If you don’t know anything about Don’t Starve, I recommend you to read it.
Getting Started
Health:
Displays how much damage the player can take. When it reaches 0, it causes the player’s Death or Resurrection.
Hunger:
Track how full the player’s stomach is. When empty, the player will experience constant health loss (similar to Freezing or Overheating ). This will continue until the player consumes a Food item that refills hunger or dies.
Spoilage:
If the player keeps food for too long without eating it, the food item will begin to spoil and rot. The item in the inventory will start as a fresh (Green) item if it can spoil. It will first turn stale (Yellow), then spoil (Red), and finally turn into an inedible pile of Rot which can be used as weak fertilizer for Farms and Plants.
Each stage of spoilage will diminish the positive effects of the food and will eventually add a negative effect to it (i.e., Sanity loss). These effects do not apply to WX-78.
The spoilage rate will double if the food is left on the ground, or it can be cut in half if it is placed in an Ice Box. You can also give it more durability by stacking it with fresher food.
DLCs and DST introduce the Wetness mechanic, causing food to become wet if not protected. Soggy food spoils 30% faster.
Sanity:
This keeps track of the player’s current Sanity level. When Sanity drops, numerous things happen based on the current amount. As it falls, the screen will begin to distort and shake, and eyes will soon begin to appear at night (Sanity Meter.png ≤ 60%). The distortion will continue until the Sanity level falls below 50%. Below this, the player can see Shadow Creatures (shadow-like monsters and Beardlings). If their Sanity level drops below 15%, the character will start to hold their head in pain, and the Shadow Creatures will begin to attack the player without provocation (except for Beardlings).
Common actions that will reduce a player’s Sanity are eating raw Meats and Monster Meat, traveling through Worm Holes, staying in complete darkness, or fighting certain monsters. Actions that will increase the player’s Sanity are eating Crock Pot food (like Taffy and Pumpkin Cookies), eating Cooked food, picking Flowers, wearing certain Dress items, sleeping through the night, etc.
Day/Night cycle:
On the HUD, a circular object will show the player exactly how much in-game time they will have left before the time of day changes to Dusk, Night, or Day.
The day will slowly turn to Dusk, then Night, and then again back to Day. This cycle will repeat infinitely, but the length of each stage will change depending on the current season (see below).
Summer & Winter:
Summer and Winter are the two seasons in Don’t Starve (there are four in the Reign of Giants DLC as well as DST; Autumn and Spring). During these seasons, the amount of Day, Dusk, and Night that will be left in a Day will differ.
Summer does not have much of a change from the game’s normal state besides the change in Day times. Winter, however, is drastically different.
During Winter:
The types of Animals and Monsters will either change entirely or just their coat color
The player is capable of Freezing to death
The hostile Deerclops boss will occasionally spawn
The duo of Mactusk N’ Son will spawn from Walrus Camps (with 2 Blue Hounds)
Winter is a very hostile season, so it is recommended that the player prepare before it begins. One of the easiest way is hunting a Koalefant before the night starts. When you find it, wait until night and kill it while it’s sleeping. You will get a Koalefant Trunk which with 8 Silk can be turned into a Breezy Vest. A Winter Koalefant Trunk can be turned crafted into a Puffy Vest using 8 Silk and 2 Beefalo Wool.
Moon Cycle:
If players are looking at the Clock at night, a small moon phase can be observed. On a full moon, normal Pigs will become Werepigs, which are hostile and dangerous to players. Therefore, it is recommended that players not visit Pig Villages or befriend Pigs on a full moon. If the player’s camp resides near a Pig Village or in the center of one, the light produced during the full moon segment can be used to escape from the Village before the Pigs transform. In Reign of Giants, however, many things can happen on a full moon, which can be observed by going into a Deciduous Forest. The first change is that it is bright enough for you to stray from your Campfire without being affected by Sanity loss or Charlie. Additionally, Mushrooms grow into Mushtrees, Flowers turn into Evil Flowers and a unique item, Glommer’s Flower, appears near Glommer’s Statue.
Equipped Items:
On Hand: For wielding Tools, Weapons, or Magical items.
Body: For wearing Armour, Dress items, Magical apparel, or different types of Backpacks on the torso.
Hat: For wearing Armour or Hats on the head.
Minimap:
Activated by pressing the Tab key on PC, View button on Xbox One, or the touchpad on PS4.
The Minimap shows the player their location and notable items (Spider Dens, Boulders, Pig King, Fire Pit, etc.) The map fills in when it is explored in the world.
Game Tabs:
Tabs that are used to Craft different objects (if the player has the correct resources). It also shows what items need to be unlocked and which resources are needed to unlock them.
