Help for a Newbie Spelunker?

[CaptainChaotica]

Okay, so...I'm trying to live the summer out in the caves.  So far so good, except for one teensy, eensy problem...

HOW THE FREAK DO YOU NOT _STARVE_?!

Seriously, I know people just like, live down there year-round sometimes but all the food there is mushrooms.  Which are poisonous in some way.  The meat is monster meat.  And I'm not allowed to make a crockpot yet (per my challenge rules).  Tons and tons of red mushtrees all around me and they don't do me any good (well, except lighting).  I've explored a decent ways and there just, like...isn't anything non-poisonous.  No berries, no carrots...and if I try to go to the surface, without an endothermic fire, umbrella or thermal stone I like INSTA die.  I mean it is _fast_.  Not to mention all the berry bushes up there are probably withered anyway.

So...how the hell do you cope?  How DOES one, in fact, live happily in the caves?

(And this isn't even COUNTING the damn depths worms.  There're no helpful creatures around, so I'll have to just fight them up close and personal, alone.  Did I mention I have like less than half my HP?  Joy.)

...Notorious

[Sinister_Fang]

2 minutes ago, CaptainChaotica said:

And I'm not allowed to make a crockpot yet (per my challenge rules)

Well... good luck then. I usually survive off of meatballs using monster meat and mushrooms or lichen. I suppose you might be able to survive off of just eating raw bluecaps, cooked greencaps and monster meat. And I guess there's always bunnymen that drop normal meat and carrots. There's also the occasional rabbit or moleworm that falls down during an earthquake but those aren't too reliable as a primary source of morsels. But without a crockpot there's not really much to eat without doing a lot of work.

Oh, and you can get morsels from splumonkeys too. Although those things are just a big pain in the rear to deal with in general.

[Plebgod]

fishing helps

[Sicko Hog]

Just kill some spiders, turn half the monster meat into eggs, and throw 2 monster meat and 2 eggs into a crockpot and you have a 50% chance of getting bacon and eggs.

2 hours ago, CaptainChaotica said:

And I'm not allowed to make a crockpot yet (per my challenge rules)

If you don't even know how to survive in the caves yet, why are you already doing challenges that limit you so much?

[CaptainChaotica]

Because I haven't explored the caves much and I thought there was food I hadn't found yet?  I'm trying to live a year as a "hunter-gatherer", and against all odds, I've made it three seasons.  (Actually I'm kinda sad I had to talk about it at all, 'cos the whole idea is that I'm playtesting this idea out myself BEFORE I go "Hey everybody, check out this cool challenge I made!"...and then get humiliated when it turns out it's completely flawed from the get-go in a way that, duh! everyone knows.)

Why the caves?  Again, hunter-gatherer--I don't know how to farm yet let alone how to make a magic anti-fire that cools you off, so it's the caves or die of overheating.  That's it.  I haven't yet found any pools, and I'm afraid to go near the ruins with just me on the server.  I've NEVER been to the ruins.  Never ever.  I'd be willing to try it with a friend or three, but not when I've already used up my one known touchstone.  The last time I ran into bunnymen they just cornered and killed me...I've never actually met a splumonkey and DO NOT WANT TO 'cos, ohmygod, I hate the Shipwrecked monkeys enough as it is and the Splumonkeys are even worse! 

I don't even know how far in I have to go to start bridging into the ruins area--more used to the way it works in singleplayer, where it's a whole other floor so the entrance is clearly defined--and...

Do I just make a buttload of torches and GO for it until I find something edible/potentially edible?  That might be a while.  And again, I don't wanna throw away this whole world by plunging straight into a dark swamp full of tentacles I can't see, or being bitten in the face by a jumping spider before I even know it's there (which has already happened).  There's a reason I don't do the caves.

I dunno.  I feel stupid and embarrassed.  I didn't want to talk about this at all 'cos I didn't want to tell people what I was doing until I knew it would work.  It sounded like SUCH a cool idea for a challenge!  But it seems I can't make it past Stage 1. 

I was hoping there was some trick to it I just didn't know yet, I mean...people live down there for permanent and even LIKE it.  I just wanted to know how.

...Notorious

[HutGenerator]

Some advice: you should bring some berrybushes (~20++) with you before going down cave.. late spring.. Usually I will start building cave base at late spring, so i can access both cave and overworld at the same time (easier resource management). When summer hits, you dont start building base down there, you go down like going to a hotel, the base should be finished before summer.

