Don't Starve!

It is done: http://forums.kleientertainment.com/...!

This is it, folks - the final Beta update (a few days early!). With this update we consider Don’t Starve to be ready for general consumption, and a complete game in its own right. We’re not done updating, of course - we’ve promised six months of post-launch content updates, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. For now, our team needs a bit of a break, so our first update will come 4 weeks after launch, on May 21st.

Because we are out of Beta, we need to be more careful in how we add content to the game. Previously, we’d throw our new content in the game almost as soon as it’s done, but we feel more testing is required post April 23. Given that, we are going to be moving to a 3 week update schedule, and open up our staging branch early to both give a sneakpeek at new content as well as give feedback before the content officially goes live.

We’ve got some pretty cool stuff planned for the post-launch expansion, and we’ll tell you about it as soon as we’ve worked out the details.

We’re putting this update out a bit ahead of schedule because we want the official launch day to go as smoothly as possible. We’ve been testing this build for the last week in the special test branch, but strange things happen when software meets the real world. Let’s get any potential hotfixes out of the way before Tuesday!

On behalf of the team, I’d like to thank everyone who participated in the beta, and helped us make Don’t Starve the game that it is today. The game is far, far better because of you!

Now for the changelist:

Adventure Mode is done!
Can you escape through a long, arduous journey of 5 randomly generated worlds, and learn Maxwell’s secret?

We’ve put a lot of effort into creating randomization between and within each level, so every playthrough presents new challenges. Exploration and adaptation is key, and only the best survival experts will make it all the way to the end. There are tons of changes, tuning, and new features within adventure mode, but listing them all would ruin the surprise!

So grab that Divining Rod and journey on -- if you dare.

Some New Stuff

Divining Rod (adventure only) - helps you track down missing portal pieces
Sewing Kit - repairs degraded clothing items
Newly-planted trees take a while to grow into small trees
We’ve gone through the game screen by screen and made everything look nicer and be more functional. The world customization screen in particular got a complete re-write. There’s also a new credits screen.
HUD size is more readable on larger screens
Wes is now unlocked by finding him in Adventure Mode
Beating Adventure Mode unlocks a new character

Bug fixes / Tuning
Too many to list! Basically, we’ve fixed all of the bugs that we know of that would have prevented us from shipping. As with every game, there are will always be some bugs that we miss, but there shouldn’t be anything too terrible that prevents players from enjoying themselves. As usual, let us know if you find any!

Sweet, I bought the game a while back. Played it. Decided to wait until it was released. I hate playing betas.

Well my brother bought me a copy. Installed it, but haven't fired it up yet... have no idea what kind of game this is. Any place to get started with some reading?

BlackSabre wrote:

Well my brother bought me a copy. Installed it, but haven't fired it up yet... have no idea what kind of game this is. Any place to get started with some reading?

I'd almost consider giving it spin going in blind, I did that the first time and it certainly made discovering things interesting, it's basically a top down minecraftalike, but with a heavier emphasis on survival, and a bit more story behind it. Perhaps look for more info on your second playthrough after you die (and if you go in blind, you will die!). I'm pretty sure there's a wiki or two about if you want to know more though.

You click on stuff. Besides that you've got 4 controls that you can use, escape for the menu, tab for the map, left/right for rotating the view.

There's a wiki, but it's best to discover as you go and through experimenting. The crafting will tell you most of what you need anyway. It's kind of a rogue-like, so death is expected eventually, and you gain xp to unlock alternative characters.

Here's an ign preview video from 3 months ago. Lots of mechanics have changed since then, but it'll give you a basic premise on how things work.

Have an extra code if any goodjer wants to trade -- I'm eyeing Surgery Simulator right now.

OK, good to know. I might fire it up tonight and just give it a go without reading/watching anything. Sounds like it could be interesting. That being said, I never got into minecraft...

I've also got a spare copy, first employee above coffee grinder to ask and friend me on steam gets it.

