What is the hardest character Overall Across all Game Stages?

[Jakepeng99]

Im not including Wes cus the poll would be boring. 

Think of how they work in all stages of the game. Dont just choose a character who sucks only in the first few days.

[Sesekriri]

I feel like it has to be Wilson. Every other character has strong upsides that let then defeat parts of the game relatively easily. The strongest downsides would probably be Warley and Walter, but there upsides definitely outweigh the downsides.

 

Warley can ignore spring, get damage and defence buffs, and have buffs to do work faster. Plus his big stomach makes his downside not so bad. 

Walter is an OP infinite ranged damage character and if you're playing him properly his sanity loss on hit will essentially never be relevant. 

Wilson on the other hand has a slightly easier time in winter and that's about it. His transmutation skills arnt really helpful as he doesn't have any unique ways to farm any particular resource enough to convert it to something else. They those skills mostly come into play when other players can leverage their speedy farming. 

[Mike23Ua]

It’s Wilson, Torch Toss is Horrible…. And the amount of skill points you have to invest in it is an absolute joke JOKE Klei when you compare what 15 skill points will do for any other damn character who already has a Skill Tree.

No I’m absolutely not going to play nice about this, all these years later I STILL feel like Wilson who was meant to be the franchise mascot got the shortest end of the (Match) Stick. 🤧

[Semind]

Well, I might be inclined to agree with Wilson, if we rate difficulty as an average. If we rate things by the hardest thing to overcome I might be tempted to nominate Wanda for how rough her health system is to deal with fighting warbot/Scion. Wilson's strats for each challenge, which basically means generic strats almost any character can execute, aren't too horrible to execute and healing food in sufficient quantities can do a lot to salve over mistakes. And I guess Wanda can kind of over prepare her healing clocks too but it's still not really comparable.

[Radicaljoe]

Every other character has some sort of goal you can reach to minimize their downside.
Walter gets better armor, faster firing, longer range to keep you safer; Wormwood gets more resources for healing like poultice or jellybeans, etc.
Warly is the one character that doesn't have any relief for the downside. 
It's not a terrible downside, crockpot food only isn't that awful. But it's the worst downside because its SO boring. And boredom is the most crippling downside a character can have.
Pair with him having 0 personal kit and you're set up for the hardest character to KEEP playing without falling asleep or wanting to swap.

(I say 0 personal kit because everything he has is sharable, the portable crockpot itself is MAYBE considerable, but like, it makes crockpot food just like a regular pot but slightly faster, it's not that impactful)

[Jakepeng99]

I don’t get Wilson cus he isn’t hard to play. Weakest isnt hardest. He is pretty decent.

I think it’s either Warly or Walter. Mainly because if you aren’t good at the game as those you just die after a tiny mistake.

Edited November 26, 2025 by Jakepeng99

[hyoton123]

I think it’s Warly, although I could be convinced with Wanda. Wilson isnt strong, but the basic principles of dst and gunpowder are strong. Warley takes time and game knowledge and some rng, and wanda has not aged particularly well (lol) and also needs specific game knowledge. Walter can sort of easily go wrong if caught off guard so maybe him too.

[GetNerfedOn]

Warly 

- convenient early forms of sanity control (shrooms, cacti) and health restoration (blue shrooms, butterfly wings) are completely unavailable

- some of the best forms of sanity control (jerky, shrooms, cacti) and health restoration (jerky, cooked vegetables) completely unavailable

- you're limited to essentially 5 efficient eats per food item. Even the most delicious meaty stew becomes useless if relied on too much. And if using healing, here's a sleeper downside: your inventory gets clogged by the healing foods you will use.

- not even the seeds in your inventory will save you if you mismanage hunger and begin to starve because Warly is frankly offended by the mere suggestion

- other characters have Perks and Skills available for nigh instant use or at least just a few days worth searching around; on the other hand, Warly requires tons of resource, skill and time investment:

- normally in solo you need an Autumn, Spring and Summer to get a mass of pepper and garlic, that largely depends how lucky you are with your seeds and requires adequate mastery of a fairly complex mechanic (farming) that also has significant resource skill and time investment

- if assisted by Wicker/Wormwood the process speeds up but is limited to one seasons growth and a lot of seeds

- people like to complain about the stations being unintuitive so I'll mention that

- @Radicaljoe mentioned other goals that characters can reach to circumvent those downsides, all those he mentioned are available to all characters and warly can work to them (big meat to spam stew, honey, clothes and tents for sanity relief and poultice and salves for healing) its just that his kit pales in comparison to everyone else especially when the extremely harsh downsides  are considered. Its less of "boring" because I've had the most fun thinking about dishes i never really think about in my playthroughs, but its really moreso that people normally would not like to metaphorically shoot themselves in the foot when they play DST.

 

And yet that won't stop me from playing warly because he's a caregiver. Sentimental reasons aside, i know the gravity of how much the difficulty of Warly crosses into unfun, and I hope justice is done in his skilltree.

[HowlVoid]

Easily warly, his character/gameplay just feels tedious or forgetable. 