Another option is bunny farm. You should be able to find some bunny farm (usually 9 or 8 together).. there are a lot of carrot on the floor too.. just feed one and fake attacking the rest.. build walls to maximize efficiency..  if you have your crockpot challenge, just cook the meat and carrot at firepit.

Depthworm? Just sync their pattern.. pretty easy to use kitting method.

[zzKratoszz]

You can survive fully on just blue mushrooms if you have them. Its even easier with a mix of blue and green. You should find a bunny hutch village not too far away with even a sliver of non bad luck. Just don't be Webber or carry meat. Steal their carrots and hire the bunnies to kill each other. You can do this once every single night. If you can find a toadstool spawn or the ruins you can fish for eels.

Do you have an alchemy engine yet? If so your first priority is a lantern then if you have silk a miner's hat as well. You should be safe enough to fish for eels without fear of monkeys, if you stay near the beginning of the ruins. The caves (not the ruins part) is safe enough to explore. You can run away like on the surface. Even the jumping spiders take a second to spawn if you run fast enough. The tentacles are actually in a swamp biome. If you have hutch put all your meat food items in him.

[DatShadowJK]

3 hours ago, CaptainChaotica said:

Seriously, I know people just like, live down there year-round 

'Ahem' Mr KisE 'Ahem'. Lights out world, has lived in the caves from day One, its now about day 450 (not me, him), now thats a challenge, you cant drag meat down there cause bunnymen out 24/7, and he lives next to the FREAKING TOADSTOOL.

Ask him for advice, he is a Pro (He is doing the Godamn Powdercake challenge)

[CaptainChaotica]

Thanks, guys!  I appreciate all the help.  Okay, so...

--Didn't set up early.  Whoops.

--I've explored a fair ways and STILL haven't found any ponds, bunnies or monkeys.  I'm beginning to wonder if this particular world is a little broken in general 'cos I keep finding an _insane_ number of spiders--I mean, like, even real early on (they've overrun my winter "camp") and also the Pickle It mod is supposed to put other veggies in the ground at world-gen but...I still haven't found a single one.  Huh.  (Yes, it is activated, I checked.)  THAT would be giving me some more food...!

--Explored as far as I could before dying, rolled back, explored another way, rolled back...I hate doing that, but, well...by the time I'm done exploring one way I'm too starved to explore anymore, so...

I've decided to move up a couple of things.  The idea is that I'm playtesting this to find OUT what works and what doesn't, after all, not that I'm _locked_ into anything. At this point I'm still allowed to tweak the rules as necessary, 'cos it's not final yet.  SO...

Long story short:  I'm going to make endothermic fires and live on the surface.  The...Spirits of the Air told us how to make magical blue fire that cools you down.  There.  I'm'a make endothermic fires when necessary, a straw hat, and dart around.  I have grass and nitre already.  Next year things'll start getting better, so I just have to make it through THIS summer.  And Bearger?  He can show up on the first day of fall all he wants, I ain't GOT nothin'.  : P  (Except perhaps ten bazillion spider queens to introduce him to.) 

(Kind of a shame, 'cos the original way I was going to introduce endothermic fire was kinda funnier/more appropriate*, but, ah well.  This is the Don't Starve world, after all, NOT normal Earth.  Magic is gonna have to come into it at SOME point...)

...Notorious

*"While trying to find the secret of eternal life, medieval alchemists accidentally made this weird blue fire!  The king was impressed...then had them burned at the stake for witchcraft." : P

[DatShadowJK]

Its funny how you replied just after I edited my thing xD

[zzKratoszz]

That does sound like a lot of spiders. There should be at least 1 spider stronghold, but in every direction? I can't say I've ever seen so many. Are these in groups of ~3 or a whole biome worth (~15+) in spawns? Normal spiders or cave spiders? Either way it sounds like you found webber's home base. You did mention mods. It may be useful to go vanilla so you understand what correct world gen looks like just in case.

Edit: if you just want more veggies to pick up I believe there is a world gen option for more carrot spawns.

