Not new to Don't Starve, but haven't played in mooonths, need survival advice

[LaDestitute]

I'm not exactly new to vanilla (non RoG) Don't Starve as I bought the game back in June and played for a couple of weeks, but I never picked it up again until a couple of days ago.

I've started playing again recently as I had noted, and I've been trying to figure out what works and what doesn't in-game in terms of long-term survival.

From my experience and errors, my personal opinion is that a large number of seed farms (+6) isn't worth it very early on in the game and I would rather just have a bunch of traps (+4, preferably eight or more), and also likely a crock pot + drying racks if I can afford the necessary resources early on. I also learned by experience not to waddle about idly without aim, gather as much resources as I can within my allowed time during day/dusk (especially twigs and grass), and setup a base in a suitable location ASAP from day 1.

I have so far have survived to day 16 in total, but my circumstances during that run -went bad very quickly-. I had a tree guard spawn right in my base as I was first prepping it a few days before my death on day 16. I kind of ignored it after it de-agroed. I then came back on day 15 or sp to find it had slaughtered my nearby beefalo herd, and I immediately went into a mental mode of preparing to get rid of the damn thing. It was getting close to the end of dusk by now and I decided to try fighting it with a spear and got killed by...Charlie in the dark, right in my own base while I desperately panicked to place a log wherever the hell my fire pit was in the darkness. I was **** out of luck as I had died two times earlier, using up two touch stones I had found quite some distance from my home.

My current run is on day 10 and my chances are much better. A decent base by a bunch of rabbit holes to the left of my base and frog ponds to the right of my base, and I already have +6 traps (split between the rabbits and frogs) and a crock pot. A small herd of beefalo is 4-5 screens away, while a pig village with three pre-generated farm patches and a pig king is very far away in the east direction from my base.

I'm surviving somewhat comfortably now, but I wanted advice on what other import things I should be doing to aid in my survival, and especially the prep for winter? I know I should probably get a lightning rod up in my base as well as a future panic room for hound attacks, but can't think of anything else off of the top of my head.

[Direkappa]

 

I'm not exactly new to vanilla (non RoG) Don't Starve as I bought the game back in June and played for a couple of weeks, but I never picked it up again until a couple of days ago.

I've started playing again recently as I had noted, and I've been trying to figure out what works and what doesn't in-game in terms of long-term survival.

From my experience and errors, my personal opinion is that a large number of seed farms (+6) isn't worth it very early on in the game and I would rather just have a bunch of traps (+4, preferably eight or more), and also likely a crock pot + drying racks if I can afford the necessary resources early on. I also learned by experience not to waddle about idly without aim, gather as much resources as I can within my allowed time during day/dusk (especially twigs and grass), and setup a base in a suitable location ASAP from day 1.

I have so far have survived to day 16 in total, but my circumstances during that run -went bad very quickly-. I had a tree guard spawn right in my base as I was first prepping it a few days before my death on day 16. I kind of ignored it after it de-agroed. I then came back on day 15 or sp to find it had slaughtered my nearby beefalo herd, and I immediately went into a mental mode of preparing to get rid of the damn thing. It was getting close to the end of dusk by now and I decided to try fighting it with a spear and got killed by...Charlie in the dark, right in my own base while I desperately panicked to place a log wherever the hell my fire pit was in the darkness. I was **** out of luck as I had died two times earlier, using up two touch stones I had found quite some distance from my home.

My current run is on day 10 and my chances are much better. A decent base by a bunch of rabbit holes to the left of my base and frog ponds to the right of my base, and I already have +6 traps (split between the rabbits and frogs) and a crock pot. A small herd of beefalo is 4-5 screens away, while a pig village with three pre-generated farm patches and a pig king is very far away in the east direction from my base.

I'm surviving somewhat comfortably now, but I wanted advice on what other import things I should be doing to aid in my survival, and especially the prep for winter? I know I should probably get a lightning rod up in my base as well as a future panic room for hound attacks, but can't think of anything else off of the top of my head.

 

Here

Day 1-5 (give or take)

I dedicate early game to wandering and exploring. Collect lots of grass(!) and sticks. Travel night by torch. Ultimately, I am trying to locate three critical things, with a bonus fourth if possible.

