Rank Difficulty for Each Character as a New Player (Out of Five)

[Dr. Safety]

I recently saw some footage from the Forge and I noticed that they had a difficulty scale that was 1 through 5. An example of this is shown below. I realized that this seemed like a lot better of way to display the difficulty for new players than just Slim/Grim for the base game. The issue with this comes with ranking each character, so feel free to take a crack at it. Remember, this is going to be in the eyes of a new player, and for vanilla gameplay. If you don't play as a character enough to make a decision, just don't put one for that character.

Note: I'd like to apologize for the confusing layout of the poll. I could only make 5 questions so this is the layout I had to go with.

[Harrowick]

I put Wilson in the "medium" ranking, because I believe Wendy does his job so much better as a beginner character. Not having any perks is technically harder than having a permanent ghost follower that protects you from mobs and darkness.

Wilson is arguably sort-of kinda maybe alright at learning the game, since you have basically nothing in terms of perks which means you have no downsides or upsides to keep in mind. (I don't count the beard as a perk, because as a new player, you'll probably die in the first autumn while trying to learn, which removes your beard on death, which then removes your insulation bonus in winter.)

[KeshS]

Flaging charachters that are beginner friendly is the elegant solution for new players to pick without stressing their mind with 5 star reviews.

 

Edit: I find the current wording a bit too fancy and confusing.

[Mike23Ua]

I prefer not to rank ANY Character that has not been reworked yet because I’m pretty sure the absurdly OP ones are going to get some justified nerfs.

I bought Wickerbottoms new Hallowed Nights skin set but after finding out people were crying for nothing but nerfs in her I’m like pffft screw that I’ll play her again once she’s ALREADY Been Reworked.

Edit: I will Rank them only based on the DLC Characters or the ones who have ALREADY Been Reworked- And I will rank them from Hardest to play to the Easiest to Play because giving them a star rating between 1-5 would be too confusing.

Hardest- WARLY.. Why? Because as a new player your not even going to know how to do anything besides pick up carrots off the ground and attempt to eat them raw, overpowered cook pot dishes??? Forget it you’ll be lucky not to make wet goop and if that’s not hard enough on you Warlys meal penalties will keep you starving.

Second to Hardest- WORMWOOD, Wormwood is a GREAT Character if your decent at the game and can avoid taking damage.. but from a new players point of view not healing when eating or constant sanity drain when chopping trees or picking flowers is going to kill you.

Medium Difficulty- WOODIE, Wood has an Axe to infinitely chop wood which is nice for a beginner but he also spawns hostile tree monsters, and shape shifts into random creatures every full moon, (remember as a new player your not going to know how to craft his totems) As soon as that Transformation period ends you enter full on Starvation.

Easier Medium Difficulty- WURT, Wurt has a TON of upsides and her only downside is Winter and only eating veggies, not that hard.. just munch a few carrots or berries you see laying around every now and then and you’ll be fine. As a noob you’ll die when Winter comes anyway regardless of if you were playing as Wurt or Not.

Easiest Medium Difficulty- WORTOX, for a noob player Wortox is a decent choice, he has high health- Simply killing anything or being near anything that dies will drop souls, use souls to restore health or hunger, the only thing a noob is going to struggle with using Wortox is Sanity.

The Hardest Easy Difficulty- WINONA, Winona is fairly easy to play, she spawns with duct tape a new player won’t know what to do with the Duct Tape but that don’t matter.. Winona has no Crippling downsides but she’s also useless.

Mid-Tier Easy Difficulty- WILLOW because Spawning with a lighter that lasts 10x longer than a torch that can also be used to cook food for you is just that OP, then once you learn you can throw Bernie on the ground to Wreck Shadows for you you’ll never worry about Them again.

The Easiest Character in the Game- WENDY Wendy has Abigail do all the mob fighting for her easily killing Bees, Spiders, Hounds, Etc.. in addition to that, Wendy can stand near Abigail to survive the night without needing a torch or campfire (the number 1 cause of all noob deaths) 

 

(that’s my list based on all current DLC characters and Reworks, I Refuse to list anyone who has NOT been Reworked yet because they’re all subject to change..)

[cantbeatdaboss]

(It was actually 1-3 in forge but good poll ;))

My personal list was:

Wilson - 2

Willow - 1

Wolfgang - 3

Wendy - 1

WX-78 - 1

Wickerbottom - 2 (new players can accidentally go insane their first few times playing her because they don't know book lowers sanity)

Woodie - 1

Wes - 4

Maxwell - 4 (please wear armor vs deerclops)

Wigfrid - 4

Webber - 2

Winona - 2

Warly - 5

Wortox - 4

Wormwood - 5

Wurt - 3

[Mysterious box]

Warly and Woody are probably the biggest traps a new player could face really I mean imagine your finally to get a hang of the game your not so good at getting a lot food but you manage and then bam all your hunger is set to zero. Then there's Warly you've learned your basics of gathering early game food and resources your hunger is about halfway and you decide you want to eat some cooked berries and then Warly says "I'm offended by the mere suggestion " not knowing anything about the character prior or knowing any crockpot recipes you slowly starve to death those would be some chilling blind experiences 

 

[RudyAmericanHero]

after taking a half year break from the game which then getting back into the game i have no trouble with each character (besides wes and maybe wormwood) but after playing each of them again id say they still play and work how the used to given the rework to some of them 

[Wumpus the 19th]

new player-wise, i'd say wolf and wx are harder in general. namely because in this SURVIVAL game, name DON'T STARVE, surprisingly a new player will run out of food or not spelunk for gears so therefore are stuck with wx's poop beginning stats.

worm is also pretty hard due to the no food heal. the only benefit from that perk, the loss of health from eating bad foods, is something new players wouldn't think of if they're thinking logically in this game.

