So we've got some newbies around I've noticed, and I made an advice thread for beginners involving some tips and tricks! I figured we don't do this often here, so let's have a thread for the new guys to help them out! :D

Basically, post your tips, or more importantly, if you're new, post a question on how to better survive a mistake you've made!

Some extracts from the other thread I posted in are below- post away here too, y'all beautiful peeps!

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"If you want my advice... ignore everything except getting a good stockpile of spiky bushes from the swamp for regenerating twigs (dig them up with a shovel and replant for infinite winter twigs) and set up shop in a desert with lots of grass for you to pick as you need it through summer until winter hits.

That's honestly the key to surviving winter. Your only goal other than drying racks, twigs and grass (full sized meat jerky heals you, restores sanity and food- best item in the game) is to get a beefalo hat. Easier than a winter koalephant vest, and lets you run around with log suits all winter. Oh, for staying warm, you need to plant trees all around your base, preferably within range of a fire.

It's all the stuff like berry bushes, farms- summer things- that distract you so much you forget what's actually important.

"Good luck mate. Koalephant hunting is far and away the best way to get meat, don't be tempted by beefalo. Never let your logs supply fall below 20, and always have a campfire pre built (click it, then don't place it.)

Keeping a secondary log suit on you stops your armour falling low, and fighting hounds is a piece of cake if you just run away from them until they eat the beefalo. Your ideal home has beefalo, grass and a road/path to help you explore from your home base with greater speed, but isn't near anything hostile like a walrus camp. Getting some spider nests planted near base by winter by recruiting pigs for a spider nest siege just before winter cracks and taking out any tier threes that have grown is really worthwhile to stop you needing expiditions for silk if you've managed to get ~8-12 drying racks online.

The primary problem with that many drying racks is that it requires two to three full stacks of grass to build, so try get harvesting early. Learning to live without backpacks will also keep you alive for a super long time, it just involves better resource management and finding chester. Hint: The eyebone is almost always along a road, and if you can't find chester by day 3, it might be worth starting a new game for this playstyle.

"I'm off to be for now, but tell me each way you die, and I'll tell you how I avoid that situation.

Mostly, don't starve is the game you have to learn that you can't just rush in and do shit. I don't take on a level 3 spider nest without traps to trap the spiders piece by piece, or pigs.

If you're not making it past day ten, I'm assuming you're not playing RoG cause that's insanity for a veteran player, but I'm figuring you're not starving- just get berry bushes, these will keep you alive long enough till you get good food- I'm guessing things like insanity are wearing you down, which can be circumvented by regularly picking flowers and keeping a garland on till winter. Flowers are a limited resource until you start getting creative with bees, but your jerky will give you all the sanity you need.

Other than that, it's really just a matter of keeping a backup torch for the night, learning tricks like keeping the darkness off can be done by quickly equipping a torch for 1 second, then unequipping it. This resets a darkness timer, and a 3% torch can actually keep you alive all night if it's all you've got (prepare to be batshit insane by sunrise, but alive.)

Lessons learned the hard way:

Free loot in chests is never free. It will explode, destroy you with spiders, fuck the world up and generally ruin your day. If you see a chest in the wild, leave it the fuck alone as a general rule.

Don't go in a swamp at dusk. Tentacles are hard to see coming during the daytime. In fact, for the most part, just don't go into swamps; swamps are advanced level don't starve, and until you're surviving into winter and running out of twigs too hard, swamps should be something you avoid at all costs, except for spiky trees. Nobody has a use for reeds, and if they say they need reeds to survive, they're a fuckin' liar. Reeds are the Rolls Royces of Resources. (What a magnificent sentence right there)

Red mushrooms aren't your friends. Just.. don't. Like. Ever. For any reason. Green mushrooms are your best buddy and your worst enemy, depending on whether you cook them for your needs at the time. Blue mushrooms are bullshit fuckin' unicorns you'll never see and always wish you had in your life. Blue mushroom fairy circles are pretty much an instant reason to build a base on the fuckin' spot.

Don't just run at shit and swing at it. Things have attack patterns. Learn them, swing, run away, let them lunge but miss you, then run back and beat the shit out of them. A good don't starve player survives combat by clobbering things to death without taking a single hit, not by having better weapons and armour.

If you go insane, you're going to have to kill a shadow monster. They're some of the hardest motherfuckers to kite, but it can be done.

