One of the most challenging tasks you must first do in Don’t Starve Together is choosing a character, which ultimately impacts how you play the game.
Due to the number of characters available in the game, it’s a little bit tricky to determine which one suits you best.
Recommended Read: How to Find Ruins in DST
Each character has unique strengths and weaknesses, so the term “best character” depends on your experience, playstyle, and objectives in the game. However, based on our experience, the best characters in Don’t Starve Together are Wickerbottom, Wanda, Wolfgang, Wigfrid, Wilson, and Woodie.
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Which Character Is The Best in Don’t Starve Together?
Don’t Starve Together has 18 characters, each with a distinct appearance and abilities. There’s no guarantee that you can master them all, even when you’re a seasoned DST player.
Although you can change your character sometimes, the process is quite complicated.
Before reading on, remember that new updates from Klei may contain more character reworks, so the list may be changed in the future.
1. Wickerbottom
Wickerbottom is considered one of the best characters in the game, assuming you know how to play her properly.
With decent attributes (125 HP, 150 hunger, and 250 sanities) and the ability to read various books, Wickerbottom is suitable for solo and multiplayer runs.
Speaking of her strongest perk, Wickerbottom can craft and read 10+ different books, giving her the flexible power to survive in most cases.
The books’ use cases vary, but here are the books we used in our previous runs:
- Horticulture, Abridged and Applied Silviculture: to grow farming and resource plants, respectively.
- Birds of the World and Sleepytime Stories: to spawn birds, put them to sleep, and kill them to farm Krampus for Krampus Sacks.
- Lux Aeterna and Lux Aeterna Redux: to create a light beam to light up the base. This has a similar use as the Star Caller’s Staff.
- On Tentacles: to farm Tentacle Spots and Spikes. It’s recommended to spawn the Tentacles inside the Bunnyman farm.
- Practical Rain Rituals: to start or stop the rain. This book is extremely useful for farming, combating (wet creatures receive more damage from certain weapons), avoiding wetness, stopping frog rains, and preventing the Antlion from spawning.
- Apicultural Notes: spawn bees to protect you. This is also the primary way we use for combat, as each bee can deal 30 damage.
Wickerbottom has the ability to craft bookshelves, which allow her to store used books inside to restore their durability.
Now you see why she’s powerful in the late game, especially when you have all the materials to craft the needed books.
Wickerbottom can craft most recipes without using the Science Machine. This ability is extremely useful in the game’s early days for crafting Backpacks.
Regarding drawbacks, you can’t sleep while playing Wickerbottom, so eating sanity-restoring food is the primary way to increase your sanity again. Cooked Green Caps, Vegetable Stinger, and sometimes Jerkies are the food for this purpose.
Remember to eat the above food while they’re fresh (green background color) since Wickerbottom won’t gain any sanity from stale food.
2. Wanda
Before Wanda, Wolfgang and Wigfrid used to be two of the strongest characters in DST, well known for their high damage.
However, Wanda currently holds the record with the ability to deal up to 142.8 damage per hit using her charged Alarming Clock.
Basically, she receives a 1.2 and 1.75 multiplier on shadow weapons’ damage at her middle age and elderly stage, respectively.
Moreover, she receives less negative sanity aura (or none at the elderly stage) from most sources, making Dark Swords and Night Armor the best combat combination.
In addition to the high damage, Wanda is also good at dodging attacks with the Backstep Watch, and she can teleport using the Backtrek Watch.
Wanda doesn’t have a health bar. Instead, she has an age bar, ranging from 20 to 80.
Unlike other characters, Wanda ages over time and dies at 80 health points. Therefore, it’s recommended to only play this character if you’re already familiar with the game’s concepts, as besides managing lots of other things, you must pay close attention to Wanda’s age.
That said, Wanda is a powerful character if you know how to play her. Otherwise, you’ll die a lot playing her.
Apart from the new health concept, the biggest drawback of Wanda is that she can’t heal from any healing food. This makes you depend on the Ageless Watch to reduce her age.
Like Wickerbottom, Wanda is weak in the game’s early days, but your life will be much easier when you have enough materials.
Wanda is a paid character, so you have to purchase her bundles for $5.99 – $9.99. Alternatively, you can weave her using 2700 Spools.
3. Wolfgang
Even after several updates, Wolfgang is still one of the best characters to play in DST.
He doesn’t have that many mechanics compared to Wickerbottom and Wanda. However, with high attributes and the ability to double his damage, Wolfgang is a pretty strong pick in the game’s early days, suitable for most newcomers.
Wolfgang has a new meter called “Might Meter”, which decreases over time based on his hunger. The more hunger points he has, the slower the meter drains.
There are several actions to increase this new meter, including lifting dumbbells, using the Gym, and doing various actions (chopping, digging, hammering, etc.).
Wolfgang can transform between his 3 forms depending on the Might Meter points.
- Wimpy (0-25 Might Points): x0.75 damage and hunger loss, lose x1.25 sanity.
- Normal (25-75 Might Points): x1 damage, more hunger loss, and slower sanity loss than Wimpy form.
- Mighty (75-100 Might Points): x2 damage, x1 hunger loss, and lose x1.1 sanity.
The Mighty form is only used for fighting purposes. When not in combat, it’s recommended to keep Wolfgang in his Wimpy form for slower hunger-reduction.
