Image: Klei Entertainment via HGG / Jeffrey Hsu
My name is Gibson Vasela. I am a freelance writer who has been playing video games for almost 20 years now. I play all kinds of games, but I especially love immersive sims and RPGs.
Reviewed by Benjamin Barr
One of the best things about Don’t Starve and Don’t Starve Together is the diverse amount of playable characters. Each one features its own unique stats, abilities, and play styles. This makes each and every play-through of the game feel unique, and it really adds a lot to the co-op component of the game.
But out of all the different characters that are in Don’t Starve Together, which ones are the best? Which ones are the most useful in a team environment? And why are they so great? These questions and more will be answered in this ranking of the 7 Best Characters in Don’t Starve Together!
Character Tier List for Don’t Starve Together
But before we get into our rankings, let’s first take a moment to place every single character in Don’t Starve Together on a tier list.
The criteria for our character rankings is mainly based off what unique benefits each character brings and their overall survivability. Just because a character is ranked lower, doesn’t mean they can’t perform well, especially in situations catered towards their kit.
Except for Wes. He literally was designed to be terrible as a self-imposed challenge for players who complained that the game was too easy.
Top 7 Best Characters in Don’t Starve Together, Ranked
With that tier list finished, let’s cover in depth the 7 best characters in Don’t Starve Together. We’ll be ranking them from good to best.
Webber – Good Early Game Character
Webber was once a normal child, but thanks to some dark magic, his body has fused with that of a spider! Thanks to this unholy union, Webber has a whole host of useful abilities/features that revolve around spiders.
Spider Allies
First, all spiders in the world are completely neutral to him (unless he provokes them). If Webber feeds a spider any piece of meat, they’ll even ally with him and help him out in combat! And unlike most other followers in the game, these befriended spiders don’t have a time limit on their loyalty.
Unfortunately, you can only befriend up to 3 spiders at a time. However, you can pick up friendly spiders and feed them meat while they’re in your inventory to heal them. Additionally, you can equip hats on them, and they’ll gain all the benefits from said hat.
Even better, Webber can craft unique Switcherdoodle cookies to transform his allied spiders into specific types. Having a mixture of Spitter and Nurse Spiders can make Webber nigh invincible and capable of taking on any fight.
Unique Craftable Items
Besides the Switcherdoodle cookies, Webber has access to some other unique craftable items that cement his status as the king of spiders.
For starters, he can craft spider eggs, which can be placed to create new dens. Since Webber is automatically neutral with them, they can serve as bodyguards against hostile enemies. He can even craft unique decorations that can be placed on the dens to make the spiders friendly to other players!
Amusingly, he can even use a level 3 spider den as a tent effectively, recovering health and sanity at the cost of hunger. This has the added benefit of delaying the level 3 spider den from turning into a Spider Queen.
Webber also has access to crafting the Webby Whistle and Shoo Box, which lets him effectively command and dismiss spiders in the area. The whistle allows him to awaken spiders from their dens, even at dusk/night, and to temporarily prevent them from automatically eating any meat in the vicinity. Meanwhile, the box lets him de-aggro all spiders in the area and dismiss any friendly ones.
How to Play Webber
Given that you have effectively an infinite supply of spiders and can lure friendly ones away from the pack, you can easily farm them for their drops. Spiders can be killed for silk and spider glands, which are components for a tremendous amount of useful recipes.
They also drop monster meat, which you can use to befriend more spiders or to eat yourself, as Webber suffers no penalties from eating monster meat dishes. All of these things make it very easy to keep your health, hunger, and sanity meters high.
Webber is a character I strongly recommend for beginners or those looking for a good all-around character. As previously mentioned, thanks to the spider drops it’s much easier to keep all three of your stats high. And with the protection that spiders can provide, staying safe in The Constant is much easier.
Wormwood – Great For Cooperative Play & Farming
Next up is Wormwood! This character is a living, sentient plant with a heart of gold. Not only would he make a great friend, but he’d also make a great character to pick if you want to survive in Don’t Starve Together.
