Tips to make your DS life easier

[MaestarLibrarian]

Hi guys,

Let us together make this thread a tip n trick thread for people that want their DS life to be easier.

I'll start:

1) build your Ice Box next to your crockpot, that way you can transfer any item directly to the crock pot with Shift click.

2) use your pigs for easy meat and pigskin. Collect 4 pieces of monster meat and give it to one pig, he will turn into a werepig. Fight/Kite it and it will drop 2 pieces of meat and 1 piece of pigskin.

3) use swamps to fight your giants if you are not ready to face them alone.

4) if you are chopping wood with a pig nearby and you get a treeguard. let the pig attack it, the pig will die and the treeguard will be reset to a neutral state. You can use the treeguard to fight other giants!

Anybody else got some?

Cheers!

[Watcha]

One flint axe= 5 big trees and 1 medium tree

[BaconAndRibs]

Make your base camp close to a pig village, preferalby one with a pig king. The pig king provides gold and the pigs provide meat and protection.

[MaestarLibrarian]

Make your base camp close to a pig village, preferalby one with a pig king. The pig king provides gold and the pigs provide meat and protection.

 

Don't go to your base if you are not close to it during full moon though...You might be surprised by your fellow pigfriends.

[ButterStuffed]

3 red caps will kill a gobbler if you're too lazy to bait it and kill it.

10 red caps to kill a bunnyman, not particularly efficient but it works.

Eating meat out of Chester like a mother bird regurgitating into a baby birds mouth doesn't anger bunnymen, but will probably gross people out.

[Hugo M.]

Clicking on a berry bush gives you berries.

[Strangerdanger101]

Boomerangs will hit gobblers, it appears to kill them in 2 hits.

Tip 2: Don't Starve.

Tip 3: Don't die.

[vimrich]

1. Let mobs fight each other for you.

- Plant (or leave) spider nests near pig villages. Automatic silk/gland farm as they battle while you're away. 

- Same near tentacles in swamps. Free silk and usually some tentacle spikes too.

- same near mactusk (place the nest in summer).

- Once a treeguard is placated with pinecone plantings, don't bother killing it. That wandering treeguard or two near you base will help in a pinch when the hounds come. Once my "pet" treeguard took out the Deerclops for me. Also, if you have pigs nearby (as you should) they will attack it and you get free pig meat and pig skin.

- you can do similar with lureplants, but they're not as good as spider nests.

- Chester is a good decoy for the hounds in the early game when you don't have enough traps, and in many other cases later on. He'll die, but then come back to life. This also means, don't put stuff like bees and bunnies or ash in Chester. When he dies, it won't all run off or blow away.

- RUN mobs through/into any other mob you can: frog pond areas, beefalos, merms, smallbirds, and even killer bee areas. I'm terrible at kiting and almost never turn and fight. Instead I know how far any other mob is at all times.

 

2. Plan/prep for the worst.

- leave tree stumps for emergencies. Digging out a tree stump won't ever generate or aggro a treeguard - important if you're racing back to base low on health, daylight, food or all three and don't have the time to deal with them.

- put a firepit and chest of essentials (flint and/or a pickax at least) near a touchstone. Flint is harder to find laying around later in the game and when you resurrect, you have nothing and will quickly freeze or starve trying to get back to your stuff.

- build a second base, ideally one you can jump to through a worm hole, or at least far from your main base. 

- your hound trap corridor/zone is good for killing any other mob chasing you (koalafant, treeguard) if you have trouble kiting them

- put tooth traps around mactusk in the summer, wait a winter, then go back in spring to see what you got

 

3. Don't get cocky. 

- strained health or sanity seems manageable, until one unexpected event occurs. I forgot to properly click "cook" once on a crock pot so when I came back to camp very low, I had a crockpot of spoiled nothing instead of a meal waiting, and almost no time to make anything to eat before death. Always have a backup and a backup for the backup.

- don't build too much in the dark. I almost died from charlie trying to plant a lightning rod. Rain put out the fire while I was working and I was stuck in mid hover and couldn't easily switch to a torch.

 

4.Other things I do. 

