food for winter?

[dafunk]

ok me and my homie just started playing this game toghether ( I am already playing it since it came out) but we really dont know what to live on in the winter?! so what you guys eating in the winter?

[rezecib]

@dafunk, Meat. Probably the best long-term strategy is to use a combination of spiders for monster meat, rabbits for morsels, a bird cage to make eggs from either, and hunt down koalefants when you can to make jerky, which will restore sanity and health.

 

With the monster meat, morsels, and eggs (one of each, + one extra egg), you can make bacon and eggs, which gives you a full day's worth of hunger, as well as a substantial amount of health. 

[InSpace]

1 meat + 2 morsel + 1 monster meat = Meaty stew (150 hunger restore, 2 days worth)

[ThisIsNotAName]

Basically you want to collect tons of berries and meat before winter, make tons of meatball (3 fruit/vegetable/morsel + 1 meat/morsel/monster meat) - Actually go check wikia, I am terrible at explaining how this food making process work.

If you have found Buffaloes nearby your base, you will have plenty of monster meat income as you trick the hounds to attack buffaloes. As long as you can overcome one winter, the later ones won't be as hard. 

[rezecib]

Basically you want to collect tons of berries and meat before winter, make tons of meatball (3 fruit/vegetable/morsel + 1 meat/morsel/monster meat)

I disagree, stockpiling for winter is a pretty bad solution. It requires so many pieces to come together for it to work.

 

You're better off just building base structures (bird cage, crock pots, drying racks) during the summer and then towards the end making sure you have a good piece of winter clothing (preferably a beefalo hat). With good clothing, you can explore and get plenty of meat during the winter, which will be fresh. Meatballs will only barely last through winter, and even then only with an icebox.  Bacon and eggs, on the other hand, lasts twice as long and is a much better food.

 

Isaacg's suggestion for meaty stew is also good. It's by far the most hunger-efficient recipe in the game (if you compare to the cooked values for each of the meats individually, cooking a meaty stew out of 2 morsels + 1 monster meat + 1 meat gives you an 118% increase in hunger provided: 68.75 --> 150).

[F1sh]

Koalephants are a really good food source, turn its meat into jerky and meaty stews, and it's trunk you can make into a jacket or eat it for health.

[ryouryou]

It's going to depend what is more scarce for you which recipes you're going to rely on, and whether you need only hunger, or secondary stats (hp/sanity), too. Meatballs are great for throwing away multiple unneeded ingredients. Remember, you can make them with combos like:

Monster Meat, Red Cap, Red Cap, Red, Cap. 

If you have useless fillers and little meat, go Meatballs. If you have a ton of meat, and in fact so much that it will go bad before you finish if you sit and stretch it, or you lack fillers that couldn't be used on their own, do meaty stew. 

There isn't really only one strategy that works when it comes to just surviving, it's going to depend on your location and how much you got done during the summer. If you had a non-rocky start and a productive summer, it is possible to be highly stockpiled, but you do need infrastructure as well. If there's only 2 of you, it's even possible to survive solely on rabbit jerky. I've done it. Keeps your sanity good and high, too. Of course, this only works if you put your base near a high number of holes. Always murder the rabbits all at once that you're going to use for a day, this keeps Naughtiness down. Once you kill a creature, it takes a full minute before Naughtiness counts down again by 1, meaning you get 8 Naughtiness per day total, but only if you kill in quick succession. You can waste time if you don't, for example:

If you kill a rabbit (let's call this time 0:00 min:sec), Naughtiness increments to 1, and then starts to tick down. When it reaches 1:00, it will go back to 0. You kill another rabbit at 1:10. The counter starts to count down, but you kill another rabbit at 2:04. Your counter goes to 2, and you do NOT get the reduction in Naughtiness by 1 that you would have gotten at 2:10. Killing them throughout the day results in several such losses unless you're crazy and have a stopwatch.

