Don't Starve - initial thoughts and opinions

[LiveInPain]

Dragonpie is a a very good food item it gives 40 health and it restore as much hunger as honey ham

[CycloneSP]

Oh, I was by no means trying to school you. I'm pretty certain you've got far more experience dying and not dying than I do. Well, I don't know too much about that first part..... XD

I am glad, however, that you can pacify angry tree guardians with planting. That way, I can save them up for such an occasion. (I currently have 1 pacified tree guardian already)

But I don't know about candy. I don't care too much for the fact that it actually injures you when you eat it. I feel that if I want to recover sanity and health in one go, I'll cook me up some honeyed nuggets. and as for meat balls, I prefer to use one morsel(or small jerky if its in the winter) along with whatever low value food items I have on hand. That way I can save my monster meat for more high value food items like honeyed ham and/or meat stew.

I do however find it kinda annoying that in order to make an icebox you need gears. I know it was changed from chiseled stone(or whatever it was called) to gears to make it more of a high valued item, but man I wish I could make one.


Also, have you ever made a shadow manip? Is it even worth the time being insane to actually make it?

EDIT: ah yes, dragon pie is nice. I had made my first one today. and I will say, I was rather impressed with it. :)

[CycloneSP]

Double posting for the sake of gloating. :)

I just wanted to say I just managed to make my very first puffy vest. Managed to track down a winter kolefant and kill it with fire! (dart) Only problem was, I had forgotten that I didn't plant my spider egg, so I had no silk to turn my trunk into a vest. Fast forward 5 days or so of farming spiders, with my trunk on the verge of spoilage, I managed to acquire the needed mats to create my very first puffy vest. (yes, I actually did manage to shave some beefalo not too long after my comment about not shaving them)


Other than that, did I ever mention how much I hate winter? So much snow, not enough plants. That's the short and sweet of it. But other than the annoyance that is no crops growing, the thing I hate the most about winter is the fact that the snow texture that covers the ground is uber annoying. I very much dislike it. I've been wanting to do some redecorating but haven't because I can't seen the new hardwood flooring I'm trying to put in.

But aside from that, I seem to be doing well with food. I have a lot of monster meat from the spiders and normal meat from the kolefant.(turned the meat into jerky) All that's left is to just wait out the winter before I can progress any further.

[Psion]

Lol, I'm playing with long summer/long winter myself, and everything turned up to max except weather, deerclops, tree guardian, berry bushes, grass, twigs, and trees (default for weather and less for the rest)

Only problem is the game sometimes runs out of memory and crashes after a few hours from the sheer number of fights between mobs breaking out. :(

It's quite crazy as food as rather plentiful, but you get nonstop attacks from tallbirds, spiders, spider queens, and killer bees.

And thanks for the tip on monster meat, as the monster meat to eggs thing got axed. XD Mainly I've been using them as pig recruitment fodder, but its nice to know they're still a potential food source in a pinch.

[CycloneSP]

Well, you can always turn it into jerky and give it to the pig king. Other than that, just get a bunch of berries and turn your monster meat into meatballs and either eat that or feed it to your birds.


and...

OH DEAR LORD GOD ALMIGHTY!!!! The ice hounds!!! keep them away! keep them away!!!!

.....so scary. I'm so glad I have a friendly tree guardian willing to smack all those mean little hounds upside the head.

[FlowerChild]

Fuck it. I'm going to take a 2nd day off to keep playing Don't Starve ;)

Somewhere around day 45 or 50 of my new survival world I decided to step through the portal into adventure mode, and I have to say I'm absolutely loving it so far.

I only have a couple of hours into adventure world 1, but so far it's totally kicking my ass. I almost starved to death, got down to only a few HP's, only to consume some raw rabbit straight out of a trap in my final moments. It's really feeling like the kind of desperate fight for survival that my first experiences with DS provided me with.

[myrkana]

Well, you can always turn it into jerky and give it to the pig king. Other than that, just get a bunch of berries and turn your monster meat into meatballs and either eat that or feed it to your birds.


and...

OH DEAR LORD GOD ALMIGHTY!!!! The ice hounds!!! keep them away! keep them away!!!!

.....so scary. I'm so glad I have a friendly tree guardian willing to smack all those mean little hounds upside the head.

xD I just run through the rabbit fields haha they get distracted and i can eventually get one alone and kill them off one by one :)

[FlowerChild]

xD I just run through the rabbit fields haha they get distracted and i can eventually get one alone and kill them off one by one :)

Yup, you can use almost anything living to distract them. Spider nests, bee hives, pig villages...I've used them all at one time or another depending where I am when the hounds attack. It's rather rare that I choose to actually fight them.

