Building your base in a pig village has many excellent advantages over building it anywhere else. This section will cover those advantages thoroughly, as well as giving you some additional information and tips.

Protection

Building your base inside of a pig village offers you good protection from all basic enemies. Pigs are completely friendly to the player (unless you attack them), and are naturally hostile to almost every enemy in the game; automatically engaging any threat that comes within a screen length of them. And when one gets attacked, all nearby pigs for several screen lengths in each direction will join the fight. This means that hound attacks will be very easy to stop if you're in a pig village during the day. All you have to do is run around until all of the pigs engage and kill the hounds. Though be sure to grab any monster meat they drop before the pigs eat it. One pig can usually kill 2 to 4+ hounds before dying, unless it gets completely mobbed by them. This also means that you'll be safe from any spiders, tall birds, merms, tree guards (pigs' kiting AI usually allows them to hit tree guards and then escape before it can hit back), and just about everything else. Even deerclops can be taken down by large pig villages that have 60+ pigs, although it's still better to just lead him away to prevent any possible collateral damage to your base.

When relying on pigs to kill enemies, keep in mind that pigs sleep at dusk and night unless they were already engaged in a fight, at which point they'll finish it before going to sleep by a light source. If a mob of hounds or spiders attack during this time, you can usually just run around a campfire until it turns day, so long as you have fuel. Or if you're really desperate, you can run around in the dark; quickly 'flashing' a torch or miner's hat by equipping and unequipping them just before the night monster/Grue/Charlie attacks you (just before the hissing noise stops), thereby allowing you to move freely in the night whilst conserving your light source's durability (albeit at the cost of a massive sanity drain). Once it turns day, all the pigs will wake up at once and mob the enemies. Another way to easily stop hounds at night if the pigs are asleep is to attack nearby spider dens (several always spawn near a pig village if it's next to a forest; if not you can transplant a tier 3 den by destroying it) to make all of the spiders wake up and start following you. Then you can just run circles around the spiders and hounds until the hounds lose interest in you and start attacking the spiders. Most or all of the hounds in an assault can be killed in this way. Getting the monster meat drops from these fights may be tough, however, as both spiders and hounds eat monster meat on the ground.

Meat Grinders

You can kill almost any enemy with no risk to yourself by simply luring them into the pig village. Even big groups of spiders will be easily killed if you lure them into the pig village, which will give you lots of monster meat, silk, and spider glands. Just be sure to grab the monster meat before the spiders or pigs eat it.

Minions

Pigs can be befriended by feeding them any meats, eggs or food based on meat (even pig skins and slurper pelts). Befriended pigs will follow and help the player for at least half a full day cycle, and for up to 2.5 game days after max feeding. Feeding a pig a small meat item (morsels, drumsticks, frog legs, etc), egg, pig skin, or slurper pelt will cause the pig to follow you for half of a full day cycle, and giving them a large meat item or monster meat will cause them to follow you for 1 full day cycle. Giving them multiple meat items will linearly stack the amount of time that they will follow you. If a pig is actively attacking the player, giving them a meat item will make them neutral again, and then giving them a second meat item will befriend them. Befriended pigs will automatically attack any enemies near them, can be ordered to attack far mobs by clicking on them (including other pigs; which will lead to one of them dying in the fight), and can be ordered to cut nearby trees if you first hit one of them with an axe (they'll then continue to cut all nearby trees until you get too far from them, there's no more trees nearby, an enemy approaches them, or until your friendship wears off). Befriended pigs also emit a powerful positive sanity aura in a small area around themselves which will rapidly give you sanity when you stand near them (I'll address how to best take advantage of this in the next section). Pigs will remain loyal until their loyalty timer expires, but during the dusk and night, they'll still go to sleep near a light source if they're not already in a fight. They'll still wake up and fight any mobs that approach them during this time. Pigs can also be given hats to wear, and if the hats provide any effect, then the pigs will receive this effect. Giving a pig a football helmet to wear will decrease the damage that it takes by 80%, and giving a pig a mining light will allow the pig to create its own light; though it will still go home at dusk like normal unless it's engaged in a fight.

An army of befriended pigs.

An Easy Source Of Sanity

Befriended pigs have an aura around them that will rapidly increase your sanity whenever you're close to them (+25/minute). However, pigs will often run from you if you get too close to them. To prevent this during day, you can order the befriended pig(s) to chop down trees by hitting a tree with an axe, and then standing beside them while they work, allowing you to get the sanity boost and lots of wood without having to use your axe durability. During night all befriended pigs will run to and sleep/stand beside a nearby light source. By making a fire and standing beside them at night, you can get the most out of their sanity boost very easily, especially if you befriend many just before dusk.

Also if you have any green mushrooms growing in the deciduous forest that always spawns near a pig village, you can pick them at dusk, cook them, and then eat them to get 15 sanity at the cost of 1 health. Alternatively, you can use the silk from killing nearby spiders to make a tent with 6 silk, 3 ropes, and 4 twigs. Using a tent at dusk or night in DST will allow you to sleep in real time, at which point you will rapidly gain sanity and health at the cost of hunger. Nothing can hurt you while you're in a tent, so don't be afraid to use it if enemies are after you or night is falling. One tent can be used 6 times before disappearing, so make the most use out of each sleep by not using it too late in the night or when you're low on hunger (you get kicked out when you start to starve). Continued...

An Easy Source Of Food

Pig villages have a variety of different sources of food in and around them. The pigs are a good source of respawning meat, especially if you turn them into a werepig by giving them 4 monster meat; which is easily acquired by killing spiders. One pig will drop 1 meat or 1 pig skin, while a werepig will always drop 2 meat and 1 pig skin. Werepigs won't be attacked by pigs normally, but werepigs will attack pigs if the the player is not around (then once it hits one pig, all others nearby will also join in the fight). Even so, fighting a single werepig isn't too difficult, as it has a predictable attack pattern that makes it easy to kill with any weapon (just hit it twice in a row, move out of the way to avoid its attack, and repeat until it dies). If the pig village is near a forest, there will always be two spider dens somewhere nearby, which is a great source of respawning monster meat. The pig village itself may spawn with small 3x3 placements of berry bushes and/or flowers, which will provide respawning berries and butterflies respectively. The forest or deciduous forest near the pig village will more than likely have berry bushes, flowers, mushrooms, catcoons, and/or mole burrows in it, which will provide a renewable source of berries, butterflies, red/green/blue caps, meat, and morsels respectively.

An Easy Source Of Manure

Pigs will produce manure whenever they're fed a fruit, vegetable, mushroom, or flower petals; which will allow you to easily build many advanced farm plots or fertilize berry bushes and grass tufts. A pig will accept and eat any non-meat items you give it every 15 seconds. Tip: A super-quick trick to convert entire stacks of these into manure is to turn a pig into a werepig with 4 monster meat, and then drop the whole stack(s) of them on the ground. It'll then immediately run up to them and quickly eat each one individually, producing manure with every single one. Using this, you can potentially build several advanced farms immediately upon finding the pig village if you can make an alchemy engine and have gathered lots of flower petals or other disposable manure-producing items on the journey there. When your base is set up and you have many berry bushes growing, you can give each berry to a werepig every time they grow in order to easily acquire tremendous amounts of manure in a short period of time (much more manure than a whole herd of beefalo could produce in the same amount of time).

An Easy Source Of Health

Two or more spider dens always spawn somewhere near the pig village, and spiders will often drop spider glands when they're killed. Pigs won't eat spider glands off the ground, though you can optionally give it to them to heal them. Each gland heals 8 damage when used, and can be used to craft a healing salve with 1 spider gland, 1 rock, and 2 ash; each healing salve heals 20 health. Also, if you made many farms with all the pig manure, you have a chance to get a dragon fruit from each seed. Once you are able to get all of your farms growing dragon fruit, you'll be able to easily make dragonpie using 1 dragon fruit and 3 filler (including ever-abundant sticks), which will give you a whopping 75 hunger and 40 health back each. Blue mushrooms may also be able to be found in the forest near the pig village. You can get blue caps from them during the night, and eating one raw will give you 20 health and 12.5 hunger at the cost of 15 sanity. Most cooked foods and things cooked using the crock pot will also give you some health back when you eat them, and since food is plentiful in and around the village, it should be easy to get missing health back over time.

