Overview
The aim of this guide is to give you a good understanding of where the best place(s) for your base(s) are, and to give you some knowledge of what to prepare for if you use the tactics within this guide.
The best position
The ideal base position (from my experiences) is near/next to rabbit holes for an infinite food supply (with the exception of Krampus which I will discuss later in the “things to prepare/watch out for” section) and also near a mob that is relatively friendly and that will attack anything that has agroed you in emergency’s. In some cases it is also wise to put your base near a healthy wormhole (given that the wormhole takes you to a good place) as wormholes are quite handy for escaping treeguards and hounds.
For example Beefalo(s);
Tallbird(s)
(A Tallbird sleeping near its nest).
Pig(s)
(A pig house during the night).
Wormhole
(A Healthy Wormhole)
Keep in mind how this wormhole is an orange-y colour, you only really want to place a base near these types of wormholes, as you can go through one end and back. However, a ‘sick’ wormhole is only a one way ticket, only go through these if you’re prepared to set up a temporary camp.
(A sick Wormhole)
Notice how its colour differentiates from the healthy wormhole.
Or Bees in some cases, I’ve had hounds chasing me before and they’ve went straight for bee hives when I ran past them, although I wouldn’t recommend this as I’m not entirely sure.
(Bee hive)
Moving on…
Making it a proper self sustaining base.
With all the creatures and entities in the wonderful world in this game, you best prepare for ANYTHING that might happen, which is why it’s essential that you have crops, farms, walls and even multiple fire pits if you want to go that far.
You really want to aim for something along the lines of this;
TRAPS
There are various different types of traps for all the different creatures in Don’t Starve, but one of them is very useful and can be used to capture more than one thing, I’m talking, of course, about the first trap you can make (rabbit trap).
(A rabbit being baited into a trap)
Rabbits can be baited into a trap like this, but it’s always better to just place them over rabbit holes that way your carrots are left for crock pot recipes and what not.
These traps are capable of capturing spiders and frogs too! All you have to do is kite them into the trap (just hit them once and then run towards your trap) and bam! free monster meat, silk, frog legs, or even a spider gland.
FOOD
Food is an essential part of don’t starve as it helps you … well, not starve. It can be found nearly everywhere and in some cases requires effort to get (e.g; fighting a monster etc..).
Perish time is the time before a food item becomes Rot. Halfway through this period, it will go stale, and give 33.3% health and 66.7% hunger. Food spoils at three quarters, giving only 50% hunger and no longer giving any health. Eating spoiled food will decrease sanity by 10. Food dropped on the ground will perish at a rate of 150% (or 75% in winter), while keeping it in the Ice Box will reduce the rate to 50%
The Crock Pot is an essential in Don’t Starve as it helps you make better food and meals that will greatly restore your health, I don’t want to go into too much detail as this guide is mainly about your base, but this[dont-starve-food.googlecode.com] is always worth giving a try for potential recipes.
(A Crock Pot in game).
Also note how the player has multiple Crock Pots, farms and drying racks, to essentially store emergency food. (If food is left on the crock pot/drying rack/farm it will take a while/forever [I think] to go stale).
CROPS
By ‘crops’ I mean the resources you can have around your base, things like trees, grass, saplings and berry bushes. Why plant these crops? you may ask, well they really help during the winter when your travel time is restricted due to the cold and making a short journey to get that extra bit of grass to make a straw roll might be your savior from sanity loss.
Rot is also VERY useful for crops as it helps them grow quicker, so if you’re unlucky enough for any of your food or petals to turn to rot don’t just drop them, keep them for your crops!
Nearly ALL crops are obtained by using a shovel so be sure to make one as soon as possible. Grass and Berry bushes require MANURE or ROT to fertilize them. The easiest and most simple way to get rot is to leave spare petals on the ground for 2-3 days, they’ll eventually turn to rot. Manure is obtained from beefalo and pigs, this is why setting up a base near a beefalo herd can have its perks!
Although a much better way to get manure is to feed pigs berries or petals (if you can spare them), only ever do this if you have plenty of other food for recipes and eating. All you have to do is drop them near a pig and they will waddle towards it and eat it, afterwards producing manure!
You also want to protect your crops with a lightning rod or two (like in the picture at the start of this section). These prevent lightning bolts from hitting the crops and setting them ablaze, ruining all your lovely berries!
(A charged lightning rod)
Also PLEASE keep in mind that you should NEVER pick your crops before winter (Day 21 usually). Crops don’t grow back in winter, so please be prepared for this!
