Crimson Channel

DST Recap

03/03/21

In general I am resistant to playing new video games and watching new shows because I know the effect they can have on me. Like many others of my generation (?), I have poor self-control and am prone to letting games and media take over my life. If not for my abstinence, I would probably be grinding League of Legends or watching anime at every free moment of my existence.

The past month and a half has only driven that point home. In January I made the big mistake of (1) installing Steam on my desktop and (2) accepting a friend’s invitation to play a game called Don’t Starve Together (DST).¹ Based on what I’ve written so far, I’m sure you can guess the rest.

Don’t Starve Together is a sandbox survival game. It drops you (and optionally your friends) into a wilderness where your goal is firstly to stay alive and secondly to do whatever the hell you want. There are resources to collect, structures to build, creatures to interact with, and bosses to fight. Undoubtedly it’s one of the fullest and most polished-feeling games I’ve ever played.²

Note that it is a survival game, and in the beginning you’ll spend a lot of time running into new challenges, dying, and losing everything. At least my friends and I did. But eventually (and in my case, after reading countless wiki pages, watching expert playthroughs, and setting up an offline server to practice combat) survival becomes secondary to doing whatever the hell you want.

So after a number of horrible tragedies, I ended up starting a server that has now lasted for 1600 [in-game] days and counting. For context, each in-game day is eight minutes in real time. There was a time when I saw day counts of 3000+ on YouTube and thought I could never play for that long. But suddenly I have no trouble seeing myself going on for 3000, 4000, or 5000+ days. DST for me has been an endless series of shifting goalposts: I’ll stop after I defeat the Ancient Fuelweaver; I’ll stop after I’ve soloed every boss; I’ll stop after I’ve penned every feasible animal… There’s hardly any struggle anymore and all of my friends have long since quit. Why am I still playing this game?

That’s the question I ask myself every day right before I boot up my computer, open DST, and find a new grindy project to work on. Am I choosing this fantasy world over real life? Rationally I should be done. It should be over. There is nothing really to do anymore. One day I will no longer play DST, and I am not convinced that on that day I could look back and be proud that I spent so many hours picking up rocks in a virtual forest instead of running, writing, or working on my annual fluid simulation project. I can only really focus on one thing at a time, and DST seems to be occupying that slot for 90% of my waking hours (and 50% of my sleeping ones too³). I reflexively type “dst” at the end of every Google search now.

Most importantly, my fellow DSTers have all lost interest, and the social aspect was ultimately what made it meaningful for me (especially in this time of quarantine). I had the most fun when I was struggling with my friends to survive our first Deerclops, or when frog rain, hounds, killer bees, and our comms were making chaos of our base. What’s the point of developing my world if I’ll have no one to share it with? I’m not a streamer or a YouTuber.

The two things I’ve realized: I need to stop playing (by myself), and I want to share my experiences. That’s why I’m writing this post – to cap off my DST episode slash produce something out of it.⁴ I can talk about what I did with my world and record a few notes for posterity.

And I’ll stop after I’ve finished this DST post…

Acknowledgments

As mentioned, I have not been the sole contributor to my DST world (I should probably be calling it our DST world⁵). Thanks to Tony (who got me into the game and played many hundreds of days in said world) as well as Henry, William, and Tonya for helping out in quite a few regards.

Also, I should credit the wiki, Klei forums, Reddit, and numerous content creators (in particular Helicalpuma) for helping me learn how to survive and flourish. I am the least creative DST player and all of my cool farms and setups come from online guides. I’ll try to link those sources as I go.

World Tour

Look at me with all these thank-yous, as if I’m accepting some award for world-building. Perhaps I’ve built up an idea in your mind that my DST world is an aesthetic masterpiece. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m writing this post out of misplaced vanity and my base is utterly uninspired next to the skinned, turfed bases of showcase threads and Twitch streams.⁶

Final dissociative note: I used a lot of mods,⁷ but not Geometric Placement, so my alignments are a little scuffed. Hopefully that adds authenticity. I didn’t originally plan to post a DST recap.

Without further ado, here are some of the highlights of my DST world.

Main Base

This is where it all began.

Featuring a sculpture garden, a chest area, a cooking area, a seating area, a Tooth Trap field, a Bee farm, two Volt Goat farms, a Pig farm, a Grass Gekko farm, a Beefalo farm, a Moleworm farm, a Lureplant farm, a Bunnyman/Spider farm, a feather farm, and Bulbous Lightbugs everywhere.

