Essential Beginner Survival Guide (ALL Seasons & Characters) Don't Starve Together

Essential First-Year Survival Guide

This guide presents a season-by-season plan for surviving the first year in Don’t Starve Together. It uses Wilson and avoids character-specific skills, so the advice works for any character. The narrator recommends Wendy or Willow for beginners because of their extra protection, but any character can follow the guide.

Setup and Survival Basics

• Choose Survival world settings and enable Caves. The narrator recommends the Geometric Placement mod for building, with Craft Pot as an optional recipe-learning aid.
• Keep an eye on three core meters:
  • Health: If it reaches zero, you die.
  • Hunger: Drains by about 75 points per day; starvation damages health.
  • Sanity: Low sanity brings hostile shadow creatures. Darkness drains sanity quickly, so always have a light source at night.
• Before heading out, check that you have light, food, armor, and a weapon. Keep a torch handy for emergencies.

Autumn: Explore and Establish a Base

Days 1–20

Autumn is the safest time to gather supplies, map the world, and prepare for winter.

• Start by gathering: Aim for roughly 40 grass, 40 twigs, some flint, and logs. Collect carrots and berries as you explore; they are useful early food. Keep an eye on food freshness and pick up seeds.
• Find gold: Search the Mosaic biome, often connected to the starting area, and mine gold-veined boulders. Use gold, stone, and logs to make a Science Machine, which unlocks important crafting recipes.
• Make early equipment: Craft a backpack, spear, log armor, and hammer. Armor reduces incoming damage; a football helmet later provides strong protection. The hammer can dismantle structures, including pig houses, for some of their materials.
• Gather pig and spider materials carefully: Fight pigs one at a time rather than near a group. Use traps to catch spiders, and only destroy an empty spider nest. Silk and pig skin are useful for later equipment and crafting.
• Build a compact base: Choose a relatively safe, central location near useful routes or resources. A roughly 7×7 area is enough to start. Add an Alchemy Engine, chests, a permanent fire, a refrigerator if you find gears, and cooking crock pots.
• Cook for hunger: Meatballs are an easy, filling meal; meat stew restores more hunger. Avoid putting more than one monster meat into a crock pot, or the dish can turn into Monster Lasagna.
• Start farming: Make garden plots and plant seeds. Talking to crops, watering them, and removing nearby weeds helps them grow well. A bird in a cage can turn meat into eggs and produce seeds when fed crops. Pierogi—made with meat, an egg, a vegetable, and a filler—is a valuable healing food.
• Keep a varied food supply: The guide prioritizes potatoes and tomatoes for reliable harvests. Meat drying is another useful option: jerky lasts longer and restores health and sanity as well as hunger.
• Prepare for winter: Craft a thermal stone and warm clothing, such as a Beefalo hat. Keep logs and grass for emergency fires. A tame Beefalo can also act as a distraction during hound attacks; don’t kill every member of a herd, or it may not reproduce.
• Use resurrection points: If you die, a Touch Stone can revive you. Return to the death location to recover your items, but be aware that nearby creatures may have eaten food left on the ground.

Winter: Stay Warm and Hunt for Useful Drops

Days 21–35

Cold is the main threat. Warm a thermal stone at a fire and carry it; insulating clothing slows cooling. The narrator favors the thermal stone because it leaves the head slot free for a helmet, but a Beefalo hat is another option.

• Winter slows the spoilage of items, but many plants stop growing, and butterflies, bees, and seed drops become scarce.
• Watch for MacTusk hunting parties, found in the Moon Forest or certain special biomes. Chase the larger walrus until it turns back, then fight it away from camp. Its drops can include a walrus tusk, used for a speed-boosting walking cane, and a Tam o’ Shanter that restores sanity.
• Collect ice from penguin nests. Ice is useful as a crock-pot filler and for summer preparations; save a supply.
• A sanity-restoring vegetable dish can be made with tomatoes, another vegetable, and ice.
• Keep gathering and exploring between milestones, and use a hammer on pig houses when you need pig skin.

First Major Boss: Deerclops

The guide prepares for Deerclops around day 30. Before the fight, bring armor, healing food, and cooked cactus for sanity. A sign can help direct its arrival away from the base.

