Don’t Starve: Surviving Winter

Overview

A quick and basic guide to surviving winter in Don’t StarveTopics covered:-Health-Hunger-Sanity-Warmth-Hunting and Gathering-Creatures-Base BuildingThemes:-Optimization of time and resorces-Cowardice vs. RisksEnjoy!

Dangers

During winter many things can have an affect on your survival. I will quickly order the dangers from greatest to least.
1. Freezing
2. Hound attacks
3. DeerClops**
4. McTusk**
5. Spiders
6. TreeGuard**
7. Other

**Although somewhat rare these creatures are very tough to kill and are best avoided

These can be the more difficult encounters for inexperienced players. It is always good to have a logsuit and some spears set aside at your base for this event. A good base can also mean the difference between life and death in this situation. See the Base Section for more info.

One of the hardest monsters in the game, DeerClops is best avoided. Yet, i will still tell you some ways of defeating it. DeerClops can be kited (by attacking once then running away, then after they attack repeat this) but this is unadvised as DeerClops has high health and can kill players in 3 hits. It is recommended for players to lure DeerClops into a Treegaurd, a herd of Beefalos, merms, or a Walrus camp as these are the most effective ways of killing it, you may also get additional loot from the deaths of the Treegaurd, Beefalo’s, or Walrus’s. A Bush Hat[dont-starve-game.wikia.com] can be used to hide from the DeerClops.

MacTusk uses a Blow Dart as a ranged Weapon to hunt down the player. His range is very long, being able to hit the player from two screens away. It is advised to run diagonaly away from McTusk as the blowdarts travel very fast and can easily kill an unarmored player. In addition to the ranged threat of McTusk, 2 Blue Hounds will spawn with him and chase and attack the player. If planning to battle McTusk, you should take out the hounds before going after him. When a player approaches McTusk he will run away from the player, much like a turkey does. While you continuously are chasing him, he will be unable to fire his Blow Darts or deal damage to you. McTusk can drop the Tam o’ Shanter and a Tusk which can be used to create a walking cane; both very valueable items.

Silk is an invaluable resource during the winter and many times needs to be harvested during the winter. Silk is used to craft tents, vests, other clothing, and traps/nets. The most effective way I personally have found to farm spiders is to set up traps near the nests of spiders durring the daytime. Then approach the spider nest and 1-3 spiders will come out and follow you. Lead these spiders into the traps and they will be captured. When the traps are looted, the spider is automatically killed and the loot is deposited in your inventory. Make sure to space the traps far enough appart so that a spider does not trigger more than one and waste the durability of the ones that trigger and do not catch anything. If unequiped it is important not to attack the spiders near the nest as Gaurdian Spiders may spawn if it is a tier 2 or 3 nest.

Although uncommon TreeGaurds are slow but have high health and hit hard. It is advised to avoid these as well as these creatures do not drop anything useful exept for living logs which are used in expensive recepies. The same tactics used with the deerclops can be used with treegaurds with the exception of treegaurds will not attack other treegaurds. Sometimes, you may come across a neutral treegaurd. When a treegaurd is neutral it is important not to chop any trees that are on the same screen as it as it will become hostile to you. If you find that a treegaurd is following you, you can plant pinecones while it is on your screen and there is a chance that it will become neutral.

Health and Hunger

Health and Hunger are replenished primarily through eating food. Making a Crock Pot with a Science Machine is the best route to go when making food. Honey Ham is the best food item for this job as it gives 35 health, 75 hunger and an additional 5 sanity. Honey needs to be stockpiled before winter in order for this stratagy to work. Honey ham needs a meaty value of 2 or more and honey in order to be made.

These are the best recipies for honey ham:
1x Honey
1x Monster Meat/Monster Jerky
2x Small jerky/Frog Legs/Morsel/Fish/Drumstick These can be cooked or uncooked (jerky cannot be cooked)

OR

1x Honey
1x Monster Meat/Monster Jerky
1x Meat/Jerky Cooked or uncooked
1x Carrot/Berry

Small jerky/Frog Legs/Morsel/Fish/Drumstick have a meaty value of .5 and will need 2 of these to be equivalent of 1 Meat/Jerky/Monster Meat/Monster Jerky

Once you have the meaty value and the required ingredients, for example honey, you can use any other fillers to make the recipe (ex. Carrots and Berries, but not twigs or you will get kabobs which give you half the hunger of meatballs).

>2 Monster meat will get you Monster Lasagana which will replenish hunger at the cost of health and sanity

2x Twigs will give you Wet Goop, which is bad for you… Except if your making frogie bunwiches!

Other good foods are:

**You will need to gather honey before winter as it will not be generated from beeboxes during the winter. Frogs will also not spawn during the winter, making it hard to use frog legs as a food source.

If you would like to know more crock pot recipies, Snazzberry has an awesome guide on Crock Pot recipies. Click HERE to view it!

Sanity

Sanity is can be diminished quickly during winter due to the longer dusk and night hours along with
other causes.

