Don't Starve Character Ranking

There are a lot of characters for different playstyles of surviving the inhospitable landscapes of Don't Starve. While most all are good in their own way some are better than others. Here's my list of the characters and their ranking compared to each other.

Disclaimer: Play how you like not as I say

Before anyone attacks me for saying their favorite character is lower than they think it should be, I'm just making this as I think fairly evaluates their strengths relative to each other. You can play whoever you think is fun or best suits you. But in this life or death landscape it's worth considering who has the strongest chance of surviving. Now, lets get to nitpicking.

I'll be judging stats and abilities based on how much they have to offer that no other character provides, Wilson is the first character unlocked and is completely solid with no drawback so anything that limits what a character can do will look bad in comparison.

Max stats and modifiers
Health - 150
Hunger - 150
Sanity - 200

Special skill:
grows a beard

With no downsides and a perk to help survive Winter he's a good choice over most unlockable characters. Why play anyone less than Wilson when you already have him? (Don't answer that, read the comment above)
Look forward to seeing him in A tier but this guide will start at the bottom of completely useless and barely helpful characters up to the ones that are good in their own way and all around great.

Z Tier - Asking for a challenge

Wes the Silent

Health - 113
Hunger - 113 - drains faster -1.25x
Sanity - 150
0.75 damage

Special skills:
Can't speak, will not warn of oncoming events like other characters will
Uses Pile o' Balloons to create balloons at a cost of 5 sanity, when damaged they explode for 5 damage and trigger other balloons.

Unlocked somewhere in the third chapter of Adventure Mode, getting Wes likely means you're already skilled in the game. I guess it's fitting he's a terrible survivor and is best suited as a challenge. His health is pathetic, he's hungry faster and stores less, his ability sucks, and he won't even give the player information. He's clearly made difficult from the start so you can show your friends how far through the game you got with such a weak character. For that reason he gets the lowest possible tier all to himself until another difficult character is made.

D Tier - Not very helpful if you already know what to do

Willow the Firestarter

Health - 150
Hunger - 150
Sanity - 120 - restore +10/min when close to a fire

Special skills:
Immune to fire damage
Portable lighter, similar to an infinite torch
When below 60 sanity she will randomly light fires

At first you might think she's good, new players having trouble in the dark or getting materials for fire will survive the night with her easy. But it really doesn't take much to get a fire started, make torches for a night or even general arson uses. Her biggest draw back is her sanity, not only how it's low compared to Wilson but any time you want to dip into low sanity she's going to start burning everything around her. Whether it's getting beardlings or just a bad day you'll set the forest on fire if your sanity gets too low. Even her fire immunity doesn't come up that often, leaving her with very minor benifits and a harmful drawback.

C Tier - Somewhat lacking but worthwhile

Wolfgang the Strongman

Health - 150 / 200 / 300
Hunger - 300* - drains faster -1.5x in normal form
Sanity - 200 - drains faster in dark and from monsters -1.1x
0.5-0.75 / 1.0 / 2.0 damage

Special skills:
When above 220 hunger he will enter Mighty Form gaining movement speed, damage and health but his hunger will drop at 3x normal speed. When below 105 hunger he will become Wimpy Form with reduced max health, reduced attack and his hunger drain will slow down to a 1x rate.

An interesting character to say the least, mighty when fed but wimpy in a famine. You can try to manage your hunger to avoid wimpy form and pull out mighty when you need it but that doesn't change your constant hunger, You'll always need food and while with most characters 'Don't Starve' is trivial advice against the other threats, for Wolfgang it's a possibility he dies from his hunger getting the better of him. Still not a complete write off.

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Wickerbottom the Librarian

Health - 150
Hunger - 150
Sanity - 250

Special skills:
Starts with advanced knowledge
Can create magic books with different effects
Can't sleep and hates food spoilage

A good choice for a quick start, Wickerbottom doesn't require a science machine for the next tier of crafting and instead it replaces the alchemy engine tier. What else can she do? Well a few books are helpful in the right situation, if you can get papyrus. Not being able to sleep through a night and restore sanity can be problematic, similar to Willow's destructive nervous state but more managable. Spoiled food doesn't pose much of a problem just keep things fresh and get an ice box but not getting the sanity bonus from early prototypes is a small trouble, and it's really not hard to get 1 gold for a science machine and plan out the stuff you need for any other character. Not many disadvantages but also few benifits, some may prefer her just to get things built quicker or only need 1 gold to unlock everything.

