Don't Starve

[Itamarcu]

Tried the demo on Chrome today. Okay, I'll buy it :)

[embirrim]

In my last world i had 4 tall nests next to each other. I've had tall birds chase me tremendous distances after a theft, before it was less than 10 seconds distance in 1 direction.

Hm, I've got an island with 4 or 5 tall bird nests, I will be setting camp next to that =) although in the latest patch, an emergency one on nov 29th they reduced food uses for tallbird eggs by a lot I think.

[Detritus]

Played the demo, and ran out of time right before I built my Science machine (I could have built it earlier except I built a fire pit instead.) It's a great game, but because I have no cash I can't buy the full version quite yet.

[Pucc]

Just bought it, its fair to say I suck, definitely need to learn the basics. My logic was dig everything useful up and stack them in a nice place together and wait for them to grow couldn't really test if it worked since I went and disturbed a spiders nest and yeah well I won't be doing that again.

[Psion]

Damn you Battosay, now i'm minus 12 bucks and up one fun game. :(

Never even heard of this game until you brought it up, but I fell in love after trying the demo. The graphics of the game, the music, the dark humor, animations... everything combines into a perfect aesthetic.

Oh, and the game is fun too. :P Near the end of the demo i stayed in the dark to see what would happen and got quickly eaten by a... thing. lol

[agentwiggles]

Just purchased it after playing the demo, I think it's great so far. Really dug the lack of instruction, it really contributed to the atmosphere. I jumped in knowing nothing about the game but what I read in this thread.

The first play was excellent. I'm dumped into the world with no knowledge of what I'm supposed to do. I run around and start collecting grass and twigs, eating a few flowers, eying the berry bushes suspiciously (they're safe!). I knew I didn't want to starve (about the only instruction I had) so I tracked down some food items, seeing all kinds of new things along my way - rabbits, birds, rocks... Everything seemed so desolate, but I didn't feel in danger (yet). I tooled around, figured out how to make an axe and cut down some trees. In what later experience has taught me was a stroke of luck, I managed to kill a turkey. I hadn't really realized that I was going to have to build a campfire, but when night came I had enough stuff to throw one together, so I built a crummy little fire and waited for nightfall. Bored, I looked through the crafting menu and saw a torch, so I made that, carrying it with me as I left my campfire - figuring I could cut down some trees until morning came and I could explore better.

I was out in a forest, and I equipped my axe. All of a sudden, my torch was gone, and I couldn't see, and then something attacked me! Now scared shitless and realizing my campfire wasn't as useless as it had seemed, I grabbed the torch again and ran back towards my fire. It went out about 5 seconds before I reached the light of my fire, and I was attacked by the something again. I ran into the light of my fire, safe... and watched its light begin to slowly diminish. I panicked, attempting to throw wood on the fire but accidentally dropping it, and the fire went out. And then... the something killed me.

Back in real life, I yell "oh fuck that was cool!" and my girlfriend gives me a weird look. And I'm hooked. That first night, the way that whole day played out as I looked around that world for the first time, and my surprise to be killed by a mysterious something in the night, something I never saw and something that could only get me because I didn't know better than to leave my fire... that was just a great experience.

[LJEKadeshi]

This is a lot of fun, I got to day 19 on my 2nd playthrough, but I have this bad habit of attacking stuff when I'm ill prepared.

[ThatOneDude]

Ok, I'd like to apologize for my post earlier in the thread. I definitely don't support pirating software, nor have I ever pirated software myself, but when I checked out Don't Starve on Steam, it was PC only. I didn't know it was available in the Google Chrome store, so by pirate, what I really meant was just a way to somehow be able to play it on a Mac. Once again, sorry.

[finite8]

Attempt 1: 8 days. Found a Treeant. Missed clicked and started chopping adjacent tree instead of attacking. Got Flattened.

Attempt 2: Still alive. Day 31.

