A close shave to our first Winter success

[Omninano]

My cousin and I enjoy playing DST co-op. We've played multiple worlds since the beta came out, but have died every time sometime during the first or second season.

Just the other day we started up a new world and this time finally made it to Winter! We had a large food stock and much to our surprise we were making it through Winter without any real major struggles. Then, five days before the end of Winter, Deerclops struck.

The ground started shaking and it was night. I intended to have us run as soon as he appeared on screen and lure him away into the night with our torches. But when he showed up, he showed up with a bang. As in, already in mid-attack animation, destroying our stuff! We sprinted away from the base, but unfortunately he didn't follow. We set up a system of getting close enough to him to aggravate him to follow us (one of us in front one of us in back) very far northward, away from our base. We had a Varg and a Ewecus up there that we'd discovered from some animal-tracking gone wrong. Our thoughts were that we could lure them up to those monsters and have them duke it out.

Of course nothing went as planned.

We made it to the Ewecus, but the Deerclops did not get near enough to aggro to it. I, on the other hand, did, and it instantly snot-shotted me and proceeded to ram into me a couple of times until I died. My cousin remained, running from the Deerclops and fearing freezing. He got far enough away from the Deerclops until it stopped following him, and I it tracked a bit in my ghost form until it suddenly disappeared. It had walked off somewhere in the savanna north of our base. My partner sprinted down to our base where we had the materials to make a Telltale Heart, and he revived me (I had died once earlier in the game, so this revival left me with a permanent half-chunk of my health gone).

Out of habit and without thinking, I began running to where I had died to retrieve my stuff. As you might have guessed, this was a stupid mistake as I quickly began freezing. As soon as I realized I had begun to freeze I did a 180 and turned right back around to get to our base's fire pit. I continued sprinting forward with my mouse hovering over my health gauge, watching it deplete and counting out loud as each number ticked down. I was close to the base, but only 10 health remained. Then 9. Then 8. By 6 I could see the fire pit, and by 4 I had at last made it!

So there I stood stuck at the fire pit, unable to retrieve my stuff and thus unable to go anywhere with the Winter weather. My cousin had all his inventory, luckily, so while I waited at the fire he ran up to grab my stuff and get any twigs he could to make a dragonfruit pie. Luckily for us, the Deerclops hadn't destroyed our ice boxes, so we had a bit of stocked food including dragon fruit left to eat. My cousin ran into the night, and I stayed by the fire with only a few materials to relight it.

While standing there waiting out the night, I decided to quickly look up a fact about something on the DS wiki. I found what I wanted using the Steam overlay browser, and then Shift+tabbed back into the game. Suddenly loud, obnoxious music started blasting in my headphones. It was horrible, and I asked my cousin if he was playing it before realizing it was coming from the Steam browser. I opened up the browser and closed the tab and sure enough the music stopped, but when I got rid of the overlay I found that my fire had gone out! And no sooner did this register with me then I was killed by Charlie.

This was obviously just getting worse and worse with each second, but my cousin and I still had hope we could salvage the game. My cousin made a derpy mistake, and had almost a full inventory when he went to get my stuff so he could only hold a few items. He returned with those items and made yet another Telltale Heart, reviving me with a whopping max health of 44. At this time we were both in quite a frenzy from the excitement as you can imagine, and in this I accidentally bumped my headphones out of their jack, causing all sound to revert to my speakers and messing up the Skype call. I plugged the headphones back in and reset the Skype call, but the game sound continued to be played through the speakers rather than my headphones. I even tried unplugging the speakers, but it did no good and I was stuck with a silent game and only my cousin's voice (meaning I couldn't hear any enemies coming before hand).

I wanted to disconnect the game so that I could reset the sound to my headphones, but my cousin feared any items on the ground would despawn. We searched online but couldn't find any answers, while meanwhile my cousin made a second trip that morning to get more of my stuff. Unfortunately for him, the Ewecus was standing right on top of my items, so by the time my cousin realized he was there the Ewecus had him in a snot trap as well. Needless to say, my cousin died then and there.

Of course sanity began draining, so I was forced to run into the freezing savanna with no protection to grab three grass to make a Telltale Heart. I just barely made it back, and I combined my bounty with the spider glands we had to make a Telltale Heart (reducing my health back down to 4 again).

So there we were, stuck at the base with hardly any good materials to our name. Luckily we had a few trees close enough to our base that I could cut down and run back to the fire pit in time without freezing. We also were lucky that we still had our ice boxes with enough food left in them. I was able to eat our jerky supply to keep my sanity and hunger up while staying by the fire to keep from freezing. My cousin left the server to conserve food and sanity, so only I remained, stuck in the camp.

Winter had only three days left and I had more than enough jerky to last me. I was sure I could make it to Spring.

Deerclops had other ideas.

I guess the Deerclops decided that his hiatus had been long enough, and the next evening he chose to return for round two of our fight. Terror struck my heart as the screen began to shake (remember, I still had no sound. By this time I had finally finished posting a question on the a question on the forums about items despawning). Once again, the Deerclops came in already swinging his arms, and crushed our ice boxes and drying racks. I made a mad dash out into the rock biome to our right, and after running a sufficient distance away from the ugly brute I realized that ironically I had enough materials to make a fire pit (though not a normal fire or a torch). So I camped just on the outskirts of our area and the Deerclops' range. There was just two days left, and if I could high-tail to the woods and chop down a tree I was sure I could make a firepit out there and wait the two days out for the Deerclops to despawn.

So at the first light, I sprinted right past the Deerclops partying in our base and over to the forest. I took my axe to a good looking pine tree, and wouldn't you know it our luck persisted. A Treeguard spawned right next to me. I quickly collected the wood, and ran away from the slow-moving treeguard. I made a small fire to warm me up, and then decided to make a run back to the base to collect anything there was.

And that's where I we are now. I got a response that items wouldn't despawn if I turned off the server, and I needed to go anyway. The epic story shall reach a conclusion tomorrow, hopefully for the better. I mean, it's just one more night of Winter. What could happen?

[TheFriendlySpycrab]

A lot

[TapeKnot]

Sorry to say, Omninano, but your screwed.