Wickerbottom (Don't Starve)

Wickerbottom

Don't Starve

DST

Origin

Quotes

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Wickerbottom
Status
	150
	150
	250
Special Item(s)	()
Starting Item(s)	×2
Code	"wickerbottom"

Wickerbottom reading the "The End Is Nigh" book

Main article: Books

Wickerbottom's special power is a Crafting Tab called "Books". This gives her the ability to craft 5 different magical Books with Papyrus and other different ingredients. She can read these for beneficial effects, but at the cost of a lot of Sanity.

The Books that she can craft are:

• Birds of the World- When read, this Book will summon 20-30 Birds in a circle around Wickerbottom.
• Applied Horticulture- When read, most Plants and Farms around Wickerbottom will advance to the next stage of their growth.
• Sleepytime Stories - When read, this Book acts the same as a Pan Flute, putting all nearby Mobs to sleep.
• On Tentacles - When read, this Book will summon 3 Tentacles at random locations near Wickerbottom.
• The End is Nigh- When read, this Book will summon 16 Lightning strikes at random locations near Wickerbottom.

The Books can be read a maximum of 5 times each and drain 33 or 50 with each reading session. This is somewhat offset by Wickerbottom's higher maximum Sanity, but eventually some Sanity restoring means will be required for continued usage of the Books.

Wickerbottom can make all Science Machine recipes without having to build the Science Machine, but does not gain the 15 per prototype for those since she already knows them at the start of the game. The rest of the recipes can be prototyped with a Science Machine even though they would normally require an Alchemy Engine. Therefore, only a Science Machine is needed to unlock all Science recipes for prototyping. The one exception is the book "On Tentacles" - she needs an Alchemy Engine to prototype it. This free tier of knowledge does not apply to Magic research machines though.

Wickerbottom is suited for both early and late game playthroughs, providing an easy start with her knowledge and interesting strategies with her Books in the later days.

Disadvantage

Wickerbottom lacks the ability to sleep in a Tent, Bed Roll, or Fur Roll due to her being an insomniac. This means that crafting those Items and Structures would be a waste of resources and the player will need other means to restore Sanity.

She also hates spoiled Food, causing her Sanity to suffer greatly. Eating stale food costs her no Sanity, but neither does it restore any. Stale Food also restores less Hunger and less Health than fresh Food of the same type. Raw Food has no penalties outside of its normal ones (e.g. Green Caps) if it is fresh.

Stage	Effect
Green (Fresh)	Restores the full amount of , and for a given Food
Yellow (Stale)	Restores 1/3 (normally 2/3) of , 1/4 (normally 1/3) of for a given food and doesn't restore any
Red (Spoiled)	Restores 1/6 (normally 1/2) of for a given food, doesn't restore any and decreases by 10

Downloadable Content

In the Reign of Giants (RoG), Don't Starve Together and Shipwrecked (SW) DLCs, Wickerbottom will be unable to sleep in the Siesta Lean-to.

In Shipwrecked, due to the lack of Tentacles in the world, the "On Tentacles" Book has been replaced with Joy of Volcanology. When read, this Book will summon 4 Dragoon Eggs to fall at her location, dealing massive Fire damage. Players can still craft and use "On Tentacles" but only if they use the Seaworthy and travel to a non-Shipwrecked world.

