My best (out of many horrible attempts) was the mid 20's. I can't remember the exact day.

I wasn't ready for winter to say the least. My farms died and shortly after I ran out of food. When I finally created a portable heat source so I could go look for food, I starved.

I've stopped asking how long I'll survive and now just wonder how soon I will die. :-)

I find that provided I survive the first winter, I can typically go on for ever. The hounds keep escalating but I think they peak on day 75, and Deerclops doesn't seem to show up as much as he used to (at least not on the default settings).

Currently playing their new preset mode, which gives you a bunch of supplies at the start in some chests. The catch is, it starts with less rabbits, less carrots, less berries, and more spiders. A LOT more spiders. So many that I ended up having about 5 spider hats in one of my bases until one of those stupid lureplants spawned and ate them all! By the time I got back it digested practically everything I had in my base. Luckily my farms were further away so they were untouched, but it did scab some meat from my drying racks.

Those fire hounds can be nasty - they spew some flammable substance when they die. I once thought I had a nice base with tooth traps, thought wooden walls would be fine. During winter, they were all good, survived all the hound attacks no sweat. Summertime - the first fire hound that dies, ignites my walls pretty much instantly, and I'm left standing in this square of fire while hounds are coming at me! Luckily they all get killed just before the fire dies out (by the tooth traps and the fire as well), but then I have a square of ash where my walls once were. Managed to just finish building a stone wall before the next attack...

Since then, I only use wood for walls if there's not enough stone, and then only on < half of the wall, or for base extensions where there are no entrances nearby, so I don't have to rebuild them every few days in summer.

I know it's off-topic here, but related to this, I've found that the sliders for world generation do need some tuning - More basically means it litters the map with the given thing.
I made a world with more berries, less tentacles and more reeds but with less touchstones, boons and more spiders, and spiders were EVERYWHERE, from the savannah to the woods and the marsh while reed grew on every territory.
Now I'm in a game with beefalos set to more and they roam just about everywhere (good for manure but not so good when they're in heat)...

At first I didn't realise there were different types of hounds, but after dying around day 30 a few times I started reading the wiki. Easily made it to day 80 after that. Then I discovered there was no Pig King and finished the map.

I thought the next world would be a piece of cake with the headstart of knowing a lot of the recipes and an inventory full of goodies. Wrong! The hounds consistently started chasing me when I was miles away from my base, and always at the very beginning of the night. They also managed to destroy two entire herds of beefalo somehow and now there's none left on the map. I'm still alive on day 60 but have wasted three lives already.

Still think this game can be very cruel :P

Oh yeah I agree it can be cruel - I finally found a door to enter adventure mode in one of my games. I went in, thinking how hard could it be? Sure, you lose all your recipes and items, but surely it's just a more structured survival? Well the survival mode I entered it from I lasted 400+ days (yeah I'm slow at exploring), but in adventure mode - well the first level was basically LOTS of tiny islands connected by MASSIVE marshlands with hardly any trees, no rocks where I started, lots of spiders... Well I died a short while into winter, while doing the "run round the campfire in circles in winter hoping it doesn't go out and the 5 dogs and the tentacles don't get you". They got me...

BTW when you go through the teleportato to another world, is the hound spawn rate reset (like on day 0 of world 1), or is it as high as it was when you left off? I've never actually bothered to go to another world (although I usually find all the things), but imagine it would be a fair bit harder if the hounds attacked at the crazy rate (and with hardly any warning) at the start of a world like they do on day 75+...

Oh and BTW in practically every game I've died multiple times, it's just that I always try to craft a talisman and an effigy pretty soon (since I almost always forget to actually WEAR the talisman - often I don't notice my armor is gone until my health suddenly drops). Once I get "re-born" I make sure I build more, plus I usually take the opportunity of the low starting sanity to waste some shadow creatures. Practically every time I get "re-born" at a touchstone it's the middle of winter, and it's the middle of nowhere, so that usually results in a second death just before I arrive at my base (assuming I don't get wiped out by spiders/nightmares first).