Don't build a town in a pig village even if this seems like a fan-fucking-tastic idea. Like having a girlfriend, for most of the month it's an awesome idea. For about 2-3 days of that month, YOU WILL REGRET EVERYTHING.

Spiders are your friends, even if you're not webber. Spiders kill hounds at dusk, provide a valuable source of health items, a valuable secondary use resource in the silk (reeds being tertiary, twigs primary, for example) and some meat.

Build a crock pot. Try out meatballs. They're pretty bad ass. Don't eat monster meat. It sucks ass.

Build a fridge. Gears are hard to get, though, and don't be a jackass and try and take on anything clockwork. Clockwork things are stupid, though, so give meat to some pigs and make them fight, or kite them into a surrounding thing like spiders or bees.

Don't kill all your beef. Beefalo are a valuable resource, and killing off a third is wise. Extinction is not. Rely on hunting koalephants and get good at this. A boomerang is a wise investment, but there is an art to pinning them against a wall/corner and running them down with a spear, or stalking them till they fall asleep at nightfall when you're far enough away and hammering their brains in with a torch.

Boomerangs can be caught. Press spacebar on it's way back (or ps4 equivalent of 'auto pick up shit')

Tents are great for making winter go by. Sleep in one with <10 hunger and a food item handy for a free health and sanity boost in hard times, and to conserve chow.

Don't fuck with an ent. Don't even think about considering fucking with an ent. Plant all your pine cones till it forgives you, stand far away from it to stay sane, and accept that your base now has a gigantic tree dicking around it. When deerclops comes, MAKE THE GIANT TREE FIGHT THAT MONOCULAR CERVINE COCKMONGLER.

The most valuable resource you can find is a natural mass formation of grass. Covet this, even if it's guarded. Employ pigs to kill guardian pigs and take out those torches... but never get involved in the fight. Guardian pigs will fuck your shit up. Natural formations of reeds should never be coveted. Under any circumstances.

Killer beehives are only for when you laugh at everything else in the game. Running through a killer bee biome makes RoG veterans cry.

Spread out base-plantations of twigs and berries. Grass tufts require lots of manure to relocate, so just live in a desert filed with lots.

Don't forget to get lots of rocks. Having enough for winter will save you what might be a really long, painful and dangerous hike.

Meat effigies are some serious hassle. They're great and all, but don't bust your balls trying to get one when the days you spent working on it could have been used just actually staying alive. Learn better to rely on not dying, not dying insurance policies.

Killing mandrakes is a sin. Keep mandrakes as a pet by picking them only at dusk, and keeping them far away from berry bushes (gobblers will devour your pets the sickening fucking cunts that they are.) A good don't starve player doesn't need some one-off buff from a mandrake, and like breaking a mirror, killing a mandrake is widely regarded as one of the greatest sins in the game that will bring negative karma crashing down around your ears like deerclops crushing your entire camp.

Walls are by and large a waste of time/resources. If you can make a hound trap with hounds teeth and all that shit, that's awesome, good for you. Most of us just kite hounds around the beefalo we live a couple of screens away from and have them get beaten to death by a herd of angry cows. So great to see them lose interest in you, bite some beef, and watch the ensuing, "YOU WALKED INTO THE WRONG NEIGHBOURHOOD BITCH!"

Beefalo aren't always your friend unless you wear a fancy hat that makes you look like one. Wear this hat all through winter.

Heat stones: Fuck yeah. Why not make 2, one to warm while the other heats up?

Hound teeth make sewing kits. Sewing kits make hats better. Sewing kids are our friends.

Magic is a pile of poonswogglistic hocus pocus jibber jabber. I sure as shit played and lived before it came to town, and by jebus you can too. Don't be a punk ass bitch getting a shadow manipulator by day 12, make six more drying racks.

A carefully laid out and organized base builds morale against the oppressive atmosphere. The only thing better for morale than a neat base is a little 'boing-boing-boing!' following that eyebone wherever you go. Von Otterman, you are the truest friend I shall ever know <3

If you have a death I haven't listed here, tell me about it and I'll give you some tips to avoid it happening. Love that you new guys are here and this community is still growing, and remember, we're always here to help :D

Note: I'm not the best player out there. This advice isn't the last word, be all and end all, and there are better strategies, so I don't want to start a war or a fight- if you have a better idea, though, type it out :3