Nachimir

Don't Starve

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Just tested out the hold-the-spacebar thing. I feel like this is going to exponentially increase my enjoyment of the game. Thank you!! I'll let you know how my cat responds...

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I'd actually avoid looking up too much about the game, as I think the surprises it throws at you are part of the fun, and the first introduction to a lot of stuff can be easily ruined.  I spoiled a few things that I wish I didn't know. 

 

Looking at the mods are also worthwhile.  Some of them make it too easy, but I use some that I think just save time.  I use the minimap, display food values and larger inventory/chest size. 

 

Some non-spoiler tips:

 

Burn down a small forest early on.  You only get one charcoal per tree, but it stacks to 40 (wood is 20), only takes one hit to knock it down (so you save on your axe durability if flint is scarce) and can save your wood for just starting fires and other crafting.  Later on there are better fuel sources, but it's handy early. 

 

You can burn whole stacks of some items to make stacks of ash.  Ash is used for your healing potion, and this is soooo much faster than burning individual things you find in the world.

 

You can "pre-build" structures.  I thought initially when you prototyped something next to a science station, that you had to place it somewhere nearby.  But if you cancel placing it, it consumes the resources and is then pre-built and ready to place in your crafting tree.  This makes laying out your base easier, or prepping to build a backup base much faster.  It's also a way to "store" resources without using up inventory slots.  If you're full, you can pre-build some useful structures that you know you'll want in the future (farms, drying racks, camp fires, etc) and keep exploring/gathering.  You can only have one of each item prebuilt at a time.

 

Building a base within an easy walk of Beefalo is useful, for a variety of reasons. 

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Sadly, the cat didn't respond at all to the bird sounds. She was more interested in attacking my 360 controller cord. :)

 

I was also intrigued by all the context sensitive commands that appear if you're using a controller. For instance, I had no idea you could cook food in the beginning of the game playing on mouse and keyboard. You build a fire, you have some carrots. I figured you didn't have a pot/skillet to cook them in, so I just ate them raw. But when plugging in the controller, a context sensitive icon appeared that told me I could cook the carrots (I assume for greater hunger replenishment). I guess the logic being you could stick a sharpened stick through the veggie and cook it like a marshmallow?

 

Thanks for the ashes tip.  Good to know they're useful for something!

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There's all sorts of things that I'm not sure if they are supposed to be hidden and discovered, or if they just aren't explained well.  That some of those show up as context sensitive commands make me error on the side of the latter. 

 

Like you can use things in your inventory on things in the world, by picking the thing up and holding it over something else.  This opens up a few ridiculously useful resources.  But I've only found 2 things that it works on so far, so it's not so common that it would occur to you very often to try it.  An example is spoilered below:

 

One of the things is food.  You can feed pigs different types of food, and different things happen depending on if it's a meat or a vegetable.

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A single world is significantly larger than I had anticipated, and things get weird after awhile. 

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Reign of Giants went into public beta on Steam today.  This is apparently the week for games I love to get expansions, what with the FTL expansion coming out tomorrow.

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 Reign of Giants is out of beta!  I haven't tried it, but watched my wife play for awhile last night (it's more her game than mine).  It looks like a pretty fantastic expansion.  The world feels like there's a greater variety of animal, plants and general environmental affects.  Each season now has challenges that have to be overcome.  Overall she's saying that it feels quite a bit harder, but that might just be that she's out of practice with it.  She hasn't even got to any of the new boss type giant boss things.

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Oooh, I've been meaning to play Don't Starve again. I've never made it past the first winter before I got bored and wandered off.

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I tried to play again with my new TV set up. Man it feels so slow with a controller. Forcing a pause to switch item is a shocking change for me. Mouse and keyboard is so much better.

Also; has anyone hit an "end game" I always rage quit for a couple f weeks if I've played for hours then die. Always go back though.

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Yeah, I got into what could be considered "End Game" stuff on one pre-DLC game.  The game never technically ends, but you've got the Story Mode you can find, and then there is Spelunking, going down into the cave systems to discover what is down there.  The caves get really tough, but it's also neat and not really what you are expecting. 