An Easy Source Of Gold Nuggets

The pig village will usually have a pig king in it who will give you gold nuggets for any meat item, eggs, and grave items (2 to 8 gold nuggets per grave item). The pig king will not accept monster meat for gold, though you can cook monster meat on a fire and then give it to a bird in a bird cage in order to get an egg, and you can then give that egg to the pig king for gold. This allows you to easily get huge amounts of gold after looting a graveyard for all of its items. Gold nuggets are used to craft many useful things including science machines, alchemy engines, stronger tools, the walking cane, the bird cage, the fridge, the lightning rod, the mining light, and more. If the pig village you find does not have a pig king in it, then he'll be at another village at the opposite end of a road that connects the two villages.


"(I've) got 99 problems, but gold ain't one!"


An Easy Source Of Pig Skin

Killing a pig will yield either 1 meat or 1 pig skin, while killing a werepig will always yield 2 meat and 1 pig skin. You can use pig skin for a variety of useful things, including football helmets (one of the best headgear items in the game), ham bats (the third strongest melee weapon in the game; it has unlimited uses, but progressively loses damage over time before turning to rot after 10 days), umbrellas (used to negate the insanity effect of rain and the rain damage done to WX-78), piggybacks (this lets you carry 4 more things than a backpack, but makes you move 20% slower; making it worse than the backpack for general use as it lets certain mobs catch you easier), one-man bands (lets you befriend up to 9 pigs or bunnymen temporarily but is expensive to craft; thus it's not recommended), and additional pig houses (useful for increasing the size and power of your village).

Meatballs And Meaty Stews Can Still Be Easily Made In Winter

One of the best things about the pig village is that you can easily make meatballs and meaty stews, no matter what season it is. Spiders respawn regularly no matter the season or time of day if you have some spider dens nearby, and can be killed for their monster meat. You can then use the monster meat to make meatballs with 1 monster meat and 3 filler items (includes ice, but not twigs), or you can give 4 of them to a pig to turn it into a werepig in order to get 2 regular meat and 1 pig skin. If no spider dens are nearby, you should destroy a level 3 spider den or spider queen in a cave or on the surface (they can take a while to become level 3 on the surface of a new world, but they're always level 3 in caves) and bring it closer to the pig village for easy farming. Monster meat can also be quickly farmed from hound mounds if any happen to be in a desert nearby (along with teeth and red/blue gems). Pigs respawn from their houses every 4 days and still roam during the day; no matter what season it is, and can be turned into werepigs like normal. You can then use the werepig meat to make a meaty stew with 2 meat, 1 monster meat and 1 filler item (includes ice but not twigs or a second monster meat).

If it's Winter and you find yourself with no filler to use in the crock pot recipe for meaty stew (you can't use 2 monster meat as it will make nasty monster lasagna, and using 3 regular meat is a big waste), you can cook 1 monster meat on a fire and give it to a bird in a birdcage in order to get 1 egg, which you can then use as a filler without penalty.

Tip: Build a fire pit somewhere near each spider den so that you can keep warm during the Winter and avoid the night monster during the night whilst still being able to hunt spiders.

Tip: When moving a spider den closer to your base, be sure that the den is at least 2 screen lengths away from the nearest group of pig houses in your village, and at least 4 screen lengths away from the main fire pit/crafting area in your base; as spiders roam around their dens during the dusk and night and can be a problem.

While the pig village has many advantages, it also has two notable disadvantages. This section will cover those disadvantages while suggesting ways to overcome them.

The Full Moon

When the full Moon rises, all pigs that were outside during the night will turn into werepigs. However, since pigs usually go into their houses for the night when it turns dusk, this is usually not a problem. The only time that it is a problem is when pigs are prevented from entering their homes at the start of dusk, and then the Full Moon rises. Situations where this can happen include: the pig is befriended by the player when it turns to dusk, the pig is in a fight when it turns to dusk, or if you leave the pig village during the day whilst the pigs are out and then you return later during the night of a Full Moon (because pigs, like all mobs, freeze in place when you go very far away from them, preventing them from being able to physically go home when dusk starts). In the latter situation's case, the entire village's population of pigs could turn into werepigs, which is a big problem if you have a lot of pig houses, as werepigs are even tougher than normal pigs.

Fortunately, even if the entire village turns into werepigs, you can easily avoid them by simply staying away from the village during the night of the Full Moon. This should be easy in DST and DLCs, since outside of the base game the Full Moon lights up the whole world and the Grue will not attack you. Once it turns day, all pigs that were werepigs will return to normal. For the Winter time you may want to create an 'outpost base' a little ways away from the pig village to help you avoid freezing whilst waiting out a Full Moon, and to act as a place to wait for Deerclops if you don't want him spawning near your base and smashing up your base's structures. Your outpost base should be fairly far from the village, usually next to a road that leads to the village for ease of travel. Your outpost base should have everything you'll need during the Winter, such as a fire pit, tent, crock pot with a meaty stew on it, a chest or two with some extra supplies (wood for the fire, crafting materials, a weapon with high durability, armour with high durability, a thermal stone, etc), and whatever else you need to help you survive.

Pigs Steal Food Off Of The Ground

Pigs and werepigs will eat any and all food off of the ground, including meat, fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, flower petals, seeds, rot, and wet goop. Eaten fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, and flower petals will cause them to produce useful manure, but everything else will simply be wasted if they eat it. Pigs can sometimes even eat enough monster meat dropped by slain monsters to turn into a werepig on their own, though this is very rare.

You can avoid this by quickly picking up any food items that are on the ground (you'll often want to prioritize picking up the meat and monster meat dropped by slain enemies during a battle in or around the village), and by storing food items in chests, fridges, on crock pots, on drying racks, or on farms.

The first days on a new world is arguably the most critical time of the whole game. This section will tell you how to make the most of your time when you're just beginning on a brand new world, from simple tips to advanced strategies.

Starting Out

When you first start out in a new world, you'll want to go around gathering up all of the resources and food that you can. No matter what it is, grab it (except seeds which you can just eat immediately for a temporary hunger decrease, and possibly red mushrooms which have little-to-no practical use at the beginning of the game).

Don't engage any hostile mobs unless you have a football helmet or other armour, and a decent weapon. If anything starts chasing you, just run away until they lose interest.

Try to grab as many flower petals as you can until you have a max stack, as you can give them to pigs in order to create manure for farms or fertilizer later on. Whenever you see a butterfly spawn from a flower, kill it for its useful wings that give you 8 HP and 9.375 hunger each. Butterflies are easy to kill with your bare hands or a melee weapon by going to attack them, chasing them until you're right beside them, and then pressing 'F' to immediately attack them (they die in 1 hit). Before night comes, you'll want to make an axe and start cutting down trees until you have enough wood to make 2 or 3 campfires and 1 science machine. Since trees grow just about everywhere in the world, you should spend your time gathering other, more limited resources at the beginning. When night comes you can collect any resources and chop down any trees near your campfire even if they're in the dark slightly, just be sure to stay close enough to the fire that you can move back into the light when you hear the night monster's hiss. If you find any touch stones whilst exploring, activate them. If you see any resources, tools, or equipment dropped by dead explorers, be sure to pick them up. Be wary of strange chests that spawned in the world naturally unless you know what they do, as they may be a devastating set piece trap. Some other suspicious-looking set pieces may be traps as well, which activate once you open a chest or take an item. Be sure to memorize which set pieces are safe and which ones aren't. You can find more info on set pieces here.[dontstarve.wikia.com] If you encounter a swamp biome in the early game, you can optionally try to grab 8 cut reeds so that you can make a bird cage as soon as possible when you find a place to make your base. If you see any merms fighting tentacles in the swamp, you can stick around and try to grab any loot that they drop after the fight is done. Do not engage any enemies in the swamp yourself until you have sufficient weapons and armour, and be sure to avoid hidden tentacles (you can see them while they're hiding by a noticeable disturbance on the surface of the swamp). As soon as you find a boulder in any biome, craft a pickaxe and harvest it, as you'll need rocks to make a science machine, alchemy engine, and other useful structures. Leave any nitre that you find in the early game, as it's just a waste of inventory space.

