Moleworm Farm Walkthrough

How to create, and double the size of, an inexhaustible source of moleworms and minerals that can be harvested during any season once every 3 nights with no maintenance cost.

The Video Version (for RoG and not mine)

His video is still correct and can be used for regular Don't Starve and Reign of Giants, however its method involves the user relogging which does not work if you are playing as a client on a Don't Starve Together server. Therefore I created this alternate guide to account for playing on DST.

Risks/Rewards of Making a Moleworm Farm

Pros

• Endless source of moleworms as long as you don't touch the burrows.
  
• Infinite source of minerals as long as you don't touch the moleworms.
  
• Can double the number of burrows to increase moleworm yield.
  
• No limit on number of burrows.
  
• Can have no maintenance cost.
  
• Available during all seasons.
  
• Can harvest en masse.
  
• Can be used to farm naughtiness and therefore Krampus.
  
• Low tech (requires a science machine).
  
• Low resource investment to start/expand.
  
• Placing multiple minerals can bait more moleworms at a time, thereby speeding up the harvesting process.

Cons

• Takes several days to set up and expand.
  
• Can only be harvested during dusk & night.
  
• Moleworm tendency to steal all minerals necessitates that it be built away from base.
  
• Moleworms take 2.5 days to respawn but since they are only out during dusk and night that rounds up to 3.
  
• Krampus will shank you and steal your items if you are not careful.

Useful Information on Moleworms and Burrows (mostly from the Don't Starve wiki)

• Moleworms take 2 days to starve as items.
  
• Burrows spawn a new moleworm once every 2.5 days, but as they only come out during dusk/night this shall be rounded up to 3 days in the interest of simplicity for this guide.
  
• Moleworms have 30 health and regain 10 when fed a mineral.
  
• If a burrow is dug up after its corresponding moleworm has been hammered and held in the inventory, that moleworm is now 'homeless' and shall proceed to make its own burrow once released.
  
• Homeless moleworms sleep during the day and have to wait until the next dusk to create new burrows.
  
• Burrows can only contain one moleworm at a time, if a second moleworm attempts to enter one that already contains a moleworm then it shall wait above ground next to the burrow rapidly twitching its nose.
  If you look closely you can see the burrow the hungry moleworm is attempting to enter.
  
  
• Two moleworms that spawned from the same burrow will both attempt to use the same burrow. Destroying this burrow while both of the moleworms it spawned will not cause both of them to create their individual burrows, instead one will replace the lost burrow for the both of them. This is why a maximum of one moleworm can be outside (out of burrow and not in inventory) when destroying the burrow that spawned them.
  
• Shoveling a burrow will yield a mineral (Rocks 53.3%, Flint 20%, Nitre 20%, Gold Nugget 6.6%) in addition to anything its moleworm has taken.
  
• Shoveling a burrow that a moleworm is currently "in" will not produce a moleworm in the same way a shoveled rabbit hole will produce a rabbit.
  
• As an item, moleworms are required to craft Guacamole (20 health, 37.5 hunger, 0 sanity) Moggles, and the Rain Hat.
  
• Moleworms can trigger traps but not get caught in them.
  
• Abigail can kill moleworms underground but will also attempt to kill the moleworms you hammer.
  
• Moleworms add 1 point of naughtiness per kill, however moleworms killed by Abigail do not add any naughtiness. But more on that later.
  
• A single bait item can attract one moleworm at a time, placing more than one will speed things up significantly.
  
• Wolfgang will one shot kill moleworms with a hammer at 247 hunger or greater.
  
• When you hammer a mole worm it appears up to 5 "friends" will be warned to go home if they are within 30 distance.
  
• Moleworms have 3 inventory slots.

The Simplified Version

Step by Step Guide on How to Double Your Moleworm Burrows (Without Using Caves)

Step 1: Gather Materials

To relocate and double the number of moleworms you've collected you will need:

• ~8 Homeless moleworms (any amount works but this is enough to fill a backpack)
  
• Enough backpack materials to hold 2x the # of moleworms (4 Grass + 4 Twigs per backpack makes 8 slots of storage)
  
• 1 Shovel
  
• 1 Hammer
  
• 1 Prebuilt firepit + fuel
  
• Minimum # of minerals = to amount of homeless moleworms +1 additional mineral for baiting purposes (ideally gold but rocks and flint work too)
  
• Any weapon

Step 2: Find a Sufficient Location

Ideally you will want to find a peninsula but if there are none or if they are too inconveniently placed then a corner bordering the ocean will work just as well. Be sure to have a minimum distance of 4 screens away to prevent any annoyances.

Do not attempt to contain the moleworms within a small area at all using walls as they will endlessly attempt to move in a random direction and never make a burrow.

