You're an Action Survivor trapped in a harsh world filled with creatures whose purpose in life seem to encompass killing you and factors designed to make your life increasingly difficult by the day. Fortunately for you, there exists particular characters and items that bring the challenge at hand to their knees.
Examples from the Reign of Giants expansion implicitly apply to Together, unless noted otherwise.
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Characters
Base Game
- Willow, barring her character refresh in Together. 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.
- WX-78 makes Adventure Mode a breeze, as their stats can be upgraded by gears dropped by the commonly occurring Clockwork Monsters, and once this peaks they can eat more gears for massive stat regain. As such, they can survive almost anything with lots of gears, a decent weapon, armor, and a light source.
- As of their character refresh in Together, WX-78 has gained the ability to scan certain entities in order to create circuits for themselves that can provide a variety of different boosts and abilities, such as increased health/hunger/sanity capacities, increased movement speed, night-vision in low-light situations, heating/cooling circuits that can also affect their fellow survivors, and more, allowing WX-78 to be a Jack of All Trades who can perform almost zero maintenance cave adventures, singlehandedly mitigate the dangerous temperature extremes of Winter and Summer, and become bar-none the tankiest of all the survivors by equipping three Super Hardy Circuits to achieve a whopping 575 maximum health, the only caveat being frozen or being wet can cause WX-78 to hemorrhage charge and lose access to their upgrades.
- Wickerbottom. She starts with higher Sanity and all Tier 1 research upgrades unlocked, which are already great boons in and of themselves. However, where she 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. She 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.
Reign of Giants
- Wigfrid 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. She also has an innate 25% damage resistance, so even without wearing armor, you'll still tank more hits. 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 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 infinite food supply, since Webber can eat monster meat without its ill effects. A drawback to this strategy is that should Webber go insane (and this is likely, given that he has a maximum of 100 sanity), spiders can't help you fight Shadow Creatures. Additionally, Spider Queens only help if you're near them, and they won't follow you. There's also the very serious matter of Red Hounds during Summer... Don't keep your nests too close to each other or you'll fry before making it a single year.
- Webber can make himself functionally immortal in Together for some rather cheap resources. As Nurse Spiders heal in an area of effect, their powers scale quadratically up to however many spiders can fit in their range. This means that approximately 10-20 of them are enough to return a Webber on the brink of death, as well as each other, to full health, allowing him to tank a boss such as Dragonfly without armor. They are only vulnerable to bosses with Area of Effect or freezing attacks powerful enough to one-shot them like Bearger and Deerclops respectively, but equipping them all with some Football Helmets is sufficient to keep them alive long enough to heal each other. While Nurse Spiders are difficult to encounter, since you have to fight a Spider Queen to near-death, once you do so, their Switcherdoodle is very cheap.
Together
- Wanda is the epitome of Difficult, but Awesome. Her special weapon, the Alarming Clock, is a whip with high range, but what really makes it special is how it scales in damage with her age. It deals 81 damage at young age, 97 damage at middle age, and a whopping 142 damage at old age. While it attacks a bit slower than standard weapons, her damage output at old age is only barely lower than Wolfgang's, but with the added range of the whip to let her attack more safely. Of course, since her age is tied to her health, being at old age means she's only a couple hits from death. With skill and clever play, though, this can be mitigated and she can be a fierce combatant in boss battles. And that's not even getting to her other watches. The Second Chance Watch is a revival item which breaks if she uses it to revive herself, but it can be used infinitely on other players with only a four minute cooldown and no max health penalties. The Backstep Watch allows Wanda to travel backwards a short distance, aiding her in combat by abusing its invulnerability frames in the middle of attacks. The real star of her utility, though, is the Backtrek Watch. By using it, an anchor point can be set that she can teleport to at any time with an eight minute cooldown. Lategame, it's possible to amass a ton of these watches and create a teleportation network that covers every important spot on the map, saving tons of time on travelling. Better yet, a purple gem can be slotted into it to let other players come with you on the next teleport. All in all, the watches provide unrivaled utility on top of her amazing combat prowess, making her a popular pick for speedrunners and megabasers alike.
Items
Base Game
- Football Helmets absorbs 80% of the damage a player takes, and has 450 durability, the exact same stats as that of the Log Suit, while having the advantages that inherently come with being headwear, so it can be freely worn alongside a Backpack (whereas you'd have to drop it just to don said Log Suit) and equipped on allied Pigmen, Bunnymen and Spidersnote to increase their survivability. Football Helmets are comically inexpensive to craft as they only require one Pigskin and Rope, both of which are trivial to acquire in bulk, even with a simple Pig farm setup for the former.
