My Discoveries - Detailed analysis of Don't Starve (on-going)

[ShiftyCake]

Welcome! I'm new to this community, and Don't Starve as well, so I hope you guys give me a warm welcome

Now, I've been noticing things ehre and there about Don't Starve in my amazing 3 hours of gameplay (yeah, I know, quite a lot), and I decided I should make a thread of this for those people who don't know this. I forgot most of the things, but I have here my first thing to tell you guys about, which will be my starting point. be sure to check in regularly to see new things I've discovered/strategy's of survival I wish to share. If you wish to put in your two-bits of what you're discovered, simply post below and I'll add it in after verifying.

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Strategies:

First/Second Day:

- This will detail what you need to collect, and what you’re exploring for

Collect:

- 20 twigs or more (you’ll find these along the way, and will use up most of them when gathering materials)

- 20 cut grass or more (same)

- 30 stone or more (for some things you’ll need to build)

- 30 wood or more (same)

- Tallbird eggs (they give massive health, or so I have heard. I’ll have to check to see if it is true)

- Silk (To catch many things, like bees)

- Pigs (drops manure when fed, and I assume they drop uncooked meat for the meat effigy which is essential for the game. I will have to make sure it is true once I find them.)

- Ferns (you’ll need them later)

- Grave items (see research for further details)

Locate:

- Stone area (they exist)

- Pigs (this may take a lot longer, since I have not found them before)

- Spider Dens (2 or more)

- Bee Hive (2 or more)

- Swamp area (for ferns)

- Graves (not a necessity, but quite useful)

- Tallbird

Shelter:

- The best place to put a shelter would be near the pig huts. Not too close, but close enough to only be a short travel. I find the brown terrain is the best place to shelter, since it’s clearly defined as a different terrain which I use to do something, and it contains little amounts of items you have to clear.

- What I do in my bases is there is a road on this terrain always, so I travel to either the end of the road or an intersection and place my first campfire there. I then proceed to place a few trees down through the pinecones to mark out my territory (when you gather more wood, keep placing the pinecones around the area until it’s filled with trees). This way, the only way in is the walkway since trees can’t be put upon it.

- People put heavy emphasis on being smack bang in the middle of a lot of different areas such as swamps and stone etc. I find it inefficient simply because quite a lot of the time you will explore and destroy all of the stuff in them in one or two days. Instead, I make the base camp as said above, and create “travel” camps as such which are temporary camps for when I’m gathering things far away. This only works because the map shows my base camp always, and I can travel back to it easily.

- I might provide screen shots of this actually, so that you can see what I did. That is, once I survive long enough :3 keep making mistakes or getting greedy! The usual.

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Discoveries:

General Killing:

It appears that most Hostile creatures have an attacking animation which allows you to hit them right after it (as they recover themselves). Just repeat this process: run, let them catch up, dodge the attack and hit them.

Food:

- Berry’s provide health as well as food when eaten, so keep that in mind when you choose what to eat.

- Almost everything edible raw can be cooked.

Monster Meat:

- Eating cooked monster meat, while restoring 50 hunger, takes a third of your health. Eating uncooked monster meat, on the other hand, only takes 5 of your health and restores 25 hunger.

- Collecting and eating five flower petals after the meat will negate the uncooked monster meat effect, so it’s far more efficient to eat monster meat uncooked.

Researching:

- Digging up the holes in front of graves gives you items, which in turn give you 80 research points

- Something less well known, and makes people appear stupid for wasting their gold nuggets, is that anything replantable that you dig up (like grass tufts, or berry bushes) grants you 20 research points. This is by far the most efficient method if your world doesn’t have graves

Most Efficient Method:

- The most efficient method to getting research points is to find a world that has graves in it, find stone and continually replay that world. Keep getting a gold nugget and such to make a science machine, and dig up the graves to put in the machine for research points. It won’t be long before you have everything, and since both research points and what you researched is consistent through every world, you’ve discovered how to build everything

Other Thoughts:

- I believe they should make it so it isn’t consistent between worlds, it would make it much more fun and a harder, much more survivalish feel of the world. I feel everything’s just too easy with this consistency.

Graves:

- I am unsure yet, but it may be that some items in the graves can be used to build certain things/maybe other things implemented later?

Hostile Tallbird (with it's egg):

- Located within stone area’s

- Defined as a "mother" in my view.

- It will attack you if you go within a certain radius of the egg, but otherwise leaves you alone.

- If you take the egg, it will chase you endlessly until an unknown time. It appears the time may be indefinite, and dropping the egg doesn’t help. Perhaps place the egg back in the nest?

- Once night comes, it'll cover and protect its egg. If attacked in this state, it'll revert back to its "mother" status and fight you until you move far enough away. If you attack it at night, and move far enough away for it to stop attacking you, it’ll become “lost” as such and retreat into itself at whatever position it was at.

Stealing the egg:

To steal the egg, I believe you should wait until nightfall, hit it with your torch to lead it away and go around it to take the egg. Do not, I repeat DO NOT, go near the bird again. Go in the opposite direction, otherwise it’ll sense you hold the egg and chase after you endlessly. This is not such a good thing at night (it’s how I died).

Killing the bird:

Same as general killing.

