Combat in Depth Discussion

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In Short

Combat is one of the four core gameplay loops in DST, the others being exploration, crafting and gathering - there are many secondary effect triggers such as influencing behavior of creatures, monsters and other mechanics. I will dump some of my thoughts about combat here to hopefully start an interesting discussion: How do you assess it? What is your approach? Do you seek it or avoid it? How much weight do you typically give combat related mechanics?

Combat Related Stats and Mechanics

There are some key mechanics that are very closely related to combat such as:

• damage output through weapons, tools and modifiers
• damage reduction through modifiers and armor
• movement speed and general mobility
• raw health and armor durability
• sustain and healing
• weapon durability
• range and area of effect damage
• inventory space to hold any of the above (mobility related)
• cost of increasing any of the above

I think that covers it.

I think all of them are quite important and we want to increase them depending on the challenge/task we face. I think movement speed is quite an important one because of two reasons. It obviously makes avoiding damage much easier during combat or simply by getting distance or running away. But there is also an important indirect factor here: Combat never happens completely in isolation. A character that is able to quickly and freely move around the map is less susceptible to being under-prepared and can more easily deal with situations when they are.

Inventory space also indirectly helps overall mobility and can be heavily influenced by good preparation and organization. Simply put, you want to hold as many items that help you in a fight in your inventory as possible and avoid holding any dead items that don't. Simply increasing your inventory space with a backpack or similar obviously helps too.

Which one of those factors do you value over others and why?

Characters

Characters that excel directly or indirectly in combat will bring several of those key factors to the table for themselves, such as Wolfgang, or for others such as Warly and everything in between.

We all know the up and downsides of most combat related characters, especially the old/initial ones. However how would you rate/assess Walter, Wortox or new Woodie?

Gear

I personally didn't explore this area too much. I feel like the efficient options here are rather narrow and I'm super surprised when people mention making blowdarts, gunpowder, traps and the like.

I tend to keep it quite simple:

In the very early game I tend to just use an axe or pickaxe for combat, killing spiders, gobblers, a pig or two, an occasional koalefant or a single clockwork knight. This is mostly due to restricted inventory space. Sometimes I craft a spear, but usually don't. After alchemy is built, I usually make a hambat and a football helmet or two. These are sufficient for most of the content.

Items I seek to craft/find after that:

• Dark swords to kill bosses and large monsters quickly.
• Thulecite crowns especially against bosses/monsters that swarm due to stunlock protection.
• Any of the movement speed increasing items.
• Some utility weapons like the weather pain, pan flute and ice staff for specific purposes/encounters.

And that's it. I mean there is also morning star which can be used to gather milk, but that is more of a utility thing. Utility weapons aside: What do you usually make or seek out? Am I missing something important or useful?

Preparation and Recovery

I think the most important thing here are foods that provide a high and efficient healing and sanity restoration bonus (especially for bosses). The better you control sanity, the better you are prepared for bosses, either by staying low for fuel, or by keeping high to avoid getting swarmed by nightmares.

In terms of healing specifically there are the all time favorites such as pierogi, honey ham, dragon pie, the occasional fish sticks and obviously blue caps.

For sanity there are cooked green caps, taffy and ice cream.

Jerky is also an overall strong food for boss fights specifically since it provides all stats and is cheap to make, just requires a bit of long term prep.

There are also some newer recipes that I'm looking forward to trying such as surf and turf, which provides a ton of value overall, how efficient do you think is gathering the ingredients?

For Warly specifically there are also some powerful options such as Moqueca and the cheap Puffed Potato Souffle.

Which restoration foods and items do you usually make?

There are also other options for recovery/preparation such as sleeping in a tent or using Honey Poultices. I'm actually looking to provide both as kind of a backup solution, because the materials used there are typically abundant and start stacking up after a while.

[W0l0l0]

Woodie's moose is a great addition to Don't Starve Together's combat, it's like playing as a rook but with more. I encourage everyone to at least try it once. That's all I have to say. 

[xDarkSoul18x]

I just wish we had some way(character, item etc) to repair our tools and weapons. Like how we have the sewing kit, but for weapons!