What is YOUR strategy?

[StretchVanb]

Hello! What welcome to a discussion on what your strategy is! My idea for this post is that people can try out new survival tactics and possibly learn from other's!

This is also so new players can learn from your skill! Thank you in advance.

Discuss your tactics:

Discussion Thread

[porps]

i try not to die.

 

 

oh ok... 

 

I pick wickerbottom- i build a backpack, an axe and a shovel on day 1. I use the shovel to dig up berry bushes, grass tufts and saplings. I do not settle down until about day 12 at the earliest, but usually later than that. That gives me plenty of time to explore the vast majority of the world, find chester and gather loads of stuff. Since i use wickerbottom, i can start making excess grass into rope, excess wood into boards and even prebuild base structures on the move. All of this creates more inventory space so i can gather yet more materials.

When i have explored the world to my satisfaction, i will head to what i consider to be that worlds best location and set up a camp in a day. I usually like quite a central location, with fairly easy (<1day travel) access to at least 1 cave, a marsh, rabbit holes and beefalo. Pig king and/or desert is a bonus.

Initial base build usually consists of a couple of crockpots, both firepits, 3 improved farms, a bird cage, an icebox, a few chests, a lightning rod and a couple of drying racks

At that point i start preparing for winter/summer, gathering plenty of grass and twigs, plus ice or beefalo wool depending on season.

[StretchVanb]

i try not to die.

 

 

oh ok... 

 

I pick wickerbottom- i build a backpack, an axe and a shovel on day 1. I use the shovel to dig up berry bushes, grass tufts and saplings. I do not settle down until about day 12 at the earliest, but usually later than that. That gives me plenty of time to explore the vast majority of the world, find chester and gather loads of stuff. Since i use wickerbottom, i can start making excess grass into rope, excess wood into boards and even prebuild base structures on the move. All of this creates more inventory space so i can gather yet more materials. -Wickerbottom is VERY useful. I can agree on that.

When i have explored the world to my satisfaction, i will head to what i consider to be that worlds best location and set up a camp in a day. I usually like quite a central location, with fairly easy (<1day travel) access to at least 1 cave, a marsh, rabbit holes and beefalo. Pig king and/or desert is a bonus.  -Being near rabbits is almost essential. Good thinking.

Initial base build usually consists of a couple of crockpots, both firepits, 3 improved farms, a bird cage, an icebox, a few chests, a lightning rod and a couple of drying racks

At that point i start preparing for winter/summer, gathering plenty of grass and twigs, plus ice or beefalo wool depending on season. - Good idea, to not gather materials when you don't need them/not wasting inventory space.

All of my notes and responses are bolded. Altogether, you have a very good tactic. I better start thinking my own up. Hmm...

[Grimr]

I'm not that exsperienced a player, though i have picked up a few tricks so far.

 

the first few days is all about finding stuff, se what you have to work with in those days i dont even build a campfire, just a few torches for the night and keep exploring, even if i have to set a couple of tree ablaze to get a good look at my surrounding, its well worth it, remember you get two pine cones from a fully grown tree when you chop it down.

 

My main goal is to find a gold nuget and enough recourses to make a since machine, bagpack, spear, logsuit, hammer and i refine of of each item, cut stone, rope and boards. I hammer the machine down again and keep exploring. When i finally set up a base, i always try to find any combination two of befeelo, behives, ponds, rabbit and it can be done the pigking close by.

 

Im a bit OCD about this but i try to find two gear before i build my base, so i have the basic to make two icebox, the faster you can get your food to last longer, the more you'll have in the long run. My reason for two boxes is i use one for seeds and vegies placed close to my farm and the other one is for meat and cooked food, and honey if i have that.

 

From my base camp, i normally make two outpost that are close to resources I'm missing at my main camp, in my current world i have no stone close by, so i have a small outpost on the border of a desset biome about 1 day away, the outpost doesnt have that many things, only a firepit a chest a crokpot and small setup of saplings and grass. My outpost i try to set close to the touchstones so they function as emergance pitstop aswell, if i cant make that happen, i place a chest og bagpack by the touchstone/meat effigy with the basic setup of items. Log suit, baseball helmet, spear, small stack of twigs, grass, logs, flint and i plant about 5 berry bushes close by so i can make to one of my camps.

