Palm Seeds are a farming resource in Windrose that unlock a renewable supply of palm wood and materials once you plant them at your base. The catch is that the palm trees lining every beach do not drop them, which sends a lot of new players into hours of pointless logging before they figure out what the game actually wants.
Where palm seeds drop
Only the mature, large palms that grow deeper inland on an island can roll a seed drop. The shorter palms scattered along the shoreline and near starting zones produce wood and nothing else, no matter how many you clear. Head away from the beach into the denser jungle interior and look for the taller palm variants.
The drop is a chance roll, not a guaranteed reward. Expect to chop several qualifying trees before a seed appears, and do not be surprised if a run of 10 or 15 big palms yields only one or two. The same rule applies to ficus and other tree-type seeds.
Requirements before you start
| Requirement | Details |
|---|---|
| Tool | Axe, crafted at a Workbench from Wood and Stone. An upgraded axe (Iron tier) is needed to fully fell the largest inland palms. |
| Location | Inland areas of the starter island, away from the coastline. Focus on Coastal Jungle forest zones. |
| Target | Large palm trees only. Small coastal palms do not roll seed drops. |
| Action | Chop the tree all the way down until it disappears. Partial chops give only wood. |
How to farm them efficiently
Step 1: Craft or upgrade your axe at the Workbench. If you are still using a basic axe and the biggest palms refuse to go down, that is your bottleneck — the larger trunks need a higher-tier axe to fell completely.
Step 2: Travel inland until the palms look noticeably taller and the terrain shifts from beach to jungle. Clear the large palms in that patch one by one, finishing each tree before moving to the next, so the seed roll can actually fire.
Step 3: Bank your first few seeds and head home. Because trees in Windrose generally do not respawn on islands as you clear them, leaning on wild farming long-term is a dead end. The goal is to get enough seeds to start growing your own.
Planting palm seeds at your base
Seeds are planted in a Seedbed, which is unlocked once you reach the Foothills biome and collect Fertile Soil from the ancient farm ruins scattered there. Each Seedbed costs 5 Fertile Soil and holds four saplings, one in each corner.
Step 1: Gather Fertile Soil from the small plots found around abandoned farms and ruins in the Foothills (and later the Cursed Swamps). A couple of these ancient farms is usually enough to build out a full garden.
Step 2: Open the Build menu with B, go to the Farming tab, and place a Seedbed on flat ground at your base. Drop a Palm Sapling into any of the four slots.
Step 3: Wait for the tree to fully grow (roughly an hour or so), then interact with it to harvest. Planted trees always return the seed you used, so once you have a stable pool of seeds, the farm becomes self-sustaining.
Automating palm seed production in Tortuga
Once you reach Tortuga, the Farming Contractor becomes the endgame answer to palm seed grinding. You hire the contractor for a one-time fee and then feed it resources to run automated harvest jobs while you do other things.
| Step | Cost / Input |
|---|---|
| Hire Farming Contractor | 10 Gold (one-time) |
| Assign a farming task | 20 Silver per task |
| Input per task | 50 Palm Seeds |
| Run time | About 8 hours per cycle |
Because the contractor eats 50 seeds per assignment, build up a seedbed farm first. Burning your whole stock on decoration or a single contractor run before you have a renewable pool will put you right back at the coastline, swinging at trees that will never drop what you need.
Why you might still be getting nothing
If you have chopped dozens of trees without a single seed, the issue almost always falls into one of three categories:
- You are hitting coastal or forest-edge palms that simply cannot drop seeds.
- You are not finishing trees — the tree has to disappear from the ground for the drop roll to trigger.
- Your axe tier is too low to fully fell the larger inland palms, so you only ever collect wood from partial chops.
Fix those three, focus on the biggest trunks you can find inland, and seeds will start trickling in. From there, the pivot to a Seedbed farm — and eventually a Tortuga contractor — is what turns palm seeds from a rare annoyance into a passive resource you stop thinking about.
Windrose is in early access, so drop rates, biome names, and contractor costs may shift in future patches. The core loop of inland-only drops, Seedbed farming, and Tortuga automation has been stable through the current build.