[CycloneSP]

Okay, I've been having lots of fun so far, and I'm between day 40 and 45 right now. But I've come across two rather disconcerting issues. The first one is I've noticed every time I hit "save and quit" it doesn't actually save at that exact point in time, but rather starts me off back at the beginning of that same day instead. Thus losing any and all work I had done between the day start and the time I quit. The second issue is one I can't tell if it's just my comp or the game itself, but I started getting some horrible lag/fps drop/what have you. Late last night around 5 in the morning the game crashed saying it ran out of memory, then about an hour into playing today the lag/fps drop kicks in.

Has anyone else had similar issues?



but on a side note... I think the thunder gods hate berries...

[Nekhs]

Bought this game today.

It is remarkably fun!

I have not gotten past day 12, I don't think.

My most recent death, I was in a cluster of beefalo on a very short night trying to shave one, only then accidentally I speared it in the face. They sent me back to the touchstone I found. I was promptly murdered by spiders. The end.

Very tragic.

[CycloneSP]

Heh, I just had a herd of beefalo save my life when a tier 3 spider nest turned into a spider queen. I lucked out as the same exact time said queen decided I looked tasty, my beefalo were in heat. XD They also managed to kill one of the tree guardians I had left them a while back, too.

I am on day 65-ish now. It is the middle of my second winter. I have half a wooden wall constructed(partially torn down by spiders) a shadow manipulator(courtesy of my first winter's mental troubles) and my prized possession, a caged crow.

Oh and psion, I've just tested it, caged birds will eat monster jerky and give you eggs in return. so by farming spiders, I can live entirely off monster meat turned meat balls this winter.


there for the longest time I was struggling with keeping my sanity up during that first winter. Then I remember about sleeping, and boy, that really helped a ton! ^_^

[Psion]

Oh, neat. yet another use for jerky! XD I love the stuff, a large jerky restores 8 health, 15 sanity, and 25 food. It's an excellent winter staple, since it provides the same food benefits as if you had cooked the meat, but with 5 extra hp and 15 sanity. The sanity boost is especially nice during winter when honey is limited, and butterflies arent available, limiting use of taffy and sustainable flower picking.

[CycloneSP]

Heh, well after I've been farming spiders for a bit, I've moved on from relying upon food for sanity, and instead use a tent. Sleeping restores a huge chunk of sanity in one go, and with meatballs and other super good foods to eat, you don't really need to worry about the hunger penalty.(despite the fact that tents are bugged atm XD) If you can't afford a tent, a straw roll will do the same thing for just one night.

So yeah, the days I spend my winter nights having a staring contest with the local hallucinations are over. ;)

[FlowerChild]

So yeah, the days I spend my winter nights having a staring contest with the local hallucinations are over. ;)

Wait until you try adventure mode. I went absolutely bat-shit crazy last night for the first time, and it wasn't by intent :)

On world 2 now. My first attempt ended with me dying in world 1 from some killer bees, but I had so much fun, that I immediately hopped right back into the portal to start it up again. Also, the levels are randomly generated, to the point where the two world 1's that I've played had completely different mechanics in terms of which resources were limited and such. Yet, they seem to have done such a good job with it that the levels feel like they were hand designed.

Anyways, I won't say anymore as I don't want to post spoilers (I'm finding discovering stuff is half the fun right now), but yeah, it rocks :)

[Nuchiha]

So yeah, the days I spend my winter nights having a staring contest with the local hallucinations are over. ;)

Wait until you try adventure mode. I went absolutely bat-shit crazy last night for the first time, and it wasn't by intent :)

On world 2 now. My first attempt ended with me dying in world 1 from some killer bees, but I had so much fun, that I immediately hopped right back into the portal to start it up again. Also, the levels are randomly generated, to the point where the two world 1's that I've played had completely different mechanics in terms of which resources were limited and such. Yet, they seem to have done such a good job with it that the levels feel like they were hand designed.

Anyways, I won't say anymore as I don't want to post spoilers (I'm finding discovering stuff is half the fun right now), but yeah, it rocks :)

I agree.

I had so much fun as Wilson, hoarding materials for discoveries. Surprisingly I've found every item discovered thus far to have a use, not a single fluff item as of yet!

[FlowerChild]

I agree.

I had so much fun as Wilson, hoarding materials for discoveries. Surprisingly I've found every item discovered thus far to have a use, not a single fluff item as of yet!

Oh, which reminds me of a little trick I discovered yesterday. I didn't realize this before, but inventing stuff restores sanity. At least it does for Wilson...it struck me that might be a character specific attribute, but I haven't tried it with others.

This has saved my ass from disaster a couple of times, as if you're out of other options and are going mad, inventing something new can bring you back from the brink. I find myself saving the ingredients required for discoveries now, so I always have one handy to throw together if I'm low on sanity.

