Playable Characters | Allies | Monsters and Hostile Mobs | Neutral and Passive Mobs | Bosses and Giants | Other Characters
This character sheet is about the various neutral or passive mobs found in Don't Starve.
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Introduced in the base game
Rabbits
Walter: "A real jackalope! Come here little guy!"
They live in burrows, and are easily spooked. Can be captured in traps, where they can be used for meat.
- Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Despite being called rabbits, they have horns like a Jackalope. Walter even calls them Jackalopes.
- Palette Swap: They switch coats in the Winter to a more whiter coat.
- Pull a Rabbit out of My Hat: Amusingly, prototyping something with the Prestihatitator has a chance of spawning a Rabbit out of the top hat.
Birds
Woodie: "What a snotty little jerk."
Birds often appear near seeds. They can be caught by a bird trap and kept in bird cages. Different types of birds appear depending on the terrain they are landing on. Also Woodie hates them all, for some reason.
- Canary in a Coal Mine: If you bring a canary in a bird cage in the Caves while the Toadstool is still alive, it will get sick and turn into a Volatile Canary. Unlike the usual trope though, they're still alive and if you take them back to the surface and drop them on the ground they'll fly away with lots of feathers dropped. However if you drop it on the ground in the Caves, it explodes.
- Creepy Crows: Crows are among the types of birds you can encounter, with plenty of characters alluding to their reputation. They're no different to other birds, though, outside of the fact they're not native to the Constant. They were dragged in there with Wes.
- Metal Slime: Cormorants in Shipwrecked spawn in specific areas in the ocean, and only occasionally drop Roe, which are important for starting Fish Farms.
- Palette Swap: There's a wide variety of bird types, but their differences tend to be minor outside of what they drop when landing, or the feathers they drop when killed
- Pirate Parrot: Appear only in Shipwrecked. Instead of seeds, they drop Dubloons, and they can make snarky comments in the inventory.
- Polly Wants a Microphone: The Parrot Pirates all talk. If you have one in your inventory, they'll comment on all the stuff you do and get nervous whenever you go sailing on a boat with them.
- Smug Snake: Parrot Pirates all hurl insults at your direction if you encounter them in the wild but if you catch one, they all start screaming for mercy and beg to be released.
Tallbird
Maxwell: "These were a failed experiment."
One eyed, stilt legged birds that spawn in rockyland biomes, protecting their nests from anything that looks at it funny. Stealing their egg can either give you a filling meal, or the opportunity to adopt a Tallbird of your own.- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: They're tall birds. The babies are small birds, and their teenaged phase are smallish but still tall birds.
- Mama Bear: Subverted. They will chase you relentlessly if you steal their eggs, but the second they hatch, the parent Tallbird will have no qualms in murdering their child. Don't be surprised if you spot a morsel or rot lying next to their nests during visits.
- Oculothorax: It's head is governed by a single, large eye.
- Video Game Caring Potential: Subverted. You can try and raise your own Tallbirds from an egg, but the moment they turn adult (and during their teen years), they'll start attacking you like any other Tallbird.
- Zerg Rush: A setpiece called a Tallfort can spawn in world generation that consists of a flock of at least 20 Tallbirds living together around a field of boulders, making it extremely difficult to clear them out for the boulder bounty without the help of giants.
Koalefant
Warly: "You can't get attached to cute cuts of meat."
A huge creature that can only be found through Suspicious Dirt piles.
- Metal Slime: It is hard to find and runs away from the player. Defeat it however and it rewards you with a lot of meat and a useful crafting ingredient to survive through winter.
- Mix-and-Match Creatures: A broadly elephant-like beast with the fur, eyes and ear of a koala.
- Palette Swap: It's red in spring, summer, and autumn, and turns blue in winter. This affects the vest that can be crafted from its trunk.
Bees
WX-78: "A MINDLESS DRONE. I LIKE HER."
Creatures that collect pollen to make Honey. They can be found in Beehives, and also in player created Bee Boxes.
- Bee-Bee Gun: They can be weaponized to make Bee Mines.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Much larger than real bees.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Normal, not aggressive (unless provoked) Bees are yellow and black, while Killer Bees are red and black.
- Face–Heel Turn: They become aggressive during spring.
