How to save yourself from an enormous headache in Windforge

One of the many advantages of not being a videogame journalist is that they get to play games early. This means they can do the really dumb stuff so you don’t have to. For instance, building a house zeppelin the wrong way in Windforge, the impending Terraria meets Moby-Dick-but-set-in-a-steampunk-version-of-Bespin RPG.

One of your early tasks in Windforge is to rebuild your house zeppelin after a crash landing. It’s a tutorial for how travel works. You have a balloon for lift, propellers for propulsion, and engines for power (don’t worry, you’ll get your guns once you get to the first town). You engage all these components at a control panel. When you “use” the control panel, the inputs that would normally move your character move your house zeppelin. Moving in a given direction engages the appropriately mounted propellers. Your house zeppelin goes up and down and left and right according to the game physics of the balloon, the propellers, and the engines, with a dash of character skill on top. It’s a pretty nifty moment when your house lifts off and you see it in action the first time. Like the house in Up. But steampunk instead of all those clown balloons.

But in my game, there was apparently some kind of bug. I kept taking damage. And because I didn’t know why I was taking damage, I was unable to prevent the damage. This leads to death. Which leads to reloading. Was it a bug? Was I dying from exposure? Did I need to craft a warmer jacket? Being a putative game journalist, I investigated.

After the jump, a horrible way to die

The weird thing is that I didn’t die on the way to the first town. I only died when I left the town. And quickly. It turns out I took damage only when I moved to the left. What kind of weird bug is that? It turns out it’s a bug called Letting Tom Chick Build A Zeppelin.

When you’re repairing your house zeppelin, you can mount the components wherever you want. I put the engines on the bottom deck, the lift propellers underneath the bottom deck, and the horizontal propellers on the walls up top. I put the control panel on the outside so my character had a nice view while flying. Check it out:

Which is all good and well. Here’s how it looks when my character is driving:

Let me zoom in a little bit:

Note that vertical line touching the top of my character’s head. I’m now going to share with you a protip:

Do not mount a propeller at head level just above the control panel.

Every time I flew the house zeppelin to the left, it engaged the propeller on the right side, chopping me in the head with the propeller blades. I had built the equivalent of a helicopter that decapitates the pilot. And while I’m at it, here’s another free protip:

Don’t rear end a giant honkin’ skywhale. The whale will win that enounter.

Windforge is out next week.