Spoiler

Show

Currently down to about 10 health and away from main camp. Thought i would take on a beehive with my two pigs (was happy for them to die). Sadly, pigs only attacked the hive and didn't bother with the horde of bees chasing me. Ran away, bees gave up. I returned to the site and collected Honey and Honeycomb. Night fell, lit fire. Sick of pigs so i fed one monster meat, watched him kill the other pig and i finished him off. Collected meat and pig skin. Saw a sleeping bee, thought "OOoohhh. Lets get some bees!" and pulled out bug catcher. Caught a bee, but inventory was full. Noticed other bees woke up and attacked. Dropped bee but as it turns out, they are still alive. Was now being chased by hoard of bees + 1 around dying camp fire. Added remaining logs to fire and took massive damage and continued to run. bees started going to sleep. Noticed i had some inventory space now so pulled out bug catcher and caught bee chasing me. Others woke up but as their attack was broken up, i managed to catch them one at a time with minimal damage. Day broke, closed game, left for work.

[Itamarcu]

How can you all get to day 30+ in your second try? I already played about 10 games and I always end up killed by bees, spiders or hounds after 5-10 days. This game is bad for impatient people :P

[Pucc]

Just found my first pig settlement. Note to self: Pig king likes buttons :)

[finite8]

How can you all get to day 30+ in your second try? I already played about 10 games and I always end up killed by bees, spiders or hounds after 5-10 days. This game is bad for impatient people :P

Use Pigs. Get them to cut the trees down then if a treeant spawns, it attacks the Pigs and not you. Collect all the wood you can, make planks and feed what you don't need into the science machine. I have already unlocked most recipes and have made my meat effigy.

Hounds are easy as you can outrun them. Just kite.

Make wooden armour. Life saver that stuff is. Also get piggies to attack the tentacles and you might score a tentacle spike. Handy weapon.

For food, set yourself up near a field of rabbit holes. Get about 5 traps going and place them as close to the rabbit holes as possible. Will practically guarantee a catch everyday, as well as any silly birds that land in it. Within 2 days of running back and fourth between traps, i had collected about 30 Morsel meat and heaps of feathers. If you get yourself a crock pot, 2 cooked morsel meat and two twigs makes Kebobs. Great for restoring Hunger and health fast with cheap resources.

Also, use the shovel. I have moved heaps of grass, saplings and berry bushes near my main camp. Gives me a plentiful supply of survival gear.

The only thing I'm short on now is rocks, which is pretty painful. Kind of has me stuck as i can't make the Alchemy engine.

[embirrim]

The only thing I'm short on now is rocks, which is pretty painful. Kind of has me stuck as i can't make the Alchemy engine.

Have you tried exploring? World generation rules dictate that there will be at least one rocky biome, the one with tall birds in it, in your world, AFAIK.

As for the rest of your post, I'd say setting up near a beefallo field, or a semi-close pig village is a dictating factor. The abundance of manure is always welcome =) specially if you move a lot of stuff to your base, what with the recent grass nerf.
For food, I think farms provide the best entertainment value, you have to work for them and maintain them but they are fun. Messing around with recipes in the crock pot is fun also, with farms you've got plenty of different ingredients to experiment with.
As I've said before in this post, if you find yourself having a lot of health issues, and not so much hunger, get some beehives. They are easy to get/mantain and restore a TON of health.

For beguinners, I'd say the nr1 thing you should research is armor, and then a spear.

[Sarudak]

Finally got this game and I'm really loving it. I can't wait to see where they go with it. On thing I'm a little worried about is the non-renewable nature of stone/flint though. Maybe they'll let you find a tunnel to a rocky underground eventually or something.

[FlowerChild]

Finally got this game and I'm really loving it. I can't wait to see where they go with it. On thing I'm a little worried about is the non-renewable nature of stone/flint though. Maybe they'll let you find a tunnel to a rocky underground eventually or something.

Glad you're enjoying it man :)

My view on how they're designing things is that you are intended to die eventually...one way or another. The late game becomes more a matter of how long you can survive for, rather than being able to do so indefinitely.

I think that's what's responsible for the non-renewable nature of some resources. It's not intended like MC where you should be able to keep going indefinitely and setup a one-man empire. In fact, the design doesn't really lend itself to that, as ultimately you will also run out of stuff to do within the environment, given that it doesn't have MC's creative options.

