Is Don't Starve Together a wiki game?

[chirsg]

Yes/no, maybe? I don't know. 

For me it's not. I don't need to keep opening the wiki for everything. There isn't much to memorize and because for the most part, the game's progression is pretty horizonal, you don't need to go through 17 varieties of weapons. Almost any enemy falls to a spear. 

Also anything you need to know in the game is accessible to you. But that's just me. 

[Mike23Ua]

This is a game that is absolutely hands down without any questionable doubt, IMPOSSIBLE to play without looking it up on a Wikipedia page.

Well you can play it, but… 80% of the game is buried in obscure knowledge you’d never figure out on your own.

[Brotid01]

I don’t like the Wiki because sometimes the info is outdated, wrong or straight missing, it doesn’t mean I don’t check it I do for certain things but very rarely.

Most of the things I look for are from Youtube specifically for the updates, the changes, buffs, nerfs, new items, etc.

But I think is because I been playing for so long at this point is kinda “memory muscle” if I can use that term in this case.

[Cheggf]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

This is a game that is absolutely hands down without any questionable doubt, IMPOSSIBLE to play without looking it up on a Wikipedia page.

Well you can play it, but… 80% of the game is buried in obscure knowledge you’d never figure out on your own.

There's like one thing that you'd never figure out on your own. 

[Evelo]

Nowadays, I use the Wiki primarily for Pearl's Quest. Outside of that, I just figure it out or have it memorized.

I did have to use the wiki way back when for the AFW and how to even figure out what to do with the celestial altars (Not very obvious to put then in the 1 triangle set piece)
The only time I didn't have to wiki was for the Mooncaller's staff because of the animation. I did however have to wiki that it could be disassembled because I didn't know what an iridescent gem came from.

[SapoLover]

I look up for recipes I don't do make often. Also to see what are the potato season, I always forget. 

[Ridley]

16 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

There's like one thing that you'd never figure out on your own. 

Is it something other than both questlines, crockpot recipes, and other more subtle features like Nightmare Werepig regenerating health while stalking or summer can't spawn fires at night? There are also things you can figure out on you own, like raid boss strategies, but not feasibly without guides or tons of rollbacks. 

[Mike23Ua]

One of the things that isn’t actually ever easily figured out or displayed in any form of information in DST without a Wiki guide or someone on these forums explaining it (same difference..)

Is “Insulation” Like you are never ever ever EVER going to figure out that wearing a Straw Hat while holding a Parsol/Umbrella And standing under a Tree all stack to prevent overheating In Summer or to Reduce Wetness.

A pro player is going to just go “Bro use a thermal stone.”

[Cheggf]

48 minutes ago, Ridley said:

Is it something other than both questlines, crockpot recipes, and other more subtle features like Nightmare Werepig regenerating health while stalking or summer can't spawn fires at night? There are also things you can figure out on you own, like raid boss strategies, but not feasibly without guides or tons of rollbacks. 

Mario 64 is a wiki game because I'd never figure out Mario falls asleep and starts going "Ahhh, spaghetti... Ahh, ravioli.... Ahhh, mama mia..." in his sleep if you leave the game idle long enough.

[Maxil20]

I’m impressed the scrapbook hasn’t been brought up yet. The scrapbook is like, a textbook example of an ingame wiki. Once you examine an item, you get the general statistics of the item/mob in question, alongside a potential blurb depending on the thing examined that tells you what it does or is just really funny, like the Toadstool Cap. Heck, it even goes a bit metagame in some places (Wicker’s tempering tempratures, for instance, specifically mentions setting the temprature to “35 degrees”, a metric that is never shown anywhere in the game unless using client mods or technically if you count the freezing/overheating warnings starting at 5/65 degrees respectively.)

I certainly think this is a Wiki type of game (or an extreme friend-info game), but I don’t think that’s exactly negative, either. Apart from the fact it Has it’s own wiki ingame, games like DS are immensely complex and trying to guide you through every single system is very difficult. My only gripe with it is the very cryptic nature the game gives in terms of accessing the majority of the content (good luck trying to solve weaver’s questline or know to deconstruct a moon caller’s staff because its the only staff in the game that disrespects the no-gems-when-shattering rule….). It’s something I do hope they find ways/better pointers to make it clear on how to access them.

[chirsg]

4 hours ago, Ridley said:

Is it something other than both questlines, crockpot recipes, and other more subtle features like Nightmare Werepig regenerating health while stalking or summer can't spawn fires at night? There are also things you can figure out on you own, like raid boss strategies, but not feasibly without guides or tons of rollbacks. 

Perhaps on the outset, you look at the wiki once or twice if you're a very new player, but I really don't think it's one of those games where you'd constantly defer to a higher archival authority outside of yourself when you've become familiar enough with the game.

As far as crock pock recipes go, there is certainly a wealth of dishes, no doubt about that. Over 70 standard dishes. Valheim and Terraria have so much fewer and with the latter, you're not even cooking with more than one ingredient. 

But with DST, you're only really cooking to overcome your damaged stats. Hunger, sanity and the other one.