1. Rock field with gold. Gold is absolutely critical. I usually try to amass a stack (20) before establishing a camp.

2. Maxwell/Clockwork biome. Would really like a gear before winter. It's nice to know where this is. Graves can provide an alternative but gears are fairly rare and they damage your sanity. This is the most difficult to find.

3. Beefalo. For protection, clothes, and dung.

4. (bonus) Pig King

Also keep an eye out for spider nests, swamp land, Chester and touch pads (these are really nice).

Day 5-12

Establish a camp. I like to put it one biome away from the beefalo and as close to everything else as comfortably possible. Do not camp right next to frog ponds or spider forests. Build a science machine, a backpack, an alchemy engine, a spear, and a log suit. You could theoretically wander for quite a while but without establishing a camp you're not going to be able to build other things and I believe any day after day 5 the hounds are eligible to attack. So it's nice to have a spear and log suit ready.

I feel the next ideal goal at this stage is to establish food production. You'll initially want farms, drying racks, and a crock-pot. For these recipes you'll mostly require rocks, grass, dung, and quite a bit of charcoal. For charcoal you need to burn trees and chop them down. Generally before the first winter I like to establish 4-5 drying racks, 1 crock pot and around 6 farms (3 improved).

Day 13-22 Preparing for Winter

Make a Football Helmet

This is most easily done by finding a resurrecting touchpad and destroying the pig heads with a hammer. This awards plenty of pig skins which is the only ingredient you lack. Football helmets are absolutely amazing. They provide the same protection as log armor and you can still wear your backpack. Doesn't hurt to do this early as possible. While on the topic of touchpads: a while after discovering it, when you are supplied and able to do so, build a chest and put some survival items inside. A heatstone, logs, sticks, grass, flint. This will save your life. Nothing is worse than dying in the winter and dying two more consecutive times from freezing to death before you can reach base and/or build a torch to light the forest on fire.

Make an Icebox

These slow the rate at which food spoils. They are so wonderfully important for surviving winter. Finding gears is a real pain in the butt. But do your very best! Combining this with drying racks slows food spoilage considerably. Clockwork enemies hurt, I would not recommend battle with them without both a Football helmet and a log suit and stay away from the locomotive guys (or lead them into a forest for quick deforestation and wood gathering, they will destroy anything you kite them in to).

Get a Bird! + Farming 101

Birds are awesome and I will tell you why. Make a bird cage, you need gold and papyrus (made from swamp reeds). Make a bird trap (need some silk) and bait it with a seed to catch the bird for imprisonment. What you want to aim for in your farms is dragonfruit, so basically you're just going to keep planting stuff in them and harvesting it until you get them. Once you get one, you can escalate the process by harvesting them and feeding them to your bird. It will spit out 1-2 dragonfruit seeds that you can replant. Ideally you want to have all your farms with a grown dragonfruit by the time winter hits. All vegetation aside from trees ceases to grow in winter. One dragonfruit combined with 3 sticks in the crockpot is one of the best meals in the game. So if you have like 8 farms with dragonfruit ready to harvest, that is essentially a weeks worth of survival. ALSO! you can feed birds cooked monster meat and they will produce eggs. You can then use the eggs for food, or give them to the Pig King for 1 gold each.

Spider Hunting 101

Spider nests have 4 levels. You can tell the level by how many bumps the nest has. Level one is just a nest. Level two is a nest with one bump. Level 3 has two bumps. Then queen. It is best to hunt spiders during the bright part of the day. Bring number of traps equivalent to level. Drop all the traps then step on the web to aggro. A number of spiders equivalent to the level of nest will come out. You will trap at least all but one 99% of the time, sometimes traps get knocked over. The other is easily stun-locked with the spear until death. Repeat until spiders stop coming out of the nest. At this point you can destroy the nest for extra silk.

Note!: If it is a level 3 nest, you will get a spider egg to plant your own nest wherever you want. For this reason, assuming the spider population is in control, waiting until level 3 can be a good strategy.

Spiders provide silk, glands and monster meat which are all very important.