Gardens and Blooming
One of several reasons for this is the fact that Wormwood does not need any tools/equipment to plant seeds. This makes it very easy for him to set up a farm early on in the game, allowing you to get access to a reliable source of food very quickly.
Additionally, crops planted by Wormwood stay fresh for longer and even restore his sanity by +10 when planted. If you’re planning on staying at camp most of the time and managing it, Wormwood is a great character to choose.
Wormwood also can fertilize himself with various manure products (gross, but very useful). Doing so will immediately heal him and begin to trigger blooming.
During this, he’ll alternate between three different stages that provide increasing amounts of movement speed (at the cost of slightly higher hunger reduction). When in full bloom, it’ll even provide overheating protection (great for surviving the Summer) and let you tend to all plants within 1 tile at once.
Unique Craftable Items
He also has access to several special crafting recipes that increase his survivability. For instance, he can craft a Compost Wrap, which can be used to heal a target by +40 health or as an incredibly potent farm fertilizer. Wormwood can also make a Bramble Trap, which is a unique trap that deals damage in an AoE radius instead of just to a single target.
You can also craft the Bramble Husk armor that reflects damage to enemies while wearing it and makes you immune to damage from the Bramble Trap. You can effectively set up a minefield of Bramble Traps and kite hoards of enemies through them while wearing the Bramble Husk.
Another great thing that Wormwood can craft is a Living Log, which only costs 20 of his health. This means that he is an unlimited source of the fairly rare Living Logs, which is a key crafting component in many useful recipes. Just make sure to keep your health topped off with some crock pot recipes.
How to Play Wormwood
Wormwood makes a great character for cooperative play. His ability to easily start up farms early game makes keeping himself and other players sated fairly easy. If you happen to be playing alongside Wurt, who is a vegetarian, you can help out with her food needs tremendously.
Wormwood also has the unique benefit of not suffering sanity loss from being wet, which is great during the Spring. Just be careful to avoid freezing still.
While Wormwood is blooming, you can get a lot done with the extra movement speed. You can easily manage a camp (or setup a new one) all by yourself and gather much more quickly. It even makes kiting enemies through your minefield of Bramble Traps even easier. You can solo major bosses with this strategy if you have enough traps set up.
Overall, Wormwood is a fantastic character to pick if you’re playing with others in Don’t Starve Together.
Wurt – Best For Boss Fights
Now onto my personal favorite character in Don’t Starve Together… Wurt! Wurt is not only one of the most ADORABLE characters in the game, but she’s also one of the best, especially in the late game.
Merm Allies & Buildings
Wurt is a merm, and as such all merms are friendly to her. They can be fed food and turned into followers, just like pigs can. What makes this so potent is that Wurt has the unique ability to craft and place down buildings that will spawn merms and merm warriors!
Merms and merm warriors are some of the BEST followers in Don’t Starve Together. They have good health and deal good damage. Plus, just like pigs, they can be given weapons and armor to be even more efficient in combat. They’ll even help you mine rocks and chop down trees!
With the buildings that Wurt can place down, you can easily amass a huge army in no time. You can find dozens of videos online of people easily beating some of the game’s most difficult bosses using Wurt and her merm armies.
Other Unique Benefits
But that’s not all. Wurt can also place down a Royal Tapestry, which will convert a nearby merm into the King of The Merms. You can trade fish to him to get various items such as reeds, specific seeds, and even gold! But more importantly, when the King spawns, he will give a big buff to all merms on the map, including Wurt herself! Wurt will gain +100 health, as well as +50 hunger and sanity.
Wurt is also immune to all the downsides that come with being wet. She won’t suffer any sanity loss nor risk dropping a held item (this includes effects from enemies that make you drop items).
Monsters like Frogs and Bunnymen are also neutral towards Wurt, which makes exploring certain areas a lot easier. She can also see where Tentacles are hiding.
You can even get a nice little sanity boost for Wurt simply by having a living fish in her inventory, which will also stay alive for longer! Just try to avoid having any dead fish related item in your inventory, as it’ll cause a sanity loss for her.
