Do NOT Starve - A Guide to Food

[BeastNips]

Foreword

These guides have been done a lot, I've even made one myself, but they seem to be quite buried in the forums. Also let's face it: people often don't search forums. It's been a while since I last played but I've got back into the game recently. When I've been leading groups of relatively inexperienced players and cooking up a crockpot full of Bacon and Eggs I'm getting a lot of "Wow, how do you make that? I usually just eat meatballs." I'd like to share my food strategy and talk a little bit about the food mechanics in Don't Starve.

This guide is designed with Wilson in mind, as he's a neutral don't starve character. It will work with any character, but some characters may find different food strategies easier. 

Edit: Please note these three points:

1. Lots of this guide can be done in more efficient ways; I'm a quite experienced player and I've taken into account these techniques and decided the way I've stated it is the most friendly way for new players. You may disagree but please send me a message or start some kind of food production comparison thread instead of posting here. 
2. If you skip to the end there is a tl;dr version for more experienced players (you may want to read the section above about 'Spring' as I assumed more experienced players wouldn't need it)
3. This is designed as a basic food guide. I'll be producing another guide on 'Advanced Food Production' another time so please don't trouble yourself to post how other foods are better than Bacon & Eggs. 

I hope none of that comes across as rude, I'd just like to keep the thread on track  

 

Strategy

This guide is based around meat. Farming is great but I feel it takes a while to get up and running to a point where it's useful. Meat is the focus and it's all about Spiders and Rabbits. Before we go any further there are a few things we need to get straight: MM is referring to Monster Meat; morsel is referring to the small meat you get from rabbits. The next thing to understand is the mechanics of meat and other basic food stuffs, which brings me on to...

 

Food and the Crockpot

The crockpot is a way to dramatically increase the value of your basic food stuffs by turning them into something more than the sum of its parts. You may have made meatballs, so you'll know that restores more food than eating 1 morsel and 3 berries (what it takes to make it). The moral of the story is: with a few exceptions, always cook basic foods in the crockpot. 

Food is split up into different categories. For this guide the one we really need to know is the meat category and how it works (check the wiki for more info on different food groups). Recipes containing meat are dependent on how much meat is in the recipe and the other ingredients present or not present, and the meat has a numerical value:

• Meat (referring to big meat) is worth 1. 
• Morsels (rabbits) are worth 0.5. 
• MM (monster meat) has a value of 1 but if a recipe contains more than 1 MM you run the risk of turning it into a monster lasagne (which is bad).

 

Setting Up and Rabbits

Rabbits are a crucial part of this food strategy as they provide a limitless supply of morsels that are active through the winter; the only time they stop producing is spring where you have a decent alternative as well as most likely a decent supply saved up from the previous winter in the form of jerky (which we'll go into later). When you set up your base you want to be within a screen or two of rabbit holes. I'd say at least 4 rabbit holes per player will be acceptable. Your best bet for this is to setup in a Savanna biome (not too close to the Beefallo!); this gives you the dual advantage of lots of grass and easy Beefallo for Wool and Manure. 

 

Exploration

This is slightly off-topic but you need to explore a lot for the first few days to get a feel for the map and where particular resources are. As well as finding your camp site with lots of rabbit holes, you need to find:

• Beefallo
• Spiders
• A swamp
• A rock biome

Make sure you have plenty stone, gold, wood, twigs and grass before you setup camp. In terms of gold, try to get around 16 (I think) as you'll need to build an Alchemy Engine and a Birdcage and you'll want to do this without an additional trip to the rock biome. 

 

Pine Cones

Save your Pine Cones from your exploring early in the game. Once you settle, you want to immediately plant around 10 of them in a clump away from anything flammable. 

 

Traps

Once you've set-up your fire pit, science machine/alchemy engine etc and planted your pine cones, you'll want to place your traps over your rabbit holes. I use a mod called auto-retrap; I can't recommend it enough. 

 

Burn Them Down! 

Once the trees you planted earlier reach their first stage of growth (should take about a day), set a couple on fire and let them burn. Once they've burnt, chop them down for charcoal. Use this to make your first crockpot. 

 

Early Meatballs

You're probably going to be eating berries and carrots while you're exploring so hopefully you should have some of these left over. To get you through the next few days you'll use your morsels from your rabbit traps with your berries and carrots to make meatballs:

• Meatballs require 0.5 meat and 3 filler: 1 morsel and 3 carrots/berries will make them just fine.

