History YMMV / DontStarve

* EightPointEight: Since the game got a 76/100 on Metacritic, there has been a lot of fan backlash.

** On the opposite end of the spectrum, there is Wolfgang and WX-78, who are both somewhat resource intensive and have downsides that can be mitigated with proper play (Faster Hunger Drain for Wolfgang, lower base stats and wetness damage for WX) ,while having massive upsides (A lot of extra damage, the ability to move faster when struck by lightning and upgrade via eating gears) leading to ComplacentGamingSyndrome with those characters players often demanding food/gears. Both don't really slip into proper GameBreaker status however without...

** And due to the crossover update with [[VideoGame/{{Terraria}}]], it's unsurprising that Don't Starve welcomed Terraria fans and vice versa.

* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: The ending of adventure mode has resulted in a lot of this for Maxwell. Is he really evil? Even if he is, does he deserve to be pitied? Were any of his actions under his control? Even if they are, was he just a victim being manipulated by the shadows?[[spoiler: Was everything a plot to trick the player into taking his place?]]

* FanNickname: "Beefalo Bill" for the Innkeeper, after the fact that he wears a beefalo suit.
** Fans of the game have taken the calling for the Treeguard[[note]]The gigantic tree monster that spawns from the forest whenever you chop too many trees down.[[/note]] as "[[Franchise/{{Transformers}} Optimus Pine]]" since it spawns from a fully grown pine tree and transforms back into one when it's idle (though in appearance only). [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings Treebeard]] is also a popular nickname for the Treeguard.

** Wilson and Maxwell (FoeYay).

** On the opposite end of the spectrum, there is Wolfgang and WX-78, who are both somewhat resource intensive and have downsides that can be mitigated with proper play (Faster Hunger Drain for Wolfgang, lower base stats and wetness damage for WX) ,while having massive upsides (A lot of extra damage, the ability to move faster when struck by lighning and upgrade via eating gears) leading to ComplacentGamingSyndrome with those characters players often demanding food/gears. Both don't really slip into proper GameBreaker status however without...

** Wendy is another special mention. She's an irrepairably BrokenBird perpetually grieving the loss of her sister, Abigail; the loading screen from the Forge reveals "Wendy clings fiercely onto the grief over her own sister's death for fear that moving on will cause Abigail's memory to fade.", indicating she's refusing to let herself be consoled over her loss because she doesn't want to forget about her. It's implied that she got lured into the Constant under the promise of reuniting with Abigail, which she gets...in the form of being able to summon her ghost. Some of her quotes add to this; examining a skeleton gets "I envy your escape" and examining a rope gets "that would be the easy way out", which indicates thoughts that should not be going through a 10 year old's mind.

* GameBreaker:
** Wigfrid. She starts with both a powerful spear and a helmet that reduces damage by ''80%'' while worn, and can easily craft them again if they break so long as the player can get a pickaxe due to knowing how to make it without needing any machines. While she's supposed to be balanced by being unable to eat anything but meat, it isn't a problem when the first thing you can do as her upon creating a world is hunt a herd of Beefalo for a stack of meat and come out okay. She's even more powerful in ''Don't Starve Together'', as she can craft her powerful spear and helm before giving them to other characters.
** Webber becomes a late-game version of this as his base of operation (and the entire surrounding area given enough time) often becomes ''surrounded'' in spider nests. Anything that even attempts to chase him home or attack him while there, even powerful boss monsters, has to cross a field of slowing terrain and face the swarm to reach him. It doesn't help that even the Spider Queens, who are bosses themselves, will charge to his defense. This essentially makes him immune to any random attacks that might show up so long as he can get home and also gives him easy access to a huge, respawning army. If you manage to get the spiders to fight each other, you can reap the resulting monster meat (before the spiders eat it), resulting in an infine food supply, since Webber can eat monster meat without its ill effects. The only balance is that 1) the spiders can't fight shadows and Webber has low sanity 2) the Queens will only help if you're near them, they won't follow you. There's also the very serious matter of [[PlayingWithFire Red Hounds during Summer...]] Don't keep your nests too close to each other or you'll fry before making it a single year.
** WX-78 makes Adventure Mode a breeze, as their stats can be upgraded by gears dropped by the commonly occuring clockwork monsters, and once they peaks they can eat more gears for massive stat regain. As such, they can survive almost anything with lots of gears, a decent weapon(s) & armor and a light source.
** Willow in single player. She starts out with an indestructible lighter that emits enough light to protect her from Charlie, and can be used to set things on fire. She's also totally immune to fire, allowing her to freely torch forests and the like to dispatch monsters without any recoil. Additionally, she gains sanity whenever she's close to a fire. Willow's ability to set low-risk fires make her fit to survive Winter, and her early availability makes her even better.
** Wickerbottom, especially in ''Together''. She starts with higher Sanity and all Tier 1 research upgrades unlocked, which are already great boons in and of themselves. However, where she really shines is her ability to craft books, many of which are either powerful weapons or greatly increase her food security. For example, Birds Of The World can attract dozens of birds into traps, while Sleepytime Stories puts all mobs to sleep. Wickerbottom really shines in ''Together'', as her books synergize extremely well with the other characters (she can have Wormwood plant dozens of seeds before using Applied Horticulture to instantly grow tons of food, or charge WX-78 with The End Is Nigh!). Alas, someone on the team realized this and nerfed her a bit in the "Reap What You Sow" update; now her "Horticulture Abridged" can only affect 10 edible plants in range in one sitting, and under the new gardening mechanics, doing this won't get you any giant crops.
** Outside of characters, it's beneficial to gun it for getting a Birdcage and a trapped Bird as soon as you are able. Birds can be fed seeds to keep them fresh (they will always produce a fresh seed in turn, unless you're playing ''Together''), crops to produce seeds guaranteed to grow that crop (helpful if you're trying to rely on Dragonpie), and cooked/dried meat to turn into eggs (needed in helpful recipes like Perogi[[note]]40 Health as long as you're not Wormwood (who can't heal from food).[[/note]] or Bacon and Eggs[[note]]75 Hunger, 90 if you're playing as Wilson in ''Together''[[/note]], or just as filler for Meatballs or Dragonpie). It's nerfed in ''Together'' however, as feeding them seeds has a 1/3 chance to produce Guano instead (which is useful as fertilizer, even moreso than manure, it just makes the bird less efficent at keeping seeds fresh) and the bird can starve to death in its cage.