Koalephant Hunting 101

You'll occasionally run across a pile of dirt which, when you uncover, shows a track. If you go in the direction the track points you will find another track, and so on. After quite a few (generally 7+), if the track doesn't go cold, you'll find a Koalephant! They will run away so you'll want to herd them into a corner. Once you attack they will become aggressive. Wait until they attack then turn around and attack 4 times, run, wait until they attack, repeat. They hurt a lot, so wear some kind of armor in case you make a mistake. This yields a trunk and 8 good meat (not morsels). The trunk can be used for winter vest or a meal that restores insane amounts of hunger and health when cooked. Koalephant meat should immediately go on your drying racks and should be the determining factor on how many drying racks you need.

Bee Farming 101

Once you've amassed some silk you can start bee farming. You'll need to first make a beekeeper's hat and at least two bug nets. For bee farms you need honeycomb and bees. Honeycomb can only be obtained by destroying a bees nest. First I would focus on catching bees with the net. If you catch one near a hive killer bees will come out and attack. This makes it a very run-happy process. You want 8 bees. Then destroy 2 nests. Simply attack it, run the bees out for a considerable distance, then run back and destroy it before they catch up to you. The beekeeper hat will negate almost all of the damage you take even if you get swarmed. Once you've accomplished this, use the rest of your nets to capture butterflies. Ideally you want like 8 bees and 12 butterflies from your 2 nets. Then plant the two bee farms right outside your camp (they won't ever attack you) and plant the 12 butterflies directly around the nests, as flowers, to harvest honey from. When you see the farms fill up with honey, put on your bee hat and harvest them then run out of range.

Cooking 101

Hopefully you have a few drying racks, your bees nests, a birdcage, and a crockpot at this point. Here are the key recipes you need to know for survival:

Meatballs: One monster meat and 3 of pretty much anything else (carrot, berry, eggs). This refills over half your hunger and considering they can be made purely from monster meat (3 monster meat -> 3 eggs with bird + 1 monster meat) that is pretty amazing.

Honey Ham: 2 honey, 1 meat (jerky from koalephant), 1 monster meat. Even better than meatballs, and uses all the ingredients that you will have absolutely plenty of. Also seems to last longer.

Dragonfruit Pie: 1 Dragonfruit, 3 sticks. I've actually never made this but I have 20 dragonfruit ready to harvest in my current game if I ever get desperate for food. It is probably nearly equivalent to Honey Ham.

Taffy: I don't usually use this but other seem to like it. 3 honey + fruit/vegetable. Restores a small amount of sanity.

You can experiment for more, but those first two are really the most important by a long-shot.

Hounds Attacks 101

For the first 2-3 which it should not exceed prior to winter, you should be fine just equipping a log suit + football helmet and blindly swinging away while taking the hits. However, if you live near beefalo it is a lot easier to just lure them into the pack until they aggro them. This is not recommended if the beefalo are in heat and you don't have a beefalo hat. Later in the game, as you amass some hounds teeth, I would recommend building a fire a small jaunt away from camp and surrounding it with (lots of) tooth traps. I would definitely recommend this away from camp as in later summers they hounds will explode and I have rendered berry bushes on my world extinct by fighting them too close to camp.

Make a Tent

Probably the best way to combat sanity, however, have a food surplus as it will drain your hunger heavily. The tent can be used multiple times as well and adds flavor to your camp.

I'm sure you can think of other things to do to fill your time before winter. If you accomplish all of this it is probably safe to say you are doing well. It doesn't hurt to have as many as 8 drying racks and 10 farms (or even more) but if you've got that many you should have meat drying on them as well. I like to try and down 2-3 Koalephants before winter hits and hopefully harvest honey a couple times, but it doesn't always work out for the best. Try to clear out the spider nests that are threateningly close to your camp.

Winter

Not much to say here. I really only have two objectives for the first winter, and the first is to survive / not starve. You want to craft a winter hat and heat stone and never leave camp without them, as well as wood, grass and sticks. Do not get caught away from camp, freezing, without the capacity to build fire. Also don't leave without a day's supply of food. And it's always best to make your long journeys after the hounds attack. Also, Koalephants are replaced with Winter Koalephants so it's not like food is cut-off, its just a little more dangerous to hunt. The Winter variants' trunk can be crafted into an even better winter vest. I tend to ignore winter vests in favor of backpacks though.