 

In games like valheim, you're cooking to augment your stats. In almost all other games where cooking is a feature, eating meals provides far more than fulfilling a hunger and health quota.

 

Hell, even in singleplayer don't starve, dishes were something far more extensive than fulfilling your stats. Tropical boulliabase gave you wetness and wave protection. Stellar.

Hamlet gave you hayfever resistance. Coffee and how it affects in game behavior is something to be scrutinized, but for once, people weren't cooking to honor their base lively resources.

For that reason, DST really does not require a wiki for matters of cooking. Not at all. For what cooking achieves, it's simply too simple to even bother with a wiki

 

Also with raid boss strats, I don't even think the wiki is a great resource. DST is far more a "Youtube" game than a wiki game

[Lovens]

There are a lot of obscure things that I think would be extremely hard to figure out without wiki or watching respective animated ahorts. Things like: moonstone event, activation of the archives, what to do with things in the archives (and that there are 3 different knowledge things but only one gives you a useful outcome), need of pearl in CK to get the third altar, the ability to hammer AD before it breaks so you recfaft it, the requirement to assemble three altars in a triangle on the lunar island but close enough that mysterious energy appears, shadow pieces, how obelisks work, getting to atrium itself (there is nothing that indicates that the big tentacle is a portal once killed. It doesn't look like one), the need of fossils and shadow heart in the atrium, ruins and AG and all enemies in the wilds regenerating on FW kill, the need of specific materials to activate both rifts, the fact that you can only get dreadstone if you let the boss smash pillars, the way loot stash and seasonal bosses spawn and appear/disappear, what causes Antlion sinkholes in summer and earthquakes with boulders in the caves, the ability to water thermal in summer to cool it down, corelation between wetness mechanics and electric damage, the ability to place banana on a boat to pacify a monkey raid, the ability to trade with NPCs like PK, Frostjaw and Antlion (and figuring out what they accept and what it does).

Many of these things could be figured out with trial and error of course. Say, you found NM werepig and want to fight it. Maybe you figured out by character quotes that you need a pick/axe to break pillars and by sheer luck found one in the ruins or ocean treasure chest (also a good example of something pretty hard to figure out without wiki. Where on earth would you go from reading a quote that your pickaxe is not strong enough? You will look through available recipes at your crafting stations and won't find any). Maybe you even figured out on your own that you needed to kill shadelings in the first phase and they exist and you have to be insane to fight them. You somehow killed NM Werepig but didn't smash the pillars because he was either far away from them or didn't accidentally smash one. Then you learned blueprints and only THEN realised about existence of dreadstone. Now you didn't get the important crafting material and cannot craft any of his rewards, your reward for the fight is nothing. The cost of this mistake is that you now need to wait 10 days, find and defeat another boss on the surface and have the knowledge only that triggers NM respawn in the caves. That is IF you know there is a surface variant and where to look for it. What if you found the junkyard setpiece earlier, rummaged through the piles once, got some weird scrap and other garbage and decided it's not worth returning there every once in a while (especially if the setpiece is in a forgotten corner of your map across the world). Then you won't know that a boss spawns there because you will never visit this "point of interest". It's hardly a point of interest with nothing going on in it. Nothing in the setpiece indicates that a boss will later spawn there. Without wiki or watching animated shorts about updates you'd be sitting there clueless about how to get more dreadstone to craft the armors from the blueprints you obtained. 

[NPCMaxwell]

I use the wiki mostly for re-reading quotes for fun, actually.

The only other two uses:

a) looking at the galleries because I like the drawings a lot

b) occasionally when something happens in the game that has never used to happen before I look up wth just happened. So I found out that gestalts can possess your farm plants and the plants turn hostile then. That's all. I usually never look up how to solve the problem, I just wanted to know what is going on, because I still don't know most DST stuff. And looking up what to do would take away the fun for me so I rather die a thousand times by trial and error or start a new world over again.

7 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

This is a game that is absolutely hands down without any questionable doubt, IMPOSSIBLE to play without looking it up on a Wikipedia page.

Well you can play it, but… 80% of the game is buried in obscure knowledge you’d never figure out on your own.

This is true, and because I don't want a wiki tell me how to play a game I have not discovered most of DST's content even yet. But that's ok, I don't need to experience a game 100%. It's more fun to not know everything and just keep playing. (and dying)

[BezKa]

I use it when I want to minmax stuff or make farms of certain types. I never check the wiki for new updates and try to figure out everything that's been added myself.

Most basic stuff I just remember or check in-game if I'm not sure.

[Sesekriri]

The wiki is honestly not that great in terms of being up to date or accurate. 

[Random Guy000]

I usually just check out the new stuff in god mode. I don't really keep a world with a high enough day count to see all the late-game content, and the majority of my burners don't go that far, but I do want to stay up to date with the updates

[Jakepeng99]

You should add options for youtube and social media.

[DegenerateFurry]

 This poll is flawed. I don't always have the wiki open, but I do check it pretty regularly when playing (just "regularly" as an option would be good). 