- Scary Stinging Swarm: Killer Bees will attack you on sight.
Pengulls
Wilba: "'TIS BIRDIE O' FUNNY WADDLE!"
Winter-exclusive neutral mobs. They spawn from the ocean to create a nest surrounded by ice near to the player's location.
- Bandit Mook: They will steal every piece of meat left unattended. They'll also steal any eggs lying around and start trying to hatch it as if its their own.
- The Family That Slays Together: Only if you attack them first (or if they are starting to die because winter is ending). If you try to attack one of them, they will come to get you all together. Weirdly averted in case you manage to steal their eggs.
- Helpful Mook: If you are lucky enough for them to spawn in a location where they won't try to damage your structures they can even be useful. Ice naturally spawns around their nests and you can mine it with no problem at all; and, when winter ends, they naturally die leaving behind black feathers, meat and eggs (thought it is more likely the last ones standing already eat most of the loot and that the rest of it is already spoiled beyond salvation by the time you find it.)
- Our Zombies Are Different: Like the Hounds, if the player is on the Lunar Island Moonrock Pengulls will spawn instead. Moonrock Pengulls don't lay eggs and they attack all the nearby mobs.
- Pintsized Powerhouse: They're deceptively powerful and do 34 damage per hit, the same as a Beefalo. A flock can easily have eight to ten Pengulls at once so you're in for a bad surprise if you decide to try to attack these things unarmored.
- Polar Penguins: They were introduced in the game the same time the Winter season was added as a feature.
Mandrake
Wheeler: "Swell. I picked up an annoying sidekick."
Living vegetables that hide in the day. If they're uprooted during the day, they die instantly but if uprooted at dusk or night, they will start hopping around and follow the player while making lots of noise.
- Brown Note: Trying to eat a Mandrake will result in it screaming, which will make any nearby mob who hears it fall asleep. If you try to cook a Mandrake on a flame, its screaming will knock the player out as well, skipping a whole day. Oddly, it won't scream if it's cooked into a soup with the crock pot.
- Sidekick Creature Nuisance: They'll act as your followers when uprooted at night though they won't actually help you and will just make lots of noise. Almost every player character finds the Mandrakes extremely irritating when they're following them.
Introduced in Reign of Giants
Moleworm
Winona: "Dutiful little miner."
A creature that resembles a mole with an earthworm's bottom. It searches for minerals, and is always seen underground until it finds some.
- Bandit Mook: It will steal a large variety of items — such as minerals, charcoal, ashes, gears or gunpowder — if it finds them lying around, and hoard them in its burrow.
- Fast Tunnelling: They scurry around beneath the ground like a fish swimming through water, matching a surface characters' walking speed while digging.
- Mix-and-Match Creatures: It has the head, torso and front paws of star-nosed mole, and the hind body of a worm.
- Mole Miner: It searches for minerals like stones and flint, which it then stashes in its burrow.
- Shout-Out: It can be stunned with a hammer, like in Whack-a-Mole. Wilson even remarks on having an urge to hammer it.
- Whack-a-Monster: They're beyond your ability to harm while underground. If you want to get rid of them, you have to goad them into surfacing or wait until they do so on their own, then get them before they dive back underground.
- Wormsign: When underground, they create a little mound of disturbed dirt that follows them as they dig, marking their position.
Introduced in Shipwrecked
Jellyfish/Rainbow Jellyfish
Woodlegs: "Shockin'ly Squishy." - Jellyfish
Wormwood: "Pretty Glub Glub Blob." - Rainbow Jellyfish
Floating blobs found in shallow waters, floating passively in the waves. They won't attack you, but trying to hurt them is a bad idea. Their rainbow relatives are safer, and like to hang around the Volcano.
- Bioluminescence Is Cool: Rainbow Jellyfish glow in the dark, making them a boon for those traveling at see. Eating them will let your character glow for a short while, and in a variety of colors too.
- Electric Jellyfish: Regular Jellyfish will deliver a painful zap to anyone who hits them with a melee weapon. It actually bypasses boat health to hurt your character's health, so don't think you're invincible just because your boat is an armored one. Rainbow Jellyfish avert this, though, and can be killed without concern.
