Okay, taking a quick break from Adventure Mode to throw out some stuff I thought of while playing:
1. Multiple camps, smaller is better. When you have a fire pit and a stash of supplies, you can recover from an adverse situation with greater speed. Notably, these are supplies that don't spoil and can leave for an indefinite period. Base materials like rocks, flint, grass, and wood are essential ... one stack of each at your alternate camps should suffice.
If you manage to scrounge a stack of pine cones for each camp, you have the ability to beat feet and rebuild most essential equipment with the quickness.
2. I made mention earlier of using spiked bushes as markers. Scroll up and criticize me and then tell me how stupid I am, I can take it. As an aside, setting up a series of spiked bushes in a tight cluster is a great way to burn them to ash for your Healing Salves; you don't lose otherwise valuable materials trying to create a single component with one purpose. Of course, you could always stockpile them for a fuel source on your fire pit since they burn for 360 seconds apiece ....
3. Let's talk about saplings because they are fucking greatness. Saplings provide twigs, they can be relocated without needing fertilizer to regrow, just a little bit of time and they serve as fantastic map markers since they are very distinct. The downside to them is that they can't replicate, so you have to be sure you have plenty of them at various stages of growth.
My personal favorite base camp is on a savannah biome near rabbits (and beefalo if possible) and a shit-ton of grass. Digging up and replanting saplings uses a bit of flint (via shovels), but with any luck you should have access to some rock/gold boulders for replenishment.
Did I mention that twigs can be used for emergency fuel? Yeah, that's a handy thing. Finally, when replanting saplings, try to put them near clusters of grass that don't need fertilizer, five at a cluster is good; anything more than that and you risk a chain-fire from lightning strikes during a storm and you lose grass *AND* saplings.
4. Speaking of fuel, let's discuss charcoal. With no mods to gameplay, no increases to stack size or fuel consumption, charcoal burns for the same amount of time as a single log, but they stack to 40 instead of 20. Essentially, a stack of charcoal has a strong place in your secondary camps as a fuel source *AND* building material. Logs are a bit too valuable to burn in a fire pit or on a camp fire willy nilly, but charcoal is super plentiful under the right circumstances.
And those are ....
5. Forest biomes.
Forest biomes are the work of the devil. They are typically infested with spider dens in close proximity to a shit-ton of trees, so combat is pretty much out unless you have a HUGE-ASS stockpile of traps to catch spiders. Forest biomes have two purposes: to enable Woody to survive as a werebeaver for an eternity and ...
TO BURN WITH PURIFYING FIRE.
Seriously, consider the benefits.
With one or three well placed torchings, you turn an entire murder den of spiders and whatnot into a field of ash and charcoal. If you are in the depths of winter and have an emergency freeze on your hands, set fire to that biome. You can tail the blaze and pick up the ash for Healing Salves before they blow away and hack down the charred trees for charcoal at your leisure. As an added bonus, it's guaranteed light for an entire night (and then some) when you have to deal with long, cold winter nights.
But you can only do this once or twice per map, so use it judiciously.
"But, Uncle Deedubs! I'll burn all the spiders and their lovely silk! What of the Opportunity Cost?!?"
6. Spiders and the farming thereof is a tricky prospect, even under the best of circumstances. Happily, a single Tier 3 Spider Den (easy to spot, it has three sections) can replenish all the spiders you need, just don't set the Spider Egg on fire. Along with pine cones, butterflies, bee hives, pig and rabbit houses ... as long as you have one to help regrow, you're capable of rebuilding from almost nothing. A single Spider Egg can replicate infinitely as long as you are willing to let the Spider Queen settle on a new location.
My recommendation? Find a peninsula on your map that has a tight choke point and place the Spider Egg at the absolute ass-end of that peninsula. After that, it's simply a matter of walling the choke point with a tight access to prevent spiders and Queens from getting out before you have a chance to kill them.
I'll do more later, for now I'm going back to trying not to starve.
In my current game I've somehow summoned a total of four treeguards (I say somehow, I've been chopping wood like it's going out of fashion).
Turns out that if you kite them into a swamp biome with some spiders nesting there, he becomes an arboreal tool of vengeance. I was just following him around, picking up loot from his rampage.
[Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
+2
Options
Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
So far I've discovered that crock pots are civilization, and also not to spend too much time spelunking or you'll go crazy.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
This game looks much more dangerous than it was before.
I was really into this game, but also found that the maintenance got kind of tiresome.
Then I took a break and came back and found they'd actually made the things which helped keep the game from being too focused (for me) on daily maintenance (replantable berries, food that didn't spoil, etc) no longer available, and added a sanity meter to keep track of.