Try to find a single gold nugget so that you can make a science machine and begin prototyping useful gear/structures in order to save up inventory slots and gain more valuable resources. You can get gold early on by mining a boulder with a gold vein in it, finding a nugget lying on the ground in a graveyard, giving a meat item, egg, or gravedigger item to the pig king, mining stalagmites near the entrance inside of a cave, or some other means. Once you've found a gold nugget, use it to craft a science machine and then place it wherever you are. Science machines are inexpensive to craft, so it's not a big loss. Use the science machine to prototype a backpack (for more inventory space), a shovel (for digging up berry bushes, grass tufts, saplings, and graves), a spear (for easily fighting and killing enemies), and anything else you think may be situationally useful. If you find a rockyland biome you may even be able to prototype an alchemy engine with this initial science machine, which you can then hold onto without placing, for when you eventually find a place to set up your base. Once you have your shovel, dig up all of the berry bushes, grass tufts, and saplings that you come across up until you have several full stacks of each. If you come across any graves, you should dig them. Each grave dug costs 10 sanity, but prototyping new things at a science machine, alchemy engine, or other crafting station gives you 15 sanity back, allowing you to easily negate this early loss of sanity by prototyping some inexpensive items.

If you need to get sanity back desperately before you have a base set up, look for green mushrooms (they emerge from the ground during dusk) and blue mushrooms (they emerge from the ground during night) in a forest or swamp biome. You can cook them on a fire and eat them in order to get a significant sanity boost (15 for cooked green caps at a cost of 1 HP, and 10 sanity for cooked blue caps at a cost of 3 HP).

The End Of The Beginning

Once you feel that you have plenty of food, wood, sticks, grass, flint, rocks, and/or gold, and several good stacks of berry bushes, grass tufts, and saplings; it's time to start looking for the pig village so that you can start to set up your base.

This section will tell you how to best find the pig village in a default new world, and what you may expect to see in a typical pig village.

Finding The Pig Village

In DST, finding the pig village can be more difficult than in regular Don't Starve. When looking for the pig village, the first thing that you'll want to look for is a cobblestone road. Cobblestone roads will lead to a pig village at one or both of the ends 60% of the time (40% of the time it will glitch out and lead nowhere, often winding in on itself in odd ways). If the cobblestone road doesn't lead to the pig village, then a normal road will, so you should start following roads to each of their ends. Depending on where you spawned in the world, finding the right road can take a while. Just make sure you have plenty of berries, carrots, morsels, and/or butterfly wings to eat, be sure to grab any opportune food you find on the way, and search each area thoroughly unless it's a large swamp, savanna, or rockyland biome, as it's rare to find a cobblestone road there. In Reign of Giants and DST, the pig village will always be in a deciduous forest biome, so keep an eye out for its unique turf and birchnut trees. In addition, Glommer's Statue will always spawn somewhere near the pig king. You can use this knowledge to locate the pig king or vice versa. Glommer's Statue will always have a valuable panflute spawn near it, and Glommer's Flower will spawn on the statue during a Full Moon; so be sure to grab it. Most often there will be two pig villages in the world (one at each end of the road that leads to one), but sometimes there will only be one. You can immediately tell if there's two as one of the villages will have a pig king but very little pre-placed material plants (berry bushes, grass tufts, flowers, etc), while the other will have lots of pre-placed material plants but no pig king. If you intend to make your base in the pig village and there's two villages, you'll want to build your base in the one that has the best assets: the one with the most pig houses, the most material plants growing nearby, and the most generally useful things nearby.

Typical Characteristics Of A Pig Village

Most pig villages will have a pig king, 5 to 9 pig houses, pre-placed 3x3 formations of berry bushes, grass tufts, flowers, and/or carrots and occasionally several merm heads on sticks randomly placed around it. Since pig villages always have a deciduous forest biome nearby, you can expect to find many birchnut trees, berry bushes, grass tufts, saplings, mushrooms of all kinds, catcoons, moles, and flowers nearby. Pig villages will most often be bordered by the ocean on 1 to 3 sides. There will always be at least two spider dens near the pig village if there is a forest next to it, which you can use to get monster meat, silk, and spider glands easily. As aforementioned, Glommer's Statue will always spawn somewhere near the pig king. Glommer's Statue will also always have a valuable panflute spawn near it, and Glommer's Flower will spawn on the statue during a Full Moon; so be sure to grab it. As mentioned before, if you intend to base in the pig village and suspect there's two split up pig villages in the world, then you'll want to inspect both to determine which one is the best before setting up your base.

This section will give you information and tips on how to best design your base, what structures are best to build for your base, and tell you how to make the most of your time and resources.

Starting Your Base In The Pig Village

When you first arrive in the pig village, do not to pick flowers or dig up mushrooms that are in or around the pig village, as they will be more useful over time since flowers spawn endless butterflies for you to eat and mushrooms can be used as filler in crock pot recipes. If you have a crock pot you can use 1 butterfly wings, 1 vegetable item (including any mushrooms), and 2 twigs to make butter muffins that heal 20 HP and give you 37.5 hunger each.

The first thing that you'll want to do when starting your base in the pig village is look to see where most of the pig houses are located within it, and put down your fire pit in the middle of them all, so that you get the maximum amount of protection at all times. From there, you'll want to find a safe place away from all other flammable things to plant your berry bushes, grass tufts, and saplings. Pig villages will usually be bordered by the ocean on 1 to 3 of their sides, so you can use that as a natural barrier against hounds and deerclops. You can place your material plants beside the ocean in order prevent red hounds from running through them during the Summer and igniting them all when they die. However, even with this precaution, if you have room you should still plant every group of 20 or so plants away from the other groups of plants in case lightning or a red hound does happen to spawn near them and ignite one set of them. If you have no ocean bordering your village, you can always just chop down a large area of trees and put your material plants inside of a pen blocked off with stone walls. Just try to not be anywhere near them when the hounds are coming during the Summer, to avoid red hounds spawning near them and potentially burning them. Try to fertilize your replanted material plants as quickly as possible so that you start getting good material production. Prioritize fertilizing the berry bushes first unless you desperately need grass or twigs, as you can give the berries to pigs in order to get more manure with which to fertilize exponentially more plants with. Grass tufts should be prioritized second, and then saplings should be prioritized last since you'll likely have several natural saplings growing in the forest around you.

General Tips: In Don't Starve Together, if a fire is starting to spread uncontrollably through a forest or other flammable materials, you can stop it from spreading by having the server host close and remake the server. Things that were already lit on fire will still be burnt, but the fire will be gone. In addition, if any player leaves and rejoins while it's dusk or night, then a powerful light will spawn over where they rejoined that will last until it turns day. This light will keep the night monster at bay, and will provide the warmth of a large campfire to keep freezing away during Winter. It can be a lifesaver if you're about to die from the darkness and/or freezing during dusk or night in Winter.

If you start running low on food, then look around for things to eat. If you're desperate for food and don't yet have a crock pot, you can always kill some spiders in the nearby forest, cook the monster meat on the fire, and eat that until better things become available. Though this should be the last resort, as monster meat drains your sanity every time you eat it.

Expanding Your Base

The next thing that you'll want to do is prototype an alchemy engine if you don't have one already, so that you can unlock better things to craft. Hopefully, you'll already have acquired enough stones and gold from your original exploring to craft one right away. If not, you can get additional gold from the pig king (assuming your village has one) by giving him meat, morsels, fish, frog legs, drumsticks, eggs, gravedigger items, etc. If you need more stones and/or gold, then you'll have to go looking for boulders in the forests or a rockyland biome. You can get the wood easily from the nearby forest. Once you have the alchemy engine, place it and all other structures as close as you can to the sides or back of the fire pit (not in front as it will block your view of the fire pit, causing you to have to switch your view around whenever you want to add fuel to it) so that you can work on stuff in your base during the night with only a single fire pit lit.