- birdcages are great for "processing" food - old food/seeds into new food/seeds, monster meat into edible eggs, etc.

- honey is very important. Get bee boxes. More the better.

- controlled sanity loss can be a good thing (e.g. to get beard hair), but get stuff ready to "pull out" of it (sleep, taffy) FIRST.

- plant "solo" trees (far enough from others to not catch them on fire) along the longest routes you use. During winter, you can light a solo tree on fire on your way back to camp to extend how far you can range. You stand next to it, warm up for a bit, and get some coal then keep moving. 

- "live off the land" and don't bother moving berries and grass to your base. Instead, base within range of natural sources (I always look for areas where light green turf areas border savanna). As you roam, you can collect as you go  Then no fires or other catastrophe can ruin you.

- turn a left over 2% spear into an brand new ice staff, saving a bit of materials and avoiding clutter

 

5. Build a Deerclops survival kit.

- 9 gunpowder, one ice staff, two blowdarts, torch. Pre-build ALL of this. (just the time it takes you to make a torch can cost you some dear part of your base when he arrives)

- Put this in a dedicated chest somewhat apart from your main base (so that if Deerclops breaks into your chests, this chest will be far enough apart that you can find stuff on the ground without mixing it up - last you want to do is sort through piles of stuff on the ground as he rampages).

- Use: Freeze the beast with the ice staff, place the powder next to him while he's frozen, light it with torch, boom, wait for fire to die down, finish him off with a blow dart or two at the most. (use 8 gunpowder if playing Wendy, allowing for her ghost to attack some, and also let the ghost die first, or else it will hit/wake the clops before the powder goes off)

 

6. Caves/ruins

- get rock lobsters EVERYWHERE as you explore. Give them stone or something so they follow you, then as it wears off, they will stay where you left them and grow/populate there. The more lobsters are everywhere throughout, the more they take out worms and are ready for other fights when you need them.

- I prefer the headlamp as a light source, leaves arms free. I use the lantern as a backup

- don't try to kill the worms, let lobsters fight them, otherwise just RUN the whole time, they're slow, almost like treeguards

- honey foods (taffy/cookies) and other sanity increasing items are almost as important as a good several days of food supply. Prepare before you go.

- terrorbeaks (ruins) are BAD. no other mob will fight them for you and they're very fast. Get back up the rope and let the nightmare cycle kill them for you.

[MaestarLibrarian]

3 red caps will kill a gobbler if you're too lazy to bait it and kill it.

10 red caps to kill a bunnyman, not particularly efficient but it works.

Eating meat out of Chester like a mother bird regurgitating into a baby birds mouth doesn't anger bunnymen, but will probably gross people out.

 

Don't they attack chester?

Clicking on a berry bush gives you berries.

 

O rly?

 

[Strangerdanger101]

Don't they attack chester?

 

O rly?

They don't attack chester if he has meat in him.

 

[MaestarLibrarian]

They don't attack chester if he has meat in him.

You like me don't you?

That's nice to know ...I mean that they don't attack chester 

[Strangerdanger101]

You like me don't you?

That's nice to know ...I mean that they don't attack chester 

You're good for a Wickerbottom follower. (But opinions are opinions, Wilson is my favorite)

 

On-topic: Bunnymen are still so annoying though, i just want to eat my meat in peace

 

[erdmanski1341]

Besides the obvious food-related tips, these are probably the most helpful things I've learned.

 

1. Traps are awesome. Traps are easy to make and in addition to using for a constant food source of morsels, they can be used to catch spiders and get silk and glands.  Just set up 4-5 in a line by a spider den and walk the spiders right into them.

 

2. Stay organized.  As you progress, you will need more and more chests to store things.  It's hard to keep thing straight after a while, so I will typically drop 1 of something (twig, gold nugget, silk, etc.) in front of the chest to let me know what is in it.  It makes finding things go much more quickly, especially when you are in a rush.

 

3. Pre-build. I always keep at least a campfire and fire pit pre-built.  It takes away the worry of being out on a run and not having logs when you need them.  Having a pre-built birdcage and crockpot is also helpful when it comes to cave exploring.

[emerphish]

where do, overdo.