 

In long term setups i also plant the lureplants i find at my outpost, they really help with the hounds if they happen to attack while you are there aswell as someway to guide the hounds into the plant, simple straw wall works here but anything can be used.

 

Also to help keep my stocked with silk and meat i try set spider dens along the edge of the shavanna biome where i have my befeelo herd, luring the spider queen into a befeelo herd in the mating season really makes quick work off her

[Mr_Bubblez]

The only thing I do with thought is exploring 85%+ of the map the first 6 days and set my base in the middle of the map,what happens next is just automatism.

[TheKingofSquirrels]

So usually I use Wilson, but since ROG came out, I use Webber because of his amazing silk beard. I always struggled getting silk, so Webber is pretty much perfect for me. Also, the fact the he can eat monster meat and live among spiders, which offer great protection against hounds, are also great perks.

 

So when I begin, I explore the world during the day, collecting berries (always having my eye out for Gobblers), flint, grass, twigs, wood, but never carrots, because I save those for emergencies because they don´t grow back. Every night, I build a camp fire so I can cook my food and wait till daylight. I won´t settle down and make a fire pit until I find at least one of the following: 

 

- Beefalo: Since the Beefalo Horn for some god knows reason doesn´t work anymore, I make sure that my base is set near a Beefalo herd. Even if I´m playing as Webber, the spiders don´t come out during the day, so you´ll need Beefalo to survive hound attacks which happen during daylight. Also, manure is obviously a really important resource, as you need it to make farms.

 

- Stones: Once I find a nice field of Stones, I spend at least three days gathering as much rock, gold and nitre as I can carry.

 

- A decent grassland where I will set camp, with 4-5 berry bushes close by, a marsh nearby with rabbits, and if possible a nearby by pond (because of Webber´s silk beard, you can pretty much fish for food for ever). 

 

What I do then, depends entirely if its Autumn or Spring, because what I do (not many people do this from what I can see) is I make two different bases: one for Winter and one for Summer. I do this because I like having in my base all of my stuff placed closely together, but now with the addition of Summer in ROG, that´s a terrible idea. Having all of the elements of your base cramped together can be hell if a fire starts. So I make two bases, one for Winter, where I have all of my crops and my main items, and then one for Summer, where I have the special fire pit, an Ice box and a couple bushes and twigs all at fare distance from each other in case a sudden fire starts.

¡

[TLLBRDWRNGLR]

I play as Webber a lot of the time.

 

I always start out on spring, find a desert, and camp! My beginning base consists of usually a crockpot, the two firepits, and an alchemy engine.

 

I always try to find a buzzard colony, with voltgoats and hound mounds nearby. If hounds attack, I lead them to my voltgoats and they normally win! If I ever go hungry I can just lay a monster meat down, and kill the buzzard that flies down to eat it, also all the tumbleweeds in the desert give me a huge resource stock.

 

I try to always plan for the future! if it's summer, i'm working to lay down tents for winter, if it's winter, you better think i'm making Ice hats for summer.

 

Tip for summer survival: Make 3 Siesta Lean-to's they are super useful to sleep summer away, also make sure you have plenty of food (take off your equipment before sleeping it drains the durability as if you actually spent that time surviving)

 

Tip for sanity loss: Green 'Shrooms, when cooked they give you 15 sanity at the price of one hp

 

General tip: Always, always, always have plenty of logs and boards! They are used tons, I try to make an entire chest, and fill it with logs, so when winter or summer starts you can warm up or cool down. (Also if you're using ROG make sure you have TONS of gold and nitre)

[The Letter W]

Locate all my necessary biomes and choose a location either close to my most used ones, or close to a reliable wormhole network. Considering I play as Maxwell most often my strategy usually revolves around the game's tendency to beat the crap out of itself.  