Gone

Clever way of making friends, Scratched. Very clever.

Back in January, I played the beta (which only had sandbox/survival mode) for about 40 hours. I knew that the 1.0 release, which is available now for everyone who pre-purchased, would include the new adventure/story mode, so I wanted to check it out today. I didn't see anything resembling adventure mode on the main menu, so I went to the wiki to investigate. It turns out that the only way to even play adventure mode is to find a certain door on the large, randomly generated world in survival mode. After 2 hours of scouting, I haven't found it.

I have plenty of other games to play, so I really don't feel like spending several (or potentially many) hours just looking for the thing that will let me play the mode I want to play. I've reposted this on the official forum in hopes that (1) the devs see it and (2) other players agree that the option to play either mode should be on the main menu.

Scratched wrote:

I've also got a spare copy, first employee above coffee grinder to ask and friend me on steam gets it.

Gone

Thank you kindly

Surprised to see so little discussion on this game - I picked it up a few days ago and am really enjoying it so far.

I've started the game up again - first time in a few months. A lot has changed. The first go was fairly short, because I was eaten on the third day by an angry tree monster. Mushrooms aren't good for you, and wormholes may be a risky thing to enter.

concentric wrote:

Mushrooms aren't good for you, and wormholes may be a risky thing to enter.

Disagree - mushrooms are great ways to increase health / sanity (if you grab the right ones). Also, wormholes are a convenient way to travel to new lands far from your basecamp.

The raw red mushrooms weren't good, but cooked they didn't poison me. I was half a world away after I exited my first wormhole. Lots left to explore, and I think I understand the logic of only getting XP when you die.

This game is tough! On my third playthrough, I made it to 22 days and thought that I turned the corner. A couple of dogs ran on the screen and ate me. Game over, no muss, no fuss.

Since that game, I can't make it more than 10 days. My last game, I spent the last 3 days of my life wandering around hallucinating. Great game.

Yeah those damn dogs, I always carry a spear and armour with me at all times just to avoid that. It was worse before they added the sound cue.

I'm hoping in my current game I'm set up for winter. I'm better set up, but I'm sure something will come along and kill me anyway.

Scratched wrote:

I'm hoping in my current game I'm set up for winter. I'm better set up, but I'm sure something will come along and kill me anyway.

That's what I'm worried about. I just got back into the game for the first time since like January. Then my best was like 30 days, but I didn't have to worry about survuving winter, so it'll be interesting when that comes around.

I've gotten to the point where I can survive lots of things. Learn to kite enemies. You can kill dogs, and even the treeguard, without ever being hit. Two swings for a dog, four for a treeguard.

Winter is always the death of me. I eventually make a mistake, and the lack of equipment means I just keep freezing to death until I run out of touchstones/effigies.

I died to doggies in winter, but had a touch stone activated, and with the tremendous foresight to leave a dapper vest nearby I managed to get back to main camp, clean out the last dog and not freeze to death. What usually happens is that I rapidly freeze to death after the resurrection.

Onwards.

Just died to a tentacle. 2 days in. Sometimes it's better to just run away.

I'm really not liking how food doesn't heal you anymore. Or rather it does, but in such piddly amounts that you have to scarf down hundreds of items. Keeping yourself fed is pretty trivial, even in winter. Keeping yourself healthy on the other hand is very hard, too hard even. I get knocked down to 25-50 hp and then I get stuck having to farm spiders just to get those healing glands to prop myself up again. Am I missing something? Is there any other decent method of getting health back?

The only other healing item I can find is honey poultices, but those require tons of reeds and I only ever found 3 reed plants before winter got me.

Tamren wrote:

I'm really not liking how food doesn't heal you anymore. Or rather it does, but in such piddly amounts that you have to scarf down hundreds of items. Keeping yourself fed is pretty trivial, even in winter. Keeping yourself healthy on the other hand is very hard, too hard even. I get knocked down to 25-50 hp and then I get stuck having to farm spiders just to get those healing glands to prop myself up again. Am I missing something? Is there any other decent method of getting health back?