FARMS
Farms are made by mixing Manure and Grass with other items to create fertile patches of ground where Vegetables can be grown. Once built, Seeds can be planted in them which will grow into random vegetables, or Crop Seeds for desired crops. I recommend only making the improved farm, but if you’re stuck for golden nuggets I suppose the basic one is fine.
(Improved Farm)
My personal use of farms is just for emergency food and quick Crock Pot meals, but if you have any other uses you think I should add just tell me.
BEE BOX/FLOWER FARMS
These are really useful for both sanity and hunger.
The Bee Box is used to breed Bees and accumulate Honey that can be harvested. A Bee Box will (re)spawn a new Bee every 4 game hours (2 minutes) up to the max population of 4 Bees per Box. All Bees will return to their Box at dusk, but they will leave it during daytime. The Bee Box will accumulate a “level” of Honey through 4 phases – from empty to full – and yielding 0, 2, 4 or 6 Honey depending on the state.
(Left;empty Bee Box, Right; full Bee Box)
Of course you can always craft a Beekeeper hat and wear log suit armour to harvest during daytime if you’re wary about it.
The speed at which bees gather honey is affected by the quantity and proximity to flowers near a Bee Box. So how can I plant flowers!? you scream at me like a dying giraffe, well it doesn’t make sense to me, but if you make a bug net you can capture butterflies and … plant them?
Anyway it some how makes flowers, so try to plant the butterflies near/around your Bee Box(es). When you’ve got a good amount of flowers knocking about you can also plant some elsewhere for a ‘sanity farm‘, but always remember to keep at least 5 flowers there so that butterflies can re-spawn.
You can also fence off your ‘Bee Farms’ with walls and have a proper professional looking farm.
Although something like the example given above will require AT LEAST 20 flowers minimum, also make sure you get at least one lightning rod in there for protection.
Events to prepare for and how to prepare for them.
Using my survival techniques and food supplies, you will come across a few worthwhile mentioning, shall we say, events, but these can be easily countered.
KRAMPUS
This bastard of a monster will come and steal items from your chests, if you’ve killed a certain number of harmless animals. I believe killing 1 rabbit = 1 naughty point, adding to how soon he will come and rabbits are the main food source in this entire guide, so you see the dilemma.
So you’ll be sat there thinking
This is so true, there’s no mercy for this bastard if he steals your top hat, so let me show you how to deal with him.
(Video provided by http://www.youtube.com/user/shypatrick)
Any ranged weapon you can make is also worthwhile gunning him down with, especially the Sleep Dart.
TREEGUARDS
These are come across no matter what you do really, you will need logs sooner or later.
They are really hard to take down because of their massive hp, but again drop quite an essential item, the Living Logs. These are required to make the Shadow Manipulator, to further evolve your science. You can either risk fighting them or just avoid them for a few days, then they should stop being agroed to you and just wander around aimlessly. If they get in this wandering around state they can be really good protection against hounds, they kill them in about 2 swings max.
To kill them you can use a kiting tactic because of their ridiculosuly slow attack speed.
(Video provided by http://www.youtube.com/user/SirChapable)
You’ve got to MAN MODE the game sooner or later you little bambi!
You can also lead them into your mobs that you should have near your base, but if you do this don’t just stand and watch, they most likely won’t be able to take down the Treeguard, even if there’s like 20 of them, you WILL need to aid them and use the shown above kiting tactic. This is extremely risky with tallbirds though (if your base is near them) because they could always become agroed to you while you’re kiting the treeguard, and tallbirds alone do quite a lot of damage, so be wary of this.
I recommend leading them into pigs and then using the kiting tactic.
Thank You for viewing this guide.
I thought I’d share my knowledge about base positioning because I’ve yet to see a guide about it, but anyway thanks for viewing the guide. I hope you learned something from it and that I can also learn from more experienced players on what should be added to the guide.
09/06/13 – Guide updated!
– Added some information about crops in winter. (Reminded by Megabagel)
– Fixed some punctuation errors.
12/06/13 – Guide updated!
– Added some information about wormholes. (Reminded by Gobbles)
– Added some information about rot and crops. (Reminded by Gromorion)
– Added some information about traps. (Reminded by Gromorion)
14/06/13 – Guide updated!
– Fixed all visible grammatical errors.
17/06/13 – Guide updated!
– Added some additional information about fertilising crops. ( Reminded by Clint Beastwood)
Take it easy.