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Walani the Unperturbable (SW)

Health - 120
Hunger - 200 - drains faster -1.1x
Sanity - 200 - drains and restores slower -0.9x

Special skills:
Builds surfboards and loves surfing
Drys off 1.2x faster

One of the characters from the DLC Shipwrecked. In an enviorment covered in water Walani has no trouble getting around with her favorite pass time. She starts with a surfboard and can make new ones pretty easy, it has 1.3x the sail speed of a raft and gets much faster against waves but has 2/3 the durability, and can fit in her inventory allowing her to pick up where she disembarks and leave wherever she feels, no more remembering where you parked. However, similar to Wickerbottom, she has a good early start but her other bonuses don't do much and her low health can be problematic especially when poisoned. I guess if anything it's easy to retain sanity and you'll have less time drying at a fire so you can get back to surfing.

B Tier - Some downsides but mostly good

Wendy the Bereaved

Health - 150
Hunger - 150
Sanity - 200 - drains slower -0.75x
0.75x damage

Special skills:
After 3 days, the flower of her deceased twin sister Abigail will be fully charged, after a blood sacrifice and 50 sanity, Abigail will attack all enemies.

My personal favorite and decently good for anyone having trouble surviving. Once Abigails ghost is activated it becomes the spirit of death to all minor enemies. Featuring 600 health regenerating 1 per second, deals 10 damage during the day (up to 40 at night) in an AoE and immune to poison. Spiders will fall in mass, snakes have no chance against her, lone pigs beefalo and koalaphants will live in fear of this double team. However without her sister, Wendy is pretty helpless with reduced damage and at a big disadvantage against bosses that Abigail can't simply tank. Besides that she can farm swarms no problem and make single medium enemies easier.

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Maxwell the Puppetmaster

Health - 75
Hunger - 150
Sanity - 200 - gains +20/min

Special skills:
Starts with a sword and armor
Codex of Umbra
Also has a purple gem and nightmare fuel

Unlocked after completing Adventure Mode, while his body is frail Maxwell starts himself with some high grade gear, including a spellbook that gives him complete control of his sanity and create helpers so long as he has nightmare fuel. When he's not cutting his max sanity down when he chooses to it springs up in moments. Fitting for the mastermind of this insane world to give himself powerful items to level the field but his pathetic health is something to watch out for.

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Webber the Indigestible (RoG)

Health - 175
Hunger - 175
Sanity - 100

Special skills:
Silky beard
Monster biology and alliances

Special unlocked in Reign of Giants, Webber has some nice bonuses. He can eat monster meat without problem where most characters would feel sick, he's friends with spiders and gets a beard that grows a bit every 3 days to help insulate some heat during Winter, just remember to shave during Summer. The downside, pigs are your enemy now, so the pig king will be tougher to get to and you have one less manure source available. For the most part he's pretty good but with a weaker beard than Wilson, silk's not as valuable as beard hair and making trouble with pigs, it's hard to put him on the same level.

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Woodlegs the Pirate Captain (SW)

Health - 150
Hunger - 150
Sanity - 120 - drains on land -4.8/min

Special skills:
Lots of starting loot
Captain of the Sea Legs, a powerful unique ship
Can sniff out treasure

After collecting the three keys and unlcoking his cage, Woodlegs is loose on the world once more. Similar to Maxwell starts with great items but with a crippling flaw, he quickly goes insane if he's on land for too long. The Sea Legs is a great Armoured Boat with an infinite cannon even if you can't add a light to it but with an infinite cannon that more than makes up for it. If you enjoy madly sailing around for buried treasure and being completely nomatic he may be a good fit. Do what you want because the pirate is free, and you are the pirate.

A Tier - No Major Flaws, Wilson Tier

Wilson the Gentleman Scientist

Health - 150
Hunger - 150
Sanity - 200

Special skills:
Grows a beard

Here he is again, the character with no true flaws and the standard for all others. Every 4 days he grows out his beard, allowing him to insulate heat during Winter and it can be easily trimmed during Summer to make meat effigys. That's it, have a razor by spring and nothing can go wrong, no weaker damage against bosses, no frail health below 125, no insanity for being on land, and no random fires if you do choose to reduce your sanity. A solid choice and a nice first character to work with.