The only other healing item I can find is honey poultices, but those require tons of reeds and I only ever found 3 reed plants before winter got me.

There IS a way to stay alive without resorting to spider farming, but are you sure you want to know?

The biggest regret I have in that game is not trying to discover it all myself. Once I opened that wiki rabbit hole there was no turning back. I would give anything to be in your position. The struggle is what makes the game. However if you still want to know, PM me.

I would put it under a spoiler tag here, but I just know by curiosity sake people will click on it, slap their head finding out how simple it is, and then be sad that they didn't spend the game time to figure it out.

You could give a clue that leads up to it, what category of thing to create, or a piece of equipment used to make it.

Speaking of which, I just got the 4th thing in this game. I'm beginning to wonder how well all generated worlds are 'created equal', as there's some things about this world that were quite nice, lots of resources, a full herd of beefalo.

I have checked the wiki a couple of times but usually because I already know how something works and I want to know the exact numbers behind it. The only major spoiler was looking up the list of crock pot recipes because I don't have nearly enough time to figure them out myself. Most of them aren't all that useful anyway, with the changes they made to healing.

In my latest world I managed to get a 5-hive honey farm set up and that alone has been keeping me fed. Making poultices out of reeds has also solved my health problems for the most part. But reeds are frustratingly scarce, they only show up in one specific biome and all I have for swamps are small scattered pockets. I'm sure there is one big swamp zone on the map somewhere but the "default" size is pretty damn big and I've explored half of it with no success. The map size settings go from default-medium-large-huge, is medium smaller than the default? Because if it is I would definitely prefer it for sandbox mode.

My biggest recent struggle has been fending off the hounds. I'm almost 30 days in and I made the mistake of setting the hound amounts to "more". And almost every week they bum rush me with 6 dogs at once. Very hard to fend off! I'm looking into bee mines.

Scratched wrote:

Speaking of which, I just got the 4th thing in this game. I'm beginning to wonder how well all generated worlds are 'created equal', as there's some things about this world that were quite nice, lots of resources, a full herd of beefalo.

It's possible to get screwed by the map generation. I once very nearly died on my first night because I spent the entire day wandering over half the map looking for some flint so I could mine a boulder and get more. Flint only seems to show up on grass and if there isn't any by your spawn or you just get unlucky, well...

And certain resources definitely make some maps better than others. Starting near beefalo means unlimited manure for farming and fuel. On my first post-release map (the one where I died in winter) The area where I chose to make my base had this pig village with spider nests around it and a bunch of beehives jammed in the middle. That area was a constant battle royale whenever the sun came up and the area was always littered with honey and webs.

Tamren wrote:

My biggest recent struggle has been fending off the hounds. I'm almost 30 days in and I made the mistake of setting the hound amounts to "more". And almost every week they bum rush me with 6 dogs at once. Very hard to fend off! I'm looking into bee mines.

From my poking around the wiki, it does seem like for best success you do want to start involving more and more bits of the environment in your favour, rather than just going it alone.

36 days, survived winter, but not the flaming doggies.

Do you guys play with the sandbox settings at all when you start a game? I turned saplings and grass up to maximum because I find gathering those the most tedius part of the game. Some of the options you shouldn't mess with though. There are already TONS AND TONS of trees in the game, if you turn them up to maximum there will be SO MANY trees that they basically cover up everything and you can't see the ground! Some of them like the setting for reeds and tallbirds cause them to show up in more biomes where they wouldn't normally appear. Turning on MAXIMUM BEEEEES for instance makes it hard to get around because there will be killer bees literally everywhere.

Tamren wrote:

Turning on MAXIMUM BEEEEES for instance makes it hard to get around because there will be killer bees literally everywhere.

So, Oprah mode?

IMAGE(http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view1/1416886/oprah-s-bees-o.gif)