Don't Starve Together

You are dropped into a hand-drawn, deeply unpleasant wilderness with nothing, at the start of autumn, and the game says nothing else. Within twenty in-game days it will be winter, and if you have not prepared, winter will kill you.

It is a survival game built like a roguelike: knowledge is the real progression. Your first ten worlds teach you what berries do, why you are going insane, and what happens if you are standing in the dark. Your eleventh world you survive comfortably, because you know, not because your character is stronger.

• Three stats: Health, Hunger and Sanity. Sanity is the interesting one, because low sanity spawns things that are actually there.
• Darkness kills. Not "is dangerous", kills. A light source at night is non-negotiable.
• Seasons rotate: autumn, winter, spring, summer, each with its own way of ruining your base.
• Characters are real build choices with different stats, perks and drawbacks.

1. 1

   Gather constantly while you walk

   Grass, twigs, flint, berries, carrots. You need absurd amounts of the first three and they are everywhere in autumn.

2. 2

   Make an axe, a pickaxe and a science machine

   The science machine unlocks the real recipe list. Build it near resources, not where you happened to be standing.

3. 3

   Always have a fire before dusk

   A campfire or a torch. Charlie takes anyone standing in full darkness and there is no counterplay.

4. 4

   Eat before you are starving, and cook first

   A crock pot turns four ingredients into real meals. Meatballs will carry you through the entire early game.

5. 5

   Watch your sanity

   Picking flowers, sleeping and eating cooked food raise it. Darkness, monsters and rain lower it. At low sanity, shadow creatures attack you.

6. 6

   Prepare for winter from day one

   Warm clothes, a thermal stone, a stockpile of food, and a fire pit at base. Winter arrives on a schedule and does not negotiate.

• Health: healed by food, healing salves and sleep. Damage comes from monsters, cold, heat and starvation.
• Hunger: constant drain, worse when you sprint or fight. Farms, crock pots and drying racks are the fix.
• Sanity: the game's signature. Low sanity means shadow monsters, and killing them drops nightmare fuel you actually need. Managing sanity DOWNWARD is sometimes correct.
• Autumn is the grace period. Winter is cold and dark and food is scarce. Spring is endless rain and angry bees. Summer sets your base on fire.
• Caves are a whole second world underground, with their own biomes, dangers and ruins.

Each character is a different game. They have their own stat spread, an exclusive perk, and usually a real drawback, and a team benefits from spreading across them.

• Wilson, the default, is a fair all-rounder and the right first pick.
• Wolfgang hits like a truck when well fed and is useless when hungry.
• Wickerbottom does not sleep, has extra science, and writes books that change the world.
• Willow, Wendy, WX-78, Woodie and the rest each reshape the survival maths in some direction.
• On a server, complementary characters cover each other's gaps. That is the intended team design.

The world is called the Constant, and it is a trap. Maxwell put you here. Behind him is something older and worse, and the whole cast is caught in a machine that needs someone sitting on a throne to keep running.

• The story is told across updates as animated shorts, in-world puzzles and ruins full of ancient technology.
• The Ancients built the ruins underground and something happened to them that the shadow creatures are the residue of.
• Charlie, the thing in the dark, is a character with a name and a history, not a mechanic.
• It is genuinely one of the best told stories in the genre, and almost none of it is in the game's tutorial.

• Up to six on a server, and it is a different, kinder game with friends.
• Split roles: a fighter, a builder, a cook, a farmer. Character choice supports that directly.
• Reviving is possible with effigies, touchstones and telltale hearts, so a death is not the end of a shared world.
• Public servers exist and are chaotic. A private server with people you know is the good version.

• Never be caught out at night without a torch.
• Carry a thermal stone from winter onward.
• Do not fight anything you have not watched something else fight first.
• Keep grass, twigs and logs stockpiled at base. They are the currency of everything.
• Learn the season lengths and count days. The calendar is the real boss.
• Read the wiki. This game genuinely expects external knowledge and nobody plays it blind past the first month.

• The official site and Klei's update notes.
• The community wiki for crock pot recipes, season lengths and character perks.
• The animated shorts on Klei's channel, which carry most of the story.
• Ask in our Discord. This is a game where one experienced player makes a group's first winter survivable.