Am I Crazy??!??! (Stealth change in the game)

[Milordo]

Am I crazy or birds now drop twigs and cut grass???? 
Like, I was doing my usual tests on Don't Starve and noticed immediately a twig dropped by a bird (didn't see which bird).
I thought it was mine and just seeing things but then another day I saw a red bird dropping a cut grass and today again another one with cut grass!!!
Wwwhhaaatt!!! This is like very big, gigantic and impactful for the game and for a very old player like me. Birds always, always only dropped seeds since the dinosaurs era, so what happened?? 
Am i missing something, when was this great idea implemented? It was a stealthy change and nobody still noticed it? Did I missed here the discussions of the community about it? 

Also, this is a cool yet simple idea that everybody for sure would have thought in all these years, developers included. Yet Klei never implemented it in all this literal decade.
What gives? Did they get inspired from videos like "surviving only on Lunar Island" or similar? Or something they noticed it when updating old stuff through Rifts? (Since I'm quite blind about Rifts, so if this is linked with them, please don't spoil the details, just confirm it).
 

[Cassielu]

Its not a stealth change, this feature has been present in DST for decade. I'm not sure of the exact time, probably before RoG was added to DST.

If you join the game after the world has been running for a certain number of days, they will do this.

Edited June 22 by Cassielu

[Milordo]

12 minutes ago, Cassielu said:

Its not a stealth change, this feature has been present in DST for decade. I'm not sure of the exact time, probably before RoG was added to DST.

If you join the game after the world has been running for a certain number of days, they will do this.

Uh???????????? 

WHAT. Wait, then why I'm seeing it now? It's impossible. It is linked via some world options like Extra Starting Resources or Seasonal Starting items? 

Also you said after "a certain number of days". They dropped me cut grass on day 2-3. That isn't some certain number. 

[Cruvimaster]

I've never seen them drop anything other than seeds. This is news to me.

What I'm sure of is that they don't drop that in construction areas, since my base never has twigs or cut grass. I would be quite annoyed if that happened.

Edited June 22 by Cruvimaster

[Draggofroot]

First time i've seen this happen was when Return of Them first released 

[-Variant]

3 hours ago, Milordo said:

Am I crazy or birds now drop twigs and cut grass????

This is a several years old feature.
It was added wwwaayyyyyy back sometime closer to the ANR era of the game. Its to help players joining later into older worlds, so they can get a head start with making tools.

Its tied between a mix of both world age, and player age, which are tracked. Older worlds and newer players cause it to happen.

[ShadowDuelist]

A few years ago, I joined a game late and was struggling to find flint. I thought I was going to overheat (it was summer), and birds gave me 2 flints in a row -enough for a pickaxe so I could jump into the caves.
The birds have been our only friends in the Constant all along.

[Dr. Safety]

I know its been in the game for awhile, but it was never present enough to make a difference for me. Even joining a world late where the whole spawn area is picked clean, I would still mostly get seeds. Sometimes a twig, some grass, or a piece of flint, but it was never the thing that saved me from darkness or allowed me to make a tool.

[Mike23Ua]

It’s been in the game for a long long time, there’s patch notes that I’ll never be able to find that specifically mention it. Most the time it happens if you stand around at the florid Postern as soon as you spawn in.

However… if you join a world with rifts already active, the birds do not do this, because.. 

Spoiler

Birds be dropping out the sky already dead.

 

[nimzowitsch10]

you guys must be trolling because in my 6k hours of DST I have never seen a bird drop a twig or grass

[Walrusst]

Its based on a very tight timer in a world you join late on.

It honestly might make sense if the postern birds had a tendency to accidentally replant resources as well, giving an explanation for world renewal around the worlds new player hub.

[Mike23Ua]

1 hour ago, nimzowitsch10 said:

you guys must be trolling because in my 6k hours of DST I have never seen a bird drop a twig or grass

Check your in game Scrapbook page, click on a bird in that scrapbook it’ll show you exactly what resources it’s capable of giving you.

[Echsrick]

a couple years or so it was, several characters were added allready, it only realy happens on old worlds for new joiners

[Well-met]

it's a feature that only kicks in if your player pawn age is significantly younger than the world's

Edited June 22 by Well-met

[Milordo]

Okay update,

Thanks for all your responses! 

I'm absolutely speechless. 

I am in this fusion of joy, awe and excitement for have founded this hidden mechanic but also total confusion and incredulous of how such mechanic was completely hidden from all of us. 

I've played over 100 worlds since 2015. Played together with over 55+ people, all of them started as complete freshly noobies. All of them with their different playstyles and crazy adventures, and not me or them never encounter a crow dropping a thing that wasn't a seed.

I know for sure @Cruvimaster @ShadowDuelist @Dr. Safety  are not new players at all and have a lot of hours, even by the process of elimination of how much time they have been in these forums. 

Like, guys. We're talking about birds. Dropping stuff. The most mondane thing ever in Don't Starve that you can see. If me and many other people, and tons more I presume at this point, don't know about it..... This is not a joke, I think we have here some shiny pokemon rarity tier. 

And now I have found out that even the wiki mentions it:

Completely surprised on how it describes it so precise. So precisely that in fact,

7 hours ago, -Variant said:

Its tied between a mix of both world age, and player age, which are tracked. Older worlds and newer players cause it to happen.

2 hours ago, Echsrick said:

a couple years or so it was, several characters were added allready, it only realy happens on old worlds for new joiners

2 hours ago, Well-met said:

it's a feature that only kicks in if your player pawn age is significantly younger than the world's

these responses are half wrong. Not only by the wiki but also because I tested those three freshly new worlds as a new freshly WX. One with 3 days, one with 5 days and one in 8 days. So how can it be a mix of old/young player age and old/young world if both the player and the world were young? Unless I'm missing something.