Step 3: Setting Everything Up

When dusk nears place down the fire pit, build and drop 2 backpacks (or chests) and all the moleworms around the water and wait for them to make their burrows. Once all of their burrows have been placed, drop a mineral to bait them and kill all of them as moleworms die after two hammer hits and they have already been hit once when you first obtained them.

Step 4: Waiting

Once they have all been killed you will have to wait 3 nights for them to respawn, once the moleworms have respawned you are to return and pick up one of the backpacks you dropped in the previous step and using this backpack: hammer these newly spawned moleworms and leave them all in this backpack.

You then want to let 1.5 days pass from this time which means half way through the sunny part of the day after tomorrow you are to comeback and feed these moleworms with the minerals you started with. Then you are going to wait a little bit more.

A helpful way to determine when to feed the moleworms is to hold the first moleworm you hammered in your inventory and leave the rest in the backpack as you do other things. As it takes 2 days for moleworms to starve and this will be the first one (to starve) you can watch this moleworm's hunger level because when its background color changes to red (%25 hunger) this will signify that 1.5 days has passed and is time to feed the rest.

Step 5: Double or Something

Not this coming dusk but the following dusk new moleworms shall spawn. Capture these new moleworms using the second (empty) backpack you created earlier and then leave them in there. Now that both the first and second spawned moleworms are in the backpacks, you must use your shovel to dig up all the burrows that spawned them. Once this is accomplished release all of the moleworms and they shall each make their own individual burrows, thereby doubling your initial number of burrows.

This assumes that none of them got stuck or accidentally maliciously murdered in the process. You can then proceed to kill these moleworms as they have already been hammered once and can not be used to make more burrows.

Step 6: Payoff

You now have (hopefully) twice as many burrows as you started with. To double the size of the farm just repeat steps 4 and 5 with at least one mineral for every burrow and enough backpack spaces equal to twice the number of burrows.

Optional Improvements

Now all you need to farm moleworms is some minerals for bait and a weapon. To negate weapon degradation you can use a walking cane to kill moleworms (3 hits each) and for during the summer you may want to add an endothermic fire pit.

How to Double Your Number of Burrows (Caves Version)

Because this is pretty much an exploit now.

Step 1: Gather Stuff

To relocate and double the number of moleworms you've collected you will need:

• Any number of homeless moleworms.
  
• A Hammer.
  
• A pickaxe.
  
• Some rocks (preferably shiny rocks).

Step 2: Find a Place

Literally anywhere but near your base.

Step 3: Do the Thing

Place the moleworms at your ideal location. You can either kill them because they've been hit once with a hammer already and wait the 3 nights for them to respawn or you can feed each of them two minerals to heal the hammer damage.

Step 4: With the Stuff

Hammer and collect all the moleworms as usual, but this time with all of them in your inventory head into the caves...

Step 5: That One Time

And then immediately leave again.

Step 6: With that Person

You have now "disconnected" the moleworms from their burrows. If you want to add more burrows immediately then you can feed each of them 2 minerals to heal the hammer damage dealt to them and can place them down again to create new burrows.

Step 7: Profit

You have now doubled the number of burrows you previously had and can hammer them again and take them back to the caves to add yet more burrows if you fed them previously.

Krampus and Naughtiness

Now this would be a pretty ♥♥♥♥ guide if i didn't warn you about Krampus. As you can increase the size of your moleworm farm indefinitely, this also means that you can farm naughtiness in massive amounts which can be really helpful or unhelpful depending on how prepared you are. As this is basically taken directly from the wiki to keep this short I'll only mention the essential stuff and just link to the DST wiki page on krampus if you want to know more.

• More Krampus spawn as days pass.
  
• 1% chance of dropping the Krampus sack.
  
• Spawns after naughtiness reaches a number between 31 and 50.
  
• Naughtiness decays at 8 points per day.
  
• Therefore with a sufficiently sized moleworm farm you can fight him once every 3 nights, or more.
  
• Kills with Abigail do not count towards naughtiness.

http://dontstarve.wikia.com/wiki/Krampus

Sources

• The video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzfQ5GqdnR0
  
• The Don't Starve wiki: http://dontstarve.wikia.com/wiki/Don%27t_Starve_Wiki
  
• This reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/dontstarve/comments/2sza4a/farmingbreeding_moleworms/
  
• Personal experience and whatever else I forget.

[Peanut Brain]

They do, the moleworm who dropped from earthquake will make burrow there.
Normally I picked them up and bring them to my base to make the burrow.

[Captain Obvious]

Do moleworms build burrows in the caves? I'm imagining setting up 2 farms, one surface and one caves, just moving upstairs and downstairs as they duplicate their burrows.

[eric]

Good

[Rodrick Heffley]

Great guide

[Vectorman]

This guide is absolutely genius and I've never thought to do this in all my hours.

Thank you for posting it!