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I did find a cave once! It was pretty cool. My girlfriend is going away for a few days soon so I'll probably pick this up again then. Just wondering: is it actually possible to build a defensive position? Any base I try to make comes across the problem of not having a door...

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The problem with a defensive "base" is that some of the most dangerous things have a tendency to be able to destroy walls very quickly.  But, walls still slow them down, which can give you a chance to lure them away.  And walls do keep out the smaller annoying things.  There is no door, but you can use traps to line a narrow pathway, which will kill most anything small that just tries to walk in.  My wife has made considerably larger and better bases than I ever have (and reached much deeper into the game in general than me).  She would build some serious trap layouts specifically to take down the most dangerous things rather than fight them directly.  Fields of teeth traps to lure packs of dogs into, keep bee traps for emergencies, and black powder traps to lure the "boss" monsters into.  She also ended up favoring building her base near things that were easy to control or avoid, so in an emergency she could lure enemies into fighting each other.  She's used killer bee hives, spiders and pigs for that. 

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After giving up on Don't Starve, I finally got around to playing Minecraft for the first time.  Bought two accounts for my wife and I, and we loved it.  We got lost a lot in the beginning, and spent a multi-day (irl) epic journey of trying to find each other again (she made the mistake of making a bed way away from home and we didn't realize that all she needed to do was destroy her bed and die to go back to the original spawn point).  It was so exciting when we found each other, though I ended up accidentally killing her digging a shelter on the way back - a bit of an Orpheus situation!!  Though that was fun, we also spent a lot of time wondering where the rest of the game was.  We'd been keeping ourselves from reading wikis as much as possible and we wandered around a lot wondering what to do next.  We'd find some crazy resources, but have no clue what to do with them.  As soon as we opened the wiki floodgates, the game opened up immensely!  Suddenly we had all sorts of things to do!  We'd find a singular, new object and instead of hoarding it away hoping to unlock the mystery of the object through happenstance, we'd just look it up.  And we're having fun still!

 

So now I'm back at Don't Starve in windowed mode and I have the wiki up at all times.  I had never been able to make to winter before, but now I'm through my first and have gotten to Day 55.  And it's been a lot more fun!  Hooray for knowledge.

 

Beefalos poop in their sleep fyi

 

There are brief moments of feeling like I'm on top of all my supplies, and those are actually the worst moments of the game for me.  I have no idea what to do next.  I keep building new machines to build new things, but I still find it hard to keep on top of why I should build certain objects.  Or, for instance, getting a clear sense of a tech tree.  I get a new, rare resource, so I look up its use.  The wiki then goes on to describe, "You combine this with the object you get when you do this specific thing to this rare creature, which when combined makes a new tool that you use in this very specific instance."  (If it seems unclear, that's exactly what my brain does when I read some of these item descriptions).

 

But.  Then I go, "oh shit!" I'm out of brush or twigs or logs or food. And then some dogs attack.  And then one explodes on my fertilized crop of brush.  And I completely forget all about finding some new thing to do.  :)

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that is incredible.  i love the XL planning of zones and geometric ease of access.  also the side-charcoal farm is a much smarter than lighting up a forest like i usually do

 

i am highly interested in Dont Starve, but have merely scratched the surface of possible things to do.  most of my major advances while playing have been total accident/dumb luck.  

 

Ive got a 30-day save going right now, but really still in the exploration phase.  i'll probably end up dying to somethign stupid like frostbite or bees.

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FUCK YEAH!  Don't Starve Together, a multiplayer expansion, is officially in the works.  Still early in development, but it will be a free update for existing users when it comes out (will cost for new buyers).  Confirmed online, and probably offline/couch play as well (not confirmed yet).  They are anticipating being able to have sizeable servers with Rust/Day-Z like populations, where you can kill other players, cooperate, compete for resources, whatever. 

 

There were a couple of co-op mods that my wife and I tried out early on, but they were just okay.  The second player could be a ghost with limited actions, but not their own character.   
 