Pause:
Used to stop the game and choose an option from the HUD (Options, Save & Quit, or Continue.) The shortcut to do this is pressing the Esc key. This can be done on the Pocket Edition version of Don’t Starve by pressing the pause button on the bottom right-hand corner.
Prototype:
The method used to unlock craftable items. Players must gather enough resources before unlocking/prototyping an item. A type of Science Machine must be used for prototyping. Prototyping will increase your sanity a little.
If players have any inquiry, please feel free to read articles in the gameplay mechanics bar below or make comment below the page, editors will reply to your question.
Day 1 The player does not start with any items, aside from some character-specific items. The first major concerns for players are Hunger, Night, And Sanity
During daytime Pick up Flint and Twigs for crafting a Pickaxe and an Axe in the Icon Tools.png tab.
Collect Cut Grass from Grass Tufts and chop Trees for Logs. They will be used for crafting a Campfire at night.
Collect Carrots and Berries to cook over the Campfire in the evening.
Continue with this until through the day and most of the Dusk. Then you have two options:
Option 1: Find a place to settle down and then build a Campfire in the Icon Light.png tab. Make sure to keep your fire burning throughout the night by adding occasional logs to it. A Campfire is the best option if you want to chop down trees, mine rocks and cook food during the night (if you want to conserve fuel, cook food later when the fire has gotten smaller). A well-stocked fire will prevent Charlie from murdering you in the dark. When it’s not raining, the Campfire will provide just enough light to last through the night although a log or two should be added if you want to light surrounding areas. Stay as close to the fire as possible to prevent loss of Sanity.
Option 2: Make sure you have materials for at least a couple of Torches which must be equipped just when the night arrives. A Torch allows continued exploration and resource gathering during nighttime. Contrast to what it may seem, nights aren’t that much more dangerous apart from darkness. If you keep away from the Marsh biome, the only enemies that you might worry about are Spiders that can be easily avoided. During the night you should also try to eat your cooked food, you will need the day and dusk to gather resources
Try this strategy:
Gather everything in sight. You will need 12 Flowers to construct a Garland to keep your Sanity up (WAIT until Day 4 or 5 to start gathering flowers when your Sanity goes down, picking a flower gives 5
The Big Picture
No Tech Build an axe, pickaxe, torch, campfire, and not a garland. Chop trees for logs and pine cones, mine boulders for rocks and gold.
Science Machine One option is to build a science machine without choosing a base location, and then some combination of backpack, spear, log suit, shovel, and hammer. Hammer the science machine, and keep exploring. One of the primary goals of the hammer is to get pig skins out of pig heads.
Burn a forest and collect the charcoal. Use the shovel to dig up some or all of twigs, berry bushes, and grass tufts.
After choosing a base location, build a firepit, crockpot, drying rack(s), chest(s), and lightning rod. Place traps on rabbit holes. Read the crock pot page – this is one of the most useful pages on the wiki. Plant pine cones and the other items.
Fight spiders using traps or weapons to collect the silk, spider glands, and monster meat. Monster meat enables a few crock pot recipes and at least serves as filler for the others. Glands heal for 8 by themselves, and with ash, can produce healing salve to heal for 20. One way to generate ash is to set a stack of 30 grass on the ground, light it with a torch, and then collect the stack of 30 ash. But perhaps the biggest reason to fight spiders is for the silk.
Secure a source of repeatable healing. The best options are a bee box for honey nuggets/honey ham (requires silk for the bug net), frogs + mushrooms for froggie bunwich (requires ponds), a fishing pole for fish sticks (requires silk for the fishing pole and ponds), farms (requires manure), and drying racks for jerky. While jerky is perhaps the weakest source of healing listed here, it’s a top-tier source of sanity and food storage.
Alchemy engine Get lots of gold and tech to the alchemy engine. The main options for gold are hacking lots of rocks, and giving meats or trinkets to the Pig King or Wolly.
Pig skins are now highly valuable. The ham bat and especially the football helmet are huge fighting upgrades. Consider a piggyback and pig houses with the leftovers.
There are three main options for meat: Beefalo, werepigs, and tallbirds, and they all require fights that could easily prove fatal. In particular, note that with correct technique, Beefalo can be killed without taking a hit, but a bum’s rush into a herd will end very badly, even with armor.
An alternative to ham bats is fighting a tentacle for the spike. Options include finding a tentacle that’s fighting spiders, befriending pigs and having them go first, and simply rushing it while heavily armored.
Find the marsh and collect reeds. Extra honey and reed can be used for honey poultice. Use a bird trap to populate a bird cage and produce eggs. The caged bird converts cooked monster meat to eggs, enables crock pot recipes, and gives crop seeds. Save eggs until they spoil and make gunpowder (or collect pengull eggs at the end of winter). Gunpowder is the point at which saving the early nitre is rewarded.
