An old story for you

[layangan putus]

Soon Winter's Feast event will begin so I want to share an old story from December 2019, all of this was during the unfortunate pandemic and I had a long holiday so I got all the time for this game - tried a bit for couple of hundreds hours to learn one or two things. Told myself, "Done with conquering 3 worlds in Don't Starve, now let's see what can this another variant offer?" By that time I'd played around 500 hours play time in DST; I had already learnt the necessary knowledges about surviving the Constant & dealing with basic bosses like AG, DC, Klaus, seasonal bosses, & just enough clue about BQ and Toad. I hope you enjoy the story!

 

 

CHAPTER I: WHAT IS HOME? (day 1 - 35)

 

I entered this Catcoon server on day 1 as Wigfrid to apply what I'd learnt. My original plan was to slain as many bosses as I possibly could. I prepared some items, rushed the DF (used walls strat) to get gems, and went into cave to scout possible location of ruins. At that time, I wasn't used to ruins rushing so I built a small outpost by the lichen area: a furnace, a tent, some crockpots, a bird cage, alchemy engine, & surrounding that small area with walls for emergency situation like depths worms & splumonkeys. I cooked as many pierogies as I could and make sure I started with max health and sanity at the outpost before searching the ruins. Luckily, the cave size generation was relatively small so I easily found the ruins and started to slain all damaged clockworks there. The military was quite a big one and took me some time to clear the ruins - "It's time to face the Ancient Guardian!", I cried. Quickly, I provoked the beast and brought it between two graves & holding F button. Surely, I also crafted a Magiluminescence and several Star Caller's staves - "These will help me smooth the next fight."

 

Now back to the outpost, I was careless so got chased by few couple of splumonkeys but I quickly ran inside the walls fighting those devils and then went to sleep in tent. All good now but soon winter came, I prototyped a cobblestone and a pitchfork and brought a heated thermal stone to find Walrus camp for a walking cane (got unlucky), Klaus sack, and the herd of deers. I found all and prepared a small arena near the sack for easy fight against this tough foe - got hit so many times but I was Wig (I always had a stack of rocks and gold) and chomped all the healing food. At last, the mighty foe is no more against this warrior. Soon after fight I got cane, it's day 30 and our lovely friend came to visit but the one-eyed beast was no match against this agile warrior. By that time, I was satisfied with the outcome of this run but I never realized for one moment that I was the only one left - the world that once was full of many players soon became the home of this newbie.

 

 

CHAPTER II: 2 MONSTER MEATS + 2 EELS (day 37 - 500)

"Now that I am all alone, this world is all mine!" - I spent most of the days exploring the mainland and hunted all Moose/Goose I could find. I also did my hobby collecting stuff to unlock all recipes so I spent a lot of time transferring stuff to the outpost below & stored them away. I also brought some resources for cave living to avoid going back across shards. I tried to relocate resources like grass, twigs, pine tree, pig house so cave base would be much more manageable. Why cave base? By that time, I'd learnt the idea of potential griefing if you build base in usual spot like PK, Oasis, Moonbase so I tried to kinda hide all the good stuff away like panflute or boss loots. In the outlaw world, griefers usually don't bother to explore the caves. Time flies quickly, it's summer now and Wormwood (a loner) joined the world - she planted seeds and built a small base in mainland. I saw him during my way to get a desert google and it's boss time now against Antlion, got hit a lot because it's hard to see the ground where it spikes but this dweller survived once more.

 

The next day, I went online and quickly entered the same server - Got a feeling the same Wormwood prolonged the world age. It's autumn now, I spent the best season to explore each cave entrance so I got good idea about the shortest routes to get somewhere. Since it's autumn, the most lovable season - bunch of other adventurers joined the world including Wendy & Winona (these two are friends from public server). The adventurers built a new base in mainland & did whatever they wanted to do. As a dweller, I saw this opportunity to learn more about these adventurers by donating enough gears. Occasionally, I helped them fighting the hounds or treeguards and brought things they need. Other than that, I went to kill more bosses like DF and Klaus.

 

There was a time that mainland base got griefed so I helped them rebuilding the place, also I shared some food with them because so many hungry mouths to feed. When not fighting any bosses, I spent my time at the cave outpost stacking more resources into the chests. Occasionally, they gather people to fight bosses so of course I joined them. Season by season, we became closer so trust grew overtime - Told Wendy & Winona where I was basing and keeping the good stuff if they needed them. Wendy (very sociable person) laughed and promised me to keep the secret, while Winona joined me surviving at the outpost. I taught them the way of cave dweller: "2 monster meats + 2 eels & you're good to go". Winona (very kind & creative person) had her own project creating spider farm not far from the outpost, also occasionally helped me fencing all the splumonkey huts. These two adventurers were very helpful, we often went back to mainland base to avoid suspicion about another base.