The only drawback of Wolfgang is that he loses more sanity when it’s dark and fighting monsters.
However, this is not a big deal since the reduction rate is not that high. You can easily pick a flower or eat a Cooked Green Cap to eliminate this disadvantage completely.
The recent rework also provides a skill tree for Wolfgang, making him stronger than ever. The skills you primarily want to use are Chore Workout, Leg Day, and Push the Limits.
4. Wigfrid
If you don’t like Wolfgang because of his transformation, then Wigfrid is an excellent alternative.
Just like Wolfgang, she has 200 health points, which is suitable for tanking most bosses. However, Wigfrid only has 120 hunger and sanity points.
She has a permanent x1.25 damage for all attacks and receives 25% less damage from all sources. Moreover, Wigfrid gains health and sanity points from attacking monsters, making her sustainable for longer fights.
Wigfrid starts the game with 1 Battle Helm and 1 Battle Spear. The helmet reduces all incoming damage by 80%, while the spear has a base damage of 42.5, which is higher than the default spear by 8.5.
That said, Wigfrid is a good choice for newcomers and veteran DST players. She’s easy to play, has excellent starting gear, and has strong perks.
In the recent rework, Wigfrid has a new Inspiration meter, which allows her to sing battle songs to buff all players in the area.
We rarely use this feature, as Wigfrid is already strong on her own. However, you may want to use The Weaponized Warble and The Heartrending Balla songs to increase the weapon’s durability and gain health points on each hit.
The only downside of Wigfrid is she can only eat meat dishes. This eliminates a lot of good food options like carrots, berries, and seeds in the game’s early days or Dragonpie for healing in the late game.
However, it’s not a big problem since most good dishes contain meat. Moreover, you can just give the plants and fruits to your teammate or use them as fillers to cook other meat dishes.
5. Wilson
Wilson is the most iconic character in the Don’t Starve game series.
He has high and balanced attributes, with 150 health points, 150 hunger, and 200 sanity points.
Wilson has neither downsides nor strong perks. This makes him the most balanced character in DST, and he’s suitable for newcomers looking to learn the game’s mechanics first.
Wilson has a magnificent beard that grows over time to provide a decent amount of insulation, making him survive easier in the Winter. However, you should shave the beard in the Summer to avoid overheating.
Shaving the beard gives Wilson sanity points and Beard Hairs, one of the main ingredients for crafting the Meat Effigy.
In the recent rework, Wilson also has a skill tree, allowing him to do many different scientific things. The skills we use the most are:
- Torch Toss: to work during the night. However, if you already have Lanterns, then ignore this skill.
- Transmute Gems III and Transmute Icky I: to craft Green Gems, Iridescent Gems, and transform between Meat and Morsels. The transformed meat has 100% freshness, so this is a great way to refresh the meat.
- Beard Hair Storage: to have up to 3 more inventory slots inside your beard. The number of slots depends on the beard stage, and you can only store food items here.
Overall, most skills in the Transmutation branch are worth learning, as they allow you to transform one material into another and vice versa.
6. Woodie
Woodie has an indestructible axe and chop trees twice as fast compared to other characters.
He can transform into 3 different forms by eating the corresponding Kitschy Idols, reducing 20 health and 15 sanities, and increasing his hunger by 18.75.
- Kitschy Beaver Idol: transform into a Werebeaver.
- Kitschy Moose Idol: transform into a Weremoose.
- Kitschy Goose Idol: transform into a Weregoose.
He can also transform into a random form on the full moon.
Woodie has a new Wereness meter that will be full when transformed into one of the above forms.
The meter reduces over time, and the reduction speed is increased if you don’t do specific actions tied to each form.
For Werebeaver, the actions are chopping, digging, mining, and hammering objects. For Weremoose, fighting is the only way. And for Weregoose, it’s running.
To at least have control of the transformation, you can use the Kitschy Idol to transform into the form you want before the full moon. When the next full moon happens, it only refreshes your Wereness meter.
The Werebeaver is well-known for his gnawing ability. It only takes around 1 second to chop a large tree and 0.467 seconds to dig a plant, while mining and hammering actions are longer than other characters.
So, in our runs, we used the Werebeaver form to farm many logs and dug plants, including saplings and grass turfs.
Speaking of Weregoose, this tiny form is the fastest, and we mainly use it to explore the map. In our runs, we used this form to find the Lunar Island because this creature can run on the ocean surface.
We had an accident before where we put important stuff in the backpack and then went to find the Lunar Island. However, we couldn’t make it to the land in time and died in the ocean, losing everything to the ocean bottom.
So, remember to put important items in the inventory instead of a backpack since Woodie will drop everything on transforming except the backpack.
The Weremoose form is best for combating and clearing multiple enemies (frogs from frog rains, spiders, hounds, etc.) with his charge attack. However, we’d recommend using Wolfgang, Wigfrid, or Wanda to deal with the giant bosses for better outcomes.
In addition, you should only transform when your hunger is low and your health is high. Because you can’t heal by using any method when transformed, and your hunger will always be reduced to 0 after the transformation.
That answers what the best characters in Don’t Starve Together are!
Have any suggestions for this guide? Let us know in the comment section below.