Once you have an alchemy engine, craft some boards and then make a chest or two to put away things that you don't want to be carrying. Generally the only things you should carry with you is the basic tools, a weapon, a walking cane (when you get one), a torch, a backpack, a football helmet, a stack of flint for tools and spears, a stack of gold for luxury tools, a stack of twigs for all tools and other craftables, a stack of wood and grass for campfires and other craftables, a stack of rocks for various craftables, and a stack of good food that you can use to gain back a lot of hunger quickly. Flammable objects should be kept inside chests, while non-flammable objects like rocks, flint, gold, gems, hound teeth, stingers, charcoal, tools, weapons, the Things, etc can simply be kept on the ground in order to save slots in the chests and make things easier to find. Be sure to get rid of any moles and their burrows that are nearby before doing this, as they take items off the ground.

Next you should try to get a crock pot if you don't already have one. To get 6 charcoal, use pinecones to plant at least 6 trees away from all flammable materials. Wait until they all grow into small trees, and then ignite them with a torch in order to get charcoal for a crock pot. Once you get the crock pot you'll be able to make meatballs using 1 meat item (even monster meat or small meats) and 3 filler items of your choice (except twigs) in order to get back 62.5 hunger, 3 health, and 5 sanity, and butter muffins using 1 butterfly wings, 1 vegetable item, and 2 twigs to get back 37.5 hunger, 20 HP, and 5 sanity. These two recipes are the easiest to make during the early game, and both replenish a good amount of stats. Later on you'll be able to make pierogis using 1 meat item, 1 egg (the egg can be made by giving any meat item to a caged bird), 1 vegetable, and 1 filler (except twigs) in order to get 40 HP, 37.5 hunger, and 5 sanity back (pierogis also spoil in 20 days, rather than 10-15 like most crockpot foods), dragonpies using 1 dragon fruit (acquired from a farm plot rarely) and 3 twigs to get 75 hunger, 40 HP, and 5 sanity back, and meaty stews using 2 meat, 1 monster meat, and 1 filler (except twigs) or 2 meat and 2 small meats (morsels, drumsticks, frog legs, etc) to get 150 hunger, 12 HP, and 5 sanity. As mentioned before, you can easily get the ingredients for meatballs or meaty stews from nearby spider dens, pigs turned into werepigs, and berry bushes or mushrooms. Planting flowers around your base will cause butterflies to spawn rapidly, which can be used for butter muffins or as filler. You should primarily rely on meaty stews for the first Winter as plants don't grow and butterflies don't spawn, but pigs and spiders continue to come out during the day like normal.

Be sure to put lightning rods around your base. Ensure that all valuable flammable materials and a good bit of the nearby forest are covered by it, otherwise lightning can potentially strike and burn them at random. Each rod covers about two screen lengths in every direction. Lightning will always strike somewhere in the player's line of sight, so keep that in mind when leaving your lightning rod-protected area while it's raining. Continued...

Now work on making farms out of manure. As mentioned before, a super quick way to convert entire stacks of items into manure is to turn a pig into a werepig with 4 monster meat and then drop whole stacks of disposable non-meat food or petals in front of it. It will rapidly eat each one and produce manure. Make as many farms as you can, and keep planting seeds in them to keep a steady supply of food growing. Try to keep the farm plots as close to the fire pit as you can, so that you can harvest crops during the night. Also leave a space for the bird cage right by the fire, as it will be constantly used to get more seeds for your farms.

If you were able to get 8 cut reeds from the swamp during your initial exploration of the world then use it to make 2 papyrus at the alchemy engine, and then create a bird cage. If you don't have the cut reeds, then be sure to get them as soon as possible from a swamp so you can start farming crops more effectively. Once the bird cage is complete, make a bird trap and bait it with 1 seed. Wait until a bird becomes trapped, and then put it in the cage. You can now give the bird fruits and vegetables grown in your farms to get extra seeds, as you have a 100% chance to get 1-2 seeds of that plant's type, and a 50% chance to get an ordinary seed. Additionally, you can also create eggs using the bird by giving it meat, cooked monster meat, small meat, or cooked eggs (you can make eggs fresh again this way). You can then give this egg to the pig king in exchange for 1 gold, or use it as filler in crockpot recipes. Giving the bird old seeds will make them fresh again. Tip: farms can grow in darkness or caves if there's a light source near them, even just a firefly's glow.

Once you get your first dragon fruit, continue to give the dragon fruit to the bird and then regrow it on a farm plot until you get a second dragon fruit seed. Then do the same with the rest until all of your farm plots are growing dragon fruits. If you want to be able to continue to get as many dragon fruit seeds as you have farm plots while being able to eat the rest, you can give the bird dragon fruits one-by-one while counting each seed that you get until you get as many seeds as you have plots. Then you can turn the rest of the dragon fruits into dragonpies in a crock pot. Or you can just follow a simplified model: for every 4 farm plots, give 3 dragon fruit to the bird and use 1 dragon fruit for dragonpie. Having extra dragon fruit seeds is good when you're still in the process of creating more farms, as you can then plant the seeds immediately once you finish a new farm. Just be sure that you keep enough dragon fruit to be able to make lots of dragonpies for the first Winter so that you don't need to spend all of your time making meaty stews.

You should then try to get a gear from digging graves or killing clockwork monsters in a chess biome, so that you can make a fridge that makes items spoil 50% slower. This will help you store food for the Winter without it going bad as quickly. Try to put the fridge beside your crock pot(s) so you can add ingredients to the crock pot straight out of the fridge.

An example of a good, self-sustaining base in a pig village, as well as my typical late-game loadout. All items on the ground are non-flammable.

Other Useful Structures

Making a tent somewhere near your fire pit is usually a good idea, as in DST you can use it to sleep in real time during dusk or night in order to rapidly gain health and sanity at the cost of hunger (see more tips on the tent in the 'Pig Village Advantages' section). Its usefulness depends on your character and play style.

You should also keep some trees, berry bushes, grass tufts, and/or saplings near your fire pit so you can harvest them during the night without leaving your fire pit. Just don't put too many there, as red hounds can ignite them. Putting an additional fire pit near your main material plant farms allows you to farm them all during the night in times of safety.

When all of this is done, you can then add additional useful structures like more crock pots (food never goes bad while it's on the crock pot, so you can pre-cook a bunch of meals for later), chests, drying racks (meat hung on the rack doesn't start to spoil until you take it off), bee boxes (if you have lots of flowers around, then this will make you a good amount of honey for each box, allowing you to make honey poultices and some good honey-based food recipes), farms, etc.

Bolstering Your Defenses

By now, you should have a pretty good base that is nigh or fully self-sustainable in terms of food and resources. Now your biggest threat topside is the hounds and deerclops. To combat the ever-growing number of hounds and deerclops, you will need more pig houses and a meat effigy for insurance. One pig house costs 4 pig skin, 4 boards, and 3 cut stones. You get 1 pig skin every time you kill a werepig, a 50% chance to get 1 pig skin when a pig dies, 2 pig skin for destroying a pig head (4 pig heads can be found around every touch stone and many of them can often be found in the swamp), and 2 pig skin for destroying a pig house. You shouldn't destroy pig houses near your base as you only get half the resources it takes to create it when using a hammer. Do destroy pig houses that spawned far away from the village, so that you can rebuild them in your base. Pig skin is renewable thanks to respawning pigs, so you can make as many pig houses as you like (the more the better). A meat effigy requires a prestihatitator to craft. The prestihatitator can be crafted with 4 boards, 4 live rabbits (caught using traps), and a tophat (made with 6 silk). Then the meat effigy requires 4 boards, 4 cooked meat (easily acquired from two werepigs), and 4 beard hair. You can get beard hair from beardlings, beardlords (creatures that replace rabbits and bunnymen respectively when your sanity drops below 40%), or by shaving Wilson's beard. Note: shave the beard as soon as it's fully grown (on the 3rd stage of growth) after about 15 days, as it is the most efficient. The beard also keeps Wilson warm longer during the Winter, so depending on your play style you may want to keep it if it grows just before or during Winter. The meat effigy should be placed in a safe area in your base where deerclops is unlikely to visit (as he can smash the effigy if his aggro isn't on a player). It's a good idea to leave some supplies in a chest near your effigy, such as a football helmet, a log suit, a good weapon, some wood, an axe, and other useful things. These emergency supplies can save your life if whatever killed you is still attacking when you resurrect, especially if it's during the Winter. Consider using stone walls to protect important areas/structures and to funnel hounds into a chokepoint.

