Two Eras of The Constant
Expansions
Don't Starve Together has never charged for its big updates. Instead, Klei rolled out two sweeping free content eras that redrew the map, the lore, and the late game.
A New Reign
A New Reign was the first great content era for Don't Starve Together, rolling out across 2016 and 2017. It opens on a changed throne: with Maxwell gone, Charlie has taken the Nightmare Throne and rules The Constant as the Shadow Queen.
Mechanically, A New Reign rebuilt the endgame. Caves and ruins were stitched into a single connected world, the base game was rebalanced, and a wave of fearsome new raid bosses arrived to give established survivors something to dread.
What it introduced
- The Bee Queen, Toadstool, Klaus and the Ancient Fuelweaver as endgame raid targets
- A reworked Atrium deep in the ruins, gateway to the Fuelweaver fight
- New survivors and quality-of-life changes across base building and combat
- A darker narrative thread following Charlie's reign over the survivors
In short: A New Reign turned a survival sandbox into a game with a brutal, lore-rich late game worth pushing toward.
Return of Them
Return of Them followed from 2019 onward and pointed survivors in an entirely new direction: out to sea. Where A New Reign deepened the land, Return of Them added a whole second frontier — the ocean, the moon, and the celestial mystery tying them together.
Delivered in chapters with names like Salty Dog, Hook, Line and Inker, Troubled Waters and Forgotten Knowledge, the era built up to a confrontation with the Celestial Champion and reframed the game's larger story around the moon.
What it introduced
- Sailable boats, masts, anchors and a fully traversable ocean
- Ocean fishing, sea stacks, kelp, and the Crab King and Malbatross bosses
- The Lunar Island and its strange celestial flora and crafting
- Moonstorms and a story arc culminating in the Celestial Champion
In short: Return of Them doubled the size of the world and gave the lore a destination among the stars.
Born from these eras
Most of the bosses, the whole ocean, and several survivors trace back to these two updates.
See the raid roster