mid-game crafting recipes, so hunting them solves two supply problems simultaneously. A good clearing loop involves killing everything in an area, moving away briefly to allow respawns, and cycling back. It is not glamorous. Neither is walking into a cave with an empty lamp.

If you lost your lamp: and the fact that this section exists suggests someone has, repeatedly: the Workbench will craft you a replacement once the recipe is unlocked. The costs are not punishing, but they do require copper processing, so you cannot do it empty-handed at two in the morning on a whim.

Unlocks after picking up the first lamp. Found in the main crafting tab.

• 4x Copper Ingot
• 1x Rope

Copper Ingots require copper ore smelted at a Furnace, which means you need to have already gone into caves to get copper: ideally, with a working lamp: to then make a lamp. The universe has a sense of humour. Plan ahead and do not lose your lamp.

The Floor-Standing Torch is a cheap emergency alternative. It costs 2x Wood, can be built and deconstructed anywhere, and will light up a section of cave for free. It does not move with you, so it is not a substitute for a proper lamp on longer routes: but as a temporary measure while you are waiting on copper, it does the job without complaint.

How Many Lamps Do You Actually Need

One lamp is fine for the starting island. The caves there are short, the fuel economy is forgiving, and you can get back to your Workbench fast enough that running dry is mostly your own fault. Do not over-engineer your setup for the tutorial zone.

The moment you set sail for larger islands, the calculus changes completely. Windrose bigger cave systems burn through one to two full lamps in a single run. If you have only one lamp and it empties mid-dungeon, you are navigating out by memory and optimism, both of which have killed more virtual pirates than any enemy in the game. Carrying two or three lamps eliminates the need to interrupt a copper mining session or a ruins exploration run to trek back to base for a refill. The material cost at that point: especially once you are farming Savage Boars and sitting on a Fat surplus: is trivial. The inconvenience of not having them is not.

• Starting island caves: 1 lamp is sufficient
• Medium island caves and ruins: bring 2 lamps, carry spare Animal Fat
• Large island cave systems and extended mining runs: 3 lamps minimum, plus Fast Travel Bell placement near the cave entrance
• Night exploration above ground: 1 lamp is fine, but be aware the Drowned and Thorn Fiddlers become active after dark

There is also the matter of the Curios tab in your inventory: a frequently overlooked section that stores collected notes and diary entries found in caves and ruins. If you are already burning lamps to explore dungeons, you may as well collect the lore while you are there. Some of it advances side quests. None of it requires additional light sources. It just requires that you actually be in the cave, with a working lamp, like an adult.