Unfortunately, only Wurt will naturally be friendly towards Mermfolk. Luckily, you can have other players wear a Clever Disguise crafted by Wurt to blend in and join the fishy fun.
How to Play Wurt
Overall, Wurt is a really great character if you are in it for the long run. She’s pretty weak early game, but by the end game, she will have very good stats and can easily kill almost any boss with her army of merm-folk.
You’ll want to focus on amassing as many Merm followers as possible by building a village of Merm buildings to house them. Since you can’t expect your fellow players to be wearing a Clever Disguise the entire time, I suggest building the Merm village a bit ways off from the main camp. The swamp is actually an ideal location for this.
Since Wurt is a vegetarian, you’ll have to make sure you get a farm up and running soon to keep her hunger in check. Especially since you can’t take advantage of staple recipes like Meatballs to stay full.
Fittingly (with some irony), Wurt is great at catching fish and exploring the waters on a boat. She gains benefits from having fish friends (live ones at least) and doesn’t suffer any penalty from drowning. Since she’s neutral with frogs and doesn’t mind being wet, Wurt is easily one of the best characters to use during the Spring when it’s constantly raining.
Florp!
Wolfgang – Best For Combat & Resource Harvesting
Wolfgang was one of the first characters I ever mained in Don’t Starve Together. Even with all the new characters that have been added over the years, he’s still one of the best there is.
Might Meter & Exercising
Wolfgang is a strongman and comes with a unique Might meter Depending on where your Might meter is at, Wolfgang will be in one of three different forms: Wimpy, Normal, and Mighty.
Your Might Meter will drain with time (draining faster the more hungry you are), and In order to maintain it, Wolfgang will have to regularly workout with either his Mighty Gym or with various Dumbbells. The gym is a permanent build-able structure where you play a small mini-game to bulk up at the cost of rapid hunger drain while exercising.
Alternatively, you can craft Dumbbells to maintain your Might meter while on the move. Using them will drain their durability, so you’ll have to regularly craft new ones. Luckily, just running around with them equipped will pause the drain on your Might.
Different Forms
When your Might is between 25-75, Woflgang will be in his normal form. There are no modifiers in this form, so it’s fine for when you’re lingering at base camp.
When it’s 25 or lower, Wolfgang will be Wimpy. He’ll deal less damage and be less effective with tools. However, he also suffers less hunger drain and has an easier time staying cool (which is great for Summer).
When your Might is above 75, Wolfgang will be in his Mighty form, which is the main reason you want to play as him. He gains a tremendous amount of bonuses befitting a strongman. He’ll deal double damage, be able to carry heavy objects at full movement speed, freeze slower, and he’s more efficient at mining/chopping/hammering (with a small chance of instantly finishing the task too).
Unsurprisingly, this makes Wolfgang one of the BEST PvP/PvE characters, even beating out Wigfrid. Dealing double damage and being able to wear heavy armor without any penalties is (unsurprisingly) very good. He can go toe to toe with just about any mob in the game and come out on top, as long as you’re decent at combat in Don’t Starve Together.
How to Play Wolfgang
As you can probably tell, being in Mighty form is the ideal case for Wolfgang. You can easily deal with threats, gather faster, and just be a more effective character than most with your impressive stats.
However, Wolfgang is incredibly food intensive, requiring constant eating to stay topped off to maintain his Might meter more effectively. Even more so if you’re wandering away from camp for a while. It’s imperative that you have multiple food dishes on you at all times, ideally ones that restore huge swaths of hunger.
There’s also one other major drawback to Wolfgang – he’s a coward. This means that his sanity will drain much faster when in the dark compared to the other characters and any monster with an insanity aura will quickly cause him to go insane.
Despite this drawback, I highly recommend playing Wolfgang for anyone who loves combat, as he’s arguably the best character for it in Don’t Starve Together. If you have a Wolfgang on your team, he should always get the best armor/weapons and should be out on the front-lines in most situations.
Warly – Great Support Character
Warly is a chef and is widely considered to be one of the best support characters in Don’t Starve Together. This is mainly due to his ability to craft unique food items that cannot be obtained any other way.