- Helpful Mook: Rainbow Jellyfish provide light in a small radius, and confer this ability for a short time when eaten, making them great for nighttime adventuring. Their presence can also be used as a way to locate the Volcano island, as they'll migrate to the center of the map and back on every new moon.
Blue Whale
WX-78: "SUBOPTIMAL SEROTONIN LEVELS DETECTED."
Depressed whales that are only found by tracking Suspicious Bubbles in the ocean.
- Expy: Of Koalefants, as they represent the equivalent of them in Shipwrecked worlds.
- The Eeyore: Their sadness and complexion are often poked fun at by the other survivors.
- Ludicrous Gibs: Poking their carcass with a machete once it's rotted will cause it to explode in a rather gory fashion, dropping its loot in the process.
- Metal Slime: They're hard to find and run away. Unlike other examples, they're easy to catch up to and are more difficult to fight off by having a very hard hitting attack. Killing one however grants its carcass which will drop a lot of useful loot.
- Visual Pun: It is a blue whale that is also blue in terms of sadness.
Doydoy
Wilson: "I feel oddly protective of this dumb bird."
Near extinct birds to the point where only two spawn during world generation, each one on a separate island. The player must find both Doydoys and bring them together to successfully breed them and repopulate them.
- Appease the Volcano God: Doydoys and their feathers are some of the most valuable objects that can be sacrificed to the volcano, delaying eruptions for up to two days.
- Doofy Dodo: Played straight. Doydoys do not react whatsoever to potential predators or being attacked, allowing the player to easily kill them for feathers and meat. Unfortunately this means hostile mobs, such as snakes, eyeplants, and crocodogs, can easily wipe out entire populations of them. The different survivors also comment on their complete lack of intelligence when examining them.
- Mating Dance: Right before they breed, one of the doydoys will start a mating dance before both of them will enter a Big Ball of Violence, leaving a nest and an egg inside to hatch.
- Super Drowning Skills: Doydoys cannot swim whatsoever, and dropping one from your inventory onto the ocean will cause it to sink, killing it immediately without dropping anything.
Water Beefalo
Walani: "You smell like wet hair."
Cousins of the land dwelling beefalo, these beasts live in the shallow Mangrove biomes of Shipwrecked. Unlike land Beefalo, they can't be domesticated.
- Underground Monkey: Serve as the Shipwrecked replacement for Beefalo.
Introduced in Hamlet
Glowfly/Rabid Beetle
Woodie: "Thanks for lightin' the way, buddy." - Glowfly
WX-78: "YOU HAVE EXCESSIVE FACIAL HAIR." - Rabid Beetle
Passive light emitting insects that spawn from exotic flowers during Temperate Season. They're of no threat to you, and make for a decent source of lightbulbs in the plateu...Until Humid Season, anyway, were they will cocoon themselves, later hatching into hyper aggressive rabid beetles that will chase after you in hordes.
- Animal Facial Hair: The Rabid Beetle has a rather nifty looking mustache, a feature some of the survivors comment on.
- Bioluminescence Is Cool: They generate light in their Glowfly stage, and all stages have a small chance of dropping a lightbulb (guaranteed if you catch the insects and kill them in your inventory.)
- Metamorphosis: They're the only Don't Starve insects to have this lifecycle. Unusually, instead of going from a terrestrial insect to an airborne one, the Glowflies do it the other way, starting life as flying dragonfly-like creatures before cocooning themselves and metamorphosing into the ladybug-like Rabid Beetles. If you pay close attention, the tongue of the beetle is actually the tail of the Glowfly.
- Zerg Rush: Rabid Beetles are individually rather weak, but come in massive numbers that will come at you all at once when they spot you.
BFB
Wagstaff: "If I'm lucky I'll be swallowed and I can glimpse its extraordinary insides!"
A big... flying bird. It appears periodically similar to Hound attacks and lands on open ground. It will abduct the player if it catches them and take them to their nest, the Pinnacle.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Quite easily the largest monster in the series. Not even any of the bosses stand taller than its foot.
- Bird-Poop Gag: When it flies around, it may sometimes drop a gigantic dung pile on the ground, showing that the dung piles that you see in the beginning all came from this thing.
- Giant Equals Invincible: You can't do anything to damage the thing. Just run away and pray it leaves.