I mean, there's a reason why I keep planting spider's nests in pig villages. Free silk. 

 

I can go more in depth if needed. 

[BurningBalls]

I build Pig Houses one and a half screens away from a big cluster of Frog Ponds.

Whenever I want loads of meat, I just smack a Frog on the head, and lead a big group of Frogs to my Pig Kingdom.

I get like 14 frog legs (small meat) from doing this once a day. I have about 70 of them in my ice boxes.

When they start going bad, I feed them to my bird and get fresh eggs. Or turn them into jerky.

[StretchVanb]

Thank you everyone for sharing! I hope everyone will benefit from this thread.

[StretchVanb]

Here is a list of everyone that i got out of this, and people who are new can read it for tips:

1. Make sure to explore your map! If you do, then the game will be much easier for you.

2. Eat mushrooms at low sanity. Only eat them with

 higher health

3. Find a decent location for a base camp! If you make it the middle of nowhere you won't have as easy access to thing such as the pig king, beefalo, and other important areas.

4. Enemies tend to fight each other.

I will put this on the top for new players once i have 5 posts.

[Doctor H. Derp]

My most general strategy is tracing the perimeter of the island as I walk along in search of resources and an ideal place to set up. I used to not set up until I had traced the entirety of the map which takes roughly 10 days on default settings, but I've found that it's not really that necessary as long as I've found the resources I need.

 

Second I have enough resources, I'll wait for that evening to create a science machine, 3 ropes, a backpack, log suit, spear, and shovel. The backpack and helps me carry more, the shovel is just nice to have, and the log suit and spear make it so I can hunt clockworks and get their valuable gears without getting absolutely wrecked. I like having the gears before setting up.

 

Then I look for a place that's reasonably close to something that can help deal with hounds and is reasonably close to a cave entrance.

I try to set up my base in such a way that I could put 4 ice fling-o-matics around it and the snowballs will hit all objects within it except for the firepits. I also make an endothermic firepit really early in my main base's construction because I want my firepits in the center of the base, and while you can place structures next to the endothermic firepit, for some inexplicable reason, you can't place the endothermic firepit all that close to structures.

 

If I had room prior to setting up, especially if I found chester, or if not I'll start right after setting up the firepits, an alchemy engine, some chests, lightning rod, maybe an icebox, is go out and get an extra 80 cut grass and an extra 40 twigs so I can set up 9 drying racks. I'll also plant all the pine cones I've collected, around 30 just to be safe, in a fairly fire safe area so I can burn them down and harvest the charcoal necessary for a crockpot and said 9 drying racks.

 

Misc. stuff: I always make the ice boxes first before a crockpot is because the food I have on hand is usually either stale or spoiling and that helps keep it's longevity, and then I try to make a crockpot as close to my placed iceboxes as possible so I can just shift click the food from the icebox into the crockpot. I eventually set up 3 iceboxes. The 2 closest ice boxes have everything to do with food while the third farthest one has everything to do with ice and a chilled thermal stone and stale honey I'll eventually use for honey poultices.

 

Oh! I also either scout out or make 2 arenas. One for hounds and the other for giants. Nothing fancy, either I'm near a rocky biome, or I clear out an area of a regular biome so that I have a place to go before the giants/hounds will spawn that will cause as little collateral damage as possible when they do spawn. These arenas will be a good distance from my main base, but not so far that I couldn't quickly run to it when necessary.

 

 

That's pretty much the basics.

[Dazontheweb]

Being a totally new player to the game my strat is to chop trees and dieing a lot!

[ThePreChewedTree]

I walk around the edges of the map. then make my way in to fill in the unexplored spaces. I usually find Chester on about my 2nd or 3rd day with this strategy.

[StretchVanb]

Being a totally new player to the game my strat is to chop trees and dieing a lot!

Lol. Everyone starts somewhere. I started at the same place pretty much.

 

My most general strategy is tracing the perimeter of the island as I walk along in search of resources and an ideal place to set up. I used to not set up until I had traced the entirety of the map which takes roughly 10 days on default settings, but I've found that it's not really that necessary as long as I've found the resources I need.