At this point in the discussion, I'd like to mention the concept of the Go-Bag.
For folks familiar with the military or law-enforcement, this shit is old hat; for the rest of the populace, it's not a regularly encountered subject, but here we are.
Did you know (within the game of Don't Starve) that a commonplace backpack holds eight slots of items? Did you know that you can pick them up and set them down wherever you please? Did you know that they are made from 4 X Grass and 4 X twigs ... which are easily renewed?
DID YOU KNOW THAT BACKPACKS ARE THEIR OWN MAP MARKERS?!?
Now you know about Go-Bags ... well, at least the basics.
You can put anything in a Go-Bag, anything at all; it's just an augmentation to your normal inventory.
So what does that mean for your intrepid avatar? It means you have a mobile chest minus one storage slot. Not a bad trade-off in my humble opinion.
Instead of storing rabbits in a chest, put them in a Go-Bag and then haul them to wherever; the same goes for long-range recon activities, you can store a ton of gear in eight slots and then drop it when you need to make room.
Have you ever run out of inventory space because you don't want to lose that Deerclops Eyeball and stack of Beefalo Fur? Go-Bag.
Over-encumbered on charcoal while chopping up all those trees you just burned to kill the Spider Apocalypse? Go-Bag.
Spelunking underground and need to make a map marker? Go-Bag.
Brand New Go-Bag from the Acme Inventory Company suits all of your Not Starving needs!
Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
Right now my biggest problem is running out of food. I use up all of the readily available food in my area in the first few days. I think part of the problem is I set up a base and want to stay there, should I be traveling more?
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
I suggest traveling most of the days and nights of summer to find and map out resources like manure, beefalo, plantables, rock & swamp biomes, pig king, etc. I suggest digging up saplings and tufts as you go. After you've mapped out all important resources, Spend at least a day each collecting all that you can of each resource.
Stop by a centrally located base periodically, to manage farms, meat racks, tufts & saplings.
Before winter you want a functioning base in a travel-able distance specifically from pig king, rabbits, beefalo, spiders, rocks. Bees & frogs are a plus.
Before the first winter, you want drying racks, a few crock pots, rock fireplace, an alchemy machine, a tent, and hopefully a chest with some veggies & other foods. A stockpile of grass and twigs are good for trapping spiders to make warm clothes, as well as tools.
I tend to explore until I find a beefalo herd with some nearby rabbit holes. There are other preferences I may get stingy about at times, but that's usually the hard rule for a base location for me.
Make at least a science machine and firepit, then generally start collecting saplings/grass tufts to relocate at camp, and berry bushes. Before winter, at least one crockpot and usually 2-4 of the better farm plots, living off of meatballs from rabbits+berries/veggies in the pot. Heatstone + bunny earmuffs will let you wander about still during winter, though I usually spend most of winter days managing camp + collecting manure since if you have more than a couple beefalo in your nearby herd, it's usually more convenient to burn manure than anything else, and it burns very well.
The basic idea is keeping a supply of grass/twigs right at camp primarily to make traps, for the rabbits, especially since even if you run out of fruit/veggies you can make meatballs with just morsels. It's utterly reliable. Just uh...don't forget to make a lightning rod to protect the plots of grass/saplings as soon as you're able.
Everything else, like spiders/bees and such can always be transplanted nearby, and with the preparation above I rarely have time to fit in more than a little spider farming.
Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
Don't you need carrots for rabbit traps though? Or will some stupid rabbits fall into your trap anyway?
Also, can you grow carrots?
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
Rabbits, frogs, and spiders will activate traps by moving near or under them.
For rabbits, this means planting the trap on top of a hole, for frogs planting around ponds, for spiders outside web. You can aggro these small creatures into traps.
You can sometimes get a stack of 10+ carrots just from picking them up as you explore.
Farming regular seeds will sometimes create a carrot. Farms need manure.
Feeding imprisoned birds veggies, will create specific seeds that can farm out those veggies.
I've only ever baited traps for birds, the rabbits seem to take care of themselves. I don't think you can grow carrots outside of farms unfortunately, but I'd love to be wrong on that score. edit: Virgil's answer is much better, go and read it.
In the winter, digging up berry bushes are preferable to picking them, as they wont regrow anyhow. A good supply of berries can make a lot of meatballs, and rot for fertilizing plantables.
I've got a decent set up that I've cleared all nearby spider nests and I'm making plans to clean out the closest swamp to me of all trees and bushes; after that, I'm turning it into my Frogman Murder Factory by transplanting spider eggs there.
