The Insulated Pack

[K5dV]

The Insulated Pack

A fictional Don't Starve Together story.

I logged into a PvP Wilderness server one afternoon. As always I picked Webber, turns out the server was in late Winter. The land was barren, a stumpy, flint less one. Still, I managed to make it into Spring by burning stumps and eating whatever food I could find (mostly cooked monster meat from killing spiders with torches). By the start of Spring I really was not in a great position, I was down to about 40 sanity and had almost no health left, I did have a full belly and a lot of grass though. I wandered through the land, now I could explore without freezing to death, I found a few pieces of flint which I used to make a couple axes to chop wood, since I was burning through campfires quickly thanks to the nonstop rain. I chopped to keep alive for the next couple days, living off butterflies from the newly spawned flowers. That was, until, my chopping caught up to me and a Treeguard spawned. This was the worst possible thing that could have happened, I still didn't have any weapons due to the lack of gold (I couldn't pacify him since I foolishly planted all my pine cones before encountering him).

So, like any proud Don't Starve Together player, I ran away. I spent an entire day running, picking flowers to stay sane and hoping it wouldn't keep following me. Up until this point I hadn't seen any other players, there were around 7 in tab, and there was a little activity in chat, two people trading and somebody complaining that they couldn't find their silk. But then, running through the woods in terror, I found a Woodie. He was beside a campfire drying his log suit and top hat. When he saw me he told me to stay the heck away from his things, but I told him I was being chased by a Treeguard and he agreed to help kill it. When it came he attacked, carefully kiting it with his spear and dealing many successful hits. Unfortunately, the spring rain had taken a toll on his gear and the wetness caused his spear to fly from his grip. He immediately took a swing from the Treeguard, which broke his log suit. He tried to keep fighting it with Lucy the Axe, but it slipped too and he took two hits. I tried to help, but there's only so much you can do with an axe. Woodie took one more hit and died protecting me from a Treeguard.

With his target dead, the Treeguard, now neutral, wandered off. I built a new fire near Woodie's corpse. I felt pretty awful getting him killed like that, I didn't want to take his stuff, but I wasn't going to live much longer without it. He had valuable food, wood and twigs. However, after battling that Treeguard, I wasn't in a good spot sanity-wise. My health was nothing to brag about either, so I just kept wandering, trying to find gold. Hounds attacked a few days later, I lured the hounds to the Treeguard and ate the meat from the hounds, but then I encountered some people. The found me beside my campfire cooking the leftover monster meat, there were three of them. A WX-78 accompanied by a Wolfgang and Wigfrid. They told me that either I gave them all my stuff or they would kill me. I couldn't really fight them, so I gave them most of my stuff, while still holding onto my spider eggs, a few berries and three flint. Great, all my hard work just taken by a group of mobsters. I almost starved for the next couple days, until I found a kind Wilson. This Wilson offered for me to come live in his base in exchange for being the spider tender. It was two more days of walking to the base, it was a secluded marsh that still had a surprising amount of tentacles. Once we reached the base I realized Wilson must have lasted a very long time on the server. There were rows of drying racks, crock pots and chests. There were also other people, a Wickerbottom and Wendy also lived here.

The summer was well spent, I learned a ton of science recipes and as promised tended the spiders. I also learned about the server history from Wilson. The trio that had robbed me earlier were well known on the server as thieves and hardcore PvPer's. As it turned out the Wendy and Wickerbottom had similar pasts to mine, both wandering the wastes until being recruited by Wilson. Wendy would go and trade with players for supplies, and Wickerbottom tended the base and spawned for tentacles with her books to keep out invaders. Wilson would gather manure and fur from the beefaloes far away and bring whatever plants were left to our base. I stayed close to the base and tended our now plentiful spider farm, killing queens and started spider civil wars for meat and silk. By the middle of Autumn we had about 10 berry bushes, and 8 or so saplings and grass tufts. He also had 2 improved farms we used for growing dragonfruit. But, things started to go downhill after the Bearger attacked. It was early one morning, Wendy spotted the Bearger and Wilson asked her to lead it to the swamp so we could kill it. The fight went surprisingly well, and we managed to get the thick fur for an insulated pack. But, WX-78 and company decided that the pack belonged to them and threatened to burn down our base if we didn't give it to them. Wickerbottom was pretty freaked out and wanted to hand over the pack, but Wilson said if they wanted the pack they would have to come and get it.

And so the siege began.