Also, as others have said, YouTubers are a big source of information. I get all my update information from TheBeard777, for instance. 

To answer the thread's question, though, I'd call this a wiki game, yeah. Klei's trying to make it less of one with things like the recipe book and scrapbook, but it's not quite there yet. 

[NPCMaxwell]

I forgot another reason for me to use the wiki is to look up spawning codes since it helps me finding the corresponding files. But this is not really relevant for my gaming, unless I respawn a statuemaxwell after my stupid shadowservant decided to mine it.

[Zima Blue]

I only check wiki a few times to remember how to cook something. Besides that, there's not much use to it because its not really good tbh 

[Mike23Ua]

2 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

You should add options for youtube and social media.

It’s all the same thing.. and before the internet it was Nintendo Power Magazines.

Either Way, DST is a game that requires the player to seek outside of the game help and knowledge- Even for something as Simple as Willows Embers and Wortox’s Souls….

I had to throughly explain to my friend that even though they had a bunch of empty back pack storage slots, that the embers and souls can only be carried in your main inventory.

(really wish Klei would just default them to your inventory and move something else to the empty back pack slots)

[NPCMaxwell]

6 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

It’s all the same thing.. and before the internet it was Nintendo Power Magazines.

Either Way, DST is a game that requires the player to seek outside of the game help and knowledge- Even for something as Simple as Willows Embers and Wortox’s Souls….

I had to throughly explain to my friend that even though they had a bunch of empty back pack storage slots, that the embers and souls can only be carried in your main inventory.

(really wish Klei would just default them to your inventory and move something else to the empty back pack slots)

speaking of simple things.....after being thrown back into the game after YEARS of not using it I suddenly find Maxwell working differently then he used to do when I left the game when Charlie's reign started.

So there I am with a completely differently working codex umbra and suddenly with a magicians Top hat and was like:

OK so what now? All I see he can carry a chest on his head now, but all the (Maxwell) mods I want to use are suddenly incompatible with him.

I literally felt as if I had never played Maxwell before so different he was to me after the changes.

This was also one of the few times when I probably SHOULD HAVE read the wiki, because basically I still use the codex umbra like in single player for collecting things and EXTREMLY SELDOMLY spawning a combat shadow. I have no idea what the butterfly thing and the pillar does.

[Lovens]

4 hours ago, NPCMaxwell said:

speaking of simple things.....after being thrown back into the game after YEARS of not using it I suddenly find Maxwell working differently then he used to do when I left the game when Charlie's reign started.

So there I am with a completely differently working codex umbra and suddenly with a magicians Top hat and was like:

OK so what now? All I see he can carry a chest on his head now, but all the (Maxwell) mods I want to use are suddenly incompatible with him.

I literally felt as if I had never played Maxwell before so different he was to me after the changes.

This was also one of the few times when I probably SHOULD HAVE read the wiki, because basically I still use the codex umbra like in single player for collecting things and EXTREMLY SELDOMLY spawning a combat shadow. I have no idea what the butterfly thing and the pillar does.

I'm not gonna spoil it but have you tried using the spells you don't know what they do? Also don't they have names in the game? I recently recommended Maxwell to my newbie friend who wanted a chill character to just have fun. I did not explain any of his magic items or spells to him, just mentioned there's a book he can use to do some cool things. He ended up figuring out what all of his stuff does by the end of first Autumn on his own and I just confirmed his findings or told him if he was incorrect about some of them. Those are not too hard to figure out if you just use them a few times.

[NPCMaxwell]

6 minutes ago, Lovens said:

I'm not gonna spoil it but have you tried using the spells you don't know what they do? Also don't they have names in the game? I recently recommended Maxwell to my newbie friend who wanted a chill character to just have fun. I did not explain any of his magic items or spells to him, just mentioned there's a book he can use to do some cool things. He ended up figuring out what all of his stuff does by the end of first Autumn on his own and I just confirmed his findings or told him if he was incorrect about some of them. Those are not too hard to figure out if you just use them a few times.

Since I avoid combat I /assumed/ the butterfly and the pillar had something to do with that, but so far I didn't really see what they do (probably because I just casted the spells randomly where I stood without having a real situation with test-mobs going on) I just saw the butterfly stayed at the ground for some days if I remember right.

[Lovens]

37 minutes ago, NPCMaxwell said:

Since I avoid combat I /assumed/ the butterfly and the pillar had something to do with that, but so far I didn't really see what they do (probably because I just casted the spells randomly where I stood without having a real situation with test-mobs going on) I just saw the butterfly stayed at the ground for some days if I remember right.

Yes they are combat-oriented and won't be useful if you use them without a target. But they are powerful spells that are fun to play around with. I understand your desire to avoid combat on a character with only 75 health, it makes sense. But even if you avoid combat by deliberately not attacking anything yourself there are still aggressive mobs that attack you and come towards you (hounds, bats, depth worms, monkeys). Next time you encounter some you might as well try to use Maxwell's combat perks, you will be pleasantly surprised how easy it is to fight stuff as him.