Dusk is going to be rather lively come the Spring thaw.
How do you people deal with deerclops during the first winter? I didn't have any traps or ranged weapons other than a boomerang, which I think just pissed him off more.
Can someone tell me what I should do in this game? I know that I should avoid starving, but what else I am supposed to do? The sandbox freedom is a bit overwhelming.
Can someone tell me what I should do in this game? I know that I should avoid starving, but what else I am supposed to do? The sandbox freedom is a bit overwhelming.
Experiment with your gear and just roam around, pick berries and carrots to eat, cook your food at night and eat it on the go.
You're going to die a lot, but that's how you gain XP to unlock most characters. Every time you unlock a new one, use that one to see if it fits your playstyle.
Can someone tell me what I should do in this game? I know that I should avoid starving, but what else I am supposed to do? The sandbox freedom is a bit overwhelming.
Everything should be in service to your goal of not starving. You can just forage, but only for a while. Come winter you will need supplies: gear to keep you warm away from fires, farms and traps for food. You'll need to defend yourself from wolves and other dangers, which generally means a weapon and armor.
So explore and map out resource locations, get the materials to build a science machine, and then start looking at what materials you need to make items that will help you survive.
One of the things I enjoy about this sandbox is the kind of mini-camps you can set up for different biomes and seasons. New trick I'm working on is building up a decent supply of veggies and scrounging rabbit fur from underground ... then setting up rabbit houses next to merman houses.
Rabbits fight at night, mermen fight at night; neither will eat meat left on the ground after they duke it out. After a little bit, they will even clear out tentacles, allowing you to make a daily sweep for fur, meat, fish and frog legs, no muss or fuss if done in the daytime.
For my next trick, I will attempt to use bees to kill a Deerclops.
There is an Adventure Mode with levels and more structured challenges to overcome, but you find the entrance to that organically during the normal survival gameplay.
One of the things I enjoy about this sandbox is the kind of mini-camps you can set up for different biomes and seasons. New trick I'm working on is building up a decent supply of veggies and scrounging rabbit fur from underground ... then setting up rabbit houses next to merman houses.
Rabbits fight at night, mermen fight at night; neither will eat meat left on the ground after they duke it out. After a little bit, they will even clear out tentacles, allowing you to make a daily sweep for fur, meat, fish and frog legs, no muss or fuss if done in the daytime.
For my next trick, I will attempt to use bees to kill a Deerclops.
Ah, that's my plan for my new map as well. Since trying to fight him didn't work out well last time. I thought you might have a more devious idea in mind given the bunnymen/mermen setup. My one concern is that he will destroy a bunch of the killer bee hives in the process making this only useable for a single winter attack.
And back on the topic of the game, walking canes are the best. Infinite durability (though shitty damage) weapon, but holy shit that +25% move speed is amazing for getting around.
Caulk Bite 6One of the multitude of Dans infesting this placeRegistered Userregular
I may not have seen the show, but I associate with people who I now understand were constantly referencing that particular joke, AND Eddie Izzard, whenever the bees came up in conversation.
Ah, that's my plan for my new map as well. Since trying to fight him didn't work out well last time. I thought you might have a more devious idea in mind given the bunnymen/mermen setup. My one concern is that he will destroy a bunch of the killer bee hives in the process making this only useable for a single winter attack.
You can build your own hives for one very specific purpose: harvesting killer bees for DW's Chest of Murder.
Build a hive, craft a bug net and start catching bees; quite swiftly, killer bees pop out to defend the hive.
When you have nine killer bees, build a chest to hold them. Now you have a killer bee trap for Deerclops and the Clockwork Bull thingie that smashes shit.
Posts
1. Multiple camps, smaller is better. When you have a fire pit and a stash of supplies, you can recover from an adverse situation with greater speed. Notably, these are supplies that don't spoil and can leave for an indefinite period. Base materials like rocks, flint, grass, and wood are essential ... one stack of each at your alternate camps should suffice.
If you manage to scrounge a stack of pine cones for each camp, you have the ability to beat feet and rebuild most essential equipment with the quickness.
2. I made mention earlier of using spiked bushes as markers. Scroll up and criticize me and then tell me how stupid I am, I can take it. As an aside, setting up a series of spiked bushes in a tight cluster is a great way to burn them to ash for your Healing Salves; you don't lose otherwise valuable materials trying to create a single component with one purpose. Of course, you could always stockpile them for a fuel source on your fire pit since they burn for 360 seconds apiece ....