* BrokenBase: The cosmetic skins are very divisive around the fandom. You get 4 skins per week by playing normally and there are multiple levels or item rarity; you can get a common glove or you can get a distinguished dress. In a way, it's very similar to the ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' drop system. These skins were supposed to be filler content but they turned into a serious market ridiculously fast, to the point where there are people offering 300 dollars for a super rare skin or selling skins for [=TF2=] and CS:GO keys. You have 3 camps, those who love it and are ready to idle and use bots to make money with skins, those who don't care and those who hate it because the devs are putting too much focus with skins instead of finishing the game or fear that the skins will overshadow the gameplay and hurt the community.

** Right behind meatballs is the Dragonpie, once the player gets a Dragonfruit. It's arguably even cheaper than Meatballs as the fillers can just be three Twigs. It restores more hunger than the Meatballs (75), and heals a meaty 40 health. It's also the only food with these kinds of stats that can be carried safely around Bunnymen. The one caveat is getting a Dragonfruit in the first place, as it's a LuckBasedMission that involves a lot of farming. But once you have one, you can SaveScum with Alt+F4 to get more than one Dragonfruit Seed from feeding that Dragonfruit to your pet bird. It's also slower to cook (40 seconds).

** Pierogi are another go-to healing food, being made with one meat, one egg and one vegetable. Like Dragonpie they heal 40 HP, but they are made with much more common ingredients that don't require farming and so the player is likely to have access to them much earlier on.

** Gobblers. They can't hurt you, but they run around the map without restraint, eating any berries they find - depriving you of a primary food source. And they run much faster than Wilson can. After the first few encounters, you'll long for ranged weapons. However, if you leave berries on the ground you'll entice them and then have the perfect moment to strike them down, killing them and obtaining meat. You can also trick them into eating 3 poisonous red mushrooms, which will kill them in an instant.

** WX-78 is often considered to be the best character for Adventure Mode due to their gear upgrades which are not only carried over to when using the teleportato, the levels provide enough gears to upgrade them to max level before the halfway point. Even after that, they can sustain themself by gears alone, allowing the player to focus on searching for the items they need.

* UnintentionallyUnwinnable: In ''Shipwrecked'', if you go to an island without an axe or machete and no materials to build them and hammer your own boat to pieces, you would be trapped.

* UnwinnableByInsanity: In ''Shipwrecked'', if you go to an island without an axe or machete and no materials to build them and hammer your own boat to pieces, you would be trapped.

* EightPointEight: Since the game got a 76/100 on Metacritic, there has been a lot of fan backlash, on [[http://steamcommunity.com/app/219740/discussions/0/810924134027482257/ this thread]] especially.

* ViewerGenderConfusion: The fandom was surprised to [[FemaleMonsterSurprise find out that Wurt was a girl]].

** Wickerbottom, especially in ''Together''. She starts with higher Sanity and all Tier 1 research upgrades unlocked, which are already great boons in and of themselves. However, where she really shines is her ability to craft books, many of which are either powerful weapons or greatly increase her food security. For example, Birds Of The World can attract dozens of birds into traps, while Sleepytime Stories puts all mobs to sleep. Wickerbottom really shines in ''Together'', as her books synergize extremely well with the other characters (she can have Wormwood plant dozens of seeds before using Applied Horticulture to instantly grow tons of food, or charge WX-78 with The End Is Nigh!).

** Wickerbottom is almost unanimously considered the single best character in DST, do to the insane utility her books have, the relative low cost of using them do to the low threat levels nightmare creatures pose to experienced players, and the characters she is able to enable. She can generate food extremely easily, do tons of damage by summoning tentacles or lightning, and overcharge WX for an entire year, and she gets the first 2 tiers of recipes a full tier earlier. All at the cost not not being able to sleep and eating stale foods, which most players try to avoid anyway.

