Don't Starve Together: Starter Pack 2023 (DLC)

I track character unlocks the way some people track tech trees, and Wortox has been on my shortlist since he appeared in the 2019 DST roadmap. This DLC is the fastest route to him without grinding 2,700 spools through the Weave system, so the value proposition is almost entirely about whether you want to play that character rather than whether you want the skins. Spoiler: you probably do. Wortox sits at 200 health, 175 hunger, and 150 sanity, which looks balanced on paper until you notice that every piece of conventional food only gives him half its normal nutrition. A cooked morsel that restores 25 hunger for Wilson returns roughly 12.5 for Wortox. That penalty is not a bug or an oversight - it is the entire design philosophy. His real food source is souls, harvested from anything that dies within 20 units of him. Butterflies, spiders, boss monsters (which drop 7-8 souls each), even PvP kills all feed the pipeline. He holds up to 20 souls at once, and exceeding that cap forces him to drop half his stack and take a sanity hit - one of the more punishing involuntary mechanics in the game. The upside is that he is the only character who can deliver AoE healing to your entire team without cooking a single meal or crafting a dedicated item. Release a soul near injured teammates and they recover up to 20 HP each, though that figure scales down on crowded servers. On a six-player world a single released soul floors at 5 HP per person, which means the correct play is cycling souls quickly rather than hoarding them. The skill tree added since his release deepens the decision space considerably. The Nice path leans into support, eventually letting Wortox craft Twin-Tailed Hearts (a soul-cost revival item) and removing his monster classification so pigs and bunnymen stop attacking him on sight. The Naughty path pushes toward combat presence and chaos. You cannot fully invest both - the Scales system forces a meaningful commitment, and the right call depends on your server's composition. Running with two or more other players makes the Nice path a straightforward efficiency choice. Solo worlds or PvP servers favor Naughty. That fork is exactly the kind of decision-making depth I want from a DLC character unlock. The rest of the pack is cosmetic: character skins for Wilson, Wendy with Abigail, Wolfgang, and WX-78, plus a science machine skin, a lantern skin, and the Sleepytime Ensemble. None of those affect gameplay, and if you already have a stocked wardrobe from prior events or the Weave system, they land with less impact. For a newer account they add visible personality to characters you will spend dozens of hours looking at, which is not nothing. The honest framing is this: treat the skins as a bonus, not the headline. Wortox is the headline. He is not a beginner-friendly pick - managing the soul economy alongside normal survival tasks has a real learning curve, and the food penalty feels punishing until you internalize that souls ARE the food - but he is one of the most team-enabling characters Klei has ever shipped, and this pack is the low-friction way to get him.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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