One thing that will help a lot to protect your base from the escalating hound invasions and deerclops is to have a special area in or around your base that is a dedicated battle arena; a place to go when you know something bad is approaching the village. This battle arena should be built around a road so you get the extra movement speed and should have lots of open space to run around, lots of fire pits in and around it so you can fight during the night/Winter, lots of pig houses around the outside and/or inside of it, cobblestone turf inside of it, and shouldn't have anything important that's flammable in or around it. Additionally, you can also have one or more chests full of different armour, weapons, and healing items in the battle arena for you to use during fights. Having a dedicated battle arena will help you greatly during any and all fights in your base.

The beginning of a Day 89 Summer hound invasion in a well-prepared battle arena.

Pig War. If you befriend two pigs and use Force Attack to swing at each one without actually hitting them (you can cancel the attack mid-swing by manually moving in any direction), the two pigs will then fight one another. When one of the pigs first hits the other, any other nearby pigs will then attack the aggressor pig until it dies. This can be used to turn two morsels, monster meat, stale/rotten meat, or eggs into a fresh meat or pig skin. More importantly, in a larger pig village this trick can result in a pig war, as pigs that weren't in range to 'witness' the initial attack from your befriended pig will end up moving into range to 'witness' the other pigs attacking the first one; causing them to become aggressive towards them. Then when a given pig dies, any pigs going after it will revert back to being neutral, and they will then 'witness' the other fighting pigs and become aggressive again and again. This will result in a chain reaction that will wipe out all of the pigs in the area, allowing you to get tons of meat and pig skin with just two morsels/monster meat/meat/eggs. Just be sure to grab all of the meat and pig skin off the ground before the pig war concludes and the survivors begin eating it. Starting pig wars becomes more profitable as you get more and more pig houses in a given area, allowing for exponential expansion. Small pig villages with very few pig houses won't get much out of pig wars (if you can initiate one at all), and will best be farmed by creating werepigs with monster meat and killing them normally. Unlike in regular Don't Starve, this trick requires the use of two friendly pigs rather than just one, as if you just get one befriended pig to attack a neutral one, the neutral one will continually run away from the befriended one, and it can be quite difficult to get the befriended pig to corner the neutral one (unless you use walls/wood gates creatively). Note: depleting all of the pigs in your village will make it more difficult to fend off mid-late game hound attacks and giant attacks. Be sure to have some extra pig houses off to the side as a backup base defense if you're going to start a pig war.

The aforementioned tip also works for befriended bunnymen and befriended spiders (as Webber), allowing you to also massively farm their respective drops with ease by starting a war.

Placing any food (including seeds, rot, or a powder cake) on the ground inside of a walled off enclosure will result in any nearby pigs walking into the walls, attempting to get the food forever (even when it becomes dusk/night). When a full moon rises, all of these pigs will become werepigs and will continue to run into the walls without breaking them, attempting to get the food whilst ignoring everything else (unless they are attacked). If you befriend 9+ bunnymen and order them to attack the distracted werepigs without attacking them yourself, you'll be able to quickly kill each one individually until the night ends, getting you lots of meat and pig skin. Mighty Wolfgang with a good weapon can also make short work of individual distracted werepigs after avoiding one swipe. Note: pigs that are trying to get the walled off food may be too distracted to help you fight hounds, giants, or other enemies unless one of them gets attacked nearby. Be sure you have some way to quickly remove the food bait or otherwise aggro the pigs if you need them to help you with other mobs. Using DST-exclusive wood gates is an easy way to get in and out of the enclosure quickly to remove or add bait. Alternatively befriending one of the pigs and getting it to fight the mob(s) will alert all of the other nearby pigs automatically once it gets attacked.

You can use bird traps in your base in order to get a steady supply of morsels and feathers, even in the Winter when food is often hard to come by. Even if you don't bait the traps with seeds, birds will continue to occasionally land in them and become trapped year-round. Putting them down next to the ocean boundary is often good. If you desperately need meat and not feathers, you can guarantee that you'll get meat for killing the bird by cooking the bird on a fire rather than killing it from the inventory. One morsel + 3 filler (except twigs) in a crockpot will make meatballs that restore 62.5 hunger. Two morsels, one monster meat, and one regular meat in a crockpot will make meaty stew, which restores 150 hunger. This is great for Winter if you're in the pig village and don't have many filler items for meaty stews, as you should have plenty of meat and monster meat as long as you farm the spiders and werepigs. Putting morsels on a drying rack will turn them into a small jerky that gives you 10 sanity, 8 health, and 12.5 hunger (this is great for keeping your sanity up during the Winter time). The same is true for regular traps with rabbit holes nearby. Note: Birds and rabbits still 'spoil' whilst in traps, so you may only want to deploy them during Winter when food is scarce.

Using a bug net to catch live butterflies will allow you to turn them into a flower by planting them on the ground. Placing 6 or more flowers in/around your base will enable you to have a constant, rapid source of butterfly wings during the day (except during Winter, when butterflies don't spawn). Attack them while they're staying in one spot to get them easily without a chase. You can use the excessive amount of butterfly wings to make butter muffins in a crock pot for large amounts of healing and hunger restoration, as filler in any crockpot recipes, or as manure if you leave them on the ground for pigs/a werepig to eat. They can also be given to catcoons in order to befriend them, allowing you to get other unique items from them in return. Putting the flowers in an enclosure surrounded by non-flammable walls and a wood gate will protect the flowers and any bee boxes from fire and will make 'chasing' the butterflies down easier. In addition, planting flowers next to the magma pools at the Dragonfly boss arena will result in the butterflies dying instantly due to the heat, but their drops will not burn. This can be used to farm butterfly wings and butter extremely efficiently with minimal setup effort. Just be sure to not go too close to the Dragonfly accidentally whilst collecting the items.

As soon as you're getting good amounts of meat/monster meat, you should switch from making meatballs to meaty stews. Meaty stews are extremely efficient for hunger return compared to their required components (even if you inefficiently use a full 4 meat/jerky, meaty stew is still 50% more effective for hunger gain). Later in the game when you have way more meat than you know what to do with, you may want to switch to relying on jerky and mass drying racks, whilst only using morsels and monster meat for backup stews. Even though meaty stews are much more cost and time effective to make than jerky for hunger restoration, jerky lasts 2x longer (and thus you can carry 2x as much of it on journeys before it goes bad) and gives you way more health and sanity return than if you had used the meat in meaty stews (a single jerky gives you nearly 2x the health and 3x the sanity of a meaty stew).

Many enemies won't attack walls if there is a way to get around them (this does not apply to giants like Deerclops). This means that you can lure most enemies into a pre-designed chokepoint, which you can then defend with tooth traps, pig houses, rabbit hutches, and/or even houndius shootius turrets. This also oddly applies to bees, which are capable of flying over walls if they're enclosed by them, but not if there's a valid path around them (even if that path is long and winding). This is particularly useful against the Bee Queen's Grumble Bees (Bee Queen herself is not affected), as you can repeatedly lead them down a long, winding maze via walls/fences and wood gates; allowing you to focus on Bee Queen herself most of the time. In addition, you can also use walls as a buffer against fire (as long as you're using stone walls or better, as grass and wood walls burn), red hounds, and giants in order to protect your most valuable structures/plants. Walls with wood gates can also be used to enclose and trap certain neutral mobs such as rabbits, beefalo (when in heat, you can prevent them from smashing the walls by putting grass walls around the interior of the walls [even if they're destroyed], keeping the beefalo 'trapped' in the middle), moleworms, catcoons, etc so that you can farm their resources/prevent them from running when you hunt them. Larger mobs like koalefants and vargs can't fit through walls that have 1 tile gaps in them.