So yeah, cruel and/or time-consuming, as I probably build far too much crap (and then tend to it too often) instead of exploring further. I think I've gotten paranoid as whenever I'm far from a base, near the end of dusk, that's when I get attacked by hounds or I stumble into a horde of spider dens that all decide to hatch queens, so now I like to be near Beefaloes or a decent base as much as possible. I think the game has "trained me" (ie messed with my head) to be excessively careful... :)

ahahaha, yes I know the winter fire dance very well too...

I think the hounds do get reset. Did notice that the first hounds [in the second world were fairly weak but the next group seemed to annihilate a group of beefalo. Might have just been coincidence though.

Made it to day 27 and then died due to starvation during the winter: my farms shut down and the bushes weren't fulling up quickly enough plus my sanity was free falling causing me to sleep a lot and eat more than normal.

Realized too late that you could store rabbits in chest indefinitely.

Will explore that avenue for the next game, but how long is the winter? Will 10 chests full of rabbits be enough?

I typically keep farming rabbits during winter, since they are one of the few food items that don't go away when winter hits. So I reckon while keeping a chest full of them is a good idea, don't expect that chest to last the whole winter - keep farming them!

BTW a few patches ago they changed the berry bushes, grass tufts and saplings - these will now not replenish during winter, at all.

By default, winter is 15 days, while summer is 20 days. Try to use the crockpot to make foods that are long lasting (bacon and eggs, perogies are amongst the longest-lasting in the game, and bacon and eggs give one of the highest hunger boosts).

Also I'd recommend using a number of drying racks - I've survived well with 3, but 4 to 6 is decent. That way the meat will last longer, and more importantly also give a not-exactly-insignificant sanity boost (which could help a lot with your sanity loss issues).

Also, try to farm some spiders before and/or during winter. The silk can be used to craft a top hat, which is good for keeping insanity at bay, and also the breezy/puffy vest - these increase sanity but also offer insulation.

If you have beefaloes near you (I always try to, but on some maps they're hard to find), you can make a beefalohat (need to kill one and get the horn, 30% chance to get the horn I think), or even just a winter hat (not as warm as the beefalohat but small sanity boost instead). You can of course shave beefaloes with the razor for their wool, so you don't have to kill them unless you want the horn and/or meat (I think you get 4 big chunks each time). The beefalohat doesn't even need silk, but the winter hat needs a small amount.

There are other options for food, like fishing and frog catching, but they're only viable in the summer - but could be worth doing if you happen to be near ponds, to prepare. Fish make some decent crockpot meals, but they spoil pretty easily.

Ideally you should have an icebox, but that requires gears, and in most games I've played I don't find any gears until I've survived multiple winters. If you do happen to find gears (from graves, or from chess pieces), then definitely look to craft at least one of these ASAP, as they reduce food spoilage by 50%.

Hope that helps a bit. And watch our for Deerclops near the end of winter - unless you're lucky and he decides to give you a miss that winter!

Actually, I was considering 10 chests full of rabbits :P.

Shortage of carrots or berries become a problem though. You need some sort of bait to catch a rabbit...

I tend to lack the charcoal. Do you get it by burning a log?

Interesting, thanks for that tip.

When you say farm spiders, you mean that they can be captured and made to work for you or do you mean hunting them?

Clever. I didn't know you can shave them.


I prefer not to rely too much on luck, unless we are talking about very high probabilities :P.

That helped a lot, thanks!

-Storing rabbits might be a good idea, but be aware that if you kill too many of them fast, you might get an annoying, all-stealing visitor. (For details/spoilers, look here.)
-You don't need to actually put the bait INTO the trap - just place the trap between a rabbit and a berry/carrot positioned some distance away, it will lure them there.
-If you can find enough berries/mushrooms/carrots/whatever, you can cook meatballs from one meat - 1 meat item + 3 anything = meatballs, which replenish around 63 hunger. Even monster meat can be the meat in this (just make sure there's only one monster meat in the pot), which makes hunting for spiders useful also in this regard.
-No, you cannot tame spiders - farming means hunting them.
-You get charcoal by burning a tree (what I tend to do is plant a few trees tightly together in a safe spot specifically to burn them later).
-For winter heat, I really recommend using a heat stone (available on the Survival tab if you have an Alchemy Machine).
-And one tip of my own: If you can find some Lureplants (the purple ones surrounded by eyes), you should plant them some safe distance away from your camp - they produce a leafy meat every few days even during winter (you'll have to whack some eyes to harvest it, though).

