When *I* was a noob...

[Filster]

In other words, skip almost the entire learning process in what is supposed to be a game that forces you to learn through adversity? You can play the game however you want but I wouldn't call that the 'smart way' especially when the alternative is actually figuring things out for yourself. 

 First of all,the point of this game is to survive,the learning process is your opinion on how you look at things.Just because 00petar00 did it the smarter way (which I think is the right way) does not mean he is not having fun.He is just not repeating the same process you guys are experiencing every day.There are things which you cannot learn within the world unless you look it up.Best example given is the Crook Pot with it's value requirements and filler restrictions must be memorized as well as the priorities for each recipe if you merge 2+ recipes in the pot.

 

 As I said again,he did not skip anything,he is just not wasting his time in life trying to 'figure' things out.He learned the basics and started adapting from a certain level which is at the VERY LEAST normal.

[Pyromailmann]

Lol most of you guys are slow, i became a great player in a matter of days, i am quite stubborn, before i got the game, i watched youtube playthroughs and read tons of wiki

 

Then you have lost at Don't Starve.

Basically what ryouryou and Rezecib have said, you have missed and failed at the game.

you don't simply go on the wiki before you play a game, you may look at it, but you should never read it before playing it. Because that ruins your entire playthrough of that game.

Granted, I looked at a few Youtube videos before buying DS too, but I only saw videos when research was a thing, and bought DS around the end of March, 2013, going in and not knowing much about it.

 

 

[jeneah]

I love what ryouryou was just saying about feeling like a noob all the time--different layers of noobitude. This game really does support the ongoing learning curve, and there's always a new plateau to achieve.

 

As for self-spoilering through research, I suspect we all have our wiki point, that point at which you're suddenly done figuring stuff out on your own and are ready to have a more complete knowledge of the game to go farther, faster. For some that happens before they fire up the game for the first time, and for some it happens far later--and of course there are probably a bunch of folks who never do look around for information.

 

I don't remember what precipitated my wiki point. For sure as soon as I started making stuff in the crock pot (because for me personally there's nothing fun about wasting food on experimentation). (Here's a plug for the great iOS app "Crockbook".) But I think there were a few things before that, as well... although I clearly didn't wiki enough to help with winter because it took us FOREVER to get through winter at first. In fact, that might have been the wiki point for me, because I know I didn't discover the use of the thermal stone on my own.

 

What was the wiki point for you guys?

[ButterStuffed]

I didn't know Beefalo get pissy when in mating season and I had built my entire base in a herd of beefalo.

You can probably guess what happened.

[TuffDwarf]

I have read this thread with great interest. Wonderful, thoughtful responses! I feel proud to be a small part of this community.

 

This may be a bit tl:dr ....

 

I first found out about DS though my son in the summer of 2013, but didn't buy it til the Xmas sale on Steam that year and then didn't start playing til end of January 2014. Since then I have racked up a few hours - 2700 odd, actually.

 

I was such a noob at first for several reasons. One is that I am now 74 years old, and secondly I had never played an online graphical game before. My experience with online games began and ended with a text based game called GemStone 3, which I played for more than 15 years. Yes, I am faithful, and dedicated, and love getting good at what I do. DS is a graphical game unlike any other from what I can see. It's art style appealed to me very much and there was none of the distortion of perspective that I see in so many other games.

 

It took me weeks to get through my first winter in DS. When RoG was added I didn't play it right away as I was afraid of it. The things I was afraid of in DS were legion. I didn't pick up any of the "Things" I found lying around my maps for the first 6 months that I played as I was afraid they were booby-trapped and I knew I was the booby! I have yet to venture more than 10 feet into the caves in RoG.  I didn't discover there even WAS a Wiki for a long time. (I was driven to it by a thirst for knowledge when I did find out about it. I'm a compulsive copy-and-paster so I now have a lot of DS info on my HDD). I have never made a Prestihatitator, or any of Wickerbottom's books. In fact I am still, after all this time, a noob.

 

The funny thing is that when it comes to the fighting, I am a toe-to-toe melee fighter! And, naturally, when I got experienced enough to unlock Wigrid, I found my soulmate.  ::

 

I now play DST:RoG with my other son on an almost nightly basis. And I still rack up a couple of hours every day in DS.