Jerky: Hunger is the same per day between big and small jerkies. If you want the most sanity per day recovered (decide if this is an issue), it is better to make small Jerky, i.e., out of rabbits. You will get 10 sanity, per rack, per day, in that case, instead of 15 every 2 days (7.5/day/rack). This can be valuable for characters with sanity issues, especially Wickerbottom as she can't sleep during the winter. If you want the most health recovery per day, it is better to make regular Jerky, out of Meat. You get 20 every 2 days (10/day) instead of just 8/day. Weigh these with how much the ingredient is needed in the Crock Pot, as well. If you have infinite rabbits and little Meat, and want to make Meaty Stew (which always takes at least 1 big meat), you will want to save the Meat for the Meaty Stew.

Finally, if you have an abundance of Monster Meat and a shortage of the other ingredients, make Monster Jerky. It does still lower HP/Sanity, but to a lesser degree. But be aware if you're doing this long-term, you're going to have a less favorable winter. The Jerky rack is one of the best continuous sources of chip health and sanity to keep you topped off throughout the winter without resorting to more expensive items. The first winter, you want to be able to use it to have a positive transaction in those two stats. Even eating the MM cooked (-10 sanity, -3 health) and drying a Morsel instead, will result in a net gain of health and a neutral in sanity, instead of the loss you'd get if you cooked a Morsel and dried the MM. If you dry Monster Meat, it should be because you're going to starve if you don't dry Monster Meat, or because you have literally nothing to put on the Jerky Rack. 

Have a bird, if you have found the swamp, by winter. Use it to convert cooked Monster Meat into nice Eggs if you don't need the lost food value (~6) as much as you need not having lost hp or sanity. 


Remember that hunger is not fully independent of health and sanity. If your health or sanity are low, your food options become more restricted, as you can not kill monsters safely. Every moment you spend hunting for Green(Blue) Mushrooms, or picking flowers, or cooking dishes that are inferior in terms of hunger but positive to health (like honey ham etc), is time and resources that could have been devoted to hunger had health and sanity been more properly managed. Do not ever neglect one at the cost of others unless you HAVE to in order to survive. If you get desperate from low stats, you will make more mistakes, as well. 

Hope that ANY of this advice was useful. 

[StaypuftMMM]

Ice is a great food source that can be used as filler for many crock pot recipes.  

 

If you have an icebox stock up on as much as possible every winter.  Then you can use it as needed to make hearty dishes that restore more hunger then food that is eaten raw/cooked.  In addition, the other food sources you may have used for these crock pot recipes can now be used for something else.  Lastly, as long as it remains in the ice box, ice will not spoil which makes food management easier later on where there will be a surplus.

[ryouryou]

Ice is not present as an item in Don't Starve Together.

[Pyromailmann]

Ice is not present as an item in Don't Starve Together.

 

of course it's not! RoG content isn't fully in yet.

[ryouryou]

of course it's not! RoG content isn't fully in yet.

Yes.. hence, the response to the post above me. Or are you teasing me for not pressing quote? I can't tell.

[Pyromailmann]

Yes.. hence, the response to the post above me. Or are you teasing me for not pressing quote? I can't tell.

[StaypuftMMM]

My mistake, I forgot this is in the DST section.

[ThisIsNotAName]

I disagree, stockpiling for winter is a pretty bad solution. It requires so many pieces to come together for it to work.

 

You're better off just building base structures (bird cage, crock pots, drying racks) during the summer and then towards the end making sure you have a good piece of winter clothing (preferably a beefalo hat). With good clothing, you can explore and get plenty of meat during the winter, which will be fresh. Meatballs will only barely last through winter, and even then only with an icebox.  Bacon and eggs, on the other hand, lasts twice as long and is a much better food.

 

Isaacg's suggestion for meaty stew is also good. It's by far the most hunger-efficient recipe in the game (if you compare to the cooked values for each of the meats individually, cooking a meaty stew out of 2 morsels + 1 monster meat + 1 meat gives you an 118% increase in hunger provided: 68.75 --> 150).

 

 

I agree with what you said. I mean, you are right, and I failed to explain what exact I did. Honestly there are tons of important parts, and solely stockpiling is not enough. What I actually did was moving most of the berry bushes that are about medium range away from my base to my base, and setup tons of traps. Also, in this version, food do not spoil in crock pots, so that is somewhat helpful. Meaty stew can be hard to obtain, as far as I noticed. Since meat is not common comparing to morsels. We had farms, warm clothes and all that. Feeding half of the cooked monster meat to birds and get eggs back, then use the eggs and the rest of the monster meat, you have a 50% chance to get bacon & egg.