 

Second I have enough resources, I'll wait for that evening to create a science machine, 3 ropes, a backpack, log suit, spear, and shovel. The backpack and helps me carry more, the shovel is just nice to have, and the log suit and spear make it so I can hunt clockworks and get their valuable gears without getting absolutely wrecked. I like having the gears before setting up.

 

Then I look for a place that's reasonably close to something that can help deal with hounds and is reasonably close to a cave entrance.

I try to set up my base in such a way that I could put 4 ice fling-o-matics around it and the snowballs will hit all objects within it except for the firepits. I also make an endothermic firepit really early in my main base's construction because I want my firepits in the center of the base, and while you can place structures next to the endothermic firepit, for some inexplicable reason, you can't place the endothermic firepit all that close to structures.

 

If I had room prior to setting up, especially if I found chester, or if not I'll start right after setting up the firepits, an alchemy engine, some chests, lightning rod, maybe an icebox, is go out and get an extra 80 cut grass and an extra 40 twigs so I can set up 9 drying racks. I'll also plant all the pine cones I've collected, around 30 just to be safe, in a fairly fire safe area so I can burn them down and harvest the charcoal necessary for a crockpot and said 9 drying racks.

 

Misc. stuff: I always make the ice boxes first before a crockpot is because the food I have on hand is usually either stale or spoiling and that helps keep it's longevity, and then I try to make a crockpot as close to my placed iceboxes as possible so I can just shift click the food from the icebox into the crockpot. I eventually set up 3 iceboxes. The 2 closest ice boxes have everything to do with food while the third farthest one has everything to do with ice and a chilled thermal stone and stale honey I'll eventually use for honey poultices.

 

Oh! I also either scout out or make 2 arenas. One for hounds and the other for giants. Nothing fancy, either I'm near a rocky biome, or I clear out an area of a regular biome so that I have a place to go before the giants/hounds will spawn that will cause as little collateral damage as possible when they do spawn. These arenas will be a good distance from my main base, but not so far that I couldn't quickly run to it when necessary.

 

 

That's pretty much the basics.

Good strategy. I must add it to the first post.

[StretchVanb]

I understand that these are all very well though of. You all have probably survived to at least day 5-60.

I will think up a way to compile this all for new players. Thank you all for responding.5

Discussion Thread

 

 

[lucky13th]

I generally try to run around finding all the biomes or as much as I can for a week or so surviving off gatherables. During the week, I gather all I need to make a firepit, science machine and alchemy engine. So lots of stone, gold, twigs, grass, logs. Since my two most played characters are Wendy and Wigfrid, they like to be near spiders for easy silk and monster meat. After I crafted a backpack I then I go find materials to make a ice box, bird cage and crockpot. Gather ice for summer or get a beefalo hat for winter, and a thermal stone. After that I'm pretty set.

 

Besides that I try to carry everything I need to handle every situation, armor/helm for hounds and giants, food to last me several days, something for the season (umbrella, ice hat, thermal stone, and beefalo hat). I go around scouting out the map as long as I can, bring home meats from killing volt goats, pigs, frogs, and random birds to make bacon and eggs, rinse and repeat.

[mizukisha]

Well my strategy to survive is in 2 parts : The first for Non RoG and the second for RoG !

 

Let's try with Non RoG for new players :It's kinda long so the RoG part will come soon !

 

The first day,I collect enough twigs and grass to make a torch,then flint for make axe or pickaxe(pickaxe first if there are some rocks arround).And if there are golds,I'm happy. The most important is the food and gold nugget for the science machine and if you have enough gold the Alchemy engine .

Then collect enough food and walk arround,I mean don't stay in one location,try to visit a lot of places !

The forest is good for spiders,but you need a spear and log suit before ! When you got your science machine you should build a backpack,some rope for the straw roll and the log suit(2 ropes,8 logs) and a spear(2 twigs,1 rope,2 flint). It should be good,go kill some spiders,and if there is a lot of spiders den,kill the second tier because they have more spiders and they give more silk ! Silk are important to make a tent at your first base(camp).