[embirrim]

My view on how they're designing things is that you are intended to die eventually...one way or another. The late game becomes more a matter of how long you can survive for, rather than being able to do so indefinitely.

I think that's what's responsible for the non-renewable nature of some resources. It's not intended like MC where you should be able to keep going indefinitely and setup a one-man empire. In fact, the design doesn't really lend itself to that, as ultimately you will also run out of stuff to do within the environment, given that it doesn't have MC's creative options.

I recently watched an interview where one of the designers talked about wanting to change the way you progress, he said making people die in order to unlock new characters would eventually change.
Also, if you're interested in looking at where they're going with the game, check out this thread on their forums:
http://forums.kleientertainment.com/sho ... ve-Roadmap
It provides some nice info on their upcoming features. From this and from what I heard on the interview, they are quite happy with the early game, but are focusing on providing additional difficulties to players in the mid game. I think hounds are the best example of that; explosive hounds are the one thing in the game that can really really set you back a lot. They're trying to make the game less monotonous, as it now lends itself to players finding a way to survive and doing it over and over again, no matter how boring it is.

Also, they're getting rid of research points. While I agree with that, as it can lend itself to some grinding, their solution seems a little out of place to me. Not only are they removing the points, they're also changing it so with each map you start you have to research everything over again. Doesn't seem to go well with the pace of the game as it is now.

But I'm not a game designer so I may be going slightly mad.

[Sarudak]

I don't have any problem with that design goal. More of an issue of I don't want to have to answer 'Why did you finally die?' With 'Oh there was no more flint on the map so I couldn't cut wood and couldn't make a fire so I died'...

[FlowerChild]

I don't have any problem with that design goal. More of an issue of I don't want to have to answer 'Why did you finally die?' With 'Oh there was no more flint on the map so I couldn't cut wood and couldn't make a fire so I died'...

Well, you can burn other stuff (like twigs), so that wouldn't really happen.

[Battosay]

And you can trade stuff to the Pig King and get gold nuggets, so you could always make a Golden axe. And they last longer ;)
Or when you're on your latest axe, if that ever happen, make a torch to burn wood, become friend with a lot of Pigs, and only hit one tree, to get charcoal. I got over 100 last time I did so, in less than a day. Took longer to collect it all ^^

[SterlingRed]

Well as a result of seeing this thread and all the positive comments, i decided to give it a go. Amazing. Fantastically done. In my first go at it I survived 26 days. I tried to catch a bee too close to a few hives without any armor on...

Anyway, I'm really enjoying it. It's quite interesting. I'm diving back into it again now for round 2!

[Sarudak]

I must find this pig king! I don't understand what you mean about the charcoal though...

[embirrim]

I must find this pig king! I don't understand what you mean about the charcoal though...

Pigs imitate you/follow you if you feed them. And you can burn trees to get charcoal. Beware of fire spreading, it's MC-like.

[Psion]

I still don't get why golden axes last longer than flint axes though, considering how soft gold is. lol

[SterlingRed]

Attempt 2 ended with me brutally mutilated by three tentacles accompanied by my three piggy slaves on day 16.
Something interesting I encountered in this go around, I noticed meat just lying around repeatedly on the swamp and tall bird area border. After some investigation I figured out what was going on. The swamp was close enough to the tall bird nest that a tentacle was stealing the birds egg. Which would then aggro the bird and the bird would attack and kill the tentacle leaving the meat behind. I found the mob interaction there pretty neat.

[Itamarcu]

Thanks a lot for the tips! I really got far in my last try (20-30 days). Well, for me it's a lot.
I think, though, that manure is very unbalanced. The game is a bit boring once you get enough food and materials from the grasslands/forest/plains, and to start farming you have to find either Beefalos or Pigs. Sadly, I already visited about 20 different islands and only found 2 pig villages and 1 Beefalo tribe, which kind of sucks.

I still don't get why golden axes last longer than flint axes though, considering how soft gold is. lol

Actually, when you "examine" the gold tools the character says "Wait, isn't gold soft?" :)