[CaptainChaotica]

Well, I wouldn't say every direction...but it seems every time I find a biome where normally it sometimes has spiders, it has a LOT.  Basically where I first based was in a savannah right near a rock biome with a lot of spider nests.  Too many for me to take them on alone, as they were all so close that if I attacked _one_ spider, 16 would come after me at once! So I had to leave them alone, and then they went to tier 3, then queens, then spread further right onto my old campground.  It would've taken a couple Wigfrids and/or Wolfgangs at least and better equipment than I had to get them.

And then, I ran into a dark forest with not just some spiders, but a LOT. Again, clumped together so I couldn't do much without risking instant death.  It seems every time I run into them it's not just one nest--and no, I didn't set them to More--THAT'S a difference I wouldn't have to guess.  You'd just _know_, 'cos More is about the same as Lots, aka ridiculous.

And so far I've only found a relative few cave spiders.  I ate the few drops of monster meat they gave me, but...that just made me finish going the rest of the way insane (after my midnight snack of redcaps) and get killed by a Terrorbeak. 

I remember I definitely turned on the Pickle It mod, 'cos it actually has a place in the challenge, later on--and I totally should've seen at least ONE onion, potato, radish or beet by now.  Weird.  It also lets you grow more veggies in farms, but I don't have any of those yet so who knows.  I mean, sure, there's still a lot of the world I haven't explored, but quite a bit I have...

Yeah, I could just turn up the carrots and/or berries, but that does too much--again, More is nuts.  I'm trying this with totally vanilla settings, not tweaking _any_thing, to get more of a clear baseline reading on how well the challenge works, if that makes sense?  My mods are mainly pretty minor and one of them even has a danger factor (Willow the Unnerfed*)--re-equip weapon, pickles, see the fling-o-matic range whenever you want (THAT won't be relevant for quite a while), no thermal stone breakage (don't have one yet), and background music for dusk/night.  Nothing that gives me magic information or extra health or non-spoiling food or anything.   Oh, and the Shipwrecked characters and Winnie, because why not.

...wait...if I have the Winnie mod activated--even if nobody's playing her, I should've seen some pink ewelos by now. They also show up at worldgen, in little herds, and are usually found pretty quickly.  Okay, that's it.  Something's broken.  Which is odd...normally they work fine with my tweaked settings (randomised seasons, less killer bees, less birchguards--that's it), and now that I HAVEN'T messed with anything, they don't.  Huh.

Don't mind me, just doing some detective work on my game here.  : P  At this point I'm thinking I should regen the world to see if stuff fixes itself, but...MAAAANNN...

...Notorious

*Although, if nothing else, this HAS taught me that Willow's craziness can set _spores_ on fire.  In the air.  It's kind of adorably dangerous.  Especially after she said "They're like floating fire"...well, now they ARE floating fire! (laugh)

[Rellimarual]

I agree that either of these two things -- the challenge you've contrived for yourself and learning to live in the caves for the first time -- is very do-able, but trying to do both at the same time is too much. Parts of the caves have foragable food, parts do not, and until you're more familiar with the biomes there, you're basically doing the equivalent of wandering around a rocky biome complaining about the lack of berry bushes.

[Donke60]

 Godamn Powdercake challenge whats that

[Starlogy]

Well, for cave food, me and my friends typically bring one or two Mushroom Planters down to the base, so this way we have filler for the crockpot. We actually end up bringing an Insulated Pack (this was before Bundled Supplies, I was trying to figure out a use for it) down as a fridge, along with some foods we couldn't get down there.

Also bird cage. Very important item to bring.

Basically, you could probably survive by eating Monster Meat, Eel stuff (which can also be made into Meatballs or Fishsticks), eggs, mushrooms, etc. In fact, if you don't mind getting your hands dirty, you could kill rabbitmen for carrots and meat.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, Drying Racks are hella useful to bring supplies for, just make a bunch and your meats will last longer. Of course, drying Eels will make it meat instead of fish, so be careful about that if you need Fishsticks.

[Arlesienne]

Chaotica, one question...

Why.

You have never been to the caves, why impose such bigger-than-life challenges on yourself? If you can get a crockpot and I'm certain you can, go for it as soon as possible! Similarly racks. Racks are a must. And a birdcage. Prebuild all these and an alchemy engine (ideally a tent, a beebox, a fridge and a magic lab since you'll soon drown in nightmare fuel and minerals), bundle up all the jerky and honey you can get, a stack of hound teeth, butterflies to plant as flowers under light shafts if you plan on starting an apiary there, and the flammable resources you won't get too easily downstairs: grass, twigs... Logs too, but you can get these from mushtrees to an extent. Have a firepit prebuilt, endothermic fires if you're doing it in summer. Don't waste time and resources on torches. Get yourself a lantern and a miner's hat. Silk will be needed for fishing rods and tents, and clothes to raise sanity, but can be obtained from spiders.