I can see my wife and I going really freaking deep if we're both able to play together.  I can also see us fighting over base design, resulting in us declaring that the other one is unfit to live with and building bases on opposite sides of the world, staring at each other over the elaborate series of walls that divide the world between us.  We take base design seriously.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jlWgtMgukZ0

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FUCK YEAH!  Don't Starve Together, a multiplayer expansion, is officially in the works.  Still early in development, but it will be a free update for existing users when it comes out (will cost for new buyers).  Confirmed online, and probably offline/couch play as well (not confirmed yet).  They are anticipating being able to have sizeable servers with Rust/Day-Z like populations, where you can kill other players, cooperate, compete for resources, whatever. 

 

There were a couple of co-op mods that my wife and I tried out early on, but they were just okay.  The second player could be a ghost with limited actions, but not their own character.   

 

I can see my wife and I going really freaking deep if we're both able to play together.  I can also see us fighting over base design, resulting in us declaring that the other one is unfit to live with and building bases on opposite sides of the world, staring at each other over the elaborate series of walls that divide the world between us.  We take base design seriously.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jlWgtMgukZ0

 

THAT WOULD BE AMAZING.  Crossing my fingers for couch co-op.  Reign of Giants sounded like it upped to difficulty on an already difficult game, but if I have a buddy to help out...

 

I like the fact that they're not simply adding a second player, but retooling and implementing new features.  Seems to imply that after dying I become a ghost until I can haunt a meat effigy.  Also that haunting objects gives beneficial things, but also has a chance to set things on fire!  I love that risk/reward design.

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A good friend of mine is working as a designer on Don't Starve Together, and last night we got a few people together for the first time to play. We had some technical issues early on and it was getting late, so we weren't able to progress too far, but we still a blast hunting and foraging and stabbing each other to death.

 

They've been doing a weekly stream on Thursday afternoons/evenings (6:30 EST), check it out if you're curious about how the game is going http://www.twitch.tv/kleientertainment 

 

Anyway here's a hot exclusive screenshot :

 

EtQoyWV.png

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I must admit that I'm much more interested in Don't Starve now that there's going to be a multiplayer element. Is there any word yet on when it's likely to be enabled?

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I'm stupid excited for this.  They're running a bit behind schedule, but are just starting a massive beta (something like 2 million beta keys will be released in batches).  Assuming the beta goes well, I'd hope that it's out within 2-3 months. 

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Klei announced that due to the persistent demand for beta access (which is still ongoing), they're adding an Early Access purchase on Steam on Monday. Together will still be a free update if you wait for final release, but if you absolutely must have it now, you can pay $5 to get in.

Edited to add: Worth noting is that for existing owners, the $5 pack includes a copy of Don't Starve and 2 keys for Together. So if you have a friend who doesn't own the game at all, you can gift it to them.

Sadly, local/couch co-op is not expected to be added anywhere in the foreseeable future, if ever. But with multiplayer being officially supported now, hopefully the modding community can solve the UI problem in a way Klei can't. I would take an ugly UI to have couch co-op.
 
 

Darn. I was hoping you'd be able to play on the same screen. Will this ever be possible for the game?

Never say never, but it's pretty unlikely: there are a lot of difficult-to-solve UI problems that crop up once you have two characters sharing one screen. The one idea I've had so far that I think would address them fairly well is to have a Don't Starve Twins mode where you're actually linked: shared inventory, shared crafting, shared health, sanity and hunger. But even then, that would be tricky to implement and isn't really even on our radar at this point. Plenty to do to make Don't Starve Together what it ought to be without adding a new mode to the mix :)

(All that said, I agree that split-screen Don't Starve would be amazing. But I don't have my hopes up.)

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I'm highly likely to go ahead and buy it.  We prefer our co-op to be same screen, but we each have our own PCs as well for the handful of games we love that don't support split or same screen co-op.  That they're including a fully copy of DS in with the purchase makes that an easy call to make. 

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