What do you do to make the game more challenging?

[Faultz]

So the name of the game is Don't Starve

But when is the last time you died or seen someone die starvation? Most deaths are monsters, usually bosses.

And with those boss deaths usually yields an items that pretty much makes the game easier in your prep for the next boss, and then the cycle repeats.

Until you get to a point your either playing just to kill bosses for an item you have 1340872 of already, or base designing. And if your just playing to kill bosses you might as well just make a world and spawn them in to get your fill, farming most items to fight bosses is just a time sink anyways.

There is not really a true challenge.

Id like to see rarer boss items, less food, and more challenging game or mode.

What do you do to make the game more challenging?

[Terra_Zina]

Sometimes I play the game as a vegan. You can't use anything made of animals, but only wood and rocks. So no football helmets. No meat, so only veggies and fruits. Can't kill animals (I make an exception for Deerclops). You have to pretty much co-exist with nature, and make a crap ton of farms. Obviously this doesn't work with Wigfrid, but I tested it with Wilson and it was do-able. Just make sure to stock up for winter like a squirrel.

I also did a No Science Machine run. Can't make a science machine and definetly not an alchemy engine. You have to survive by what you already know, and hope you're lucky with blueprints.

You could also base in the ruins but ruins basing is pretty easy in dst, so it's only really a challenge in vanilla.

[MostMerryTomcat]

I think what you would want and like, OP, is more WorldGen options. To be able to turn off regrowth, generate a more wasteland main continent by let's say have the possibility of what type of biomes can be spawned, what can be turned off, and the like. That would be indeed a wonderful thing from my perspective and could help people (myself included) that want for example only a Desert World, a Mozaic World and whatnot for particularly "flavored" hardcore survival experiences.

[ShadowDuelist]

I'm still not great at ruins rushes, so I get into publics and try to ruins rush before day 15-20. So far I'd say I success 60% of the times, and die and ragequit the other 40% 

[shroom416]

In new worlds, I try to base somewhere I haven't before (like the swamp or the antlion desert). For older worlds, I try to kill as many bosses as I can back-to-back in one season, kind of like a "one epic season" of fighting. 

[CaptainChaotica]

Random seasons all day year long, baby! Er, multiple years, actually.

I too have fiddled with the world-gen settings in an attempt to get a certain _feel_, a certain landscape...but it never quite worked.  For example, I was thinking like, a blasted post-apocalyptic world.  So I tried turning almost everything--good AND bad--down to "less", and cranked up the meteors so we'd have blasted terrain and scorch marks everywhere.  Unfortunately, it turns out "less" is nowhere near less ENOUGH to _feel_ scarce and desperate enough, and of course none is...none.  I kept randomly finding sticks for some reason in my "none" world, but that was it.

(There IS a mod that can make an all...well mostly...desert world.  It's called Desert Enhancement.  It's got a setting for exactly that.  Yep.)

I've also tried the vegetarian (not vegan, I was allowed eggs) thing, and then one day when I found a morsel in a field I was like "HMMMM...wait.  Are the challenge rules that I can't _eat_ meat, or just that I can't KILL animals?  'Cos, like, it's right there..." and the No Science Machine Challenge.
And THAT'S kind of where I got the "March of Civilization" challenge idea from...you unlock things not in order of the game's tiering system, but according to _when the were first used in real history_ (or as far as we know, right now).  So, like, you CAN make spears, wear logs, and warm yourself up with a rock, 'cos those are all primitive, but don't count on getting a crockpot anytime soon...

...Notorious