** While all the player characters qualify as Woobies, given that they were dragged into a nightmare world from which there is no escape, special mention goes to Wilson - the [[CuttingOffTheBranches canonical protagonist]]. He [[spoiler: frees Maxwell, only to end up on the Nightmare Throne himself, and is eventually sent back into The Constant by Charlie after being tortured by her]]. A lot of the promotional material for the game involves Wilson being terrorised and/or injured.

* Wormwood. Some fans consider him a ReplacementScrappy for replacing Warlocks in ''Hamlet'' while other fans consider him to be a MorePopularReplacement.

* ReplacementScrappy: Wormwood from ''Hamlet'' gets some of this, since he was added in the same update that removed Warbucks.

* AntiClimaxBoss:

** The cosmetic skins are very divisive around the fandom. You get 4 skins per week by playing normally and there are multiple levels or item rarity; you can get a common glove or you can get a distinguished dress. In a way, it's very similar to the ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' drop system. These skins were supposed to be filler content but they turned into a serious market ridiculously fast, to the point where there are people offering 300 dollars for a super rare skin or selling skins for [=TF2=] and CS:GO keys. You have 3 camps, those who love it and are ready to idle and use bots to make money with skins, those who don't care and those who hate it because the devs are putting too much focus with skins instead of finishing the game or fear that the skins will overshadow the gameplay and hurt the community.

** Hounds. They can come at the most inappropriate time. To kill one isn't very hard; it's the fact that several hounds come ''all at once'', making it hard to concentrate on one at a time. At first it's only packs of 2-3, but they get bigger as the days go by. As if that wasn't enough, after a while they start coming in Red and Blue variants, depending on season. Red Hounds set fires upon death, while Blue Hounds freeze nearby mobs, including you, upon death. Both of these make melee combat even less desirable.
** Frogs. These amphibian annoyances live by ponds, which are valuable food sources once the player gets a fishing rod. While they don't have a high damage output and aren't terribly difficult to kill, they spawn in ''huge'' packs and cause you to drop your items when their tongue hits you. Worse, attacking one frog will cause the entire army to ZergRush the player, often leading to their death. And God help you if you're playing Reign of Giants; in Spring, there's a chance for it to start ''raining frogs'', regardless of where you are. If you're unlucky, you can have your base surrounded by frogs with no way to get rid of them without getting swarmed.
** Tallbird Eggs are a great food item, as they never expire when they're uncooked and they can be used like regular eggs in a Crock Pot. Unfortunately, any player that wants one will have to go through a Tallbird to get it. While they have fairly average health, they deal quite a wallop when they attack, dealing 50 damage to an unarmored player. The hitbox is [[HitboxDissonance also fairly large]], making it difficult to kite unless they player is using Wheeler. What's more is that they're incredibly fast, and unless the player is fortunate enough to find a path, the Tallbird will outrun them. To top it all off, they respawn at Tallbird nests every 2.5 days, making farming their eggs an incredibly dangerous task. You could burn the nest and prevent them from spawning at all, but you'll lose the ability to harvest Tallbird Eggs from it as well.

* ShipsThatPassInTheNight: ''Any'' pairing not involving [[BigBad Maxwell]] would be this. Relieved slightly in ''Don't Starve Together'', the multiplayer expansion, as lines are added for examination-interactions between players that can expand on how it is that they evidently know each other ("It's Wilson!" is a known line that Willow would give, for example).

** While all the player characters qualify as Woobies, given that they were dragged into a nightmare world from which there is no escape, special mention goes to Wilson - the canonical protagonist. He [[spoiler: frees Maxwell, only to end up on the Nightmare Throne himself, and is eventually sent back into The Constant by Charlie after being tortured by her]]. A lot of the promotional material for the game involves Wilson being terrorised and/or injured.

* TheWoobie: In the Gorge event, there were quite a few players who felt bad for the Swamp Pig Elder, who is slowly dying of mermification from displeasing the Gnaw, and whose people are neglected by the goats.

** An Ewecus is a minor annoyance compared to the other possible track spawn: the Varg. It's a FlunkyBoss that will summon Hounds to fight alongside it, and they can be the seasonal Hounds as well just to add to the pain. It also seems to have a larger aggro radius, so by the time you realize you haven't found a Koalephant, you're already being chased down.

** Meatballs tend to be the most commonly produced food item, due to being quick to cook (15 seconds) and restoring a decent amount of hunger (62.5) for a relatively low resource cost (one of any meat and three any fillers that aren't twigs or honey).
** Right behind meatballs is the Dragonpie, once the player gets a Dragonfruit. It's arguably even cheaper than Meatballs as the fillers can just be three Twigs. It restores more hunger than the Meatballs (75), and heals a meaty 40 health. The one caveat is getting a Dragonfruit in the first place, as it's a LuckBasedMission that involves a lot of farming.

* EightPointEight: Since the game got a 76/100 on metacritic, there has been a lot of fan backlash, on [[http://steamcommunity.com/app/219740/discussions/0/810924134027482257/ this thread]] especially.