It isn't a big deal in survival mode mind you, as it's pretty hard to go nuts without intentionally trying in that mode, but adventure has forced me to take a much closer look at everything I'm doing :)

[CycloneSP]

Day 70 has just dawned and my second winter is coming to a close.

On other news, I have learned that taking a hammer to pig-heads-on-a-stick will result in 2 pig skins. So for all those lovely used up touch stones you find, this is the perfect way to stock up on pig skins without the need to slaughter your nearby pig village and run the risk of being pummeled to death. Does anyone know what merm-heads-on-a-stick drop?

Oh, and I also managed to make myself a second puffy vest. ^_^ Now I just need to find myself a pig king so that I can have a reliable source of gold and I should be all set.

[FlowerChild]

On other news, I have learned that taking a hammer to pig-heads-on-a-stick will result in 2 pig skins. So for all those lovely used up touch stones you find, this is the perfect way to stock up on pig skins without the need to slaughter your nearby pig village and run the risk of being pummeled to death. Does anyone know what merm-heads-on-a-stick drop?

I did that to one yesterday, but can't remember what it dropped, so I'd say "nothing of note" :)

The other trick I use for collecting pig skins is to basically hammer all the lone huts I find. Oddly, pig men don't get pissed off when you demolish their homes.

In other news, I wasted a heck of a lot of time yesterday working my way up to gunpowder in my adventure game, under the assumption I could use it to blow up the basalt blocks that were scattered around my map for some unknown goodies.

Much to my surprise the exploding gunpowder did squat to those blocks, confusing me to the point where I wound up looking it up on the wiki to see if I was placing the powder wrong or something. Turns out that basalt blocks are totally indestructible, and totally unrelated to gunpowder.

Was quite the disappointment as it just seemed to be a natural fit for the feature, and it leaves me wondering just what the intent of gunpowder is anyways in terms of gameplay. Thought I'd post up the above though lest anyone else waste their time in a similar manner.

[CycloneSP]

Hmm, here I just assumed gunpowder was just another way to create mob traps. Like set a bunch of it down, plant a pinecone trail for a fuse, lure a mob boss in, and Kaboom! But yeah, other than that I do feel like gunpowder is kinda all on it's own in the tech tree with no clear cut purpose.

[FlowerChild]

Oh, one thing of note about adventure mode that I don't particularly care for:

Any inventions you create in survival mode, don't carry over to adventure. However, any inventions you create in adventure, carry over between levels.

As far as I can tell, what this means is that it is optimal on your first adventure level to go all the way through the tech tree so that you won't have to create research devices in latter, presumably harder, levels.

To me, this is a rather unnecessary grind. That part only occurred to me in world 2 so I set up a pretty permanent base and spent several hours trying to create everything I could with the resources available on that map (there were no beefalo, so I'm still missing a few).

This may make sense if you get all the way through adventure in one go, but man, if you die and have to start over, it would be exceedingly painful to have to do all over again.

I think they really should have either had research carry over from survival OR reset your research with each adventure level so that you could only work on researching what is necessary for that particular one without worrying about being at a potential disadvantage in latter levels if you don't research absolutely everything possible. I suspect for the sake of continuity, the first would be the better option, and give players incentive to "beat" survival mode by researching everything before moving on to adventure.

Actually, I think I'll post this over on Klei's forums, as it strikes me as a rather major nuisance that serves no real in game purpose.

[CycloneSP]

Ah, very interesting. I haven't tried adventure mode yet as I have not found the door to said adventure mode.

Also, I believe I have spent too much time in the BTW forums. As the other day I was particularly annoyed at the visual of the snow coverage and had made an account over on the official DS forums and was just about to post a suggestion as my first post... then I recalled the BTW forums and realized that posting that suggestion was not a good idea. At least for my first post that is. XD

FC, you have trained me too well.

[FlowerChild]

FC, you have trained me too well.

Hehe...the irony being that my first post on their forums was a suggestion too ;)

[Nekhs]

Basically every death I've ever experienced in this game is due to taking risks I shouldn't have. Very much like Better than Wolves!

I made it to Day 24 and experienced my first winter ever!

And then I decided I absolutely had to have a bird cage and it just couldn't wait until summer.

The search for reeds is responsible for a large number of my deaths.

That, and accidentally attacking the twin as Wendy.

Swamps are evil. The end.

[CycloneSP]

The trick to collecting reeds is to do a small circle around the target reed to check for tentacles before going in to harvest them.

[Nekhs]

Mm, I rarely have problems actually collecting the reeds - it's surviving the swamp, period.

And then the swamps I come across have like two reeds in them total and it makes me sad.

I've come to the conclusion that I should never enter a swamp with anything less than a suit of logs.