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Woodie the Lumberjack

Health - 150
Hunger - 150
Sanity - 200

Special skills:
Infinite cursed axe

Woodie can cut trees all day, any day. Save up your flint and twigs for picks and shovels cause you'll never need to craft an axe in your life. The downside? A better Wolfgang transformation. If you abuse your axe too much or a full moon rises you will turn into the Werebeaver. And that's it, you do up to 41 damage, run fast, your health sanity and hunger are replaced with Beaverness, you lose the curse over time but can keep it going if you eat logs and saplings and just have to manage your curse wisely. Compared to Wilson there's more managment involved and you have to take your time when harvesting wood but it's very managable and hardly a downside.

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Warly the Culinarian (SW)

Health - 150
Hunger - 250 - drains faster -1.3x
Sanity - 200

Special skills:
Portable Crock Pot
Unique dishes
Chef pouch, preserves perishables with the space of a backpack
Gains 1.3x the benifits from crock meals, but only a fraction from other foods w/ increased negative effects
Hates eating the same thing over and over and over and over and can we eat something besides Ratatouille and Meatballs for once!

Again requires more smarts than Wilson but hardly any disadvantage. His large hunger drain is off set by his large stomach and his love of cooking. Also he starts with one of the most important items in any Don't Starve a Portable Crock Pot. Let me say again, starts with Portable Crock Pot! You don't even need to set up bases for cooking he starts with his own crutch to fix his handicap. Along with 8 space bag to hold and preserve ingredients, you start the game with an insulated pack, correction: an insulated pack with 8 slots instead of 6 and you don't have to kill a bearger. Look up the requirements for dishes, pick your favorites and print out the recipies and remember not to repeat a dish too often within 1.75 days.

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Wilbur the Monkey King (SW)

Health - 125
Hunger - 175 - drains faster when running -1.3x
Sanity - 150

Special skills:
Is a monkey
Runs faster but walks slower
Can't talk except through monkey sounds
Poops every 2-5 days

Similar to Wes, Wilbur is unable to give hints to what's going on, hopefully when you find him out at sea you've played Shipwrecked enough to know what's going on. However he's a decent character on his own. While slow when walking he can move quicker simply by moving in the same direction for 3 seconds, while this does increase hunger at the same rate it saves time more than anything. His other benifit, monkeys aren't jerks around him, the most annoying mob in the game stops being a problem, automatically a great character. His stats are a bit low, but that can be ignored with free manure every few days. Make fewer trips to the water beefalo or make a small farm or fertilize your current farms, or throw your poop at enemies and birds or just roleplay as a monkey on a journey to the west.

S Tier - God Like

WX-78 the Soulless Automaton

Health - 100 - 400 (+20)
Hunger - 100 - 200 (+7)
Sanity - 100 - 300 (+14)

Special skills:
Upgraded by gears
Damaged by rain, charged by lightning
Chemical engine, ignores spoilage

At first starts with miserable stats nearly as weak as Wes, but with up to 18 gear upgrades he becomes the strongest character in the game, and with gears showing up in a number of places besides the clockworks it's possible to get your stats up well before you need to fight them hand to hand. WX-78 takes no penalty from food spoilage, so long as it doesn't turn to rot he can eat it just fine where as most characters will eat food before it even has the chance to go stale. While rain and wetness do harm him it's not much and can be eaten off without worry or just get an umbrella soon, even better get struck by lightning and go into overdrive, 100hp restore, 1.5x movement, radiate your own light, and immune to freezing for the next day. If you know where to look for gears and know how to stay out of rain WX-78 can be a powerhouse against this harsh organic nature.

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Wigfrid the Performance Artist (RoG)

Health - 200
Hunger - 120
Sanity - 120
1.25x damage dealt, 0.75x damage taken

Special skills:
Starts with signature battle gear
Meat only diet
25% enemy attack is given to Wigfried as health and sanity

At first glance Wigfrid looks like a poor character, forced to hunt for food all the time and not the best stats besides health. However everything she lacks is made up for by constant combat. Sort of a more independent version of Wolfgang, she has less bonuses in damage but less demands in terms of food. She starts the game with a helmet and a powerful battle spear, each easier to create than their football helm and spear equivalents, fighting shouldn't be a problem. While she won't get much out of farming she can still spice her meatballs with non meat items so long as the final product is meat based. Even monster meat isn't that bad as the negatives are directly restored by killing enemies and most damage absorbed by her helmet. Everything is covered and what's left is a warrior ready to devour everything she can.