Then build a hammer and destroysome pig house so you can build a football helmet for your head,keep it for emergency !

After that,you need a lot of foods ! You have many easy way to get a lot of foods ,here:

1-Build a bugnet with the silk you got(if you have 10 it's perfect),catch some butterflies,they spawn on flowers then plant them somewhere to make new flowers,repeat that again and again till your bugnet finish or whenever you want ! plant them all ! then kill the butterflies for butterfly wings,good for your hunger and good for Heal your wounds:)

2-Stay near the rabbits,build some traps and place them near rabbit holes,very close so when the rabbit will go out it will be trapped,kill him for a meat

3-Collect berries and carrots,cook them to prevent them from perish time !

4-Build a crock pot(you have to burn trees to make charcoal)

Now you can start to build your camp

If you found some buffaloes you can create a lot of basic farms or improved farms and plant seeds for vegetables !

Make some drying rack for dry your meats !

Build a tent some chests a firepit and here we go !Plant bushes,grass,twigs arround(you have to dig them with a shovel then plant them arround your base ! If you have enough gold nugget you can build a lightning rod,a thermal measurer and a rainometer.Try to find chester if you are lucky,it ill help you to store your items.

 

Here a screen :

 

Non RoG :

[porps]

The easy WX-78 strategy:

 

Start a game as wigfried. Set up an early-ish camp and build a divining rod. Find all 4 things, kill spiders, spider nests and pigs for a stack of silk and pig skin. Catch a load of fireflies. make a miners hat and an umbrella, Kill as all clockworks you can find for a stack of gears.

 

Teleportato out.

 

You may need to repeat this process on the next world depending on how many gears you got. essentially the strategy is to enter the teleportato, switch to wx-78 and instantly be able to upgrade to max power.

 

Kinda lame i know

[StretchVanb]

Thank you! I hope many people will learn how to Not Starve from your strategies!

[Maz]

I pick Wendy or Webber (Wigifried if Im bored, Wilson if I'm lazy) and I put berries and beefalo to more(I'm a cheater I know, but looking for those ruins my strategy). I don't grab any food, but I go throughout the map until I find a rock biome, a grassland biome, and an autumn biome. I make my base in the average centre of it all, and stay there until day 8. I gather all the food, wood, and rocks I have and go off (Leaving a bit behind). I look for poo, more berry bushes, swamp biome, and spider biome. I come back on day 15 to get ready for winter.

 

By now I'll most likely have 3 stacks of poo (if I found chester, he would be full of it too), 25 berry bushes, maybe a stack of reeds, and maybe some silk and healing glands, and I would get ready for winter.

 

Now it's day 30, and I'll die. I don't mean to, but it always happens from day 28-30.

[wxps350]

for about 1-5 days, I wander around searching for rocks to get gold to build

a science machine. afterwords, I make a backpack, a fireplace, and a spear for when the hounds come.(IF they come). then, I make things in any order I see fit. Lastly, I explore.

[Barbarian]

This is more of a long-term strategy since I'm trying to survive to day 1000.

 

I seem to have gone into a lot of detail, so I've put it into a spoiler thingy so you don't have to read it.

 

This time around I decided to set myself some starting rules and try to stick to them, as otherwise I get distracted all the time.. I'm trying to survive to 1000 days, so this is a long-term strategy as well.

1. Edge the whole map, don't deviate unless about to starve or threatened, collect whatever useful resources are in your path. (I deviated twice to track koalefants for food). Craft a Science Machine asap and make a backpack and a shovel so you can start collecting berry bushes and saplings.  You could also craft a razor in case you happen to come across some beefalo.  Then hammer down the machine and take the materials.

2. Follow all paths to see where they go and to find Chester. Again collect useful resources in your path. This reveals any pig villages and beefalo locations, plus letting me see how easy travel is between different key points. Also find the Wooden Thing and get gears.

3. Choose a place for a temporary base - near to rabbits & beefalo - set up firepit, crockpot, icebox, Machines, some berry bushes and twigs, and some boxes to dump stuff in.

