Survivors Born in The Constant
Characters
All 19 survivors of Don't Starve Together — the returning cast from the original game, plus the six who debuted in DST itself.
Picking a Survivor
The Don't Starve Together cast — and where to start
DST's playable roster is 19 strong: the returning Don't Starve survivors (Wilson, Willow, Wolfgang, Wendy, WX-78, Wickerbottom, Woodie, Wes, Maxwell, Wigfrid, Webber, Warly) plus the six who debuted in Don't Starve Together (Winona, Wortox, Wormwood, Wurt, Walter, Wanda) and the cursed monkey form, Wonkey.
For a first world, the gentlest picks are Wilson (the no-downside baseline) or Wendy (her ghost sister Abigail handles most early threats). Once you know the ropes, fighters like Wolfgang and Wanda have the highest damage ceilings, while supports like Wortox, Winona and Wickerbottom carry whole teams.
Browse every survivor below. Swipe the tabs or click a portrait to read each one's perks, downsides and playstyle.
The Gentleman Scientist
Wilson
Wilson is the default survivor: an ordinary scientist whose only special trick is a magnificent beard. He's the blank slate everyone learns the game on.
Perks
- Grows a beard he can shave for free beefalo wool
- Beard gives strong insulation and warmth in winter
- No downsides — the baseline survivor
- Skill tree adds alchemy and beard-based utilities
Downsides
- No combat or sanity perk of his own
- Easily outshone by specialised survivors once you know the game
Team role
Wilson is the recommended starting character — everything in the game was balanced around him.
Release & updates
Released with the original Don't Starve as the first survivor; remains the free, no-unlock baseline in DST.
The Firestarter
Willow
Willow is a young pyromaniac who is happiest near flame. She can light fires with her bare hands and carries Bernie, a haunted teddy bear who fights shadows for her.
Perks
- Immune to overheating, takes less damage from fire
- Can light a free fire with no fuel using her lighter
- Bernie the teddy bear scares away shadow creatures and revives big when her sanity is low
- Gains sanity from being near fire
Downsides
- Loses sanity faster than most when standing in the cold and dark
- Bernie ages and needs sewing kits to repair
Team role
A solid combat-and-light support, especially in caves and ruins where shadows pile up.
Release & updates
Released alongside Wilson; her skill tree lets her summon fire-based attacks and strengthen Bernie.
The Strongman
Wolfgang
Wolfgang is a circus strongman whose damage and health scale with how full his belly is. He's a fearful softie hungry, and a wrecking ball when stuffed.
Perks
- Hits the highest damage ceiling of any survivor when full (Mighty form)
- Bonus health and attack speed in Mighty form
- Trains at a Gym to flip directly into Mighty with stored power
Downsides
- Eats roughly twice as fast as a normal survivor
- Wimpy form is fragile and loses sanity quickly
- Sanity drops faster around monsters than baseline
Team role
The go-to boss-killer for any team — Wolfgang plus a kiter melts giants in seconds.
Release & updates
Original Don't Starve survivor; reworked in 2022 to give him the Gym and Dumbbells that anchor his fighter identity.
The Bereaved
Wendy
Wendy is a quiet, grieving twin who summons the ghost of her sister Abigail. Abigail does the fighting so Wendy doesn't have to — making Wendy one of the safest survivors for new players.
Perks
- Summons Abigail, an invincible ghost ally who fights for her
- Deals less damage but is rarely the one taking hits
- Hardly loses sanity around the dark or monsters
- Can craft Sisturn for sanity from petals
Downsides
- Her own attacks are weaker than a standard survivor
- Abigail can be wiped out and needs a Mourning Glory to revive
- Without Abigail nearby, she is below average in combat
Team role
Often recommended as the best beginner survivor alongside Wilson — Abigail trivialises early threats.
Release & updates
Original cast; her skill tree expands Abigail's combat modes and adds petal-based crafting.
The Soulless Automaton
WX-78
WX-78 is a hateful clockwork automaton that can eat Gears to permanently boost its stats. Lightning charges it up. Wet weather hurts. It loathes all organic life.
Perks
- Eats Gears to permanently upgrade max health, hunger and sanity
- Gets charged by lightning strikes for faster movement and bright light
- Immune to food spoilage and food poisoning
- Has a Circuit system that slots in temporary stat upgrades
Downsides
- Rain shocks it for damage and sanity loss
- Cannot eat seeds, raw vegetables or stale food without penalty
- Lower starting stats than baseline — must be upgraded
Team role
End-game powerhouse: a fully fed and circuited WX-78 has the biggest stat pool in the game.
Release & updates
Original cast; rework added the Circuit skill tree turning it into a modular machine.
The Librarian
Wickerbottom
Wickerbottom is a stern librarian who writes magical Tomes. Her books summon birds, light up the sky, grow plants or scare enemies — a one-woman utility army for the whole team.
Perks
- Crafts powerful Tomes (sleep, plant growth, weather control, more)
- Can prototype most science recipes without a station
- Higher starting sanity and big sanity pool
Downsides
- Cannot eat stale or spoiled food — strict freshness rules
- Cannot sleep, so tents and bedrolls do nothing for her
- Books cost paper and reagents; sustained use is expensive
Team role
A defining team-wide utility character — her books are the answer to whole biomes.
