Don't Starve!

I don't see the need for the spoiler tag, but...

Leap attack, you say? Sounds dangerous.

I'll be sure to rebuild my meat effigy ASAP. I used the one I had while playing last night. I got careless while fighting a mob of (non-leaping) spiders.

These spider nests are a Female Doggo now! New update landed.

Died to one. I recommend full armor, lots of traps and run like crazy through the traps after wacking it... and hope they don't all catch you with their leap attack!

I've had issues getting a meat effigy setup as well as a couple other things, but i finally found a spot with 4 pig houses and pigs wandering around so i'm wondering if this is where i'm supposed to get regular meat from...anyhow...that's something i havn't found yet is just plain meat for those recipes that require it.

Meat is dropped by pigs, beefalos, tallbirds and treeguards.

MeatMan wrote:

Meat is dropped by pigs, beefalos, tallbirds and treeguards.

I know beefalos drop a decent amount of meat too. if you can get a straggler by himself, hit him and run him a bit away from rest of group before you kill him to avoid a beefalo stampede.

I got the meat needed from some pigs, about to get enough of a beard that i can shave it and build the effigy.

Is there any way to export a world you generated?

Cause i have the most amazing world..and it's islands are just MASSIVE, mostly with multiple biomes per island.

Those spiders are tough now. I hate those leaping bastards, they totally ruined the strategy I used to farm spider nests.

I also discovered mandrakes. Are they new this patch, or did I have bad luck with not finding them before? Haven't figured out what they're useful for yet, but I've tried a couple things with wacky results.

Double post for realistic beard growth simulations.

Strewth wrote:

Those spiders are tough now. I hate those leaping bastards, they totally ruined the strategy I used to farm spider nests.

Yeah the new leaping spiders are a PITA. I'd say the best ways to deal with spider nests now are either by having a group of pigs following/protecting you, or by using the new tooth trap item (within the attack menu IIRC) that was introduced in the last update. If you haven't seen it, it's crafted with 1 log, 1 rope and 1 hound's tooth. As with other traps, they have a limited number of uses (lose a certain % each time it's triggered), but they do good damage, making them very effective. I've been placing 6-8 of them near a nest, then after hitting the nest, kiting the spiders into walking over the traps. Between waves of spiders, be sure to pick up and reset triggered traps, as they don't do any damage in their triggered state.

That said, if there are only 1 or 2 leapers in a mob, you can still kite and attack the mob normally without losing too much health if you're wearing a full-strength football helmet and/or log suit. But using tooth traps is much less risky, of course.

Strewth wrote:

I also discovered mandrakes. Are they new this patch, or did I have bad luck with not finding them before? Haven't figured out what they're useful for yet, but I've tried a couple things with wacky results.

Mandrakes are not new. They're just rare. I've only seen 3 or so in the 25+ hours I've played.

As for what they're useful for, here's what the wiki page says:

Mandrakes are one of the best Foods in the game, healing 100 Health and 100 Hunger.

Cooking Mandrake on fire yields Cooked Mandrake and knocks the character out until daytime. This trick can be used to skip night without a Straw Roll.

They are worth 100 Research Points.

Mandrake can also be cooked in the Crock Pot, which results in Mandrake Soup.

If you're using Wolfgang - the only charater with more than 100 health and 100 hunger - you can cook mandrake soup in the crock pot, which, depending on the ingredients, gives between 102-140 health and 101-116 hunger. Of course, you can cook mandrake soup with any character, but it would be wasting some of the health and hunger benefit.

Has anyone tried to take down a Krampus yet? I've been considering setting up bee mines all over my base to deal with him when I decide to go collect a pile of pig skin.

That is strange. I've got 30+ hours in and I only first saw a mandrake last game. I've found 3 of them in my current one. I pulled one out at night and instead of falling over and passing out, he followed me around until morning when he promptly replanted himself.

Strewth wrote:

That is strange. I've got 30+ hours in and I only first saw a mandrake last game. I've found 3 of them in my current one. I pulled one out at night and instead of falling over and passing out, he followed me around until morning when he promptly replanted himself.

Yep, the mandrake is a weird thing. If you pick it at night, it follows you and will fight for you if you engage in combat. But since it's just an animated plant, it's easily killed.

The one complaint I do have about the game is that experience (XP), which is required to unlock new characters, is only given to you if you die. I've unlocked every character except Wolfgang, and because I'm on day 68 on my current game, I know I've earned more than enough XP to unlock him, but I won't actually receive that XP unless I die. And because I have 2 meat effigies, I'd have to die 3 times in order to get the game over/'you are dead' screen. Well, unless I use the hammer to destroy both of my meat effigies.

Just picked this up on a whim when the podcast crew mentioned it was like Minecraft and my ears perked up. I honestly didn't know a whole heap about it before that, and I mostly skimmed through this thread to avoid spoilers. From what I can tell, it seems best going into this blind!