In addition to fire pits being permanent versions of campfires, they also have a range of benefits over campfires. First, they won't cause nearby flammable objects to smoulder and catch on fire at high fuel amounts. Second, fire fuel used on a fire pit will burn for twice as long as fire fuel used on a campfire. Third, at max fuel they can burn for 75% of a full day versus a campfire's 37.5% of a full day (twice as long). Fourth, fire pits are less affected by rain than campfires are, and will last longer. Be sure to consider this info when relying on campfires whilst exploring, and consider placing fire pits in any places you find yourself spending a lot of time in.

You can gain lots of fire fuel quickly and efficiently by making a pitchfork and digging up pieces of terrain. You can then put several stacks of it near your main fire pit for later use. This is much more time efficient than just using logs (1 turf burns for the same amount of time as 1 log, and can be manually acquired much faster). If exploring during Winter, you may even want to carry a max stack of turf with you, as well as a pitchfork (since you want to make the most of your time whilst exploring in Winter). Other good fire fuel includes excess pinecones, log/grass suits on low durability (they instantly add 100% fuel to the fire), glommer's goop (adds 100% fuel), dead glommer's flowers (adds 25% fuel; the same as logs), glommer's wings (you can't make the Old Bell in DST and so this item has no use besides fuel; it adds 25% fuel), excess rot (adds 8.33% fuel), and excess manure (adds 25% fuel). The same applies to fueling Ice Flingomatics, which use fire fuel for power. Also, if you intend to fight a boss near a fire pit for a long time during long nights/Winter, be sure to craft some logs into boards first. That way you can instantly fuel a fire from 0% to 100% fuel, and you don't have to constantly worry about adding more fuel; allowing you to focus on the boss.

Creating cobblestone turf in/around your base with 1 rockyland turf and 1 board will increase your movement speed by 30% like natural roads, which can be useful for increasing efficiency in the base.

When your base, food, and basic resources situation is settled, you should look around for MacTusk's camps, which can be seen year-round. His camp will not spawn in a swamp biome or the two desert biomes. MacTusk has a 50% chance to drop the walrus task that can be used to craft the walking cane in order to buff your movement speed by 25% whilst it's equipped (which is extremely good in all situations throughout the game if used right) and a 25% chance to drop the Tam o' Shanter which can be worn in the head slot in order to give you a whopping +6.7 sanity per minute (it's also a tier 2 warmth item, lasts for 25 days before expiring, and can be repaired with the sewing kit). You should attempt to farm MacTusk as much as possible when he shows up during Winter time, up until you have both of his unique drops for every player in your group that needs them (he respawns 2.5-3 days after you kill him and each world always has multiple walrus camps). Catching MacTusk with a melee weapon can be an issue as he runs to stay out of melee range. You can kill MacTusk easily by setting up traps around his camp, using ranged weapons, by killing his hounds and then chasing him into a player-placed wall (using the ocean is not recommended as his drops can fall into the water and be lost), by luring his party into a group of pengulls, a spider den, or another area with hostile mobs, by distracting MacTusk via having him aggro on Chester or befriended pigs/bunnymen, or by chasing him far enough away from his camp that he begins to attempt to mindlessly walk back to his camp; ignoring the player completely and allowing you to walk up and stunlock + kill him with any melee weapon. The igloo cannot appear or disappear whilst it is actively on the player's screen.

You can easily kill gobblers by placing berries, any fruit, or any vegetable item on the ground close to them. They'll then mindlessly walk up to it and try to eat it over any nearby berry bushes, and you can then stunlock and kill them with any melee weapon. This method is easier and more reliable than running them against the ocean's edge, and guarantees you'll get both drumsticks for killing the gobbler. In addition, if you let the gobbler eat 3 red mushrooms, it'll then die from the damage they inflict, allowing you to kill them without using any weapons.

Spacing out pig houses can be a good way to avoid them all from burning down if a red hound dies in the base, ensures they're more difficult for giants to smash, makes them more effective against giants (due to less group mobbing for giants' AoE to kill), and can make pig wars easier to initiate. If you have an ice flingomatic, putting many pig houses in range of that is a good idea.

Making your base in the tumbleweed desert is arguably the best place to set up your main base in DST. Once you relocate pig houses, spider nests, rabbit hutches (with spider nests near them once you have 9+ of them, as they'll be able to automatically farm the spiders for you), berry bushes, material plants, trees, birchnut trees, and flowers there; you'll reap many natural benefits (near a swamp for easy reeds is likely the second best place). The tumbleweed desert has many natural benefits that usually make it the best place to make a base, regardless of character(s) chosen. These benefits include: renewable tumbleweeds that can give you a number of useful items (even trinkets, gears, and valuable gems rarely) (if you manage to find their spawn point you can even build a cage for them with walls/fences; tumbleweeds are big enough that you can also leave 1-block wide spaces in your walls/fences), cacti that regrow every 3 days (even in Winter) and can be picked for cactus flesh (can be cooked to give you 15 sanity, 12.5 hunger, and 1 health back each) and cacti flowers (the flower is only given during Summer) (can be eaten to give you 8 HP, 12.5 hunger, and 5 sanity each or can be used to create a flower salad for healing [can be made with 1 cactus flower, 1 vegetable (including cactus flesh), and 2 filler (filler can be vegetables, cacti flowers, or ice) and gives 40 HP, 12.5 hunger, and 5 sanity back] or a floral shirt [is tied with eyebrella and ice cube for the highest overheating resistance]) at the cost of 6 health per pick (the damage can be reduced down to 1 by wearing armour, and eating cooked cactus flesh gives you 1 health back), hound mounds that can allow you to quickly farm monster meat, hound's teeth, and seasonal gems via respawning hounds, non-renewable flintless rocks that give you 4-5 stones each (allowing you to get huge amount of stones easily during the early game), magma pools around Dragonfly's arena that you can use to create automatic butterfly farms, heat thermal stones on the ground to their max temperature quickly (90 degrees, at which point they keep you warm for 10 minutes straight and glow in the dark for 7.5 minutes [making you immune to the night monster or the darkness' sanity drain]), cancel freezing during Winter (you can even overheat quickly during Winter nights), dry off quickly if the rain stops reaching you, avoid the night monster during night (requires precise placement to prevent burning unless it's raining), and cook food on (though you'll be lit on fire in the process), and natural sandy turf that you can plant trees and any plants on; but which lureplants' eyeplants can't grow; meaning you can place lureplants in an area surrounded by this turf in order to create a leafy meat farm (note that eyeplants can still grow on places where the turf is missing, so you may need to move some of it). If a wormhole exists in/near the biome, you may want to base close to it so you can use it to quickly flee your flammable base if red hounds are coming in Summer/Autumn or if giants are approaching. You can create a battle arena on the other side of the wormhole, complete with toothtraps, a fire pit, weapons/armour on the ground, a life giving amulet on the ground (can be haunted as a ghost to revive), etc. If the wormhole leads to a useful area such as the swamp, the mosaic biome, the pig king, etc; then that can be a big added bonus. For obvious reasons, you shouldn't make your base too close to the Dragonfly arena or the hound mound(s).

Birchnuts from birchnut trees in the deciduous biome can be cooked on a fire and then used in a crock pot with 1 berry, 1 fruit item (can be berries), and 1 filler (can be twigs, ice, or berries) to create trail mix. Trail mix gives you a very low amount of hunger/sanity, but it heals 30 health and lasts 15 days before spoiling, making it excellent for when you need quick healing for a cheap cost (especially if you plant birchnut trees near your base and only cut them down when they're fully grown). Fully grown birchnut trees drop 2 birchnuts during Autumn (coloured leaves) and 1 birchnut during Spring/Summer (green leaves). Birchnut trees do not drop birchnuts during Winter. Note: pigs can eat raw birchnuts off the ground and will not produce manure, wasting them.