 

Swamp

At this point you should have a Crockpot and traps set up around your base. Now you're off to the swamp that you found earlier! You did find the swamp, didn't you? In this swamp you're looking for (if I remember rightly) 8 Reeds; get 10 to be on the safe side. Bring 3 traps with you to the swamp because you will most likely find a Spider nest. If not, this is the next thing you're heading to so make sure you found them earlier!

 

Tackling Spider Dens

The safest (while not the most efficient) way to tackle a spider den is to use traps:

1. Place 2-3 traps in a row starting at the edge of the spider's web; not too close together.
2. Walk on said spider's web.
3. Let the spiders that emerge see you and chase you.
4. Run through your traps.
5. Loot traps.
6. Rinse and repeat.

You may need more than 1 den, but you're looking to get 4 silk here.You'll also get some MM and spider glands. Do not turn your MM into meatballs.

 

Monster Meat

MM is a huge part of this food strategy and one of the best sources of MM is spiders. Early game this will be tricky which is why you're getting by with meatballs for now. The goal here is to get 4 silk, and eventually find tier 3 spiders dens so you can destroy them and relocate them to near your base for an easy, infinite supply of MM. I'll discuss this shortly.

 

Birdcage

 

Use the reeds you collected earlier to make paper which is found in your 'refine' tab. You'll need 2 seeds which should be easy to collect pretty much anywhere on the map. Use 2 paper, 2 seeds and 6 gold (I think) to make a Bird Cage and place it in your base. 

 

 

Bird Trap

 

1. Use the 4 spider silk from earlier to craft a bird trap in your 'survival' tab.
2. Place it slightly outside of your base and place 1 seed in it as bait. 
3. Once your bird trap captures a bird, loot the trap so the bird is alive in your inventory.
4. Click the bird and place it in the birdcage. 

 

Bacon and Eggs

Bacon and Eggs is an excellent source of food that restores an OK amount of health and a great deal of hunger. Two Bacon and Eggs in your inventory will keep you going through most long journeys. Bacon and Eggs requires 1.5 Meat and 2 Eggs, or 1 MM, 1 Morsel and 2 Eggs. Eggs are produce by feeding cooked monster meat to the bird in the bird cage during day or dusk. 1 MM = 1 Egg. What this means is that Bacon and Eggs are actually made from 3 MM and 1 Morsel, because 2 of those MM are fed to birds to make eggs. This means all ingredients come from Spiders and Rabbits. Bacon and Eggs will now be your staple food. 

 

Jerky

You want around 4-6 Drying Racks per player. You use these just for your morsels, not your MM. The idea is you get to the point where you're using Small Jerky in your Bacon and Eggs recipe instead of Morsels. This step isn't essential but it does allow you to keep your morsels longer and helps you out in Spring (I'll discuss spring near the end). 

 

Relocating Spider Nests

Early in the game you're going to need to travel to spiders to get MM because it's not worth setting up near them unless you've found a good location which happens to be near spiders (you often find spiders in a large Savanna so you might get lucky). Basically, it's worth travelling early game because you're going to move the spiders.

 

By around day 9-12, at least some of the spider dens on the map will reach tier 3 meaning they look like 3 nests stacked on top of each other. This means that they are ready to be destroyed.

 

To destroy a nest: 

1. Make sure it's during the day (arguably it's easier during dusk but for new players do it during the day).
2. Use the spider trapping method from earlier. 
3. Keep repeating this until no spiders come out of the nest when you walk on the web.
4. Run up to the nest and hit it; 1 warrior spider may come out so quickly kill it (you'll manage with just a spear but might as well wear armor to be on the safe side).
5. Once the warrior is dealt with, keep hitting the nest until it's destroyed.
6. It should drop lots of silk and a spider egg. 

 

The spider egg that is dropped can be placed like a tree/sapling etc to create a new spider nest anywhere you want. Use this to move spider nests closer to your base. About 3 screens away from your base should be a safe distance to plant them. 

 

 

Spider Farm

 

You want to get around 1 spider nest per player, so every time you come across a spider nest make a note to revisit it when it's tier 3. You want to place these dens against a coast if possible to reduce the amount of directions the spiders can run, and leave about a 1/2 screens distance between the nests. Spiders come out at night and wander around near their nest; you can take advantage of this:

 

1. Place nests.
2. Place traps a little distance apart in a half moon around the spider nests; about 1/3 to 1/2 a screen away from the centre of the nest. (Don't place it at the edge of the web, because the web will get bigger as the nest grows)
3. Leave the nests.