 

Long live us noobs!

[applebottom]

500+ hours later it is pretty hard to remember the exact feeling that things brought you. I am mildly curious if amount of total hours played/time since you began has any correlation to how positive you feel about your particular start and methods chosen.

 

I forgot that feeling too! That's why playing DST is fun because you meet new kids and it's cute when they're like, "Wait, wait, how do I attack others" and you stop punching them long enough to explain things. Kidding aside (I don't PVP), it's fun when you happen to camp with a noob who is willing to learn and they're all chatty and fascinated at how everything in the game can be used to survive (and die).

 

I even became Steam friends with this kid who would message me all day, even while I'm at work, saying things like, "Hey! I survived until Winter!" "I made a Dragonfruit Pie", and so on.

 

OP also has a funny topic where she met a kid who made her play hide and seek with the berry/bush hat. That wouldn't have occurred to me. I see a berry bush and all I'd think of is when it will regrow, where to replant it, how to trap gobbler if it comes out, etc. So DST is giving all of us second-hand newbie feels, which is nice.

 

I will also put out there that I felt like a bit of a "noob" again starting DST compared to DS. In DS/DS:RoG, I never had other players nearby to compare or contrast playstyles with, or to see the efficiency of certain techniques that I wouldn't have tried.

 

DST made me feel both pro and noob. Having played DS/ROG meant I didn't make silly mistakes in front of others in DST. I was proud of being the Granny Wickerbottom who always handed out food and told the hurting Wilsons to "Eat some honey hams for your boo-boos." and "Steer clear of them cows during mating season!" *shaking my cane*

 

OTOH, sometimes you meet a player who is gooooooood, and it's great camping with them and watching how they do things differently. At those times I feel like a Master's Apprentice, all "What else do you need?" "Yes, sir, I will fetch more grass so I can see how you make that genius Gobbler trap thing!"

 

Comparing myself to myself just a few months ago, I was still a noob. I think that, in a few more months, I will be able to look back at now and I'll think that I was a noob.

HA! So much this! I'm just a casual gamer and adjust slowly to changes. When the new DLC comes out, I'll probably fumble and die all over again. XD

[applebottom]

What was the wiki point for you guys?

 

Fun question! This would make a great separate topic, jen. For me, my wiki point was.... discovering there was a wiki. LOL!

 

Like TuffDwarf, I've been playing this game alone for a looooooooong time and had no one to talk to about it, so my lack of knowledge that the wiki exists was forgivable. (Bought my copy from GOG and had no idea there was a community, unlike if you buy through Steam and get all these notifications and achievement cards thingy.)

 

Anyway, yeah, sick of restarting for months, I gifted my bestfriend a copy, thinking I'm so good and "pro" and she'd come ask me for help. Two days later, I asked how she was doing and she's like "Oh, I'm trying to kill my first Deerclops".

 

O___O WTF

 

Then she told me about crockpots and jerky and meat points and bird cages and stuff. And that's when I learned there was a wiki. And I checked it out and loved it like my own first born son.***

 

*bow*

 

 

I was such a noob at first for several reasons. One is that I am now 74 years old, and secondly I had never played an online graphical game before.

 

The funny thing is that when it comes to the fighting, I am a toe-to-toe melee fighter! And, naturally, when I got experienced enough to unlock Wigrid, I found my soulmate. : : I now play DST:RoG with my other son on an almost nightly basis. And I still rack up a couple of hours every day in DS. Long live us noobs!

 

You, Sir (Ma'am?) are my idol. And I totally get that "whut-- so many things to think about! Can't I just stand here and bash these spiders' heads in?"

 

Unlocking Wigfrid was love at first kill.

 

 

***Disclaimer: I don't have a son.

[TemporaryMan]

Wiki point?  Crock pot.  Definitely the crock pot.  Mind you, I bought the game after watching 25 episodes of Sips playing the game with Willow (plus a few episodes of MrGMView) so I wasn't exactly going in blind.