- It's beneficial to build a Birdcage and trap a Bird in it as soon as you are able to. 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 Peroginote or Bacon and Eggsnote , or just as filler for Meatballs or Dragonpie). They're a mixed bag in Together though; you can still feed them crops to get seeds, but as of the "Reap What You Sow" update they'll only give you one seed that matches that crop. And feeding them seeds has a 1/3 chance to produce Guano and a 2/3 chance to give you nothing. They can also starve in their cages, so you can't leave them alone for too long.
Reign of Giants
- This DLC grants another use for the Deerclops' eyeball drop — as a crafting ingredient for the Eyebrella. It provides absolute protection from the rain and lightning strikes when worn, and it has the secondary function of insulating you greatly from overheating, and it being headgear as well seals the deal. These effects make a world of difference in surviving Spring and even Summer, since for the former you'd need to hold out an umbrella (not the most convenient when combat or resource-gathering ensues) or risk life and limb to craft a Rain Coatnote and/or Rain Hat, and for the latter season most gear designed with overheat protection come with major drawbacks that make them uneasy pickingsnote . It lasts a generous 9 days while worn, but conserving its usage allows it to last even longer. Should its durability run low anyway, a Sewing Kit repairs half of that upon use.
- The Old Bell is devastating in the right hands, particularly for its Mundane Utility of destroying clusters of resources such as trees, and as a combat tool against bosses and swathes of strong enemies, to the point it is the only item from this DLC that has never been carried over to Together (as an understandable consequence of its griefing potential). While it can only be learned via getting its blueprint, said blueprint can be obtained by mining a Glommer Statue, and its crafting recipe just calls for one Glommer Flower and Glommer Wings, both of which you can acquire from a slain Glommer as soon as you find it near said statue in a Full Moon. When you ring it, Biiigfoot will stomp on where you initially rung a few seconds later. This titanic foot's stomp is an Area of Effect, has a generous reach and does 1000 damage, which is enough to instantly kill most mobs, and soften a boss for the killing blow (or outright finish them off). The only drawback to using this properly is how long it takes for Biiigfoot to stomp in regards to the mobs — but once you work around that, enjoy the fruits of your labor. Just don't stand underneath Biiigfoot as it's about to stomp, or else you're likely dead. Unfortunately, you can't use it in Caves, as doing so will instead provoke an earthquake.
Shipwrecked
- The Cutlass Supreme is a weapon that certainly lives up to its name. It has the same damage output of a Dark Sword, but without the sanity drawbacks, or the need for a magic crafting station. It's ingredients are also easier to obtain, requiring only gold, twigs, and a swordfish. While the swordfish is the hardest part to find for the weapon, once you do find it, you'll learn that it always respawns where you last found it, leaving you with an easy to replenish source of cutlasses.
Together
- Before the Troubled Waters update, Leafy Meat was largely useless as a food item, really only useful as filler or bird food. After the update, it's an absolute must have thanks to the powerful Crockpot dishes it can be used in. Jelly Salad is a sanity food as powerful as Ice Scream, but without the need for an incredibly hard to come by ingredient, and Beefy Greens is comparable to Bacon and Eggs when it comes to restoring hunger, but requiring easy to come by veggies rather than meat. One simply has to wait until Spring, find a few Lureplants and plant them somewhere where the Eyeplants can't grow, and they will be set for the rest of the game.
- Due to the way water traversal works in this game, Boats are incredibly useful even if you're not sailing.
- The easiest use for boats that most players come up with are deploying them like bridges, saving a lot of travel time required for traversing around land branches, and sailing out to islands like the Lunar Island.
- Planting Lureplants on a boat trivializes farming for the aforementioned Leafy Meat, since this method effectively disables their ability to grow Eyeplants.
- If you lure the Bee Queen onto a boat, she won't run away from you and will simply get stuck there, making it easy for you to hit her. This has since been patched, though.
- The Dreadstone Helm and Dreadstone Armor are absolutely incredible armor pieces. They have over double the durability compared to Football Helmets and Log Suits, but the thing that makes them shine is their ability to repair themselves at the cost of your sanity, making them essentially infinite durability if you make sure to take care of them. What helps make them Game Breakers as well is their ease of access, as the Nightmare Werepig can be found in the Muddy Biomes of the caves two days into a world, with the only caveats being you need a Pick/Axe from the Ruins to fight the Nightmare Werepig, and that it only drops enough Pure Horror to craft one of either armor (easily solvable with a Construction Amulet that you can get in the Ruins as well). Through Ruins Rushing, you can end up with the armor set before Winter even starts!