• Fight near a fire to manage the cold, but avoid standing directly beneath Deerclops, which drains sanity quickly.
• Eat cooked cactus to keep sanity up and use pierogi or other healing food when health gets low.
• Deerclops can destroy buildings and may disappear if it leaves the loaded area, so the narrator recommends fighting it when it arrives rather than letting it wander off.
• Collect its eye, which is needed for the Eyebrella, and its meat.

Spring: Protect Against Rain and Use Seasonal Resources

Days 36–55

Spring brings rain, lightning, and more frequent wetness, which can lower sanity and cause other problems.

• The Eyebrella gives full rain and lightning protection if you have Deerclops’s eye. Alternatives include a raincoat or combining a football helmet and umbrella, though that combination does not protect against lightning.
• Build a lightning rod near the base to draw lightning away from you and your buildings. Repair clothing before it breaks; the guide suggests mending it when durability falls below about 45%.
• Tomatoes and potatoes grow well in spring. Remove weeds and keep tending crops; the guide recommends planting them together.
• Watch for Lureplants near explored areas. They can swallow nearby items and creatures. Cut a path through the eyes to the central bulb and destroy it; the bulb can then be replanted as a defensive distraction.
• Replant grass and saplings near the base for convenient supplies. Grass needs fertilizer to regrow.
• Treeguards may appear when cutting trees. Planting pine cones can calm them; if fighting, strike several times and dodge with a walking cane.
• Moose/Goose is an optional spring boss. Fight near its nest and bring armor, a weapon, healing food, and a cane. Dodge its horn attacks and put away your weapon when it honks, which can disarm you. Afterward, handle the goslings individually and avoid their spinning attacks. Down feathers are useful for a summer fan.
• During frog rain, the narrator suggests leading frogs toward a Moose/Goose nest, where the creatures may fight each other and leave meat and other drops.

Summer: Prevent Overheating and Fires

From day 56

Summer brings heat, faster food spoilage, withering plants, and wildfires. Choose a cooling plan and protect the base.

Cooling options include:

• An umbrella and a Luxury Fan made with Moose/Goose down. The fan lowers temperature and can put out nearby fires.
• Cooling a thermal stone with a watering can.
• Keeping two thermal stones in a refrigerator and swapping them as needed.
• Endothermic fires, which cool rather than warm.

Other summer preparations:

• Build an Ice Flingomatic to extinguish fires around the base and keep nearby plants watered. Turn it off temporarily if it is extinguishing a fire you need for warmth or cooling.
• Fire hounds can explode in flames when killed, so fight them away from flammable structures or be prepared to extinguish fires.
• Tomatoes grow better than potatoes in summer. Crops grown in caves do not suffer the same surface heat and fire risks.
• The guide also recommends making Desert Goggles if possible; they improve visibility and movement during the Oasis desert’s sandstorms.

Optional Summer Boss: Antlion

Ignoring Antlion can cause earthquakes and craters that damage buildings. Defeating it prevents these events for the rest of the summer.

• Bring armor, a strong weapon, healing food, an extra thermal stone, and cooling supplies.
• Use a cooled thermal stone to start the fight. Dodge the sand spikes that appear beneath the player and attack during openings.
• If Antlion tries to heal by eating rocks, interrupt the action with an attack.

Return to Autumn and Future Years

After summer, autumn returns and the guide’s essential first-year plan is largely complete. The second autumn introduces Bearger, a powerful seasonal boss.

• The guide advises beginners not to fight Bearger directly. Instead, exploit its charging attack to knock down trees and gather logs, while nearby Treeguards may attack it.
• If fighting Bearger, dodge its ground-slam waves and use openings between attacks.
• Bearger’s fur can be used with gears to craft an insulated backpack that slows food spoilage.

With the base, food, seasonal clothing, and boss drops secured, players can spend later years exploring caves and the ocean, fighting other bosses, or expanding their farm.

Gamers and Sources Featured

• Jakeyosaurus — narrator and guide creator; the gameplay footage uses Wilson.
• Wendy and Willow — recommended as beginner-friendly character options.
• REDMAGIC 10 Pro — sponsor featured in an advertisement within the video.