Special Spices
These food items make him a valuable asset to have at anytime, mainly due to the unique buffs that they can provide to players. Warly can use his unique Portable Grinding Mill to make special spices that can be added to ANY crock pot dish to give them special effects. You’ll just have to craft a Portable Seasoning Station first to add the special spices.
One such spice Warly can craft are Chili Flakes. When a player eats a food item that has been seasoned with Chili Flakes, they’ll deal an extra +20% damage for the next four minutes! This is a very, very good buff to have whenever you’re engaging in combat and can make difficult boss fights a lot easier.
There are currently a total of 4 spices in the game that Warly can craft, each with its own unique buff/effect. These range from taking less damage, to increasing the healing effects of the dish, and to gathering resources faster.
Unique Cooking Tools & Recipes
Another great thing about Warly is that he has the ability to craft special cooking equipment that makes whipping up dishes much easier to do.
One of these is the Portable Crock Pot. This is an invaluable item to have for easily creating crock pot recipes on the go. It’s also something he starts every game with, meaning you can start making crock pot recipes immediately after spawning in a new world!
The other special tool he can craft is a Chef Pouch. This is a special backpack that reduces the spoilage time of any food item placed within it. Conveniently, it can also be used to store other items like a standard backpack.
As befitting a chef, Warly has 11 unique crock pot recipes that provide powerful special effects. Some examples include Fish Cordon Bleu (makes you immune to being wet for 5 minutes), Monster Tartare (a completely beneficial use of Monster Meat), and Volt Goat Chaud-Froid (makes all damage dealt by you electrical damage).
How to Play Warly
Warly is largely designed to be a support character due to his spices. Stacking multiple buffs at once on the more combat oriented characters can drastically make fights easier. Given that Warly only needs half the amount of time needed to cook any crock pot dish, he should be the one managing the kitchen 24/7. Especially if you have the ingredients on hand for his special unique recipes.
Of course, due to his Portable Crock Pot and Chef Pouch, Warly is also an excellent explorer. He can whip up new dishes on the go and doesn’t have to worry about them spoiling as quickly.
However, there are two important caveats to Warly. The first one is relatively minor – he can only eat crock pot dishes. Since you have the Portable Crock Pot, this isn’t a huge deal as long as you find the right ingredients.
The second one is the actual issue. Warly is a picky eater and gets bored eating the same dish in rapid succession. Each time he eats the same dish within 2 days, he’ll recover less stats from the dish. You can check if you’ve eaten a dish within the past 2 days by inspecting it and seeing what Warly says. Due to that, I suggest you focus on having two high hunger restoring dishes on standby to alternate between.
WX-78 – Mix & Match Buffs
WX-78 was one of my favorite characters when I first started playing Don’t Starve back on my PlayStation 4 back in the day. While I don’t play him much anymore, I can’t deny that he is an amazing character in Don’t Starve Together due to his sheer potential.
Circuits & Charge Meter
Originally, WX-78 had the special ability to eat gears and upgrade his max stats. That has since been replaced with a new system revolving around Circuits!
By using his unique Bio Scanalyzer item, WX-78 can scan creatures to obtain blueprints for unique Circuits that give him various buffs when equipped. All he has to do is stand in the scanning circle while it’s near a creature for 10-20 seconds.
This is easier said than done, especially if the creature is hostile or prone to running all over the place. You’ll either have to get really good at kiting the creature in a small circle, freezing it, or putting it to sleep. But on success, the Bio Scanalyzer will drop a blueprint and some Bio Data (needed for crafting the circuits) nearby.
This is where the Charge Meter comes into play. It comes with 6 pin slots and up to 6 charge bars. Each Circuit takes a various amount of pin slots to equip, and when the Charge Meter is sufficiently filled up, it will activate the equipped Circuit’s effect.
While scanning and unlocking the Circuits can be rather difficult, gaining charge is simple. As long as you’re not starving or wet, WX-78 will gain a charge every 90 seconds. You’ll only lose charges if WX-78 is frozen or manually removes an equipped Circuit with his Circuit Extractor. Luckily, gaining them back is trivial.