OK looks like Dristvaan has answered most of the points I was going to make, RE spiders and the trap baiting.

From memory I THINK the meatballs isn't quite "anything" as I'm pretty sure you can't use sticks (some recipes can be made with one of something + three sticks, which saves a LOT of food!). You can check the wiki that Dristvaan provided, they have a really detailed section on the crockpot, which could save you lots of messing around when food is in short supply.

With the traps, I tend to place the trap almost on top of the rabbit hole and then walk away to do other stuff - then at some point (typically within 1 game day) you'll get a rabbit with no bait and no effort! Sometimes I've captured a rabbit, replaced the trap, walked a short distance and it caught another one seconds later! That way you don't need bait at all (no need to place it on the ground), and you can do other stuff while the trap does it's work. You have to get the trap as close as possible to the hole though - start by aiming at it, then slowly move the mouse up until you're able to place it.

Course, you can always boomerang 'em if you've managed to get an Alchemy engine and the components. Not as convenient, but can be useful if you're in a bind and need meat quick. You can also boomerang birds, or just use the bird trap and then kill them. Note that if you kill the bird with the boomerang or in your inventory, you may get a feather instead of meat (which is still useful for crafting pipe darts) - but if you definitely need meat, just stick the captured bird over the firepit to instantly turn it into a cooked morsel, guaranteed.

Note that the "all-stealing visitor" may appear much sooner if you kill birds though, as they're worth more "naughty points" than rabbits. Having said that, I've never actually had him appear, although I think I've had the "warning noise".

The lureplant thing is a good idea, especially if you're low on other meat - or even if you happen to have a lureplant and feel like having one nearby. They're actually even more useful than that: anything it kills it will eat, and until it's digested it can be retrieved (along with the plant meat) when killed. So they can be used to farm spiders, frogs, etc. They can even soften up a spider queen and in some cases even kill one - or at the least help with the spiders. Naturally the plant needs to be there ahead of the queen arriving, since it takes a few days for the eyeplants to grow.

The only thing they're not that good at is hounds since in winter the lureplant no longer spawns eyeplants (AFAIK they changed this recently), and in summer the firehounds will ignite and burn the whole thing down (which can be fun though).

Also recently they added Pengulls. While I wouldn't bother attacking them (they're nasty, and they rarely drop anything worthwhile), they do lay eggs during winter. They'll grab and hide the eggs when you get near, but I hear that if you visit them at night, they'll be asleep and so you can grab some free eggs. Haven't tried this myself, but it's a good alternative if you don't have a birdcage.

Magnitus, not sure what you meant by "luck", but just to be sure I'm not being misunderstood, when I say 50% it means that the food lasts 50% longer, not that there's a 50% chance of the food not spoiling. Unless you meant luck as in finding the gears - I agree, I wouldn't rely on that at all. Like I said, I normally don't find them until a few winters in. My current game is day 70+ and haven't found them, but I did play with the Default Plus using its "default" settings - there are sooooo many spiders on that setting that I've had to wipe out multiple queens just so I don't get spiders trashing my walls - and they're still spreading! I torched an entire forest once by accident by trying to wipe one out - at least I wiped out another one next door.

Hope that clears some stuff up.

Also, the caves are worth a visit, but there's no need to rush. My current (70 days+) game still hasn't taken me into a cave. Then again I've only built one and a bit bases in all that time due to the damn spider plague...

I've finally worked out a pretty reliable formula for survival in normal games.