Lichen is best made into unagi - better fishsticks available if you have access to lichen and eels. This is an excellent recipe to heal, but mind the fact it spoils fast.

You haven't met rock lobsters yet if you say there are no helpful mobs down there. You feed them minerals and have to give them a couple (no matter what sort, so flint and rocks are the cheapest) to get a great tank. Bunnymen will attack monster-tagged entities on sight, which is good for depth worms, but they also constitute homicidal vegans, smelling the scent of meat, fish, eggs for a bit. Befriending some and killing others is a great idea, but be sure not to pick their meat or bunny puffs until they are back in their hutches.

[CaptainChaotica]

Well, see, the original idea was not specifically to live in the _caves_ under extreme restrictions.  It was just to make it _through a year_ under these restrictions...which originally included like, no way at all to keep cool in the summer, so it was caves or nothing.  If I was playing NORMALLY, sure, I'd be makin' all kinds of cool stuff!  But this is less about how to live in the caves, and more about "How do I summer as a hunter-gatherer?"  The caves were just kind of..."I _have_ to live here or roast."

But then I changed one of the rules, so...

EDIT:  This thread _was_ originally about living in the caves, 'cos I thought there was some kind of native cave-food that I didn't know about yet.  Turns out no, you have to use a crockpot to turn poison + poison into food or go further in than I can and fish.  Didn't know that, but it was worth asking.  Also, this whole challenge...well, I didn't KNOW how hard it was gonna be ahead of time. That's why I tried it!  To find out.    I mean, I had never actually tried the semi-nomadic lifestyle seriously before, so I wanted to give it a whirl.

That's not to say that all this advice isn't helpful--it is!  I just can't use it right _now_.  And yeah, I know about rock lobsters.  I ran into them on my very first time into the caves, right by the entrance, and yeah, I used them to help me with the depths worms.  I'm having a very odd bit of unluck this time around--I've explored a fair amount and have yet to find any rock lobsters, only like three spider nests, a slurper that was peeking out from behind something (which means I made it to the edge of the ruins area?), and that's...it, for animals.  And YET, weirdly enough, lots and lots of grass and twigs.  Including in a totally dark area.  Odd.  And a gigantic forest of red mushtrees that keeps sporing at me all the time.

Guess what else I ran into my first time down there? Bunnymen!  Guess what I was carrying?  I was on low HP and I remember them chasing me to like, the ends of the freaking earth before finally cornering me in one of those weird little cave dead-ends and murdering my face off.  My goal was to find the _other_ sinkhole leading to the ruins--never did.  (Singleplayer, obviously.)

I would LOVE to make some of these cave-only foods sometime.  Like unagi or powder cake.  I've never even seen lichen or eels.  But, like I said, the place is kind of oddly barren of food ingredients.  It's not just me--I mean, it partly IS--but there's also legit not much to work with.  Lots and lotsa filler in the form of those redcaps, but MAN, not much meat.  Monster or otherwise.  Even with a crockpot I think I would've run out of meatball material by now.

Yes, it's a big challenge, but it's only part of what _will_, I hope, be really cool.  IF I make it through the first year, the next one will be a bit easier.  Could've picked a shorter amount of time, but nothing else quite sounded right.  (shrug)

...Notorious

[Donke60]

using a straw hat a pretty parasol or umbrella with a thermal stone is how i survive summer but I don't hunker down at my base for long peroids of time just to cook food and sleep and storage thats about it so thats how you could do it though I would advise a melon hat to avoid close calls with overheating if you want to fight something

[mochilo]

I normally prepare A LOT of dragonfruit cakes the day after summer, which have a very nice duration. If you don't want to use a crockpot, I would say bring a few stacks of honey with you? that will last for very long too.

The best option would be to find some pond and fish A LOT. Earth shakes will also bring you rabbits and moles.