Such a great little game so far, got up to night five and I'd purloined a whole bunch of stuff from a graveyard to feed into my research engine, I was on the way back to my little encampment when I came across and egg and figured "Why not?"... then I got torn apart by a freakin' one eyed tallbird! That was the first hostile thing I'd encountered so it was something of a surprise!

I'll definitely be jumping back in tomorrow, but I might be careful not to overdo it before release, don't want to exhaust what the game has to offer too early.

Redwing wrote:

Just picked this up on a whim when the podcast crew mentioned it was like Minecraft and my ears perked up. I honestly didn't know a whole heap about it before that, and I mostly skimmed through this thread to avoid spoilers. From what I can tell, it seems best going into this blind!

Such a great little game so far, got up to night five and I'd purloined a whole bunch of stuff from a graveyard to feed into my research engine, I was on the way back to my little encampment when I came across and egg and figured "Why not?"... then I got torn apart by a freakin' one eyed tallbird! That was the first hostile thing I'd encountered so it was something of a surprise!

I'll definitely be jumping back in tomorrow, but I might be careful not to overdo it before release, don't want to exhaust what the game has to offer too early.

Oh, but wait. Nothing like a tree coming alive and ending your six day run because its night and you didn't notice....

Not that I speak from experience.

Note to self: Do not shoot fire darts at turkeys when they are running around your berry farm.

Strewth wrote:

Note to self: Do not shoot fire darts at turkeys when they are running around your berry farm.

Any experience shooting fire darts at the friggin Ent that spawns in your carefully cultivated forest?

I always torch the forest behind me while they chase me around. Charcoal is always useful for fueling fires and trees are easily replanted. Not like berry bushes. My trouble with tree guards is usually misjudging his swipes or forgetting to take fire lighting materials out of my backpack at night when I armour up.

Strewth wrote:

I always torch the forest behind me while they chase me around. Charcoal is always useful for fueling fires and trees are easily replanted. Not like berry bushes. My trouble with tree guards is usually misjudging his swipes or forgetting to take fire lighting materials out of my backpack at night when I armour up.

Spoiler:

That's what makes Willow so awesome...as soon as she gets in a dark area she lights a fire herself

New patch out today! Small one, but now you can replant turf. Details here: http://http://www.dontstarvegame.com/article/update-turf

Significant update released today.

NEW FEATURES:
-Food spoils over long periods of time. Stale and Spoiled foods are less beneficial. Rotten food is practically inedible, but can be used as fuel or fertilizer.
-Crock pot foods are now stackable.
-You can build a Ice Box now to mitigate spoilage.
-New unlockable character: WX78, a robot who can eat spoiled food with no penalties, and who hates all living things.
-Steam cloud can now be disabled. (details below)
-New camera controls for streamers/YouTubers: CTRL+P will freeze the camera in place. CTRL+H will hide the hud.
-Smallbirds now grow up to become angsty Teenbirds. Teenbirds will grow up to be Tallbirds and leave the player.
-The mysterious Otto Von Chesterfield can be found in some swamps. (You will need to start a new map to find him)
-Beefalo travel in proper herds now. Herds regenerate off-screen (currently with adults)
-Beefalo herds become agitated when they go into heat, and will chase away the player if they are not wearing a beefalo hat.
-Beefalo sometimes drop a beefalo horn, which can be used to move beefalos around.
-The Spider Hat is no longer craftable - you just wear the Spider Queen's head directly. It also can't be used to steal spiders from an existing queen.

FIXES:
-Health and Hunger values have been re-tuned across the board. Characters have a larger hunger buffer now.
-Addressed minor spelling mistakes
-Minor tweaks and fixes
-Fixed various save/load issues

DISABLING STEAM CLOUD:
Some people have reported save/load issues with Steam Cloud. We have added a workaround that will cause the game to save its files in your documents directory instead. To activate this mode,
add the following two lines to your "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\dont_starve\settings.ini" file:

[STEAM]
DISABLECLOUD = true

I like the game so far. I can definitely see where it's going. But my deaths so far have been rather frustrating. Basically what keeps happening is I get into a fight with something, survive with low health. Then when I go to eat something, before the animation can even finish a dog runs onto my screen and kills my guy just like that. *snap*, dead. It's happened more than once.

I don't mind the dying part, but it brings my progress to a screeching halt. And then I have to come back in and go through the really boring initial setup phase. Berry farm, grass farm, science machine, firepit etc. That's the part that really drags on my enthusiasm, the rest of the game is great fun. It's not as bad now that I have a new world to play on that has basically every biome shoved together into one big ink blot. But before it was excruciating because I kept getting stuck with worlds made of tiny islands connected with LOOOOONG bridges that were sometimes longer than the islands were wide.

This game is seriously addicting. I love the additions that are being made and I can see this being a great thing when it's complete.

I must admit that I don't know what actually builds up XP. Is it just time survived?

silentsod wrote:

I must admit that I don't know what actually builds up XP. Is it just time survived?