[Well-met]

I don't get the "game stage" part since even a Wes is pretty easy once you got everything in place

[Evelo]

Before the skill trees, I'd say Wormwood, but now, Warly. He isn't even hard, just the least easy. Though Wes is also difficult, but unlike Warly, he can stuff his face with Wobster Bisque on the regular without penalty.

[Jakepeng99]

28 minutes ago, Well-met said:

I don't get the "game stage" part since even a Wes is pretty easy once you got everything in place

If it becomes easy in your eyes, there will still be a character who is the hardest.

 

Anyway this is mainly for your whole playthrough. Its kinda your choice what fits, wether you want to count beefalo or if you want the ultra mega lategame to count.

[ShadowDuelist]

I think it is Warly.
 

In the early game he’s mostly downsides compared to almost anyone else.

Later on, most of his perks—already pretty mild with the current updates—depend heavily on farming. But he has no real advantage in farming, so everything is tied to RNG and a lot of long, repetitive grinding. He also has to kill volt goats (more RNG) and set up a goat farm, which is difficult to do correctly and very time-consuming both to build and to benefit from.

And even after all that, you only get a very limited number of uses out of his perks, while he still keeps his strict dietary restrictions.

I wouldn’t say he’s bad in the same way Wilson is. Even when playing solo without using the portal, Warly does have some useful buffs: he can deal damage comparable to Wolfgang, he has some defensive buffs, and in multiplayer he can buff the whole team. But in solo play, almost everything he does is grindy, RNG-dependent, time-consuming, and gives pretty limited returns.

If a new player asked me, I’d say Warly is the real challenge character. And I don’t mean this to be bad since a lot of people enjoy going around Warly’s cons while not becoming a god in the early/mid game. Even so, I still think all that effort should feel somewhat more rewarding.

[Tigris Nano]

I would pick anything even wes over wendy because of grind to make her somewhat useful outside of spider farming / hound waves / sitting at base and of course my beloved command wheel. Like its so bad that devs even made keybinds as bandaid solution. What is so difficult in making it work like "click+hold abigail flower with rmb/use slot bind then move cursor (its original location could be remembered before opening spell wheel) out of "cancel" circle towards some option then stop holding rmb / item use bind"?

But you may ask "what about willow or maxwell?". Willow doesnt rely on her spells that much during combat (where it matters most) aside from bq fight which is "spells > lunar flame > cast > wait > repeat" and maxwell got his infamous shadow cage which can buy you enough time to spawn more shadows (which dont require micromanagement, deal more dmg, gain full hp the moment you spawn them and still live longer than abigail) and stop all sorts of cosmic horrors in their tracks because of course maxwell can. And wendy relies purely on abigail (and beefalo but plenty of bosses and mobs tend to knock you out from beefalo and kill it if you mess up just once; klei, saddle with kb resist when?) to deal some fine damage. Bosses tend to deal some insane mob dmg so abigail dies in like 2 or 3 hits. So if you want to keep her up for bit more you will have to constantly interact with this horrid wheel. Otherwise you are just emo wes without balloons for pranking your teammates.

Its not like wendy is hardest in terms of difficulty, for me she is mentally hardest because I want to hit walls with my head whenever I have to use that spell wheel and grind pots knowing they might be wasted by another 2-3 boss attacks.

[Edible Coal]

18 hours ago, Sesekriri said:

I feel like it has to be Wilson. Every other character has strong upsides that let then defeat parts of the game relatively easily. The strongest downsides would probably be Warley and Walter, but there upsides definitely outweigh the downsides.

 

Warley can ignore spring, get damage and defence buffs, and have buffs to do work faster. Plus his big stomach makes his downside not so bad. 

Walter is an OP infinite ranged damage character and if you're playing him properly his sanity loss on hit will essentially never be relevant. 

Wilson on the other hand has a slightly easier time in winter and that's about it. His transmutation skills arnt really helpful as he doesn't have any unique ways to farm any particular resource enough to convert it to something else. They those skills mostly come into play when other players can leverage their speedy farming. 

the warly stuff u said requires some amount of farming and pre planning

[ShadowDuelist]

19 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

I don’t get Wilson cus he isn’t hard to play. Weakest isnt hardest. He is pretty decent.

I agree with this vision. Both Wilson and Wes kinda suck—they aren’t harder to play, they just lack meaningful positive traits. Wes sucks more than Wilson, but it’s the same idea. They are still decent options for people who don't like overpowered characters.

Wormwood is harder to play than most characters, but he makes up for it with some powerful buffs, especially as the game progresses into later stages.

Warly is harder across all stages, and his returns are about the same as what characters like WX or Wolfgang get with a 5 days setup. The idea behind him out of being sort of an alchemist/herbalist creating powerful buffs through food on the go is amazing. It's just poorly implemented IMO.