One night, the four of us were beside a fire pit when Wendy was hit by something, two sleeping darts, then a moggles clad Wigfird charged in and hit me with a ham bat. In two hits almost 75% of my health was gone. If it wasn't for Wilson freezing Wigfrid with an ice staff we may have all died. Wickerbottom and Wilson quickly stun locked and disposed of the intruder. Wendy woke up as day broke, but this was just a scouting attack. Chat was filled with curses from WX-78 and threats to burn down the base, but we knew it would take a fight for the base to fall into enemy hands.

We began preparing the next day, using all our cut stone to build walls and traps for the base, at night the only entrance had 4 bee mines blocking it, and we also had 2 ice flingomatics for fire protection. We now had a fortified base, but in the meantime WX-78 and co had been improving too, they now had many more sleep darts, gunpowder, and even a dark sword for Wolfgang. We learned this via chat from somebody they killed, even they we weren't sure if that was all they had.

At the start of Winter, a Willow came to our base and asked if she could live with us, I was skeptical, but Wilson said she could come and join us. She stayed in the base until about dusk, Wendy and Wickerbottom had already come back from their tasks, and the three of us stood beside Willow. Willow then walked over to the ice box, and ate 3 red caps, dying from the last one. I thought to myself, how strange that was, since she came to our camp without freezing of being killed by tentacles. Then I saw what she died with. From her corpse around 80 killer bees spawned, somebody must have spent days gathering those bees. Then it occurred to me that WX-78 might have enlisted some help to attack our base, I didn't have time to think though, the bees were upon us. Wendy used Abigail's AOE to kill some of the bees, but Abigail was quickly overwhelmed. I donned my log suit and charged the bees, not my brightest moment. I was quickly reduced to 68 health, and I ran, bringing about 20 bees with me. By this time, Wickerbottom had crafted a fire staff and was spamming it on the bees. I ran in circles for a little bit, and eventually Wickerbottom killed the rest of the bees with the fire staff, thanks to our flingomatics the damage was minimal. We told Wilson what happened in chat, and he said that we had to fight back. So after he arrived the four of us began preparing weaponry for a counter attack. My gear wasn't too great, but I tamed about 20 spiders and brought them along. Wendy had similar gear to me, but Wilson and Wickerbottom had a wide array of magic tier stuff.

Using information in chat, our group eventually arrived at their base, though we went a lot slower since he had to build a ton of campfires to stay warm. Once we spotted the base we made an assault plan; Wendy would hammer the outside structures (bee boxes, drying racks), Wilson and I would kill the trio, and Wickerbottom was magic support. The base was quite large, it had everything a late game base would need, and it had lots of stone walls. We attacked, inside the base was the enemy crew, I attacked WX-78 while Wilson dealt with Wigfrid. Wickerbottom froze Wolfgang and began breaking down their walls. Maybe attacking the obvious leader of the group wasn't a great idea, he had nightmare armour and a ham bat. I was holding my own though, but the battle wasn't doing so well on the other side. Wolfgang had broken free from his icy prison, forcing Wickerbottom to join the melee else Wilson be double teamed, Wilson was doing well against Wigfrid, but he was going to have his armour broken soon. I might have even been winning against WX-78, but he hit me with 2 sleep darts and ran backwards. The evil robot ate two gears and rejoined the battle with rejuvenated health.

This was not good, my armour was almost busted and now his health was full, I needed a rescue. When all seemed lost, Wendy broke through one of the walls and attacked WX-78 from behind with her ham bat and with Abigail (by this time all my spiders were dead). But while this was going on, the other battle was failing, Wickerbottom had just been slain by Wolfgang, leaving Wilson to fight a weakened Wigfrid and Wolfgang alone. Wendy and I stun-locked WX-78, but he just wouldn't die. We managed to break his nightmare armour, and then once we finally killed him it was too late. Wilson was running from the duo. He got a little bit of a running start, but Wolfgang hit him with two blow darts and it was over. This left us with a tough decision, do we attack them in hopes of killing them in their weakened state, or loot the base and flee? We decide on the latter, Wolfgang and Wigfrid just ran through the broken remains of the base and left us to loot. I quickly grabbed some goodies from their chests, an eyebrella, tons of their jerky, living logs and even a tam 'o shanter. Then we checked the bodies, we took anything useful. We ended up with a pretty good amount of stuff, then we checked Wilson's body last. All his stuff was there, there was just one thing missing: the insulated pack.

Happy New Year, to a 2016 of inseresting and good stories.

[RyanandLink]

Oh my god!! Amazing! That ending!

[K5dV]

Oh my god!! Amazing! That ending!

Thanks for the support.

[BigGames]

Niceeeee ending