 

The idea is that you place traps during the day to catch spiders at night. Spiders will wander out from the nest at dusk/night and run into your traps. If you go back to your traps during the day they will be full of spiders. This will give you a steady supply of silk, spider glands and most importantly: monster meat. 

 

 

Food Production Routine

 

Your routine becomes:

1. Check rabbit traps.
2. Check spider traps.
3. Cook monster meat.
4. Feed enough MM to the bird for however many eggs you need.
5. Cook bacon and eggs.
6. Never go hungry. 

 

 

Managing Spider Dens

 

Every now and then your dens will grow to tier 3. You need to destroy them when they reach this stage or your base will be overrun by spider queens. To destroy them use the same method as you used to destroy the tier 3 nests in the wild. 

 

 

Spring

 

Rabbit holes close up in spring which means you lose your morsel supply. You have a few of options here: 

1. Use monster meat and live off meatballs in spring (you'll have plenty of berries because of the fast re-spawn due to the rain)
2. Switch morsels to frogs legs found near ponds or during from rain (they also count as 0.5 'meat' in this recipe if I remember rightly but you may want to double check this).
3. Over produce morsels in winter and make them into jerky which should last you through spring if you're using an ice box - I always do this and I rarely run out.

 

 

Quick Version (this is for more experienced players)

 

1. Set up near rabbit holes.
2. Locate spiders and move them near your base as soon as possible.
3. Farm spiders with traps.
4. Farm rabbits with traps.
5. Build birdcage.
6. Use birdcage to turn cooked MM into eggs.
7. Use 1 MM, 2 Eggs and 1 Morsel to make bacon and eggs. 

 

You now have a winter-proof food supply. 

 

Thanks for reading and I hope you found this helpful. If this guide is useful I'll post a new one for more advanced food production designed for after your first winter such as Dragon Pie, Honey Ham etc. This guide is mainly for your first Winter/Spring; by summer you'll want some more advanced foods.

 

[Arcita]

Damn, that is a lot of text. I only read the quick version at the end, but you can also use moleworms for morsels. You can relocate them anywhere so you're not limited to rabbit holes (also rabbit holes close during spring), and to harvest you just set a mineral on the ground during dusk/night and whack them when they come to take it (no resources used up in the harvest). 

edit: and an even faster way to get morsel-equivalents is to turkey farm. Set up a bunch of berry bushes in a single area, set a few berries on the ground, begin harvesting bushes and when turkeys spawn they will go for the berries on the ground before the bushes. I usually end up with around 30 turkey legs per harvest of a sizable berry bush farm. 

[BeastNips]

Yeah Turkey farms will be covered in the advanced food production guide as they take a little more setting up Also Spring and possible solutions gets a mention but it isn't in the short guide so I should probably add it to there.

I never liked moles but each to their own!

[calculuschild]

I always seem to get plenty of Monster Meat just fighting the spiders with a spear.  A 2 or 3 whacks and they're dead.  Do you find that taking the time to gather grass for traps and set them up all over the spider dens saves time over just killing them with a spear?

 

Also, as long as you've got eggs worked out, I've found Pierogis to be a pretty decent healing food (half the hunger as Bacon & Eggs, but twice the health), which can be made with at least one meat, one vegetable, one egg, and something that's not a stick (berries, ice, another egg, another vegetable).  You could simply replace the Morsel in your B & E recipe with a Red Cap that otherwise are useless, but in a crock pot work great as a vegetable for this recipe.

[BeastNips]

There is a pretty big trap vs spear debate with a lot of different factors to consider. As having that debate would be slightly off topic: yes I think traps do save time and are a lot less daunting for a new player when all things are taken into account. Keep in mind this is made for very new players which is why I added the Foreword about other players having better solutions. I myself have a different approach to food but I wouldn't recommend it to new players.

Pierogis will be covered in advanced food production as they are a healing food primarily (in my opinion obviously).

[Arcita]

22 minutes ago, calculuschild said:

I always seem to get plenty of Monster Meat just fighting the spiders with a spear.  A 2 or 3 whacks and they're dead.  Do you find that taking the time to gather grass for traps and set them up all over the spider dens saves time over just killing them with a spear?