3. Let's talk about saplings because they are fucking greatness. Saplings provide twigs, they can be relocated without needing fertilizer to regrow, just a little bit of time and they serve as fantastic map markers since they are very distinct. The downside to them is that they can't replicate, so you have to be sure you have plenty of them at various stages of growth.
My personal favorite base camp is on a savannah biome near rabbits (and beefalo if possible) and a shit-ton of grass. Digging up and replanting saplings uses a bit of flint (via shovels), but with any luck you should have access to some rock/gold boulders for replenishment.
Did I mention that twigs can be used for emergency fuel? Yeah, that's a handy thing. Finally, when replanting saplings, try to put them near clusters of grass that don't need fertilizer, five at a cluster is good; anything more than that and you risk a chain-fire from lightning strikes during a storm and you lose grass *AND* saplings.
4. Speaking of fuel, let's discuss charcoal. With no mods to gameplay, no increases to stack size or fuel consumption, charcoal burns for the same amount of time as a single log, but they stack to 40 instead of 20. Essentially, a stack of charcoal has a strong place in your secondary camps as a fuel source *AND* building material. Logs are a bit too valuable to burn in a fire pit or on a camp fire willy nilly, but charcoal is super plentiful under the right circumstances.
And those are ....
5. Forest biomes.
Forest biomes are the work of the devil. They are typically infested with spider dens in close proximity to a shit-ton of trees, so combat is pretty much out unless you have a HUGE-ASS stockpile of traps to catch spiders. Forest biomes have two purposes: to enable Woody to survive as a werebeaver for an eternity and ...
TO BURN WITH PURIFYING FIRE.
Seriously, consider the benefits.
With one or three well placed torchings, you turn an entire murder den of spiders and whatnot into a field of ash and charcoal. If you are in the depths of winter and have an emergency freeze on your hands, set fire to that biome. You can tail the blaze and pick up the ash for Healing Salves before they blow away and hack down the charred trees for charcoal at your leisure. As an added bonus, it's guaranteed light for an entire night (and then some) when you have to deal with long, cold winter nights.
But you can only do this once or twice per map, so use it judiciously.
"But, Uncle Deedubs! I'll burn all the spiders and their lovely silk! What of the Opportunity Cost?!?"
6. Spiders and the farming thereof is a tricky prospect, even under the best of circumstances. Happily, a single Tier 3 Spider Den (easy to spot, it has three sections) can replenish all the spiders you need, just don't set the Spider Egg on fire. Along with pine cones, butterflies, bee hives, pig and rabbit houses ... as long as you have one to help regrow, you're capable of rebuilding from almost nothing. A single Spider Egg can replicate infinitely as long as you are willing to let the Spider Queen settle on a new location.
My recommendation? Find a peninsula on your map that has a tight choke point and place the Spider Egg at the absolute ass-end of that peninsula. After that, it's simply a matter of walling the choke point with a tight access to prevent spiders and Queens from getting out before you have a chance to kill them.
I'll do more later, for now I'm going back to trying not to starve.
Turns out that if you kite them into a swamp biome with some spiders nesting there, he becomes an arboreal tool of vengeance. I was just following him around, picking up loot from his rampage.
I was really into this game, but also found that the maintenance got kind of tiresome.
Then I took a break and came back and found they'd actually made the things which helped keep the game from being too focused (for me) on daily maintenance (replantable berries, food that didn't spoil, etc) no longer available, and added a sanity meter to keep track of.
I just couldn't get into it again after that.
For folks familiar with the military or law-enforcement, this shit is old hat; for the rest of the populace, it's not a regularly encountered subject, but here we are.
Did you know (within the game of Don't Starve) that a commonplace backpack holds eight slots of items? Did you know that you can pick them up and set them down wherever you please? Did you know that they are made from 4 X Grass and 4 X twigs ... which are easily renewed?
DID YOU KNOW THAT BACKPACKS ARE THEIR OWN MAP MARKERS?!?
Now you know about Go-Bags ... well, at least the basics.
You can put anything in a Go-Bag, anything at all; it's just an augmentation to your normal inventory.
So what does that mean for your intrepid avatar? It means you have a mobile chest minus one storage slot. Not a bad trade-off in my humble opinion.
Instead of storing rabbits in a chest, put them in a Go-Bag and then haul them to wherever; the same goes for long-range recon activities, you can store a ton of gear in eight slots and then drop it when you need to make room.
Have you ever run out of inventory space because you don't want to lose that Deerclops Eyeball and stack of Beefalo Fur? Go-Bag.
Over-encumbered on charcoal while chopping up all those trees you just burned to kill the Spider Apocalypse? Go-Bag.
Spelunking underground and need to make a map marker? Go-Bag.