You can farm big quantities of monster meat easily by placing one or two spider nests in a bunny village. You should have no problem eating that and recovering HP and sanity with blue mooshrooms. I preffer to camp close to blue mushrooms better than green ones, so I can recover both HP and sanity any time eating them raw or cooked. You will end up with a loooot of spider glands too so you can actually recover the HP lost without sanity drains too. Earthworms waves are like fast food delivered right by your place, monster meat too (be sure to be close to bunny villages so they will help you against these, sometimes these are A LOT)

[zzKratoszz]

The caves are surprisingly more friendly than people give them credit. Part of the problem people have with them is food. But its not so much that there is less food, more so that the food is tightly grouped up compared to the surface. You don't get a little bit of food everywhere, you get it all in a hand full of places. Take the blue mushroom biome for example. Blue mushrooms refill lots of health, some sanity when cooked, and 5 of them are worth as much as meat balls in hunger. I can generally find 60+ such mushrooms in their respective biomes.

The only actual problem is when you can't find the food source you want to eat. Bunnies are a great food source as I mentioned. But some people may not want to start a mob war over some more peaceful means of gathering food.

[mochilo]

19 hours ago, CaptainChaotica said:

That's it.  I haven't yet found any pools, and I'm afraid to go near the ruins with just me on the server.  I've NEVER been to the ruins.  Never ever.  I'd be willing to try it with a friend or three, but not when I've already used up my one known touchstone.  The last time I ran into bunnymen they just cornered and killed me...

Do I just make a buttload of torches and GO for it until I find something edible/potentially edible?  That might be a while.  And again, I don't wanna throw away this whole world by plunging straight into a dark swamp full of tentacles I can't see, or being bitten in the face by a jumping spider before I even know it's there (which has already happened).  There's a reason I don't do the caves

I'm sorry I didn't read this before posting, so here goes my doublepost

I'm on my first run with summer base in the caves, and I've learned the few basics to survive in there and explored it recently, so I'd be really happy to share with you all I learnt. We can go MP if you want, as I forget a lot of things when I'm posting in the forum and I'm afraid I'd make multiple posting here so much xD

So about these points: bunnymen will want to kill you if you carry any meat on you. But if you don't carry meat, they will be friendly and will fight every monster for you. This is the reason I recommend a few stacks of honey while you explore the place.

It's good to make your base close to bunnymen for earth worms wave attacks and spiders farming, just not right over them so you can have your meat at home. The good thing is, bunnymen are around only during dusk and night, which is a short part of the time during summer. You know you are safe when a day starts, the "Save game" text helps to know when you have a few free-bunny minutes to cross their village if you carry meat.

That's really easy to do lanterns instead torches. Just make a lantern and refuel it with lightbulbs. It's way better than torches, as it last way longer, is refuelable and can be dropped on the floor for light if you need to fight or mine whatever on your way.

There are no random tentacles in caves/ruins. You can see only a very big column thing that happens to be a tentacle, but these won't attack if you don't attack first, and it doesn't hit as strong than the surface tentacles. You can even see them in the map, so tentacles is not a problem.

Spiders only spawn where you see spider web on the floor. If you don't touch it, no spider will bite you on the face!

You know when you are close to the ruins because there is lichen. it's a blue "plant" that grows on some brown ground biomes, there are A LOT of them and they are also seen in the map, so it's really easy to spot even if you happened to explore. They can also be eaten with a sanity penalty, and can be used to cook in a crockpot just like other filler (1 monster meat + 3 lichen = meatballs, for example). I know you don't want to cook, but I say this so you know there are resources even there!

Good luck!

[Rellimarual]

Most caves do have swamp biomes, so you can get tentacle spikes there. Those areas also have regular spiders.

[Sinister_Fang]

8 hours ago, Donke60 said:

 Godamn Powdercake challenge whats that

The powdercake challenge is surviving long enough to see a powdercake rot. It takes 18,750 days for one of these things to actually rot.

[KoreanWaffles]

5 hours ago, Sinister_Fang said:

The powdercake challenge is surviving long enough to see a powdercake rot. It takes 18,750 days for one of these things to actually rot.

I put a Powercake into Toadstool's sporecloud.

Do I win?

[Sicko Hog]

8 hours ago, Sinister_Fang said:

The powdercake challenge is surviving long enough to see a powdercake rot. It takes 18,750 days for one of these things to actually rot.

I don't get why anyone would do this challenge. It's not difficult, surviving 18,750 days isn't any harder than surviving a year. You just have to waste 100+ real days worth of time on a video game.