McTusk The second objective is McTusk who spawns from the walrus camp which you hopefully ran across in the summer. Let me preface this by saying he was a lot easier for me to kill on the PC version. The strategy I favored there was to make 3 boomerangs (do not run out of boomerangs!) and go at him with as much armor as possible. If there are pigs nearby you can feed to assist you, that is a bonus. Once you get near range he will approach with his son and two dogs. First objective is to take out the dogs with the spear. McTusk will be plinking away at your armor with his blow dart. Once the dogs are dead you can focus on McTusk with the boomerang. You may want to practice with the boomerang prior to engaging him. The trick is to hold spacebar when its on the return. Probably like 6-8 boomerang hits to kill him.

On the console I just couldn't make it work. You can't click the mouse on your target so 75% of my boomerang throws went to his son or !@%!@# Chester. It was pretty much the most frustrating thing ever. I gave up after nearly dying three times in the first winter. The following summer I set up tooth and bee traps around the Walrus Camp spawn. First day of the following winter I went up there and the dogs were already dead. Had to kite McTusk through a couple traps and he died as well. This is now my preferred method.

Why kill McTusk? First, he drops his tusk which can be used to craft a walking stick which is pretty much one of the best items in the game. Super fast walking. Second, he sometimes drops his Tam O'Shanter hat, which boosts sanity ridiculously and provides winter warmth.

[porps]

Personally i think it's a bad idea to set your base up on day 1. i much prefer to explore the map in the early days, so that when i do set my base up i can make sure it's in as good a spot as possible. but then i usually play wickerbottom.. i'm aware that other characters may feel forced to set up earlier (still not on day 1 though).
 
Rabbits are certainly a great resource to have nearby. If your plan is to basicallly live off that resource, i'd advise you to make a shovel and go and dig up some grass, saplings and berry bushes. Plant them near your base. You need decent amounts of grass and twigs if you're going to be making many traps.. Running out of those things in winter can be a painful experience. The berries can be used as crockpot filler to make your rabbits into meatballs. You'll need manure or some other kind of fertiliser for the grass and the berry bushes. Definately build a lightning rod asap.

 

You'll also want plenty of drying racks, the more the merrier, so you dont waste any morsels.

 

Try to gather pigskin - Use a hammer to knock down the pig-heads-on-spikes which you find around touchstones and in marshes. If you cant find many, you may have to kill werepigs (feed pig 4 monster then wait for it to turn...). kill it you will get some meat and a pigskin, rather than just one or the other.

 

With the pigskins, make pighouses within easy travelling distance of your base. When a spider den hits tier 3, take it down- i'd suggest bringing 3-5 traps with you to catch the spiders. At tier 3 the den, when destroyed, will drop spider eggs, which you can pick up and plant near your pighouses to create a tier 1 spider nest. This setup will provide you with a steady and easy supply of silk and monster meat (which you can use to make more werepigs or as a filler in crockpot recipes). Add more pig houses as necessary. You'll need the silk for a bird trap, a bug net, and possibly winter clothing depending what you decide to make.

 

Build a birdcage (you'll need reeds from the marsh). Put a bird inside it. It's possibly the single most useful structure in the game. The captured bird will convert fruit/veg into seeds, or meat (including cooked monster meat) into eggs. This is a great way to refresh food items which are about to spoil, and bacon and eggs is yummy. If the eggs start to spoil you can cook them over a fire, then feed them back to the bird in return for fresh eggs.

 

Make sure you have a thermal stone for winter. It will be very hard to survive without one. Rabbit earmuffs will help a little... enough to make it through the cold months if you're careful and dont wander far... but really you want something better than that... if you can hunt the first winter koalaphant for a puffy vest that would be ideal, combined with a beefalo hat. You can make do with just 1 or the other, or even just a winter hat. Most important thing really is the thermal stone.

 

Make sure you have plenty of wood. The pigs can help you chop (be prepared for treegaurds to spawn though). What i liked to do was feed pigs a monster meat so they became friends, take them to a forest (plant one near the pig houses, but perhaps not too near that an unexpected fire could spread from one to the other) and hit the first tree once with an axe... then switch to a shovel and follow the pigs around, digging up the stumps and gathering the wood. If a treegaurd does spawn it will kill the pigs but will be neutral to you cos all you were doing was shovelling, not chopping.