Various Thoughts:

Night:

- I believe that these “creatures” that attack in the dark do not exist at all. The sense I get from this game, is that the world itself is hostile. If this is true, then when it comes night, the darkness itself could actually be what’s attacking you. At least, that’s my thoughts on it.

- I keep hearing noises from the outside, and what I believe to be laughter? If that is so, another thought would be that what’s actually outside is that magician. Making us play by the rules? Or watching us suffer?

Edited December 5, 2012 by ShiftyCake

[Little Teemo]

welcome to the forum! and yes ur speculations are right about the tall birl and trust me, 3 hrs is nothing lol some ppl here play for 6 hrs straight lol...but again welcome to the forum

- - - Updated - - -

welcome to the forum! and yes ur speculations are right about the tall birl and trust me, 3 hrs is nothing lol some ppl here play for 6 hrs straight lol...but again welcome to the forum

[ShiftyCake]

welcome to the forum! and yes ur speculations are right about the tall birl and trust me, 3 hrs is nothing lol some ppl here play for 6 hrs straight lol...but again welcome to the forum

- - - Updated - - -

welcome to the forum! and yes ur speculations are right about the tall birl and trust me, 3 hrs is nothing lol some ppl here play for 6 hrs straight lol...but again welcome to the forum

thankyou! I was actually joking when I said 3 hours was a lot, so you guys knew how new I am to it.

[Aerow]

Firstly, Hello Cake. Welcome to the community. Good to know you enjoyed the game but there are some suggestions I have to draw from your post. Since you are still just exploring the game, I guess the discoveries you made are semi-decent(?)

Anyway, here we go.

Shelter:

- The best place to put a shelter would be near the pig huts. Not too close, but close enough to only be a short travel.

There really is no point in having your camp close to a pig village since you can create one yourself. Instead it is better it is placed near a herd of Befaloes since you can have all the manure in the world and one way of protecting yourself against hounds and such.

Monster Meat:

- Eating cooked monster meat, while restoring 50 hunger, takes a third of your health. Eating uncooked monster meat, on the other hand, only takes 5 of your health and restores 25 hunger.

- Collecting and eating five flower petals after the meat will negate the uncooked monster meat effect, so it’s far more efficient to eat monster meat uncooked.

The solution to eating cooked monster meat is really simple, build a honeybee hive. Honey gives back ridiculous amounts of health compared to petals and also it is an unlimited source which has a speed factor that depends on the number of petals around it. Also a Crock pot can be used to cook food. Honestly, 2xCooked meat(or monster meat) + 2xHoney makes you Honey and Ham which restores ~82 Hunger + ~ 20 Health. So it is a better option since building one really does not take time.

Researching:

- Something less well known, and makes people appear stupid for wasting their gold nuggets, is that anything replantable that you dig up (like grass tufts, or berry bushes) grants you 20 research points. This is by far the most efficient method if your world doesn’t have graves

Gold is considered a better option to dump in the research machine since it gives you a decent amount of points AND is an unlimited resource. Since hunting bunnies is not that hard, hunt a whole lot of them and feed them to the pig king who inturn gives you the gold at a 1:1 ratio for meat. On the other note, Tallbird eggs give you a great amount of research points.

Other Thoughts:

- I believe they should make it so it isn’t consistent between worlds, it would make it much more fun and a harder, much more survivalish feel of the world. I feel everything’s just too easy with this consistency.

This is gonna be changed afaik.

Graves:

- I am unsure yet, but it may be that some items in the graves can be used to build certain things/maybe other things implemented later?

There is one item that you can acquire at the grave that can be equipped and it is the Amulet. Provides Resurrection.

Hostile Tallbird (with it's egg):

Stealing the egg:

To steal the egg, I believe you should wait until nightfall, hit it with your torch to lead it away and go around it to take the egg.

The bird goes to sleep by dawn, before the complete nightfall. You can change your view direction and locate the egg when the bird is asleep and steal it without even waking it up. An alternate way would be to use the panflute.

Night:

- I believe that these “creatures” that attack in the dark do not exist at all. The sense I get from this game, is that the world itself is hostile. If this is true, then when it comes night, the darkness itself could actually be what’s attacking you. At least, that’s my thoughts on it.

I guess you didnt meet the hounds yet? Apart from the darkness there ARE other things out there that seek to kill you.

Wow, that turned out to be quite something. Well, have fun with different experiments on the game.

Edited December 6, 2012 by Aerow

[Toaster Fu]

I believe the darkness is a grue.

[Jetexx]

I believe the darkness is a grue.

I think so to, but no one really knows what it could be? Heck maybe a giant shadow creature?

[Toaster Fu]

Well Kevin said the name of the file that kills you when your in the dark is labeled "grue".

[Marak]

I'm hoping you guys know where the Grue comes from. If not, I will be very disappoint. Son.

[Toaster Fu]

Zork? *cough*wiki*cough*

[Marak]

Just making sure

It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a Grue.

[NeedPants]

Hah my bedroll beats ur grue by a longshot! Seriously tho, its awesome that u can go to sleep at dusk and wake at dawn skipping the night without having to stand next to ur fire afk'ing.

[winddbourne]

I do believe the grue showed up not simply in Zork, but specifically in Wishbringer with the adventures of Simon the postman.