Conclusion

While some characters are stronger than others that doesn't make the others any less fun. I still enjoy playing a character even I would admit has problems setting them lower than Wilson who has no drawbacks, and even he is out classed by a few characters. The game should be about having fun and picking a character that fits you. However if you still want to know, Wigfrid and WX are very strong and Willow is completely useless to anyone who knows what they're doing, just saying. But still, go try everyone and pick the one that's right for you.

Don't Starve Together Rebalancing

Just some notes on characters in the multiplayer, usually to prevent griefing.

=Willow's lighter has a limit but also an easy recipie to rebuild it, her fire immunity is reduced and she doesn't leave fire when low on sanity, she also starts with her stuffed bear Bernie who will distract shadow monsters.

=WX-78 starts with 150 health sanity and hunger, only requires 15 gears to fully upgrade to the same cap

=Maxwell only starts with his Codex and 6 Nightmare Fuel instead of a sword and armor as well as a difference between worker puppets and duelist puppets. Sanity boost has been lowered from 20 to 6.7/min.

=Woodie's Werebeaver has reduced capabilites and shares Woodie's health and sanity. To return to normal hunger/wood must be restored to 100, death as the werebeaver results in actual death.

=Shipwrecked hasn't been added to DST along with its signature characters.

A note on DST team synergy

Some characters become a lot stronger in Dont Starve Together. Mainly Wickerbottom, her books cost her sanity and it's very hard for her to get it back up alone, aside from them she simply has half the recipies prototyped for her and hates stale food. However, with more hands to collect reeds in the swamp for her and Wolfgang to handle harder fights (and eat her surplus of berries and bird morsels) suddenly she's on the level of fully upgraded WX-78. Speaking of which, cast lightning whenever you want on him so he can work during nights and roam rather than wait for a storm. Maxwell's shadow minions cost nightmare fuel which you can only gather so quickly with 20 sanity/minute. Solution: make others gather nightmare fuel for you and then become the best resource collector possible. A lot of these characters are frail alone but with a well structured team you can cover each others weaknesses and become a terrifying force. Still, Wilson has nothing holding him back and provides beard hairs from sanity, with or without a team structure.

and Woodie pretty much sucks in DST if you factor in Maxwell and teamwork.

[НАСРАЛ_В_ПОДЪЕЗД]

wtf is this lol. Have you ever played the game?

[Blu90]

Woodie is an A tier until you try to use him in SW or you so much as want to obtain glommer.

[Shame]

Wickerbottom is arguably the most powerful character you could have, to the point where her drawbacks are nothing but minor inconveniences. Not the most fun to play as, but her books will trump nearly every game challenge there is. You mention sanity, but that becomes a non-issue if you can fight off nightmares (you will need the nightmare fuel eventually anyway) and gather cactus flesh and cook green mushrooms for sanity.

[COR_MORTEM]

i got 107 days with wigfrid when i was a big noob and 96 with heavy from tf2

[Fluffy Furret]

My opinion on this is that it seems a lot more designed towards beginners than anything. I know quite a few veterans that would put willow lower than wes and put wickerbottom (and sometimes) wolfgang as better than WX-78.

[[e-mail]]

I can't be the only one that thinks that Wilson is garbage tier because he brings absolutley nothing to the table other than a (incrediably sexy) beard and that 90% of the time you die out of sheer bordem

[SirBogmire]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1265142213

[SirBogmire]

boi i got to day 428 with willow fight me

[Joehsnsoen]

Honesty, i hate when people take someone's tier list (edgy rick) take it as solid fact and insult other people for not fully agreeing, I mean what if im amazing with Wes and Willow but im horrible with Wicker and Wolfgang, does that mean im a pro or a noob?

Which makes tier list somewhat pointless to take as fact because people have different playstyles and the only way to stop people from fighting on which character is better is to just allow you to only play as Wilson which isn't fun at all, and no i don't like "GOD LIKE" characters because they breeze though the game which puts me to sleep

[Papa Canis]

You are lucky that EdgyRick doesnt read Steam Guides. He wouldve been on your ass faster than you can blink.
(You didnt put Wicker and Wolfgang at God tier)