Moving forward, what I think Warly needs is:

Spoiler

 

• Simplify his portable tools: maybe let him combine all 3 things into one single cooking station. Maybe allow him to use his portable crock pot while in his inventory.
• Give us a reason to cook on the go, over crafting 20 dishes in super grindy sessions and then bundle/polar bin everything: Perhaps recently cooked foods by Warly should grant extra buffs, that bundled or stored doesn't (which, is relatable with real life)
• Give us a reason to stay as Warly, Like I've mentioned in previous posts, perhaps making all time based food buffs (EG: Glowing after eating Glowberry mousse, electric damage of Jelly, Weather protection buffs, Jellybeans, Work/damage/defense spice, etc) last a lot longer on him.
• Make the food rotation of the "refined palate" thing feel rewarding, each time Warly eats a food he is not bored of, allow it to give bonus things (like +5hp and +5 sanity, even if the food's original stats do not give those. Bear in mind that this requires you not to repeat dishes so it won't be a super easy thing to spam)
• Make the world grow naturally more variety of vegetables, instead of just carrots and berries: Early game Warly could craft more things on the go and store seeds for later, by exploring.
• Give Warly better food management perks: He was suggested to receive bonus meat when killing creatures that drop some kind of meat (he even says he is an accomplished butcher). Also smaller buffs would do, things like Warly always getting a guaranteed seed out of picking vegetables, or one more vegetable/seed when he breaks giant crops.
• Make his special chef pouch actually useful: I think it should be changed or upgraded to be a hat that stores food and makes it last about as much as the insulated pack. But upgrading his usual backpack would do too (maybe with salt?). Late game Icker jars could allow him to further upgrade it.
• Allow him to weaponize food more: It could be both exclusive tools he makes (think of the hambat) or new kinds of poison seasoning or explosive food lures for different kinds of creatures (even those that we normally can't feed)

 

Edited November 27, 2025 by ShadowDuelist

[GimplyGoose]

On 11/27/2025 at 7:03 AM, Tigris Nano said:

I would pick anything even wes over wendy

If you deleted Abigail from the game, Wendy would still be easier/stronger than Wes.

[shaurun]

I picked Webber.

For sure he can shine is survival, but overall:

- managing spiders in boss fights is very difficult, probably since you manipulate swarm you should be okay with some of them die, but in fact it's most likely you either can lead them all to survive, or all to be killed. They are way less powerfull then merms or rabbits, and adding new members to the swarm doesn't protect individuals a lot, since they don't know how to kite.

- other survivors have more or less clear and reachable goals. Webber... eh, after you've retrieved nurse spiders, the only thing he can could probably do is amass the horde. But it's hard to move between shards, you have to keep eye for them to not eat your loot, and placing structures / moving sometimes can be complecated with a lot of spiders. If more merms = more houses, spiders aren't easy to amass, covering map with them takes a lot of time and all you craft is the simplest spiders. Late game transforms your kingdom to lunar spiders but anyways you should Wilson your way through CC to reach the endgame.

- his stats aren't really good, and early game no pigs to chop trees - slower progression. Wilson is actually better for progression because he not only can hire workers, but skip crafting mooncaller staff.

Honestly I haven't played a lot with Webber so I could be unfair to him, but yeah to me he seems to be the hardest atm.

[Cheggf]

Even if you included Wes the answer would still be Wormwood or Warly. Their healing downsides are by far the most difficult downsides in the game, way harder than Wes taking slightly longer to do stuff. 

[Tigris Nano]

3 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Even if you included Wes the answer would still be Wormwood or Warly. Their healing downsides are by far the most difficult downsides in the game, way harder than Wes taking slightly longer to do stuff. 

Thats if you dont focus on getting batbat in first 5-6 days. After that wormwood becomes [title card]

[Cheggf]

31 minutes ago, Tigris Nano said:

Thats if you dont focus on getting batbat in first 5-6 days. After that wormwood becomes [title card]

Needing to heal with an expensive thing that drains your sanity is still way harder than any other character. 

[Tigris Nano]

39 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Needing to heal with an expensive thing that drains your sanity is still way harder than any other character. 

Its not that expensive. You get logs from crafting menu, wings from bats and few purple gems by combining red and blue gems from graves during first few days. And if thats not enough (ofc its not) you can get more gems from ruins, jimbo, dfly, sunken chests, sproutrocks, bishops + from combining red and blue gems from wide variety of sources. And of course, thing that single handedly carried whole ancient echoes update - boulder trees.

Also sanity drain is not necessarily something bad (only during fw fight but you can counter that with bee crown and, if you get hit often, sanity food). Free nightmare fuel for dark swords, night lights and other fuel consuming stuff is always welcome for me.

[Cheggf]

5 hours ago, Tigris Nano said:

Its not that expensive. You get logs from crafting menu, wings from bats and few purple gems by combining red and blue gems from graves during first few days. And if thats not enough (ofc its not) you can get more gems from ruins, jimbo, dfly, sunken chests, sproutrocks, bishops + from combining red and blue gems from wide variety of sources. And of course, thing that single handedly carried whole ancient echoes update - boulder trees.

Also sanity drain is not necessarily something bad (only during fw fight but you can counter that with bee crown and, if you get hit often, sanity food). Free nightmare fuel for dark swords, night lights and other fuel consuming stuff is always welcome for me.

Edgy Rick, is that you?