Release & updates
Original cast; her skill tree adds new books and lets her co-read Tomes with allies.
/>The Lumberjack
Woodie
Woodie is a stoic Canadian lumberjack who carries Lucy, a sentient axe. His curse lets him transform into three different animal forms — a Werebeaver, Weremoose and Weregoose — each with its own job.
Perks
- Lucy is a top-tier axe that never wears out
- Werebeaver chews through trees and minerals at huge speed
- Weremoose hits hard and tanks attacks for fights
- Weregoose is the fastest land-travel form in the game
Downsides
- Loses sanity steadily after each transformation
- While transformed he can't talk, craft or use most items
- Werebeaver hunger drains fast — needs constant chewing
Team role
A flexible utility survivor who covers gathering, fighting and travel in a single kit.
Release & updates
Original cast; reworked with the three Were-forms and a skill tree that specialises into one of them.
The Silent
Wes
Wes is the hard-mode survivor — a mime trapped in The Constant who is worse than baseline at literally everything. His only real upside is that he can craft balloons.
Perks
- Crafts Balloons that pop for damage and decoy enemies
- Always silent — no voice samples, can only mime
Downsides
- Lower health, hunger, sanity and damage than a normal survivor
- Slower hunger drain doesn't make up for his many penalties
- Cannot speak, even in chat-game contexts
Team role
Chosen by veterans who want a self-imposed challenge run, not by anyone trying to play efficiently.
Release & updates
Original cast; even after a rework that softened his stats and added more balloons, he remains the deliberately hardest survivor.
The Puppet Master
Maxwell
Maxwell is the former King in Shadow himself, now stripped of his throne and stuck surviving like everyone else. He still has just enough magic left to conjure shadow puppets that work and fight for him.
Perks
- Summons Shadow Duelists that fight at his side
- Summons Shadow Workers (lumberjack/miner) that gather for him
- Starts with the Codex Umbra book and a Dark Sword
- Higher sanity pool than baseline
Downsides
- Lower max health than any other human survivor
- Summoning shadows costs sanity and health
- Frail to direct hits — must let the puppets fight
Team role
A pet-class fighter and gatherer. Lets a solo player feel like they have a team of three.
Release & updates
Original cast; his skill tree adds new shadow servants and stronger Codex Umbra spells.
The Performance Artist
Wigfrid
Wigfrid is a method actor who refuses to leave character — she is, as far as she's concerned, a real Valkyrie. She lives by combat and the rules of battle.
Perks
- Starts with a Battle Spear and Battle Helm
- Restores health and sanity from every hit she lands in combat
- Deals more damage and takes less damage than baseline
- Can craft a Battle Song for buffs that benefit the whole team
Downsides
- Can only eat meat — no berries, vegetables or eggs
- Loses sanity if she eats non-meat food
- Her food restrictions make early game harder
Team role
A combat-leaning support who can heal off bosses and buff the team with songs.
Release & updates
Original cast; her skill tree adds more Battle Songs and lets her share her perks with allies.
The Indigestible
Webber
Webber is a boy fused with the spider that ate him. Half-child, half-monster, he can recruit Spiders as allies and keep an entire spider farm purring at his base.
Perks
- Spiders are friendly to him by default
- Can craft Spiderdens that he can repair and grow
- Can plant Mound Wells to expand his spider colony
- Beard gives winter insulation
Downsides
- Pigs, Bunnymen and most NPC villagers attack him on sight
- Lower max health than baseline
- Cannot trade with the Pig King
Team role
Spider commander — his colony provides Silk, Glands and Monster Meat in bulk.
Release & updates
Original cast; his skill tree adds new spider variants and stronger faction control.
The Handywoman
Winona
Winona is a tough former factory hand who turns determination into machinery. She builds and repairs faster than anyone, and her catapult arenas grind down bosses while the team kites.
Perks
- Builds and works much faster than a normal survivor
- Exclusive Engineering tab: Generators, Catapults and Spotlights
- Crafts Sewing Tape to cheaply repair gear
- Catapults auto-attack enemies in a powered field
Downsides
- Engineering structures cost gears, fuel and gems
- No innate combat or sanity perk of her own
- Only shines when the player commits to the Engineering tab
Team role
Infrastructure character — sets up bases, repairs gear, and turns boss arenas into kill zones.
Release & updates
First survivor created exclusively for DST (Sept 2017); the rework in 2019 gave her the full Generator-and-Catapult identity.
The Survival Chef
Warly
Warly is a fastidious chef with his own Portable Crock Pot and exclusive recipes. His meals do more than fill bellies — they buff the whole team's stats.
Perks
- Cooks dishes the rest of the cast can't, with strong buff effects
- Carries a Portable Crock Pot for cooking anywhere
- Gains more sanity, hunger and health from food than other survivors
Downsides
- Suffers a hunger and sanity penalty if he eats the same recipe twice in a row
- Needs to maintain variety in his diet — punishes lazy meal planning
Team role
Team chef and buffer. A Warly + Wolfgang combo is a popular boss-fight setup.