Anyway, I would say, everyone has a different situation and thus a different solution. After collecting all the berries and farmed vegetables, I had an overwhelming amount of vegetable and berry, and thus to me, meatballs are my best choice. The smartest thing to do is not solely go for one "best" kind of food, rather, value what you have and figure out the best solution from that.

[rezecib]

Feeding half of the cooked monster meat to birds and get eggs back, then use the eggs and the rest of the monster meat, you have a 50% chance to get bacon & egg.

But since you have rabbits set up, you can do egg + egg + morsel + monstermeat and get bacon and eggs guaranteed... 

[tetrified]

I find that honey for honey ham/nuggets is a good strategy too, if meat (the item, not the category) isn't a viable option for you. Don't forget you can stockpile in drying racks/crockpots, so if you want to designate one person to "making tons of crockpots" that's not exactly a bad idea. I'm usually only playing with one other person, and she gets the grass, sticks and rabbits, while I get the stone, wood, and charcoal. And whenever either of us see tracks, we go ahead and pin the koalefant 'cause the meat doesn't spoil that way and it's nice to have a lot of them for manure without the heat.

 

Whenever we're not doing that, we're grabbing monster meat and giving it to pigs, and then making more pig houses. It's a pretty smooth operation when you get it down.

[Asparagus]

Starting:

• Explore; gather the initial resources as you go along, surviving on rabbits, berries, or carrots (or perds)
• ^ you can easily kill perds (turkeys) by luring them with berries... place on the ground and when they see it, they'll walk towards it. They will be distracted and will not run away until they eat the berry... but don't let them! Kill them before that.
• When you have the initial resources (grass, twigs, rocks, flints, gold, logs... cut reeds) preferably full single stacks, make a base (temporary; if you haven't found that special place where you want to set up permanently)
• Strive to for an Alchemy Engine which you'll need to make most of what you'll need in winter.

The long term food:

• Make a Crock Pot, Bird Cage (catch a bird using a bird trap; silk is used) and Ice Box if able.
• Find a tier 3 spider den, kill the denizens (if you can) and destroy the den. It will yield silks and a spider egg sack.
• Take the egg sack and place it somewhere in ear-shot of the base...
• During dusk, wait near the spider den and stun-lock-and-kill the spiders (do not do this near the den if you can't handle 3 at a time yet) or make grass traps (the ones for the rabbits) and place them around the spider den)
• Harvest Monster Meat (also Spider Gland and Silk)
• Gather "Meat" (or small meat from birds or rabbits)
• Make eggs by cooking monster meat and feeding them to the bird.

The Recipe for the best survival food (for me at least)

• 2 eggs + 2 regular-sized meat (either 2 "Meat", or 1 "Monster Meat and 1 "Meat") or
• 2 eggs + 1 regular-sized meat (either 1 "Meat or 1 "Monster Meat) and small meat (dried or other wise)

"Bacon and Eggs" last a long time and twice in an ice box... so if you have a hard time hunting for "Meat" (beefalo herds are jerks) and tracking koalefants can be dangerous (spawning ewecus or warg instead of a koalefant) then this strategy will be good for you...

[ryvrdrgn14]

Easiest for me would be eating veggies and berries during summer and switching to Monster Meat + Morsel (x2) + Honey for honeyed ham in winter.

 

Set up a bee box early and harvest it everyday. You should have enough to make ham during winter. Monster Meat and Morsels are easy to get from spiders and rabbits during winter. You can kill 8 rabbits a day without summoning Krampus so just kill 4 rabbits each and make meatballs if you really have nothing else (this requires a couple of dozen traps or some rabbit chasing). 3 rabbits and 1 monster meat is okay too if you have a spider nest set up nearby.

 

Hunting Koalefant is always good and you can thin out the Beefalo herds if you need to (but it's not suggested that you wipe them out).