In Winter, thermal stones can be kept fully heated constantly (these take around 10 minutes away from a fire to cool down and will make you glow in darkness for around 9 minutes) by placing them near magma pools in the tumbleweed desert. They can also be brought close to their max temperature by placing them near a scaled furnace, which you can build anywhere (you can also use the scaled furnace as a constant light source against the night monster during the night, and you can cook food on it at anytime; though it can also cause you to quickly overheat if you're too close to it). In Summer, thermal stones can be kept frozen constantly if they're placed inside of an ice box or Snow Chester (these take 5 minutes or so to warm up). If you make two stones for each person in the game (one to carry and one to keep hot/cold), you can each just swap between the two in order to instantly heat up or cool off once the one you're carrying is starting to cool off/heat up. This mostly makes freezing in Winter (if you're basing near the tumbleweed desert or have a scaled furnace) and overheating in Summer a non-issue, even without any special clothing items. Thermal stones also heat/cool faster on the ground than in your inventory/backpack. Put them on the ground by a fire to heat them up much more quickly (same for endo fires' cooling effect).

In DST, thermal stones lose durability whenever they go from heated/chilled back to standard grey. Preventing them from going back to grey can make them last longer. Damaged thermal stones can also be repaired using a sewing kit. One use will fully repair a thermal stone, and each sewing kit can be used 5 times.

Bundling wraps can be used to 'freeze' items as they were when they were placed inside. The most obvious use for this is to put large stacks of food items in them so that they don't spoil. However, there are also more advanced uses of bundling wraps that make them even more useful. The first of these uses is to mass collect light bulbs/glow berries and store them in a bundling wrap. This will allow you to save huge amounts of them indefinitely, meaning you won't have to keep returning to the caves to refuel your miner hats/lanterns/mushlights. A little-known but great use is to store fully heated/chilled thermal stones for Winter/Summer. Whilst in a wrap, thermal stones won't change heat levels nor will they heat/chill the player. With this you can carry 4 fully charged stones in a wrap in your inventory and carry another fully charged one on its own. Then whenever you need to, you can swap out your current one for a charged one before wrapping all of them up again. With this trick, freezing and overheating becomes super easy to prevent, even on long adventures out of the base. Another good trick is to carry empty bundling wraps in your inventory and use them to wrap up supplies you find on your adventures. Since every bundled supplies can hold 4 items at the cost of 1 inventory slot, this allows you to carry way more items. You can also use bundling wraps on other items that decay over time, such as a ham bat or an ice cube, in order to keep them from degrading when you're not using them. Live animals like birds, moleworms, butterflies, etc can also be stored in a bundling wrap to prevent them from decaying. Any meat items stored in a bundling wrap won't be sensed by bunnymen either, making it a safe way to carry things like meatballs, meaty stews, pierogis, jerky, etc whilst farming them.

Ice will never 'spoil' whilst in an ice box or Snow Chester, can stack up to 40, is easy to obtain in large amounts, respawns each Winter in the form of mini glaciers, and can be used as filler in any crock pot recipes. This makes stocking up on ice by mining mini glaciers during and around Winter time a great idea. One to two full stacks of ice in a freezer will last most DST groups through the entirety of Spring, Summer, and Autumn; and you can then stock up again when Winter comes. Mini glaciers will always respawn near pengull breeding sites; which are in the same locations each time. Thus, if you get some in/around your main base, you can mine them regularly for more ice. Ice can also be immediately used to reduce the player's temperature by 40 degrees for 7.5 seconds, used to extinguish fire and smoldering objects, used in a few unique crock pot recipes, used to make water balloons (can put out fires during Summer), and can be used to create the ice cube head item. The ice cube is very good at delaying overheating, albeit at the cost of it decaying after 4 days, making the player wet whilst wearing it (up to 50/100 wetness), and making the player move 10% slower whilst wearing it. Ice cubes placed in ice boxes or Snow Chester never 'spoil', like ice.

In Autumn, you can use Bearger to mass farm stones, gold, flint, nitre, etc by leading him through boulders. This also works for trees, but eventually the Tree Guards that spawn will catch up to Bearger and kill him. You can also get Bearger to destroy bee hives, killer bee hives, and spider dens by getting him to attack or ground pound next to them (all his attacks have AoE so he'll hit them). You can also use his groundpound to destroy large amounts of trees or material plants. With Bearger's AoE, you can also get him to fight clockwork enemies, tentacles, other bosses, etc; which can be used to defeat Bearger easily and gain loot. This also works with Deerclops during Winter, as he destroys trees that he walks through.

Hounds

One pig can generally kill 2 to 4+ lone hounds before dying itself, less if a bunch of them mob one pig. It takes 4 days for a pig to respawn after it dies. By day 100 on a default world, 12 hounds will come per attack, and they will attack every 3-4 days. Hound attacks can be cancelled by going into a cave sink hole during their barking phase (this also works for depth worms in the caves), but killing them can get you monster meat, hounds teeth, and gems; and thus you should try to fight each hound attack. You should have at least 30 pig houses built all around your base by this time so that the hound attacks are easily defeated without issue every time. While 30 is the minimum you should have by now, you and your team could easily have 80-100+ pig houses built in that amount of time if you were regularly and efficiently farming werepigs.

Deerclops

Deerclops on the other hand takes 122 pig hits to kill (twice as many as in regular Don't Starve), kills pigs in 2 hits, and has a massive area of effect with every attack that freezes mobs solid on hit (allowing him to kill pigs before they can unthaw); meaning that pigs' mobbing tendancy will actually result in more of them dying to him than if they came in a slow individual trickle. A very strong village of 100+ pigs will usually be able to handle deerclops on their own, with only some of the pig houses and structures at the outskirts of the village possibly being destroyed. Nonetheless, it's still annoying to have some of your base's valuable structures destroyed, and if deerclops attacks while your base isn't huge, you won't be able to ignore deerclops. Thus, you should either fight deerclops yourselves, or you can use a little trick I discovered to easily lure him away from the village: when you hear deerclops' deep breathing that signals his approach, simply get everyone in your group to run at least 6 screen lengths away from the nearest structure and then wait for him to show up. He'll always spawn 1 to 2 screen lengths from a player's current location, and thus will have no structures nearby to destroy. If a wormhole is near your base, having everyone use that when you hear deerclops coming should guarantee that you get sufficient distance from your base. Once he's away from your base, just simply have everyone run away until he loses interest in following everyone (Deerclops takes 20 seconds to de-aggro on his own, if he hasn't swung within that time), at which point you can all return to your base without having to worry about him destroying your structures or having to fight him (if you so choose). Though I personally like to come back later during the next day with several befriended pigs and some good weapons in order to finish him nice and quickly. Keep in mind that deerclops will remain in the area you previously left him in until Winter ends if you do not kill him. This can be bad if someone forgets about him and runs into him again, but it can also be advantageous if you can lead hostile mobs/bosses to him or vice versa. If he destroys the structures and despawns, he will return again before the end of Winter. If he is killed, he will take 6x longer to return, and thus won't spawn again during that Winter season if the server is on default settings. Fortunately Deerclops on RoG/DST doesn't destroy structures with his AoE attack if he's aggro'd on players/mobs, unlike the base game. Note: No giant in DST can attack within the first 29 days by default. Deerclops will be the first giant to spawn, and will first appear on the night of day 30 by default (rarely he can come up to a day later), going after whichever player is closest to the most structures.

In this section I'll provide you with some useful links of various kinds, as well as giving you a quick description of them.