Main area of our main base. Our very first Fire Pit was the one under the Alchemy Engine.

Volt Goats, Pigs, and Beefalo. I use Anenemies to autofarm the upper Volt Goat herd and the Houndius Shootius to help me farm the lower Volt Goat herd.⁸ There’s a bait pen in the middle of the 36 Pig Houses, which is what those Pigs are crowded around.

Grass Gekko farm. There are 15 Gekkos in there.

Tooth Trap field and Moleworm farm. I always carry a Telelocator Staff on me so that in a pinch (e.g. upcoming hound attack) I can teleport myself here. Also, there are a bunch of Mosquitoes, Batilisks, and Tentacles that like to show up in the top-left area at dusk and fight each other. Every once in a while I go through and collect the Mosquito Sacks to use for Water Balloons.

Spider farm. Batilisks also come up from the sinkhole below the pen and die to the Bunnymen.

Feather farm. I have to switch to Wickerbottom via the Celestial Portal in order to use it.

Adjunct Farm

Featuring a produce farm and a Bunnyman/Bee Queen/Batilisk farm.

Produce farm. The chests in the middle contain wrapped crops and seeds of every variety except for Pomegranates, which I never found (I stopped planting random seeds shortly after I got Dragon Fruit). I also put Beefalo in the vicinity (they’re to the northwest, just out of view) in order to farm their horns for tending. This whole area is a boat hop away from the main base.

40 Rabbit Hutches + Bee Queen. There’s also a sinkhole right above the hutches, which is nice for automatic guano farming. The produce farm, directly to the right of this area, was helpful for creating all of these hutches (by providing the Carrots that the RWYS Bunnyman nerf took away).

Zoo Areas

Featuring Tallbirds, Koalefants, Winter Koalefants, Beefalo/Butterflies, MacTusk/Bunnymen,⁹ Saladmanders, Carrats, Rabbits, Gobblers, Ewecuses, Slurpers, No-Eyed Deer, Catcoons, Krampii, Bulbous Lightbugs, a Varg, and a marooned Bearger.

Tallbirds, Beefalo, and a Winter Koalefant. There are flowers in the Beefalo enclosure so that the Beefalo can farm Butterflies when they’re in heat. Re: Tallbirds, I raised the left two from eggs and captured the right one from a nearby nest. Unfortunately, the right one keeps spawning, killing, and (most importantly) losing health to Smallish Tallbirds. One of these days it will be slain by its child.

MacTusk enclosures. A few in-game years ago, one of these MacTusks started shooting at my Winter Koalefant. I responded by penning the MacTusks in with some Bunnymen.

Nonthreatening animals. I promise that those are all Carrats and not Carrots. :)

Koalefants and Slurpers. There’s one Slurper in each of the six pens on the right.

Ewecus, Catcoon, and Krampus area. I telelocated all of these guys here. There are three layers of walls around the Ewecuses because they were able to mucus me through one, and then they were able to mucus me through two. The Catcoon pen also serves as a small Butterfly farm, although I rarely bother to teleport in and grab anything. I should probably remove the Telelocator Foci and fill the remaining gaps in the Krampus pens, just in case they’re able to pick up seeds and disappear, but worst case I can always abduct more of Klaus’s friends.

Varg pen. I’ve never actually gone close enough to draw this one’s aggro.

My good friends Pearl and Bearger.¹⁰

Oasis Desert Base

Featuring a Tooth Trap field, a Spiky Bush farm, a produce farm, a Bee farm, a Lureplant farm, a Marble Shrub farm, a Koalefant pen, and a loose Volt Goat herd from a spring rain hunt.

Oasis summer base. To the west, there’s a Lureplant farm (for Leafy Meat), a Koalefant pen (for manure and luck), two Bull Kelp plants, and a Marble Shrub farm. The Tooth Trap field is to the north and the Volt Goats are to the east. And of course there are cacti everywhere.

Caves Base

Featuring a Bee farm, a Pig farm, and a Beefalo herd.¹¹

I used Napsacks and Deconstruction Staves to duplicate Shroom Skin for the Glowcaps. The Ruins are a thin chasm to the right of this area; you can telepoof for a shortcut (although I rarely do).

Ruins Base

Featuring a Pig farm and a Beefalo herd.

You can telepoof to the end of the Atrium path from a spot just a little north of this. To the southwest there are Cave Banana Trees, Cave Lichen, and Ponds.