Brand New Go-Bag from the Acme Inventory Company suits all of your Not Starving needs!
And you get a go-bag!
EVERYBODY GETS A GO-BAG!
Stop by a centrally located base periodically, to manage farms, meat racks, tufts & saplings.
Before winter you want a functioning base in a travel-able distance specifically from pig king, rabbits, beefalo, spiders, rocks. Bees & frogs are a plus.
Before the first winter, you want drying racks, a few crock pots, rock fireplace, an alchemy machine, a tent, and hopefully a chest with some veggies & other foods. A stockpile of grass and twigs are good for trapping spiders to make warm clothes, as well as tools.
Spiders are a good source of monster meat, which can be turned into meatballs, which destroy hunger in the crock pot.
3 Traps can generally be used to clear out entire spider nests.
Make at least a science machine and firepit, then generally start collecting saplings/grass tufts to relocate at camp, and berry bushes. Before winter, at least one crockpot and usually 2-4 of the better farm plots, living off of meatballs from rabbits+berries/veggies in the pot. Heatstone + bunny earmuffs will let you wander about still during winter, though I usually spend most of winter days managing camp + collecting manure since if you have more than a couple beefalo in your nearby herd, it's usually more convenient to burn manure than anything else, and it burns very well.
The basic idea is keeping a supply of grass/twigs right at camp primarily to make traps, for the rabbits, especially since even if you run out of fruit/veggies you can make meatballs with just morsels. It's utterly reliable. Just uh...don't forget to make a lightning rod to protect the plots of grass/saplings as soon as you're able.
Everything else, like spiders/bees and such can always be transplanted nearby, and with the preparation above I rarely have time to fit in more than a little spider farming.
Also, can you grow carrots?
For rabbits, this means planting the trap on top of a hole, for frogs planting around ponds, for spiders outside web. You can aggro these small creatures into traps.
You can sometimes get a stack of 10+ carrots just from picking them up as you explore.
Farming regular seeds will sometimes create a carrot. Farms need manure.
Feeding imprisoned birds veggies, will create specific seeds that can farm out those veggies.
As for the advocates on replanting berry bushes and grass tufts ...
Honestly, I don't even bother, the additional maintenance via fertilizer is pretty much equal to the time I spend walking around. To each his own.
Wooden flooring costs one board to make; one board is refined from four logs.
Four measly logs to plop down some flooring under your base so Lure Plants can't grow underneath your farms and drying racks and crock pots.
As a side bonus, you can dig up the turf beforehand and replace it where you want or use the turf as a highly efficient fuel source.
Daddy like, Daddy do.
My long term plan is to complete the path that goes partway between my savannah camp and my swamp camp with cobblestones.
Dusk is going to be rather lively come the Spring thaw.
My fiancée got one in Adventure mode, so I know that setting fire to an entire forest doesn't work.
Maybe kiting into a tentacle region?
My only advice is to head for the killer bee hives, beefalo and swamps.
Experiment with your gear and just roam around, pick berries and carrots to eat, cook your food at night and eat it on the go.
You're going to die a lot, but that's how you gain XP to unlock most characters. Every time you unlock a new one, use that one to see if it fits your playstyle.
Everything should be in service to your goal of not starving. You can just forage, but only for a while. Come winter you will need supplies: gear to keep you warm away from fires, farms and traps for food. You'll need to defend yourself from wolves and other dangers, which generally means a weapon and armor.
So explore and map out resource locations, get the materials to build a science machine, and then start looking at what materials you need to make items that will help you survive.
Rabbits fight at night, mermen fight at night; neither will eat meat left on the ground after they duke it out. After a little bit, they will even clear out tentacles, allowing you to make a daily sweep for fur, meat, fish and frog legs, no muss or fuss if done in the daytime.
For my next trick, I will attempt to use bees to kill a Deerclops.
Dunno the connection to arrested development, though.
But seriously, how are you planning to kill him with bees? Just run him through the killer bee area, or... ?
well, that's the tiny snag with referential humour: not everyone has seen the incredibly popular thing you're referencing.
Agreed. I was mostly confused because you laid out the exact joke from the show, then said you weren't sure what it had to do with the show.
You can build your own hives for one very specific purpose: harvesting killer bees for DW's Chest of Murder.
Build a hive, craft a bug net and start catching bees; quite swiftly, killer bees pop out to defend the hive.
When you have nine killer bees, build a chest to hold them. Now you have a killer bee trap for Deerclops and the Clockwork Bull thingie that smashes shit.
Assuming the bees actually become active when the chest is destroyed.