Useful Informative Links

The Don't Starve community wiki. This wiki is updated regularly and has loads of info on every item, food, structure, enemy, boss, mechanic, etc that you could ever need. Find it here.[dontstarve.wikia.com]

The pig's page on the Don't Starve community wiki. This page has some extra info that you may find interesting. Find it here.[dontstarve.wikia.com]

The crock pot's page on the Don't Starve community wiki. This page has tons of useful info, with details on every single crock pot dish available in the game. Find it here.[dontstarve.wikia.com]

The set piece page on the Don't Starve community wiki. This page details every set piece in the game, including the dangerous trapped set pieces that you need to look out for. This was also linked to earlier in the guide, but it's worth reposting here. Find it here.[dontstarve.wikia.com]

A video showing you how to easily farm drops from werepigs whilst keeping them constantly distracted. The basic gist is that you seal a food item inside of a pen surrounded by walls so that the pigs/werepigs can't reach them directly (powdercakes are best for this as they practically never spoil). The pigs can't attack the walls as they need to eat the food first, and they will ignore everything else. Note: you don't actually need the set piece, nor do you need to rely on other mobs to kill them, you can go up and attack the werepigs yourself without worry about retaliation from them; the only issue is the strong insanity aura they emit. Note #2: Do not create this meat/pig skin farm inside of your village itself, or else your pigs will constantly try to reach the food, and won't help you in battles. Find it here.

A video showing you how to quickly set up a bunnyman farm easily. This efficient farming method can get you tons of carrots, meat, bunny puffs, and even beard hair (when you're nearly insane) with no risk to yourself and minimal material cost. Note: do not build the rabbit hutches close to your main base, as bunnymen will be automatically aggressive towards you if you have any food items that contain meat in your inventory (including crock pot recipes that use it, such as meatballs and meaty stews). Ham Bats are still fine, as it's technically not a food item. Find it here.

Don Giani's channel has lots of other useful DS guide videos too. Check them out here.

A video showing you a good early game base layout in DST, and which structures to prioritize first. Find it here.

A video showing you how to successfully kite several different minibosses and bosses without taking any damage. Find it here.

A video showing you how to kite almost every enemy in DST without taking damage. Find it here.

A video showing you a quick and effective cheese method for the Ancient Guardian. Only requires 4 wood, 6 cut grass, and a decent weapon (Ham Bat works best as it has unlimited durability). Works on any other bosses that can't destroy campfires/fire pits. Find it here.

A video showing off various interesting/useful tips and tricks. Notably it includes info on how to dodge enraged Dragonfly's attacks, a method to harvest beehives/boxes without aggroing any of the bees (requires some items that may be difficult to get early on), info on how to efficiently trap koalefants, volt goats, and beefalo without the latter breaking your walls, how to trap guardian pigs in order to generate unlimited free light around them (can be done with as few as 8 walls if you're tight on resources/want more space), the exact effect of ambient world temperature on food spoilage, and the ability for you to use big tentacles' origin points as wormholes in the caves. Find it here.

Joeschmo's channel has lots of other useful strategy/tips videos too. Check them out here.

A video guide telling you about DST character team synergies and anti-synergies. Find it here.

An explanation for Wolfgang's healing and damage taken mechanics as he gains and loses maximum health due to his hunger fluctuating. Explains that when played correctly, Wolfgang has 'secret' stats that essentially give him 33% less damage taken and 33% more health gained from healing items/food. This is essentially done by constantly remaining Mighty whilst in combat, and then letting yourself become as starved as possible before healing with healing items. In combination with all of his other buffs, this explains why he's such a highly-rated character. Find it here.

Useful Workshop Mod Links

Note: None of these Workshop mods change base gameplay, all of them simply give you more detailed information in-game.

My DST Mods Collection. A Workshop mods collection that includes most of the mods listed below, as well as some other minor ones. You can use it to subscribe to all of my mods with one button click. Find it here.

Geometric Placement. Allows you to create a geometric grid that your mouse snaps to segments of, enabling you to place things with perfect spacing. Find it here.

Craft Pot. Shows you suggestions about food items that you can make with the crock pot depending on what item(s) you already have in it, as well as what ingredient(s) you're missing for each possible recipe. Also enables you to see exactly what you're going to create in the crock pot with whatever full recipe you currently have added to it. Find it here.

Display Food Values. Simply displays information about food items when you mouse over them, such as the spoilage time and the hunger, health, and sanity that they'll give you upon consumption. Compatible with the SmartCrockPot mod as well. Find it here.

Show Me. Shows you detailed info on a huge number of things when you mouse over them. Includes thing like the hunger, health, and sanity stats returned from all foods, spoilage time of all foods, crock pot cooking time and food type, farm plot food type (whilst it's still growing), plant regrow time, number of uses left on a Tent/Siesta Lean-to, damage values for weapons, durability values for all items with durability (even if they're on the ground), follower loyalty time, bundling wrap contents and spoilage time, etc). Find it here.

Health Info. Shows you the current and maximum health of mobs when you mouse over them.
Find it here.

Damage Indicators. Shows damage numbers whenever you or a mob takes damage.
Find it here.

Combined Status. This Workshop mod is extremely helpful. It adds more information about your character and the world itself to your HUD, and is always visible. Find it here.

Minimap HUD Customizable. Just like the original 'Minimap HUD' mod, it adds a minimap to your HUD. This minimap mod has more features however, such as the ability for you to change the dimensions of the minimap itself and the ability for you to move the minimap to different parts of the screen. Find it here.

Extended Map Icons. Adds additional icons to your map (even more than the original Where's My Beefalo? mod). Compatible with the HUD Minimap MZ mod as well. Find it here.

Finder. Highlights chest/storage containers if you are currently holding an item that there is one or more of within the chest/container, or if you're hovering over a required item in a crafting recipe within the crafting menu and the chest/container has one or more of that item. Find it here.

Auto-Unequip on 1%. Client-side mod that automatically unequips reparable items that break when they reach 0% durability (IE Magiluminescence, Eyebrellas, Puffy Vests, etc. Find it here.

DST Equipment Switcher. Client-side mod that makes it so items that you equip with right click will swap positions with any item that you were holding/wearing, rather than putting the item you're unequipping into the first available inventory/chest slot. This is especially good if you use inventory hotkeys to swap between items, as it means items will always be placed in the slot you equipped a new item from. Find it here.

Wormhole Marks. Simply assigns a persistent colour to the map icon for each pair of wormholes that you've travelled through, allowing you to see where each one will lead to. Find it here.

50 Saveslots. Increases your max number of world save slots from 5 to 50. Find it here.

Global Positions. Allows you to see the map icons of other players in your game no matter how far they are, and it extends the off-sceen player pointer range indefinitely (doesn't work if the player opts out of the tracking via a button on the scoreboard). Find it here.

Global Pause. Allows players to pause the game using a pre-defined hotkey (though only the server host can unpause once it's paused). Very useful for when someone needs to be AFK briefly. Find it here.

Quick Drop - Client Version. Allows you to quickly drop any item stack by holding Ctrl and right clicking. Holding Shift and Ctrl whilst right clicking allows you to drop 1 item from a stack. With this mod, you can also perfectly put multiple item stacks on top of one another as long as you don't move whilst dropping them, which is great for organizing massive amounts of items on the ground. Find it here.

Show Bundle. Shows you the contents of a Bundled Supply package as if it was in your inventory or a container (including the spoilage time) upon mousing over it. Find it here.

Moving Box. Adds an item to the Tools section that allows you to pack up most craftable structures and move them somewhere else (including filled chests and all their contents). Requires a Science Machine to prototype and 3 papyrus + 1 silk to create. When carrying an item your character is incredibly slow and cannot use any hand slot items, making it very balanced and only useful for rearranging things near your base. Structures can only be placed in areas where there's sufficient space for them. Find it here.

Gesture Wheel. Allows you to instantly use gestures by pressing and holding a button and selecting it from a scroll wheel.
Find it here.

Hopefully you found this guide useful! If I made any mistakes in this guide, or if you just want to tell me something, feel free to do so in the comments. If you enjoyed the guide and want to show your support, leave a rating and a favourite. If you want to check out other guides, workshop items, etc by me then check out my official Steam group here: \/\/ar Hawks