 

Hundreds days passed after we tried to improve the way of cave dwellers, more adventurers joined - this time were Woodie (he once taught me the way of sailor) and his partner in crime Wortox. These two came with only one goal which was giantslaying, they quickly explored and communicated about the preparation between each other. These two prepared so quickly but somehow they couldn't find this giant location. This is my home and I'd seen a glimpse of this giant so I quickly told them the location. I didn't use ping mod back then so I needed to actually meet them then led them to the spot. Thanking me - "Join us slaying this giant" he said then chopped its cap. I quickly brought out my hambat and tried to deal as many damages as I could. Toad saw me and gave its sporecap - I was panic tried to run away costing me the hambat. Wortox was observant - he quickly dropped a dark sword for me. I quickly grabbed that sword and back on my feet. We spent enough time because of the constant shadow creatures from nearby fissures but we finally slayed this giant beast. After the fight, I invited them to the outpost for safety where Woodie then gave me all of the Toad loot. I couldn't thank them enough because now the outpost had significant upgrade which is temporary lights to reduce dwarf star consumption.

 

We spent more time talking to each other and then went separate way. These two were not satisfied with previous giantslaying due to the shadow creatures' intervention before so they prepared for one more fight - and this one blew my mind. "You done, eh? Quickly place it", I just entered cave from mainland and walked a bit then out of blue I saw a giant frozen toad between these two. "Place all to block it, I think it's far enough" - One'd been freezing the toad while the other'd been placing lureplant bulbs to slowly push the toad from its hole. "Stop standing there! Help us beating this toad, eh?" - I stood silently then quickly started holding the F button. After the giant fell, "It's called shenanigans, this one is hard to pull off if you are alone but doable I guess." We spent more time talking about this topic until finally they left the world to do more crimes - I quickly spent more time in private world testing this shenanigan to make sure its consistency before I called it a day.

 

 

CHAPTER III: THE BIGGEST CHOMP (day 501 - 1000)

Loading screen and - "Go carry it and stand still, I'll push". I was surprised by a ruckus in chat about something happening in mainland. I quickly ran to see what's going on up there. Apparently, there are new adventurers joined the world - more adventurers including WX-78 (clever & ambitious person) & Wigfrid (fellow shield-maiden enjoyer). I saw this WX-78 pushing another adventurer that carrying a weird heavy object to somewhere I think. "Hey! You've been living long enough here, why don't you fix the statues?", he sounded disappointed - I was confused, "I don't know what you are talking about but pretty sure I've cleared the ruins, what's with the statues tho?" He went silent for a moment, "Whatever.. stand still I'll push again, we're almost there". I was curious so I just followed them until we reached the destination. After some pushing adjustments, the adventurer carrying the unknown object placed it into the statue and *SNAP!* I just realized what those weird pieces are for the first time. "Oh so that's what those weird objects are for, I know each of the location" - "Nah we'd already located them all, Wig is on the way here.. you can help carrying the last one." After we finally fixed the statues, I asked, "Now what?" - he responded, "We wait, we also need to prepare an arena and healing food" so we did wait and the night finally came.

 

"Kill the knight first, bishop second, last the rook.. always keep 'em close" and it started my first attempt against these familiar shadows. I started to hear a creepy moan and they started running into the smallest shadow and hit it so I just did what others did and the two shadow left began transforming into their bigger version. It went so fast then I saw shadow bats flying around with creepy sound and these adventurers got hurt and suddenly this giant shadow mouth appeared crunching me - I was so panic so I ran away from it but then I remembered to keep them close. I ran far enough from it but tried to be near the tall shadow, thought I was safe yet another giant shadow mouth chomping me. I quickly ate the healing food to stay healthy and made more helmets. Luckily, this time no giant mouth tried to chomp me because it's transforming yet again to be the biggest shadow I'd ever seen and here came THE BIGGEST CHOMP - I didn't really remember it very well but pretty sure I stayed in the corner watching my low health bar and got a glimpse of these adventurers beating the hell of this giant shadow. When I was pretty sure everything had gone safe, I just went to sleep at the mainland base and spent the next morning cooking more healing food at the outpost. While I was doing that, suddenly WX-78 said, "Hey, you told me you've cleared the ruins then why are there these damaged clockworks? Hmm..." - "I am 100% sure I've slained all damaged clockworks even the guardian, I even kept its horn", I replied. Turned out there was this sacred part of ruins that I'd not yet explored because at that time I didn't know if it's possible to generate such ruins.

"Alright! Let's gather in red shroom biome, we need to mine 8 fossils" so we met there and got all the fossil pieces we needed. "So where's this another part of ruins? Lead us there" - I led them to my outpost and told them that we just needed to take the other path and went straight and no need to worry about the devils since they were caged. "It's fine, this place can do & we also have the key" - He built 2 stone walls and put 1 wooden gate near the edge. "Alright, come follow me!" so we followed, I was not sure what's going on but I knew I could trust this WX-78 then it happened. I saw WX-78 floating on the void without care and soon each of us followed him navigating the void. We ran for several seconds then I saw weird tiles I'd never seen before but we ignored it and kept moving into this bigger square arena with a gateway at the middle of it. "We've arrived, type /rescue" - he quickly inserted a key in the gateway then built this intimidating skeletal figure. "Wait! What should we do?", I got traumatized by the past event - "This one is simple, just hit and don't let the skeleton eat any small shadow." Thus, after we dealt with some shadow creatures.. yet another cool fight began.