4. Find the walrus camps and set up a Winter base nearby, with berry bushes, firepit and icebox.

5. Craft Winter Hat & Thermal stone and put them in Chester, ready to head out to Winter camp at first sign of Winter. And an umbrella and Rain hat so I'll be ready for Spring. Oh, and also make a bird cage early on and put a stack of eggs in a box to rot to make gunpowder. And make a Pan Flute - I had 2 mandrakes by now.

6. Spend the Winter collecting teeth, Tam-O-Shanters and Walrus Tusks to make Walking Cane, and plenty of ice for flingomatics. When Deerclops came I used the Pan Flute and a stack of 14 gunpowder and this killed him, leaving his eyeball intact. Don't forget to collect any eggs at the end of Winter from abandoned Pengull areas - leave them to rot for more gunpowder.

7. Spend Spring at main base, preparing for first Summer - craft an ice fling-o-matic and endothermic firepit but don't place them, explore desert and find oasis and set up Summer camp there (mine has frog ponds so I made a few traps and left them there, and the Potato Thing set piece so I could use those farms, grass and twigs, but another time I had a savanna oasis with a couple of rabbit holes and some grass, so I made sure to plant some trees and twigs). Place crockpot & icebox with ice fling-o-matic covering them and the farms etc, and make sure the endothermic firepit is out of it's range. Make a box and leave some extra supplies there, plus an extra thermal stone in the icebox. Spend the rest of Spring collecting fuel, silk or whatever else you're short of. I got a Goose Moose in my 2nd Spring, and took him to the Swamp where the tentacles and a spider queen killed him for me. Took the moslings to the beefalo.

8. When you think it's the day before Summer, head out to the Summer Camp. Make sure you take everything you need, as you dn't want to risk coming back for something, and setting your base on fire. Survive your first Summer by not going too far from the base, and always having one thermal stone in the icebox to swap when needed. Live on rabbits or frogs. Forgot to say, I'd prepared another stack of dynamite and used it on the Dragonfly with the Pan Flute again.

9. Collect 5 cactus flowers just before Summer ends so you can craft a Floral Shirt for next Summer (I don't like wasting gold by building machines at each base, especially as I play as Wigfrid).

10. Make sure you have turned Chester into Ice Chester before next Summer comes - you should have some blue gems from hounds, and if you dig up mole holes you can get lucky too - I found the last one I needed from a mole hole. That will make your 2nd Summer easier since you won't be stuck in your Summer base. Chester will hold one thermal stone always, and you just swap when yours warms up. This works fine, but a Floral Shirt gives you a bit longer before swapping.

Also, once you have a stack of teeth, start making a hound trap area - so far you can deal with them by heading to beefalo, but as the waves get bigger it becomes harder, unless the beefalo are in heat.

This is where I'm up to now, towards the end of my 2nd Summer, and about to start building a permanent base nearer to the beefalo. And I will have to go into the caves as I'm really short on gold and nitrite so I'm going to use a cave entrance near to my Summer camp for this.

[Raresh32]

I spend the frist day collecting grass and tiwgs until dusk then i made an axe i dont stop choping tree until night and if i dont have a stack of logs i camp near some trees the food is not so important in frist day (except for wolfgang).In the second day(or late)  i explore a lot for a rocky land then i mine until 2 stacks of rocks and 1 of gold(this may take some time),after that is time for finding a good place to make a base (near a pig village or a beefalo herd but no next to them due to full mon and mating season)then craft the shovel an then dig 1 stack or more of berry bushes sapling and grass then i return to my base all is good for early days but now I must search for manure(I pick for beefalos or I get be pigs putting petals or eathever who is not meat to ground (but must be comestible)then i do farms and i do important structures(crock pot,drying racks,or a alchemy engine if i play vanilla and lighting rods if i play dlc)then after some days is the time for collecting resurces and build the second base (in a grassland with bees and ponds or in a forest with spiders but i need a lot of armor)that is mine strategy for short (sorry for bad english)