- Giant Foot of Stomping: You do not want to be under this thing when it's about to land on the ground. The only thing that can survive a direct hit from being crushed by one of its feet are boss monsters.
- Kidnapping Bird of Prey: It will abduct the player if it catches them. On its nest, its shown to have abducted a bunch of other stuff too including an entire house.
- Nested Mouths: It has a head inside its mouth, which also has another head inside its mouth too.
- Roc Birds: In the files, it is referred to as "roc".
- Shout-Out: Its name is a reference to The BFG.
- Turtle Island: It's large enough to have vegetation growing on its body. You can see roots dangling out of its plumage and wrapping around its legs, and there's an entire tree growing on its beak!
Hippopotamoose
Woodie: "Reminds me of something I saw in Algonquin Park once."
Semiaquatic creatures that live in the Lily Pond Biomes of Hamlet, but also traverse on land.
- Ground Pound: One of the Hippopotamoose's two attacks involves jumping towards its target to deal damage, uproots plants and destroying structures in its area of impact.
- Shockwave Stomp: Within the Lily Pond Biome they'll create waves by simply moving through the water, wih the waves becoming larger and more violent once they're actually chasing something.
Introduced In Don't Starve Together
Grass Geckos
WX-78: "MUCH MORE FUN THAN PICKING GRASS"
Skitish creatures that can be found in swarms. Sometimes, planted grass tufts will transform into them.- Helpful Mook: They automatically drop their tails when spooked to be picked up, making them a faster way of gathering grass than just harvesting grass tufts. It also helps that they do this year round and are not affected by the seasons.
- Planimal: They're geckos made out of grass, and can spawn themselves out of planted grass tufts. Spooking them makes them drop their tails as regular grass for you to pick.
Carrat
Wilson: "Are carrots supposed to have legs?"
Mutated carrots found in the Lunar Islands, buried in such a way to look perfectly like regular carrots. Will eat anything left on the ground, so be careful.They get their own dedicated event in Year of the Carrat, where you can train them for Carrat races.
- A Day in the Limelight: They star in the Year of the Carrat event. You can train them with special equipment to participate in Carrat races.
- Big Eater: They will ravenously eat any food off the ground, so don't leave anything you need to eat near them.
- Helpful Mook: Only to Wormwood. He can create Carrats once he unlocks his Lunar Cultivator skill, who will then proceed to grab edible items and bring them to him.
- Planimal: Part carrot, part rat. They drop regular carrots when they die.
Saladmander
Wilson: "It's cute, but it's not ripe yet."
Docile but territorial little lizards that roam around near hot springs, trying to claim them as their own from other Saladmanders. Putting them near a heat source will ripen them, making them more dangerous.- Pintsized Powerhouse: They're small, but they have 900 Health, and deal up to 50 damage when ripe.
- Planimal: Part plant, part animal. They appear to specifically be mutated dragonfruit, as they drop them whole when ripened, and can be transformed from them through the use of Steeped Lunar Essence.
- Playing with Fire: They gain the ability to send out a burst of flames from their bodies when ripe.
Skittersquid
Wolfgang: "Wolfgang make friends with bright little fishies."
Squid like creatures that prey on ocean fishes. They sometimes spawn around these schools to hunt them, and wander around while providing light with their bioluminescent eyeballs.- Bizarre Alien Biology: It looks more or less like a one eyed squid that can walk on land, but then it opens its mouth, which is on top of its head.
- Helpful Mook: They can provide light during nights, long as you don't provoke them. They also make for a good source of lightbulbs should the Caves not be enabled.
Grass Gators
Woodie: "Can't tell if it's an animal or a real lively shrub."
Half reptile, half plant critters that roam the waterlogged biomes out at sea.-
Dummied Out: They were once planned to show up in Don't Starve Shipwrecked, but were scrapped, and later implemented in the Waterlogged update. - Face of a Thug: They're part alligator, a notably dangerous creature in the real world, but they're skittish and completely passive. They'd rather run away from players than confront them.
- Planimal: Like their land bound brethren, the Grass Geckos, they're reptiles made out of grass. To take it a step further, their respawning mechanics implies they are grown from the Great Tree Trunks.