 

 

CHAPTER IV: MORE SHENANIGANS (day 1001 - 1750)

Another BQ fell once again and so another AFW fell. "We need to reset ruin & clear it every time we can to get more horns, we only have 4 horns & 4 eyes for 4 turrets - we need more turrets." At this point, I had helped several encounters against AFW so I skipped the fights to build a new place for my own far from the devils and the fissures - A place where I could store personal belongings safely & collect my thought. Thus, I picked a large empty spot near the other part of ruins and built myself a cozy base to remember my root. After spent whole day for finishing the structures and floorings, I called it a day then came back the other day to be surprised by my new neighbor from the sacred part of ruins. His place looked cool, also he had bunny farm using damaged bishops he repaired. My neighbor was a chill person, we always guarded each other's home. Done with the place, I finally collected my energy to greet more adventurers that joined the world. This time we had Wickerbottom & Maxwell - Let's do shenanigans, shall we?

 

WX-78 suggested that the mainland base should be at moonstone forest. There were many trees at one time but somehow they managed to clear the forest and put cobblestones for each tile. Meanwhile, Wickerbottom did all the farming using lureplants while Maxwell placed lots of pawn statues circling the moonbase. Their plan was to build turrets circling the moonbase and protect both of the moonbase and the turrets using statues to farm moon events and protection against treeguards or hounds threats. That's why they also needed to build many statues on a boat and two statues on the land to then burn the boat down to kill many tier 3 shadow knights to farm shadow hearts. I believed they managed to do that in less than one or two seasons and occasionally they revived one or two reanimated skeletons near the moonbase to destroy it over and over again while manually repairing it to duplicate moonrocks. At this point of time, pretty sure all of catcoons, tallbirds, beefalos are already extinct.. I mean I didn't even see any berry bushes but they were not really useful back in 2019 - we're lucky with stonefruit bushes and reeds at swamp & lunar island.

 

Apart from those shenanigans: WX-78 had shown me weird stuff like a statue on top of a statue, capable of making Wig's helmets as WX-78, also his wildest idea to kidnap moslings then exploited rollback feature in first day of summer to keep those moslings as rainmaker so totally free of wild fires and Antlion for whole summer. At one point, they also changed the circle shape into heart shape for moonbase - I was glad they were having fun building that beautiful moonbase & don't forget the lotus-shaped of moonrock idols. They managed to turn the barren world into a paradise: scaled chests were full of bundled stuff & foods were always abundant from pig farm, hound farm, honey farm, & bunny farm - They even built a zoo to keep koalefants, ewecus, slurpers to attract new adventurers. The world age was too ancient prolly almost 10000 days to even get visited by cool modders & DST content creators - These adventurers were always up to something mindblowing.

 

 

CHAPTER V: MACHINE OF DESTRUCTION (day 1751 - 2500)

Somewhere between in chapter IV, there were these two adventurers that joined for couple of hundreds days: Willow and Wolfgang - These two were insanely good players like I never know how they did it but they successfully managed to play with 500ms ping & they outperformed all bosses. Mastering patterns in DST is one thing but mastering patterns & delay from internet connection.. now that's something else - I remember they said, "Just get used to the delay." These two came up with a shenanigan like duplicating volt goats from one herd so you can multiply the herds consistently to farm horns. These two were playing optimally, I got lucky to have this duo as companions because they kindly taught me the next level of DST. They were so inspiring that I went ham rushing BQ (using tentacle traps), DF (use walls), Klaus (Winterfeast), AG (cheese graves), AFW (mixed between catapults, normal weather pains, & lureplants), & finally clearing ruins to then repeat everything 3 times a day for 3 days straight. Still I felt unsatisfied so for one more round, I went rushing all bosses without any assistances or cheeses - Simply playing the intended way. I practiced before in private world for everything I need to know then I finally did it - ended the rush with Malbatross. (new boss back then)

 

 

CHAPTER VI: THE LAST RAISE (day 2501 - 3000)

 

I collected the feathers as my reward, brought it back to my home - on the way I encountered a random Wes skeleton near the outpost. It reminded me how cruel the Constant could be so I quickly hammered the skeleton down. Back home, I unlocked all recipes needed to craft a Winged Sail - I put it at the middle of the place. As I was raising the sail slowly, I remember these adventurers starting from the current mainlanders to whom helped me started this awesome journey: Wilson, Warly, Webber, Wolfgang, Willow, Wickerbottom, Maxwell, Wigfrid, WX-78, Wortox, Woodie, Winona, Wendy, Wormwood, pretty sure I saw Wurt once in a while but no one really stayed to play her in public - The sail was finally raised.

 

~FIN~