Using hound teeth, set up tooth traps. Build a boomerang, hunt birds, and craft fire/sleep/blow darts.
Magic Build a Prestihatitator. Build a meat effigy, which requires meat and shaving a sufficiently long beard. In fact build 2 but only place 1 (When you’re ready to go spelunking place the second one in the cave with a lantern, a weapon and some food to make it easier to reclaim your lost equipment).
Fight the chess pieces to get gears, marble, and the wooden thing.
Dig graves to get gems and gears. With gears, the choices are an ice box or a divination rod. Blue gems can be made into ice staffs – this is generally more efficient than darts for fights requiring ranged weapons. Red gems can make a life giving amulet. Mandrakes can make a pan flute.
Winter Preparation Plan A is a beefalo hat. This requires fighting about 3 beefalo, depending on drops. Plan B is a winter hat – the wool could come from shaving beefalo at night, thus avoiding the fight. The backup plan is rabbit ear muffs. It’s always useful to get 1 or 2 thermal stones. (and a stack of charcoal, depending on your insulation rating you might need up to 80 charcoal to see you through winter)
Looking for Trouble Hunt a Koalefant to make a vest. Fight MacTusk n’ Son and hope for an awesome hat or a tusk for a walking cane. Make Krampus angry. All of these require either ranged weapons, good combat gear or understanding of how to kite and drop aggro.
Advanced Magic Teching to shadow manipulator requires three things: a purple gem, living logs, and nightmare fuel.
The Dark Sword, Night Armor, and Fire Staff are all significant fighting upgrades. Given enough nightmare fuel, make a nightmare amulet, go insane, and collect more nightmare fuel.
Most advanced magic items and resources cost sanity to use or acquire, so sanity sources are more valuable now. Options include green and blue mushrooms, MacTusk’s hat, pig friends, jerky, and sleeping in a tent. Prototyping otherwise low value items could be a bargain due to the sanity gain; for instance, a sign is 4 logs for 15 sanity.
Boss Fights Prepare the battlefield. It could have any or all of strategically placed walls, tooth traps, fire pits, bee bombs, pig houses, beefalo, and even a treeguard.
In all stages of the game, the easiest way to win a fight is to get someone else to do it. For instance, build a pig house next to frogs, and collect the pig skins after the frogs win.
Fight the treeguard, the spider queen, and the deerclops. Note that if the player encounters any of these before they are ready, the fight can be avoided.
All About Night
Night’s Effects Without a Lightsource
The player will be alerted that Charlie (Night Monster) is near. After 5 seconds the player is attacked and damaged for 100 health and 20 sanity.
(Armor will absorb damage taken from Charlie.) 10 seconds later it will attack again, causing the same amount of damage.
50 sanity/min is drained while in the darkness. (0.83 sanity/second)
You will be unable to pick up items or interact with objects using the mouse button. Objects can still be collected by using the space bar, but due to the games natural tendency to go towards any object instead of the closest one, this is an ineffective way to gather materials for a torch or a fire.
With a Lightsource
5 sanity/min is drained while near light. [Verified]
On the World Mobs will fall asleep as soon as night starts and will wake when night is over. Note: Some mobs sleep during the day instead, especially if their home is destroyed (such as the Spider and the Spider Warrior.) However, the combat reaction below is the same. Other creatures that sleep during the day may wake when near but are neutral mobs (such as a Bunnyman) instead and will react as a pig without its home.
If the player walks near a sleeping Spider, Spider Queen, Killer Bee, Tallbird, or Hound it will wake up and attack the player, unless they are part of one of Maxwell’s traps. If so, they will continue to sleep until an event triggers them.
If the player attacks a sleeping Spider, Spider Queen, Bee, Killer Bee, Tallbird, Hound, Treeguard, or Pig, it and its nearby allies will wake and attack the player.
If the player walks nearby a sleeping Koalefant or Winter Koalefant it will wake up and start running away. There is just enough time to attack it with a melee weapon if you are quick. (A torch works.)
The pig king will be asleep and will not be able to receive any gifts in exchange for gold.
Plants will not grow.
Meat will not dry.
Tallbird eggs (unless in a nest or near a fire) will freeze and turn to Wet Goop.
Light
Fire Pit
Cost: 12 Rocks and 2 Logs
Cost to maintain: Fuel
Cost rank: Expensive initial placement, maintenance is low, high reuse value
Light area: Large, grows smaller as fire weakens
Mobility: Stationary
Rank: Good, the most efficient method to stay warm during winter
Usage: The optimal choice for a base or an area where you know you will stay for a while or come back to. It is much more efficient in the long term than any other light source, lasting up to 6 minutes. It is also used to stay warm during winter and cook food.