--- WARNING, SPOILERS ---



* When starting a new level, run around the map exploring and collecting resources for a while before trying to make a permanent base. It's fine to just eat carrots and berries during this time. Scour the map for the following things:
- Boulders containing gold. You'll need about 10 - 20 gold to make a decent base, but a minimum of 1 is still very useful
- Spider dens - at least 10 spider silk is hugely useful to get started with a good base
- Supply of grass, twigs and flint

* Try and find an area with the following things in close proximity:
- Savanna is ideal but grassland is also fairly good
- Lots of grass tufts (needed to make traps, but do not regrow in the winter - don't transplant them either)
- Lots of rabbit holes (staple food supply to survive the winter) - four or five should do. It's not necessary to store the captured rabbits as they spawn during the winter, but it can be useful
- Beefalo herd is optional but very useful for manure and as a hound defense mechanism - just run in circles around the beefalo while the hounds are chasing
- Spider den is optional but very useful as a source of spider silk and monster meat - you can also later transplant a level 3 spider den closer to your base by destroying it and planting the spider eggs
- Preferably no huge dangers in the general area (like Tallbirds or Igloos)

* Once you find all the above make a permanent base close to the rabbit holes and not too close to the beefalo (mating season might cause a problem)

* Make a shovel and dig up a lot of saplings. Build a lightning rod in a clear area a short walk away from your base then transplant the saplings around it along with some pine cones. This will give you a good supply of twigs, which are needed to make traps to catch rabbits. Wood is useful to keep the fire going in the winter, but manure and beefalo wool can also be used instead.

* A very useful way to survive the winter is to build up a stockpile of honey - it lasts a long time (an entire winter) and can be used in a crockpot to create Honey Ham (1 honey, 2 rabbits and 1 monster meat) and Honey Nuggets (at least 1 honey, at least 1 rabbit) which both restore sanity and give a big boost to sustenance levels
- Start bee farming by making 2 bug nets and capturing 12 bees and 8 butterflies
- Make a beekeeper's hat and a Spear (and a log suit also helps) to do hit and run tactics on bee hives. Grab the honeycomb and build three bee boxes quite close to your base, with a lightning rod in the middle and plant flowers (by using the captured butterflies) all around them. Building them close to your base will mean that the bees will keep working all the time (not just when you're visiting them) but can also flood your base with annoying bees, which aren't dangerous but can be irritating
- When honey is dripping on the ground next to a bee box, put on your beekeeper's hat and harvest it
- When winter hits, you can harvest the remaining honey from bee boxes without any bees attacking. It also doesn't go stale while it's still in the box. Bees won't generate new honey during the winter though.
- Three bee boxes should create enough honey to last a winter, but more is even better.

* Handy tips:
- Capture some fireflies with a bug net at night time and release them right next to your fire pit. This will allow you to always find your fire pit at night time in case of emergency
- Farming is nice in the summer but useless in the winter. Don't rely on it.
- If you find a swamp, it can be quite a good boost to watch a battle between some Merms (fishy monsters) and Tentacles. When they are finished killing each other, swoop in and grab a Tentacle Spike (very effective weapon) and any other useful stuff lying around




Doing all the above should allow you to survive the winter and then continue exploring in the summer.

All good tips from @rmeakins - I do about 90% of this on every new world.

I'd only add:

While I wouldn't bother transplanting anything at first, later on it might be worth transplanting them so that you have an easier time collecting grass. You'll need to fertilise them with manure before they'll regrow though, so I tend to only do this after I've been in the world for a while (typically after surviving a couple of winters or so).

The main benefit of keeping lots of them is that when your sanity drops (or you force it to drop), you then have a box of beardlings to kill for nightmare fuel (potentially - also beard hair and monster meat). Of course, massacring a lot at once can bring about you-know-who for a visit...


Although I also use honey ham and honey nuggets a lot, I've found that any more than two bee boxes is serious overkill. Most of the time I make do with just one, although having a backup is always nice.

The trick is to ensure that there are LOTS of flowers nearby. So, capture lots of butterflies, then plant them near your bee box(es). Bees need to gather nectar before they'll return to make honey, so the faster they can do this, the faster honey will accumulate. I tend to plant at least 20 flowers near my one bee box, and it tends to generate honey pretty quickly.

If you notice a bee "spazzing out" over a flower (like it doesn't know which way to go), this is a bug - to fix it, just pick that flower. This seems to occur most often if flowers are placed really close together, so leave a bit of space (but not too much!).