 

Usually i will lead the treegaurds some distance away from my base before pacifying them by planting pinecones nearby. Eventually, i'll build a wall to pen them all in and then build a rabbit hutch or 2 in there - this creates a meat/carrot/bunny puff farm, as the bunnymen immediatly agro the treegaurds when they emerge, and the treegaurds can 1 shot them no problem. But thats for later... it requires cave exploration... I only say it so that you might see that treegaurds can be a useful resource to have around if you manage them properly.

 

The sooner you get your toothtrap pit set up the better. You dont need to use walls and stuff like you may have seen others do, certainly not at first- you can just place a load of toothtraps on the floor for now. Certainly towards the end of winter the hound attacks will be quite nasty, if you dont have a beefalo hat and the beefalo are in mating season when the hounds come, you'll probably be gald you made the tooth traps.

 

Do you have an icebox yet? Thats another thing to add to your "to do" list. But if you havent found any gears yet it isnt essential for making it through your first winter, it's just helpful.

 

Use a bug net to catch some fireflies, then use the fireflies to make a miners helmet. It's a really easy item to make and one of the most useful in the game. 

 

Last but not least - Sanity. Prototyping items boosts your sanity, so it can be a good idea to save some crafting recipes just for that purpose. For example, you're sanity is getting dangerously low, so you might decide at that point to prototype all the gold tools for a quick boost.

[Starvation]

Someone has to day it; so I will:

 

Don't Starve

[serpent]

in the vanilla version, you can easily put upp your base as of day 1, once you found your rocks and a beefalo herd, you're basically good to go in my opinion, as this provides most of the necessities to survive ^^

 

In RoG, i like to center it between beefalo''s, in range of a desert, and the glommer statue

[LaDestitute]

I started a new savefile recently and made it to day 23 so far. Winter has set in already and I have my base mostly set up. A science machine, alchemy engine, fire pit, crock pot, four drying racks, two chests, lightning rod, a bunch of transplanted berry bushes/twigs/grass (9/10/10, respectively), and six farms (three normal, three improved).

 

I think I'm relatively prepared for winter. I have rabbits for a decent food source, a constant supply of nearby wood, a thermal sotne, and I already have a full beard with Wilson along with a Beefalo Hat. Is there anything else I should be doing to help me survive winter? The only thing I can think of is finding a Winter Kaolaphant for it's tusk for that vest armor item, other than general tips like "don't starve" and "don't freeze to death".

 

Also, if I sense the Deerclop coming, will I be able to completely avoid it using a worm hole? I've read that I can (as it will spawn on the otherside and not follow me back), but I'm not sure if it's true and would like additional verification.

[Direkappa]

I started a new savefile recently and made it to day 23 so far. Winter has set in already and I have my base mostly set up. A science machine, alchemy engine, fire pit, crock pot, four drying racks, two chests, lightning rod, a bunch of transplanted berry bushes/twigs/grass (9/10/10, respectively), and six farms (three normal, three improved).

 

I think I'm relatively prepared for winter. I have rabbits for a decent food source, a constant supply of nearby wood, a thermal sotne, and I already have a full beard with Wilson along with a Beefalo Hat. Is there anything else I should be doing to help me survive winter? The only thing I can think of is finding a Winter Kaolaphant for it's tusk for that vest armor item, other than general tips like "don't starve" and "don't freeze to death".

 

Also, if I sense the Deerclop coming, will I be able to completely avoid it using a worm hole? I've read that I can (as it will spawn on the otherside and not follow me back), but I'm not sure if it's true and would like additional verification.

 

Not sure about the Deerclop.

 

But you should get on with McTusk (if you're able to that is)

[Enbo]

If you meet deerclops, it ain't that much of a big deal. Just get tons of spears and logsuits. Attack him twice then run. Continue to do this until he dies, then you can regain your sanity killing some shadow dudes, pickin up flowers, eatin jerky etc.

That's the case for RoG. In Vanilla he has an extended range; I don't exactly remember if you can run away from him without using a walking cane.