 

Also, as long as you've got eggs worked out, I've found Pierogis to be a pretty decent healing food (half the hunger as Bacon & Eggs, but twice the health), which can be made with at least one meat, one vegetable, one egg, and something that's not a stick (berries, ice, another egg, another vegetable).  You could simply replace the Morsel in your B & E recipe with a Red Cap that otherwise are useless, but in a crock pot work great as a vegetable for this recipe.

Yea, pierogies are great for healing. Bacon & eggs' great virtue in my opinion is their long spoil-time. They last for 20 days (40 in a fridge). I usually convert about half my raw food to bacon & eggs and the other to meatballs. I eat the meatballs first as they spoil quicker, then I nom on the bacon and eggs. 

[RalphKastro]

or just hire a Wendy player to spend all his days hunting down Koalephants. So much food it all spoils.

[Snowhusky5]

This is a good basic food guide. The only thing you left out is that you should say a bit more explicitly how there are better food strategies for more experienced players, instead of relying on rabbits. Also, Meatballs and B&E are basically the best foods to get you through the first autumn and winter, but later on you can make a wider variety of staples, such as Dragonpie and Honey Ham, which aren't as good for the first winter since bees and farms don't work. I'm playing a long-term game with one other guy atm, and we have 4 beeboxes and sooooo much honey, its ridiculous.

[BeastNips]

Yeah I'm going to produce another guide called Advanced Food Production for that stuff.

You're right; almost every post I've had has been "you can do this bit better" ha I'll put it in capitals or something once I'm at a computer. 

Edit: Fixed the original post. 

[alexeiwc3gosu]

Here is the my list of usefull stuff:

In short

Meatballs = any meat and 3 fillers - basic (1 morsel 3 mushrooms ?)

Bacon and Eggs = 1 monster meat 2 eggs 1 small meat - THE LONG LASTING

Meaty stew = 1 monster meat 2 big meat 1 filler - THE HUNGER

Taffy = 3 honey and a twig - THE SANITY

Honey ham = 1 big meat 1 monster meat 1 honey and filler - THE HEALTH

 

 

[Akrone]

It's a great guide! Thanks for share.

14 hours ago, alexeiwc3gosu said:

Here is the my list of usefull stuff:

In short

Meatballs = any meat and 3 fillers - basic (1 morsel 3 mushrooms ?)

Bacon and Eggs = 1 monster meat 2 eggs 1 small meat - THE LONG LASTING

Meaty stew = 1 monster meat 2 big meat 1 filler - THE HUNGER

Taffy = 3 honey and a twig - THE SANITY

Honey ham = 1 big meat 1 monster meat 1 honey and filler - THE HEALTH

That's a nice list too

I would have added Trail Mix = 1 roasted birchnut + 3 berries (or 2 roasted birchnut + 2 berries) on THE HEALTH

Very easy to get and an important source of HP in the first days of play (If you are not Widgrid, of course )

[Bluetoast]

This guide is really useful to me thank you

[The Letter W]

A really well written guide! Definitely one I'll be recommending to new players! 

[Snowhusky5]

On 2/9/2016 at 5:07 AM, alexeiwc3gosu said:

Here is the my list of usefull stuff:

In short

Meatballs = any meat and 3 fillers - basic (1 morsel 3 mushrooms ?)

Bacon and Eggs = 1 monster meat 2 eggs 1 small meat - THE LONG LASTING

Meaty stew = 1 monster meat 2 big meat 1 filler - THE HUNGER

Taffy = 3 honey and a twig - THE SANITY

Honey ham = 1 big meat 1 monster meat 1 honey and filler - THE HEALTH

 

 

 

On 2/10/2016 at 7:39 PM, Akrone said:

It's a great guide! Thanks for share.

That's a nice list too

I would have added Trail Mix = 1 roasted birchnut + 3 berries (or 2 roasted birchnut + 2 berries) on THE HEALTH

Very easy to get and an important source of HP in the first days of play (If you are not Widgrid, of course )

I would also add Pierogi in the THE HEALTH department, since it is ez 2 make (any meat, 1-2 carrot/veggie, 1-2 eggs) for 40 hp each! All you need is 3 MM and a carrot (and a birdcage). Later on, when all the naturally occurring carrots are gone from the world, you can make a bunnyman farm to get 100s of them