THAT beingggg saidddddddd

5 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

It’s been in the game for a long long time, there’s patch notes that I’ll never be able to find that specifically mention it. Most the time it happens if you stand around at the florid Postern as soon as you spawn in.

4 hours ago, Walrusst said:

Its based on a very tight timer in a world you join late on.
It honestly might make sense if the postern birds had a tendency to accidentally replant resources as well, giving an explanation for world renewal around the worlds new player hub.

I was indeed near the florid postern! So maybe that is also a factor?? I guess???

I also want to reiterate the part of my closet special adventure with my community. I know everything about new player experience. If this was made by Klei, on literal 2015, with the sole goal to aid new players, it failed so abysmally......

 

The only thing I would really want to know, if this is linked to Extra Starting Resources or something alike because if it is tied through some world customization, I would get it, since I meddle with them a lot during the years, but if not otherwise I can't explain it if not with "this is a badly programmed and designed mechanic, that also shows the insecurities and confusion of Klei of that time".

In conclusion this is a REAL bummer because you can do cool gameplay with it. This could be one of those things in this final modern era of Dst to be complety revisited/reworked. It would be awesome to have certain items to be dropped from different types of birds, depending also on which biome they land on. It could elevate a lot the gameplay of your base/s around turfs! 

[ShadowDuelist]

8 minutes ago, Milordo said:

The only thing I would really want to know, if this is linked to Extra Starting Resources or something alike because if it is tied through some world customization, I would get it, since I meddle with them a lot during the years, but if not otherwise I can't explain it if not with "this is a badly programmed and designed mechanic, that also shows the insecurities and confusion of Klei of that time".

AFAIK, it’s not.

It was a measure added to give players a chance to receive basic materials and be able to craft at least a torch or an axe, even if the area near spawn had been picked clean. I think this was implemented before extra starting resources, or at least before that setting had a default use. It was also present before the character reworks, so most characters didn’t start with a survival kit.

However, it’s very RNG-dependent; not only in whether you get any materials at all, but also in which materials you receive. It’s also very easy to miss when it happens (for example, if the bird drops the item slightly off-camera, or you simply walk past it).

Extra starting resources guarantee that if you join after X amount of time (defined by the setting), you will always have some grass, twigs, and flint in your inventory.

[Milordo]

27 minutes ago, ShadowDuelist said:

--snip--

As you said, and discussed in this topic, it's so legendary rare, that it doesn't exist, thus it is badly programmed or designed. I don't think it's even up to debate. In your cool story, if I perceived well, correct me, it happened to you once. Once in 11 years of Dst. Like wow. I didn't even think about Extra starting resources taking the same role, and thus place, making it even more redundant.

Which is why I would add this in the long list of Klei to do. It is such a shame to waste such mechanic.

Edited June 22 by Milordo

[ShadowDuelist]

2 minutes ago, Milordo said:

As you said, and discussed in this topic, it's so legendary rare, that it doesn't exist, thus it is badly programmed or designed. I don't think it's even up to debate. In your cool story, if I perceived well, correct me, it happened to you once. Once in 11 years of Dst. Like wow. I didn't even think about Extra starting resources taking the same role, and thus place, making it even more redundant.

Well it happened more than once with random twigs or grass, but yes, just that one time it was (VERY) useful. I see you point about that.

As a related story (maybe you remember about it) many moons ago Klei tried to balance the chance and frequency in which birds gave seeds. And it ended up making birds either not drop any seed at all, or drop an absurd amount of seeds, to the point where any non-Warly or Wigfrid could survive entirely off eating ground seeds. The final patch to that story is the frequency of seeds we got now.

My point being: maybe it was better replaced with improving extra starting resources (which they did) instead of messing with RNG related events, that can cause completely unexpected results.
And birds supplying you a twig just stayed there as an old, flavor, out of use feature. I think if you do not rely on it it's fine, you may get a grass or a flint once and then, as a nice little surprise like you just had. 

Who knows, maybe one day it could save you too? 

[Mike23Ua]

Honestly it should probably be removed from the game and just have the odd beefalo guy replace it since he offers other stuff too.. players will learn he exists IMMEDIATELY and can also get the same resources the birds would have randomly dropped.

Flashback to Solo DS and Maxwell popping up when you spawn “Say Pal, You Don’t look so good.”

Beefalo guy can pop up and be like your first time is an I.O.U, you can pay me back later. 😂 

Cause just standing around waiting on RNG for birds to drop stuff sucks.

[user1464576869]

I assumed it was part of world-regrowth mechanics which has been a thing for years, but I'll be honest I've never ever seen it happen on-screen until only within this very month were I saw birds drop one twig and a flint on-screen for the first time. I always assumed more than anything that the items simply spawned off-screen, no birds or anything.

Edited June 23 by user1464576869

[Echsrick]

9 hours ago, Milordo said:

these responses are half wrong. Not only by the wiki but also because I tested those three freshly new worlds as a new freshly WX. One with 3 days, one with 5 days and one in 8 days. So how can it be a mix of old/young player age and old/young world if both the player and the world were young? Unless I'm missing something

like just immagine a world is like day 50 or something and you join freshly into the world, then birds have a chance to drop grass and stuff for a while

[Jakepeng99]

On 6/22/2026 at 1:11 PM, Milordo said:

Uh???????????? 

WHAT. Wait, then why I'm seeing it now? It's impossible. It is linked via some world options like Extra Starting Resources or Seasonal Starting items? 

Also you said after "a certain number of days". They dropped me cut grass on day 2-3. That isn't some certain number. 

I have been seeing this for ages.