Release & updates
Originally a Don't Starve: Hamlet survivor; ported to DST in 2019 with his exclusive crock-pot recipes intact.
The Soul Hopper
Wortox
Wortox is a mischievous soul-eating imp who blinks across the world in puffs of shadow and keeps his whole team alive by harvesting and releasing souls.
Perks
- Souls drop from any nearby death and heal him and all allies on release
- Soul Hop teleports him short distances; chains echo into a free second hop
- Can map-teleport long distances by spending souls
- Loses far less sanity around monsters
Downsides
- Capped at 20 souls — overflow drops half his stash with a sanity hit
- Eats real food at half value (good or bad)
- Treated as a monster by Pigs and Bunnymen by default
Team role
The closest thing DST has to a dedicated healer, wrapped in a chaotic trickster.
Release & updates
Released March 2019 as an unlockable; Nice/Naughty Scales skill tree refines his soul economy.
The Lonesome
Wormwood
Wormwood is a sentient plant-person who can plant seeds with his bare hands and grow his own decorative gardens. He's gentle, naive, and made of leaves — which means fire is very, very bad for him.
Perks
- Plants seeds and saplings directly from his inventory, no farm needed
- Gains sanity when plants grow nearby
- Crafts unique living-plant gear like the Bramble Husk armour
- Blooms in spring for extra speed and stat regen
Downsides
- Cannot heal from food at all — only from green-thumb items and salves
- Takes extra damage from fire and burns easily
- Loses sanity when plants are destroyed
Team role
A farming/gathering specialist whose late-game gear (Bramble armour, Living Logs) is some of the best in the game.
Release & updates
Released June 2019 as an unlockable; his skill tree adds new plant gear and a stronger Bloom cycle.
The Young Merm
Wurt
Wurt is a young Merm girl rebuilding her people. She turns the dangerous swamp into a thriving settlement, recruits Merms as followers, and crowns a Merm King for huge team buffs.
Perks
- Merms, bunnymen and most NPCs are neutral to her
- Builds Craftsmerm Houses and Merm Flort-ifications to grow an army
- Crowning the Merm King massively boosts her stats and her army
- Resists wetness; keeps fish alive in her inventory
Downsides
- Strict vegetarian — cannot eat meat, fish or eggs at all
- Pigs are permanently hostile; she cannot trade with the Pig King
- Lower starting sanity, and the King needs constant feeding
Team role
Faction-leader survivor — late game she's a one-merm civilisation.
Release & updates
Released October 2019 as an unlockable; her skill tree expands her command over mutated Merms.
The Pinetree Pioneer
Walter
Walter is a fearless boy scout armed with a slingshot and an invincible dog named Woby. He shrugs off the darkness — until something actually hurts him, at which point his bravado cracks.
Perks
- Ignores negative sanity auras from darkness, monsters and dusk
- Starts with a Trusty Slingshot — ranged weapon from minute one
- Woby is invincible: small Woby stores items, big Woby is a mount
- Tells campfire stories that restore sanity for the whole team
Downsides
- Taking damage drains sanity, and a wounded Walter keeps bleeding sanity
- Allergic to bees — bee attacks ignore armour
- Normal sanity-restoring clothing does nothing for him
Team role
Ranged scout and explorer; safest survivor for the dark caves and ruins.
Release & updates
Released June 2020 as a free survivor; skill tree expands his ammo, kit and Woby's abilities.
The Clockmaker
Wanda
Wanda is a clockmaker on the run from her own future. She has no health bar at all — only an Age that ticks upward, which she manages with a personal tab of time-bending pocket watches.
Perks
- No health bar — uses an Age meter (20–80) instead
- Ageless Watch heals her by winding back the years
- Backstep Watch teleports her with invincibility frames
- Alarming Clock weapon scales with age — top damage in the game
Downsides
- Cannot heal from food, salves or bandages — only from her watches
- Constantly ages on her own; reaching 80 kills her
- Watches cost Time Pieces, which drain materials and gems
Team role
Highest-skill, highest-ceiling survivor. Top-tier boss killer with unique sanity utility for revives.
Release & updates
Released September 2021 as an unlockable; skill tree expands her clock arsenal and time mechanics.
div>The Cursed Monkey
Wonkey
Wonkey is not a survivor you choose — it's a curse you fall into. Collect ten Accursed Trinkets from the pirate monkeys of Moon Quay and any character transforms into Wonkey.
Perks
- Faster sprint speed than any normal survivor after running
- Powder Monkeys and the Queen of Moon Quay become friendly
- Removes the original character's downsides while transformed
Downsides
- All of the original character's special abilities are switched off
- Pigs and Bunnymen are now hostile
- Faster hunger drain while sprinting
- Accursed Trinkets clog inventory and cannot be dropped
Team role
Not chosen — accidentally entered. Some players use it deliberately as a travel form.
Release & updates
Introduced with The Curse of Moon Quay; the only "survivor" that exists purely as a reversible mechanic.
One world, many survivors
That's the full roster. Now see the systems they all have to master.
Explore the features