Benefits & Downsides of Being a Robot
While he no longer consumes gears to directly upgrade himself, WX-78 can still eat them to regain a massive amount of stats (+60 stmina, +75 hunger, +50 health). Upon dying, he’ll drop up to half of the gears he has eaten across his lifetime.
Since he’s a metal robot, WX-78 acts like a lightning rod (unless next to an actual one). Luckily, this is relatively fine, as he’ll heal +100 health whenever hit with lightning (at the cost of -33 sanity). You also don’t care about the freshness of food and don’t suffer penalties for eating stale/rotting food.
Unsurprisingly, robots don’t like water. Whenever he’s above 15 wetness, he will begin to take damage, increasing with each charge level. This can quickly kill you if you don’t have something to keep you dry like an Umbrella and a Straw Hat.
How to Play WX-78
WX-78 is definitely designed for the more patient players. He’s fairly weak at the start of the game without his Circuits, possessing lower stats and no major benefits. But once you equip him with the right Circuits, you’re basically playing the game on easy mode.
Start off with getting easy-to-obtain Circuits from a Spider and Butterfly for some quick boosts to your Health and Sanity respectively. From there, you can start working your way up the food chain to unlock the more potent Circuits from bosses and elite enemies. I strongly suggest getting access to Sleeping Darts to keep enemies in place and not killing you while you scan them.
I highly recommend you play him with Wickerbottom, as she has a book that can be used to summon strikes of lightning. This will allow you to massively heal WX-78 just about anytime you want! Plus, Wickerbottom hates stale food, which WX-78 does not remotely mind.
Wickerbottom – Great Synergy With Other Characters
The character that many players consider to be the best in Don’t Starve Together is Wickerbottom. This is due to her special talent which revolves around crafting and using a variety of spell books that have several unique effects.
Knowledge is Power
These effects of her books can range anywhere from stopping the rain (good for preventing sanity loss) to resetting your body temperature (so you don’t freeze or overheat).
The most useful of these books, however, is one which causes nearby crops to grow very quickly. If you have a farm set up, you can use Wickerbottom to very quickly reap a full harvest of food. In a game called Don’t Starve Together, I think you can see why this ability is so darn useful.
Thanks to her character re-work/overhaul, there are even more books for her to use in Don’t Starve Together than the base single-player game.
Some of the more notable ones include Pyrokinetics Explained (extinguish all nearby fires and give a charge to your custom Fire Wand for each one), Sleepytime Stories (puts every mob around you to sleep), and The Everything Encyclopedia (lowers the requirements to prototype new items from science/magic/think-tanks).
How to Play Wickerbottom
Wickerbottom is probably the best character to play as in Don’t Starve Together if you plan on playing cooperatively with other people. This is because she has so many different ways she can synergize with other characters.
That crop-growing book I mentioned earlier? Pair her with Wormwood and you can have a thriving farm early game! Is it raining and WX-78 is dying from water damage? Crack open another book and turn off the rain. Maybe your base (and teammates) are burning to death in the summer? Pop open two books to extinguish the flames and reset everyone’s temperatures!
It’s hard to fully explain just how useful Wickerbottom can be. However, the most useful thing she can do with her book is to make your base a one-stop-shop for gathering resources. You and your team can effectively dig up every sapling and tuft of grass, transplant them back to your base, and read from the Applied Silviculture book to instantly re-grow all of them!
That being said, there are some things you need to watch out for as Wickerbottom. For starters, she can’t sleep at all, so you can’t make use of tents to restore her sanity and health. This is especially problematic, as reading from the books costs sanity.
We recommend having plenty of green mushrooms on standby to cook for sanity restoration and certain crock pot recipes for restoring health. Speaking of which, she detests eating anything that’s not fresh. She won’t gain sanity from stale dishes, and spoiled food just drops her sanity.
Join the High Ground
We hope that you found this article covering the Top 7 Best Characters in Don’t Starve Together informative! What are some of your favorite characters in the game? Be sure to let us know down in the comments! And subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more regular DST rankings and guides.
Happy gaming!
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