Currently, yes. The longer you survive, the more XP you earn, but the screwed up thing is that the only way to receive XP is to die permanently, as in die without a way to be resurrected.

I'm not sure that's much of an issue. You only get xp when you die, but the only thing xp is good for is unlocking new characters, and you have to die to start with a new character. The only exception is if you have researched and built a tent, but if you've gotten that far you've probably also died a few times and unlocked a couple characters anyways.

The icebox doesn't slow food spoiling enough. I like having stores of food with me when I go on expeditions.

In other news, the latest update looks interesting. Featuring walls, wormholes and wibrarians.

According to the main menu and the 10mb download I just did the game updated today. Anyone know what changed?

Tamren wrote:

Anyone know what changed?

You can escape the world by finding... things... and doing... stuff with them. You get to keep your inventory, and you cash-out any XP that you have and unlock characters without dying. This is the first step towards story mode. The world that you escape to is no harder than the first, but this will change soon!
New Research Method: Under the new research method, you unlock access to tiers of recipes by building research machines. You can unlock a specific recipe by building it near an active machine, after which point you can build it anywhere. Your known recipes last as long as you do - they will travel with you to new worlds if you escape, but you will lose them if you die. There are no more research points or grinding. The science machine is now a bit cheaper to make, and the alchemy engine is a bit more expensive.

This is a big change, so we’ve made it optional for the time being. When you start a new world, you will get to choose between the new research method or the old one. Your progress in the old method is not available in the new method, but will be there if you switch back. We will be phasing out the old method soon, but wanted to introduce the new one carefully.

New Character:
Wickerbottom the librarian can be unlocked with XP. She gets a bonus research tier, because she is so smart.

New Creatures:
There are baby beefalo. You can eat them, if you are a terrible person.
Disgusting worm mouths are sprinkled throughout new worlds. I dare you to click on one!
There is a new, elusive herbivore that you can hunt. He is hard to find, and harder to catch. He drops some unique loot and lots of meat.

New Craftables:
You can build three types of defensive walls (straw, wood, and stone). These can be destroyed by monsters, and repaired by you. The AI pathfinding is not done yet but will probably go in the next update, so enjoy confusing the heck out of pigmen while you can.
You can make wooden floor tiles and place them like turf.
You can make a boomerang and throw it at other creatures. Just be careful when it flies back at you!
You can build a pitchfork, which takes over turfing duties from the shovel.
You can craft a nice, comfy summer vest.

New Other Stuff:
Spider dens produce creep tiles that slow down movement. You can dig them up and place them if you like.
Added a better death effect for creatures.
Spline-based roads look better, and make you walk faster.

Balance Changes:
Every new meat effigy that you create takes a chunk of your max health. It gets returned when you die, or when you destroy the effigy.
Made “monster lasagna” recipe that shows up when you use too much monster meat in the crock pot.
Cooked / crocked foods inherit spoiledness from their ingredients (with a small bonus).
The “new world gen” is now the default. The old method will soon be deprecated.
Added a character quip when hounds are approaching.
The tent no longer swaps characters - it is now acts as a super-powerful bedroll that restores all health and hunger.
Honey nuggets and honey ham spoil a bit faster.

Misc Bug fixes:
Birds don't spawn seeds when flying away if there's already seeds nearby.
Teeth trap can be reset with Right-click.
Beard fountain doesn’t... fountain.
Teenbird and Tallbird aggression fixes.
If you die with something in your hand it will drop on the ground instead of disappearing.
Fix for missing Pig King in new world generation.
Fix for hangs in new world generation.
Massive speed up for new world generation.
Fixed bird/wilson animation freak-outs on slower machines.
Darts and poop won't magically accumulate at the world origin.
Berries won't show up in farm plots.

You can escape the world by finding... things... and doing... stuff with them. You get to keep your inventory, and you cash-out any XP that you have and unlock characters without dying. This is the first step towards story mode.

story mode? *eyes open*

Some really big interesting changes there... The new XP mechanic should make things less frustrating for everyone. The new research mechanic is MUCH more interesting because you have an actual goal with every new death instead of having access to stuff all the time.

Added a character quip when hounds are approaching.

ARGH YES! Getting jumped by hounds when I was in the middle of other things was far too frustrating.

EDIT: Speaking of frustrating things, couple bugs I ran into in this version:

- Hammers can't be put into chests or recycled at a science machine. You will instead hit the object with the hammer even if you don't have it equipped. In the cast of the chest this will spill all of the contained items onto the ground and possibly destroy them. I lost a stack of red feathers this way.

- If there is a way to unstack items I can't find it. A stack of two amulets will become one amulet if you equip it. The other is lost.

- Don't dump rotten food on the ground. I dumped a rotted seed to make room in my pack, came back much later and picked it up. It then spoiled the stack of perfectly fine seeds I was carrying.

Tamren wrote:

- If there is a way to unstack items I can't find it.

Hold either Shift or Ctrl (can't remember which) and left-click.