Don't Starve

[Quinton]

I seem to be very bad at capturing birds with traps.  I can bait traps with carrots and capture rabbits pretty easily, but the birds fly down, eat my seeds or berries and fly away without triggering the trap.  Help!

I need to get in the habit of putting critical items in known inventory slots so when a horde of spiders or whatnot attacks I can find my spear more efficiently...

[Lakov_Sanite]

Are you sure you are baiting the trap and not just dropping the seeds near it?(there's a specific option for bait) I've never had a bird land and NOT trigger a trap.

I like to think it's a fun game but right now there's just not much going on with it for me, need more content to keep it from feeling repetitive, more things to build etc.

[Quinton]

Yup, I click the bait item, the click on the trap (when the word "BAIT" appears).   The Red Birds will fly into the trap, eat the seeds or berries, and fly away.  Infuriating!

Rabbits, on the other hand, are lured by the delicious carrots and effectively captured.

[Lakov_Sanite]

That has to be a bug or something, I don't even have to bait traps sometimes to get birds there. Also monster meat makes great bait, since it's not useful as food and I prefer to save delicious seeds for myself.

Is there a way to clear out spider nests after they've gotten big? I can kind of do it by kiting the huge pack they spawn but it takes forever.

[Sky]

Take them slow, the spiders spawn in waves. I've had no problem clearing them with the basic spear and bark armor and no trickery.

[Ceryse]

I just plant a small forest around the spider nest and watch it all burn.

[Ingmar]

You don't really need to bait your rabbit traps - just put them over the rabbit holes and they'll catch rabbits.

[Soln]

Yup burn the spider nests and then collect the charcoal after by harvesting the dead trees.

With birds and spiders you just need to be far enough away from my experience.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Take them slow, the spiders spawn in waves. I've had no problem clearing them with the basic spear and bark armor and no trickery.

I've noticed they only seem to spawn at dusk, is that right? Usually I just ran up and hit the nest which spawns them all.

[Sky]

collect the charcoal after by harvesting the dead trees.

Ah, wondered how to get charcoal...makes sense in hindsight.

Lakov, hit the nest once (in daylight) and it spawns maybe four or five. Kill them, hit it again and it spawns a few more. Repeat until it stops spawning spiders, then you can thwap it to death and collect webs.

Birds: yes, you have to be a distance from the traps. I've had no problem, I ring my little home base with traps and don't bother baiting them and get tons of birds.

[Quinton]

collect the charcoal after by harvesting the dead trees.

Ah, wondered how to get charcoal...makes sense in hindsight.

This was entertaining to discover by accident - built a fire too close to some trees, fed the fire once or twice, FWHOOOM the world is ablaze, but afterwards, charcoal!

[Sky]

Btw, the patch seems to have nerfed/fixed catching birds in regular traps. Looks like spider hunting just went way up on the early game checklist. Also looks like fuel value took a slight hit, 3 logs vs 2 for a night.

Not sure what day I'm on. I've got a bunch of farms set up, 1 basic, 2 level 2 and 1 level 3. Kill three beefalo (meant to kill one, but BAF code said otherwise..and spear+bark armor is sufficient), so I got some meat finally. Made some stew (3 meat in crockpot) which is almost a full stomach but doesn't stack.

Been playing around with light sources, torches burn out way to fast. Next up is the pumpkin lantern and miner's helmet I just made.

[Quinton]

Oh, are there different traps for birds?  I thought there was only one kind!

EDIT: Aha, found it.  On my current game I ended up with a huge beefalo herd nearby as well as a pigman village.  With a spear and a logsuit it's not too hard to separate one or two beefalo from the herd and obtain a lot of meat to cook, so I've been leaning on that for food.  Need to go after spiders more (scary) and get materials I need to try my hand at beekeeping.

[Quinton]

Some fun posts from one of the developers about peoples' reaction to the Krampus, and some of his thinking about the game design (especially around encouraging players to not just do the same thing over and over):

http://forums.kleientertainment.com/showthread.php?4445-Krampus&p=33198&viewfull=1#post33198

http://forums.kleientertainment.com/showthread.php?4445-Krampus&p=33403&viewfull=1#post33403

Definitely feels like they're aiming toward a roguelike in the sense of "player needs to adapt to the random world and situations that turn up" using the tools available.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I really dislike how adversarial all the designer talks have sounded.  Making a hard game is fine but it still needs to be fun.

[Ceryse]

My problem with the designer take on player actions is they seem to be going for direct reactions to player action in the game. I'd rather see something along the lines of introducing more predators that interact with the environment. For example, slow down the bunny respawn rate and introduce a predator of some sort that will hunt rabbits, thus forcing the player to either deal with the predators to secure the rabbit population for his own self (thus perhaps causing a population explosion that results in your gardens and such being decimated by rabbits if you can't stop them) or to diversify your food sources. Hell, make the spiders kill birds/insects/rabbits, even. Throw in a wolf/thing kind of predator to harass beefalo stragglers and pigmen.