A tent is the the best way to restore sanity. Requiring 6x Silk, 4x Twigs, and 3x Rope the tent allows you to sleep through dusk and night while restoring 50 sanity. A tent can only be used 6 times before dissapearing. Therfore to get the most out of your resources it is advised to destroy your tent with a hammer after sleeping in it 5 times. You will get half the resources you put into it from doing this which can be put towards building another tent.

If your sanity is low enough to where there are Crawling Horrors around you can equip a spear and logsuit and run after one. Once you are in the middle of the Crawling Horror you can press [Space] and attack it with the spear, this will engage combat with it. Walk to it when it reappers and when its attack animation stars run away from it. After it attacks, quickly run up to it and attack it yourself, it will reapear in another location near you. Repeat this until you kill it and you will be rewarded +30 sanity and nightmare fuel.

Clothing can be worn to increase sanity and stay warm at the same time. The breezy and puffy vest are good at this, with the latter being one teir above the previous.

Warmth

Warmth is one of the most important aspects of winter. Without warmth frost will start to form around the edges of your screen and the player will slowly freeze to death.

Almost essential for surviving winter. You could think of the heat stone as a portable campfire. It will prevent you from freezing while it is orange/yellow colored. When it is gray or blue it needs to be “recharged” at a fire in order to be useful. While the heat stone is icy gray it will actually make you colder so it is advised to put it in a backpack until you can get another fire up. The heat level of your heat stone is porpotional to and limited to the size of you fire. While away from a fire the heat stone will slowly lose heat until it is blue and eventually icy gray.

At your main base you should build a fire pit. This will allow you to get the fire up to max heat without the risk of setting half your world on fire. There are 4 levels of fire ranging from the tiny flame to the medium, the large which is what most characters will say is a “good” fire, to extra large where the flame will envelope most of the pit. The extra large fire, or teir 4 fire, is examinaed by your character as “too much fire”, this fire will give you the largest amount of warmth and charge your heat stone to its max heat. If you need quick warmth you can drop a log on the ground away from other flamables and light it with a torch.

Clothing is another very important item used to survive winter. There are different tiers of clothing in Don’t Starve; the higher the tier, the longer the warmth. Here’s a basic table outlining some of the tiers.

Base

can mean the difference between surviving the winter and not. Winter lasts for 15 days; the first winter will start on day 21 and end on day 37. Preperation is key here because during winter the challenge of staying warm is going to limit your out of base explorations to a minute of running around scrambling together everything thats on the ground and halling it back to base. So a stockpile of non-perishable resources is always handy. In additon, during winter, grass, berry bushes, and saplings grow extreemly slowly if not at all. This can make your grass farm useless during the winter so it is best to get it in the summer while you can. Also, even though trees grow at their normal pace, it is good to have a stockpile of logs set aside for quick light and warmth at your firepit. You should also consider bringing materials to make a fire with you while adventuring in case of situations that require time away from base.

You should make about 6 or more drying racks by your base as these are invaluable for food and health. Drying racks not only more that double the spoilage time of your meats, but can take a spoiled peice of meat and turn it into a fully unspoiled peice of jerky (Spoilage value of 0). Also while on the drying racks, jerky will not spoil, this can be used to make an indefinate supply of non-perishable food. Only one meat item can be on a drying rack at a time. For meats with a meaty value of .5 (See Health and Hunger) it takes one day to turn a peice of meat into a Small Jerky. Otherwise it takes 2 days. During the winter the time it takes for meat to dry is doubled, so thats 2 day and 4 days respectively.

The Crock Pot is a useful structure that allows you to take various foods and combine them to make another, most times more benificial, food. The Crock Pot has 4 slots that must be filled in order to make a food. Once filled the Crock Pot will take a variable amount of time to complete cooking. (See Health and Hunger for more info.)

Walls are good additions to your base and can provide the player in Real Life sanity and comfort in the fact that they have some sort of barrier between them and the harsh environment of Don’t Starve. With Hay being the worst, wood being better, and stone being the best, the player has choices to make regarding the way they want to set up their walls. Walls may be repaired and hightened with other walls in order to increase their protectiveness and heath.

It is a good idea to put traps around the entrance of your base in order to protect agains enemies. A good set up is to have somewhat of a narrow hallway as an entrance to you base, you may then line this cooridor with Tooth Traps and, near the center of your base, Bee Mines.

-Idea from killing75
Touch Stones can be found through out the world of Don’t Starve. Once activated these structures will act as a respawn point for your character. When you die you will be transported to the last one activated. Your items will be at the location of your death. It is advised to set up a “mini base” around one of these as you will be lacking any clothing or weapons that you had. A fire pit, a chest with logs and weapons/tools in it, and some spare healing items that are non perishable such as healing slave or spider glands. The healing items will be useful because you are spawned with only 50 health, 2/3 hunger, and 1/2 sanity. Do not leave flamable items next to the touch stone because they will be ignited when you are resurrected! Also, the pig heads on sticks can be broken for pig skins, a valuable resource for building football helmets, umbrellas, and pig houses.

Good Luck!

Thanks for reading my guide! Feel free to give me a rating if you liked the guide (and even if you didn’t!).

If there’s anything that you would like to see in this guide that i might have missed or didn’t elaborate enough upon, drop a quick comment or message me on Steam. Please be patient because I don’t always have time to update this guide!