Tips

See also: Guides/Character guide - Wickerbottom's Books

• During the early days, it is advised to craft a Backpack and Shovel as soon as possible to start storing dug Grass Tufts, Saplings and Berry Bushes for the player's future base, saving them the time to go back and acquire these items.
• Having early access to variety of books is valuable, therefore setting the base in reasonable proximity to Swamps is a good strategy, and visiting Swamps frequently is a requirement to use Books reliably.
• Eating Cooked Green Caps is highly recommended during the early days, as well as going after the Tam o' Shanter in Winter and creating Bee Boxes for Taffy in later days, in order to get good use out of the Books.
  • "Applied Horticulture" can be used in tandem with a Mushroom Planter to cultivate large amounts of Green Caps, provided the player has an excess of living logs.
  • In RoG or DST, eating cooked Cactus Flesh is also a good way to quickly restore Sanity, however Jelly Salad is the go-to end game Sanity restoring food considering its easy and cheap recipe and 50 sanity gain.
  • In SW different Crock Pot recipes that provide big amounts of Sanity like Banana Pop and Surf 'n' Turf.
• "Birds of the World" book allows the player to produce mass amounts of Feathers if it is coupled with "Sleepytime Stories", Bird Traps, Lureplants or Mobs that will hunt the birds, such as MacTusk or Merm.
• The Lightning from "The End is Nigh" has no tactical use besides charging allied WX-78 in DST, as it deals next to no damage and can stunlock Wickerbottom herself in the middle of combat, while posing the risk of burning valuable items.
• Due to her insomnia she cannot sleep under Winter's Feast Tree in Don't Starve Together to get presents. She will receive the present if she's forced to sleep, but no way of forcing sleep is offset by any gifts that can be received.
• In DST Wickerbottom's favorite food is Surf 'n' Turf, meaning that she gains 15 bonus when consuming the food.
• "Sleepytime stories" allows picking easy fights with swarms of mobs such as Clockwork Monsters or Spiders. It also works exactly as Pan Flute which allows calming down Dragonfly. The downside of this strategy is that the book takes more time to read, so the player has to use it preemptively when the last larvae dies.
• "Applied Horticulture" allows Wickerbottom to mass-produce crops such as Dragon Fruit, Shrooms from Mushroom Planters. The downside is that plants planted with this method will be unlikely to grow large sizes.
• "On Tentacles" is generally only useful as tentacle pit spawner which allows the player to easily fight many enemies such as Hounds, Bee Queen, Walrus, Spiders. The downside of this strategy is that it's dangerous and the player probably needs a Lazy Forager to pick up the loot risk-free and a Bone Helmet to use several books to make the trap efficient without needing to fight of Shadow Monsters.
• "The End is Night"'s main use is charging up WX-78 in Don't Starve Together, as it's unlikely to help even when the player is swarmed with enemies.
• "Joy of Volcanology" in SW can be used to easily farm Obsidian by extinguishing the Lava Pools that form with Ice.
• "Horticulture, Abridged" works the same as Applied Horticulture, in addition growing berry bushes, banana bushes and stone fruit bushes.
• "Horticulture, Expanded" works the same as the abridged version, allowing to grow more crops per use. It also has fewer uses.
• "Applied Silviculture" grows nearby trees and twigs. It also calms down Tree Guards which allows Wickerbottom to easily create Treeguard traps without wasting pine cones. Whenever Bearger spawns, using this book to grow trees for him to knock down yields high profits.
• "Pyrokinetics Explained" extinguishes nearby fires including all campfires and gives back a Fiery Pen which works like a fire staff. This book is mainly used during summer or spring, when a wildfire occurs during to a lightning strike.
• "Overcoming Arachnophobia" and "Tempering Temperatures" are generally useless due to its temporary nature and considerate sanity drain.
• "Lux Aetherna" and its Redux variant creates a beam of light above the character, and can be used to cause Earthquakes in the caves.
• "Practical Rain Rituals" is the go-to book to craft during first Spring, as it's very cheap and allows the player to completely bypass this season's downside - constant rain.
• "Apicultural Notes" spawns 2 Grumble Bees helping the player. The maximum amount of bees commanded at once is 18. It is helpful when fighting non-AoE bosses such as Krampus, Dragonfly (Excluding enraged attack), Antlion, Spiders, Clockworks, Cave Monkeys. The downside of the book is that the Bee Queen will assume control over the spawned bees, and bees count as monsters making Pigs and hostile towards them.
• "The Everything Encyclopedia" is mainly useful when the player needs a tier 2 magic items such as Night Sword in the early game, as it allows the player to craft it using only alchemy engine.