I haven't had a single incident with the whole naughty or nice mechanic because I've never seen the need to trap birds or rabbits (or to kill pigmen/beefalo). Between berries, carrots, monster meat (throw four into a crock pot, or some and some vegetables and its perfectly edible with no drawbacks) and the odd bit of meat I pick up here and there... If I need something from a pigman, I just feed it monster meat, turn it evil and then kill it, which is the exact same play style before they patched in naughty or nice except I no longer use my axe/spear to kill a few rabbits here and there. Traps just never seemed worth it for me.

Any direct threat I have a simple solution for; kite/kill or lure into the herd of beefalo and then wait.

In my current game I'm on Day 20 and the only thing I don't have tons of stored is rocks because its a two day hike to get to where the rocks are on the map. I have a small, nine bush farm of berries, none of the farms (no need), am within spitting distance of the beefalo herd for physical protection and the group of seven spider nests in the nearby graveyard (the one possible threat) was a simple solution of planting around thirty trees, cutting firebreaks between them and the forest as a whole and setting it on fire; 40ish silk and three stacks of monster meat for my trouble and a small forest of burnt trees to chop at my leisure for charcoal. Only time I came close to death was when I was exploring to find rocks in days 3-6 and had my first encounter with swamps and tentacles.

[MournelitheCalix]

Been playing this game and legends of Grimrock.  Right now I am at day 48 and haven't had a close call since day 20 ish.  Right now I pretty much go out to chop trees down and collect seeds.  That is pretty much it.

My Strategy


The one aspect of this game that sticks out so far is that this game is too easy after 20 ish days.  I really wish there was more hound type encounters with nastier creatures.  I find myself simply wondering how I beat this thing, or should I die repeatedly simply to end this game and try again on a newly generated world.  I am sitting pretty with multiple meat effigy's and wondering what should I do next because honestly the game has gotten a bit boring at this stage.  Great concept though and I know its just beta but I love the whole tim burton esq art work and the initial challenge at least of simply surviving.  I highly recommend this game.

[Sky]

Ah, shit. Day 24 and got too brave with some beefalo. RIP, Wilson 2.

[CmdrSlack]

I am starting to realize that I do not need to wait to build a science machine. I have spent the past 8 days of my current game trying to find a spot with beefaloes. Pigmen? Two camps. Swamp island with tentacles. Check. Rock island with loads of gold everywhere? Check.

After all of the waiting and searching for a perfect base camp, I finally decided to just set up shop on an island and start feeding crap into the science machine. Holy shit. Now I just need grass so that I can make rope to build a log suit.

I may be finally getting the hang of this game.

[Sky]

Yeah, getting a spear and armor is pretty critical.

[CmdrSlack]

I was very hesitant to "commit" to a science machine because you can't move it. Given the drop rate of gold nuggets, I am no longer very worried.

[Soln]

I was very hesitant to "commit" to a science machine because you can't move it. Given the drop rate of gold nuggets, I am no longer very worried.

make a hammer and smash it up.  You'll get your nugget back and more.

[Dark_MadMax]

Just bought this today after some random youtube vid. This game is amazing! - really cool surv sandbox with great style.  My best so far is day 16 after like dozen starts and every time I die in new and creative ways :)

[Severian]

I picked it up for the full, still low, price a couple weeks ago after being steadily entertained by Sips' YouTube series (a Yogscast guy).
So now I'm at 60 hours played and my longest run was 202 days.
But that's really not the best way to play, the best experience is to go in blind.

[DeathInABottle]

Agreed!  Half the pleasure of Sips' series is seeing him experience stuff for the first time.  I'm really looking forward to Deerclops FINALLY descending on his camp.

[satael]

New update 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puYKfd1dodQ

[Soln]

Looks good but I got tired when I couldn't build anything permanent like a hut/shack.  The tents are temporary and all the survival feels grindy after awhile because you're not surviving for anything (any goal).  I'll check it out though.

[Xanthippe]

/necro

Don't Starve Together is out.

From the Steam entry:

Don't Starve Together is a standalone multiplayer expansion of the uncompromising survival game Don't Starve. NOTE: Players who currently own Don't Starve on Steam will get Don't Starve Together for free on June 3.

[Malakili]

This is actually a fun little game, I bought it with some steam credit I had during the last winter sale.  If you like survival games it is worth checking out, and with the multiplayer version coming, I could see having some good times with it.

[Xanthippe]

More info from Steam news page on it

The main packages available on June 3rd will be the following:
Don’t Starve will continue to be $14.99
Don’t Starve Together will be $14.99, and include an extra giftable copy of Don’t Starve Together for your friend
Don’t Starve + Don’t Starve Together + a giftable copy of Don’t Starve Together will be $19.99

[Xanthippe]

And..... Don't Starve is on sale right now for $5.00.


Edited to add: This might only be for people who currently own Don't Starve? It's the Frontier pack, which is Don't Starve and Don't Starve Together.