 

I don't think I'm romanticizing my early days because I can remember them quite distinctly.  Making your second world an eternal dusk with more or lots of clockworks and tallbirds has a distinct way of doing that.  Four touchstone resurrections later, when I realized I had two of The Things at once, a quiet spot in the swamp where I could build a fire pit, and I could get hunger and sanity almost full again for the first time in days, I knew things had turned around.  Two days later I even had Chester and Willow's lighter back, plus the third Thing.  And getting the rook at the Wooden Thing and another rook to kill each other simultaneously?  Priceless.

[leopardflowers]

I remember my first day playing DS fairly clearly. I was picking berries and the Gobbler appeared. I thought to myself, "OMG the turkey must be worth more food points than berries." I then kept chasing the Gobbler with an axe all day until I got it cornered at the edge of the map.

 

When I killed it, both drumsticks fell into the ocean.

Then it was nighttime and I got killed by darkness since I didn't know to craft a torch or make a fire lol

[absimiliard]

LOL, oh Gobbler, how my opinion of you has changed over time.

 

At first I was all "I hate you, I Hate You, I HATE YOU!!!!"  I totally got all the posts griping and whinging about Gobbler.

 

Now I'm all "Ooh, turkey dinner!  Come here stupid turkey.  Who's a stupid turkey?  Yes . . . you are!  *WHACK WHACK WHACK!*  Time to build a crockpot!"  Totally different feels.

[applebottom]

When I killed it, both drumsticks fell into the ocean. Then it was nighttime and I got killed by darkness since I didn't know to craft a torch or make a fire lol

LOL that damn Gobbler. It's deceptive because I always think "Just a liiiiiiiiiiiiiittle bit more, and I'll have you", then it's dusk again and I just spent another day chasing after a silly turkey for nothing.

[RalphKastro]

I'm just going to speak a bit out of experience here and say that I do remember that all my good points in the game(mostly deaths) when I started playing were those that took me by surprise. I started using the wiki quite a bit after I got through my first summer(and promptly died in winter), and from then, I started to do a bunch of compulsive reading about stuff to do to survive. I didn't quite notice at the time, but my enjoyment of the game fell quite a lot after that, with only some great peaks of "WTF IS THAT THING THAT JUST KILLED ME" momments, which were both hillarious and terrifying.

So yeah, although I won't say that it's an objective factual fact of certainty that using the wiki ruins your experience in any way, I'll say that being catched by surprise by the game and learning with my own mistakes and lots of swearing was much more fun than just reading a strategy guide for me

Look at it this way, this game is hard for new players, you can go ahead and keep on dying till you get sick of the game and quit or force yourself through first 10-20 days for how long? 

 3 Words: Dying Is Fun.

[jeneah]

TemporaryMan: what you said! The first time I found the eye bone it was like "what is this weird thing?" and then "oh god what is that orange creature? why is it following me! I'm scared!" (by then I had been punished several times from assuming creatures would be friendly). It took a while to figure out the connection between the eye bone and Chester, and then what Chester was for. Extra funny to me now because of course when I see the eye bone now I get a big squirt of happy brain chemicals: "CHEEESTEEEER!"

 

And the Things! I don't know if I would ever have figured out what the things were on my own (I would always drop them on the road at the first sign of inventory management issues). I definitely got that from the wiki. 

[ryouryou]

I didn't even PICK UP the eyebone, because the game had punished my curiosity too many times already, and it looked so sinister. >_<

[THEGHOSTOFGAMING]

I got the game right after reign of giants came out so I bought the game and rog as a bundle. I got the game because I saw someone on youtube play it and it look amazing. Only problem: The guy played as Webber. I literally spent an hour trying to tame spiders until I went to the wiki and realized I was an idiot

[BipedalBear]

Ah, I remembered the first time I played ROG beta. There were no koalefants and wetness was a serious thing. I basically sat in my base the whole time, trying to survive on 30 berries for the entire winter. Good times. Then there was the first winter in vanilla, I ran out of food as Wolfgang and there were killer bee hives near my base. I lured pengulls into beehives and managed to survive for 10days before committing sudoku(seppuku).

Basically I had no idea on how to survive the winter on my 4th try so I changed the world setting into summer only. Man did I survive for long!