Warly is of course very hard since many new players won't know what the hesh a crockpot is and either waste ingredients or just make goop.

woodie is slightly lower on the easiness scale mostly since he's controllable now, save for full moon, and can mass produce an early game resource.

wickerbottom is just god. pls nrf.

 

[sinisterrkid]

WIth Wickerbottom the most relevant aspect for new players is not needing a Science machine to prototype many things, most important of all spear and wood armor. And also the very high sanity, giving them more time to figure things out in peace before having to deal with the sadows and noise.

Also are we all forgetting WX-78 starts with the lowest stats of all characters? Until a new player gets gears in their hands this is pretty huge. By no means one of the easiest beginner characters, what's with most people putting them as easy to medium?

(Turns out I never played WX on DST)

[GenomeSquirrel]

Rank 1    (Gives new players something useful)

Wendy 

Willow

Rank Two (Gives new players something slightly less useful)

Wickerbottom

Wigfrid

Woody

Rank 3 (Gives new players nothing)

Wilson

Winona

WX

Rank 4 (Less HP/ and lower stats)

Maxwell

Wolfgang

Wes

Rank 5 (Monsters, tricky diets, and inability to heal)

Warly I'd be willing to give his own tier well below 5

Webber

Wortox

Wormwood

 

[Mike23Ua]

Why are you guys categorizing characters who haven’t been reworked yet?? 
Prior to her Refresh Willow did not have a gigantic shadow wrecking companion... it is VERY SAFE to Assume that any and all Characters that have yet to be reworked will also undergo such drastic changes as she had.

[torauma]

Without a doubt, wormwood would be on the most difficult, most of the reworked characters are on the easier to use tier, while dlc being the difficult ones

[GenomeSquirrel]

3 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Why are you guys categorizing characters who haven’t been reworked yet?? 

Because I live in the present.

[ShadowDuelist]

1 hour ago, sinisterrkid said:

Also are we all forgetting WX-78 starts with the lowest stats of all characters? Until a new player gets gears in their hands this is pretty huge. By no means one of the easiest beginner characters, what's with most people putting them as easy to medium?

That's on singleplayer DS. On DST it's just a beardless Wilson that gets a tiny damage when wet. It's very new player friendly.

3 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

Warly and Woody are probably the biggest traps a new player could face really I mean imagine your finally to get a hang of the game your not so good at getting a lot food but you manage and then bam all your hunger is set to zero. Then there's Warly you've learned your basics of gathering early game food and resources your hunger is about halfway and you decide you want to eat some cooked berries and then Warly says "I'm offended by the mere suggestion " not knowing anything about the character prior or knowing any crockpot recipes you slowly starve to death those would be some chilling blind experiences 

 

This. 

I think the current descriptions don't really give any warning to the new players. If they jump into the game for the first time blindly as Warly, Wes, Wolfgang or Wormwood, they are most likely going to have a frustrating first experience.

It's not like it's impossible to learn like that, but the learning curve will be pretty steep.

[sinisterrkid]

3 minutes ago, ShadowDuelist said:

That's on singleplayer DS. On DST it's just a beardless Wilson that gets a tiny damage when wet. It's very new player friendly.

Oh woops. Will fix original post. Am just realising I never played WX on the DST version.

[Harrowick]

29 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Why are you guys categorizing characters who haven’t been reworked yet?? 

It's going to be a looong time before every character is refreshed. We've only seen 5 refreshes of the total 13 characters (not counting DLC), and they've become more or less a side project it seems.

They've already tackled the characters with the biggest flaws, so as of right now there aren't any characters that are in a super desperate condition. I believe the rest of the refreshes will just focus on quality of life improvements and make each character more enjoyable to play without focusing on nerfs. (According to Klei stating they aren't focused on nerfing the characters.)

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's fair to categorize the characters as they are, because characters like Wickerbottom, WX-78, and Wolfgang will (probably) still play the same roles with maybe a few balances and additions unlike characters like Woodie who got an entire redesign/makeover.

[RogueGamer12]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

Why are you guys categorizing characters who haven’t been reworked yet??

Because the poll listed them.

[BeeClops]

I feel like if you're a beginner Warly is hands down the hardest pick, he's in a league of his own in my eyes. I feel like starvation is a major issue for beginners, and Warly just amplifies that.

I also feel like Wendy is not the easiest as the poll would suggest, i feel like it takes a little bit of practice to know how to use her sister properly, and dealing less damage than regular character i think makes a difference early game for newbies. 

In my view, the most "useless" characters are the easiest for beginners, like the less perks the better. I feel like you need some xperience to manage more quirky characters, and it may do more harm than good at first, better learn the basics that would work with most characters

[Confused Rock]

sanity is an actual thing that hurts for new players, which makes willow and wendy even better and makes maxwell slightly reasonable. Maxwell trades dying to sanity with dying the first time you encounter a tentacle.

[Minitte]

I think it's definitely Wendy Willow and Wigfrid as a 1 star. idk about the rest of the characters

[Sweaper]

If we consider a new player and not a beginner, and someone who never saw any gameplay footage, everyone is hard thanks to first night.

Edit: Actually, Willow might have a better chance if by luck they equip her lighter.