Endothermic Fire Pit
Cost: 2 Nitre , 4 Cut Stones and 2 Electrical Doodads
Cost to maintain: Fuel, Nitre
Cost rank: Extremely expensive initial placement, maintenance is low, high reuse value
Light area: Large, grows smaller as fire weakens
Mobility: Stationary
Rank: Good, the most efficient method to stay cool during summer
Usage: Essentially a cold Fire Pit, this Fire Pit cools you down, making surviving the summer much easier. The downside to this is the huge expense that is required to build this.
Note: Endothermic fires are only able to be built in a world with the Reign Of Giants DLC.
Campfire
Cost: 3 Grass and 2 Logs
Cost to maintain: Fuel
Cost rank: Moderately expensive to place, low to maintain. Must be replaced with every new use.
Light area: Large, grows smaller as fire weakens.
Mobility: Stationary
Rank: Good, but inefficient for long term usage
Usage: Optimal for new players during the night, useful for keeping warm during winter when not having access to a Fire Pit, and can be used for cooking food.
Endothermic Fire
Cost: 3 Grass and 2 Nitre
Cost to maintain: Fuel, Nitre
Cost rank: Moderately expensive to place, low to maintain. Must be replaced with every new use.
Light area: Large, grows smaller as fire weakens.
Mobility: Stationary
Rank: Good, but inefficient for long term usage
Usage: An alternative for players who are surviving summer. Also useful in a pinch when there are no logs about.
Note: Endothermic fires are only able to be built in a world with the Reign Of Giants DLC.
Torch
Cost: 2 Grass and 2 Twigs
Cost to maintain: Single use only, however can be put down or unequipped to keep use down.
Cost rank: Moderately inexpensive to craft
Light area: Small
Mobility: High, equipped. Must be held in hand to give light.
Warmth: Used to set things on fire, trees burn longest and give charcoal when chopped down after burning.
Rank: Good depending on the situation; inefficient to use regularly.
Usage: Optimal for travel during early game, and very effective for temporarily restoring warmth during winter by setting things on fire.
Fire
Cost: Torch or firestaff is used to start the fire, and a tree or burnable item.
Cost to maintain: A tree lasts for 10–15 seconds, an item placed on the ground lasts 3–15 seconds.[1] Firestaff uses 1 charge.
Cost rank: Supply cost for tool used, only.
Light area: Huge, depending on item(s) burned.
Warmth: Provides warmth, can be used to heat up a heat stone up to about 1/3 from 1 fire.
Rank: Bad, a fire lasts a very short time but has a very large light area.
Usage: Almost free way to restore warmth during winter.
Miner Hat
Cost 1 Straw Hat, 1 Gold Nugget and 1 Fireflies, and it requires an Alchemy Engine to prototype
Cost to maintain: 1 Gold Nugget and 1 fireflies. Last for a very long time, about 4-5 nights before having to refuel.
Cost rank: Cheap, but takes some effort to find and get materials. Fireflies are not renewable, but are abundant. (Fireflies stack up to 40, so up to 160 of them they can be brought over to a new world)
Light area: Large.
Mobility: High, worn as a hat
Warmth: None
Rank: Arguably the lightsource of choice, it lasts about 4-5 nights if used only at night. The only downside is that Fireflies are not renewable, however abundant.
Usage: Any time light is needed.
Golden Rules
Don’t Start a Fight you Can’t Finish. You shouldn’t bite off more than you can chew. If you want to start a fight, you have to be sure you can end it. While combat is fun and all, it’s more important to worry about your life. If you aren’t skillful enough in taking down certain creatures, don’t engage in fighting it.
Don’t get Greedy. If you see a bunch of loot on the ground from battles, the victors from said battle can’t be far off. If you try to get in there to collect all of the loot blindly, you may find yourself low on health trying to escape. Unless you’re wearing superb armor or it’s life-threatening, don’t risk your life just for shiny stuff. Keep in mind the Don’t Starve world is hostile enough to not hand you everything on a platter.
Make Sure you Have a Light Source. Always. Exploring is fun. But just in case you have to venture out from your main base of operations, you should bring spare light sources, like torches, campfires and lanterns. In case you get caught up in a fight you can’t finish, or hungry animals are stalking you, and you can’t return to your home, it’d be best to have spare light sources so Charlie can’t attack. The night is an opportunity for many dangerous creatures, I’m sure you knew that.
If It’s too Good to be True, it Probably is Don’t Starve has set pieces that are much like traps. Though some are helpful in any way, most set pieces are dangerous if you don’t take caution. If it looks strange or out of the ordinary, take heed. Even if you come unscathed, there may still be a price to pay.
That's everything we are sharing today for this Don't Starve Together guide. This guide was originally created and written by ToxiL. In case we fail to update this guide, you can find the latest update by following this link.