Sanity is just as important as Health and Hunger in Don’t Starve and Don't Starve Together. Whether players are going at the game alone or with some friends, everyone should keep an eye on all their levels on the bottom left of their screen. While some characters have different meters, such as Wanda who has a Life meter instead of Health, Sanity is usually part of all the characters' survival icons.

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With Sanity being one of the bigger parts of the Don’t Starve in general, it’s important for players to know how to deal with it when it starts falling. Thankfully, there are some things players can do to keep Sanity from falling quickly and causing the party members to die off quickly.

The Importance Of Sanity

Like most meters in survival games, each one indicates certain levels that players need to keep track of in order to last the longest in games. While Health and Hunger are common meters in games with obvious reasons, Sanity is a meter that isn’t so common.

Don’t Starve is a survival game set in a world where a lot of creepy monsters tend to go after characters, and at night when players are huddled around a campfire as their only light source, some might even see the little faces and arms poking out in the darkness trying to grab ahold of players. When Sanity drops, these creatures are more likely to pop out of the darkness and can even be seen walking around during the day.

When Sanity is low, the players vision because shaky and bright, whispers are heard, and the shadow creatures can even become aggressive and attack the characters. Players can even see their character shut their eyes, rock back and forth and cover their ears. So, while players are trying to survive the harsh terrain and numerous creatures like Spiders, angry Bees and Frogs, players will have the added danger of these shadows coming after them.

What Decreases Sanity

Because Sanity is so important with this game, there are a lot of causes for Sanity dropping. Being alone, exploring the wilderness and avoiding any causes of death would take its toll on anyone, just the same for the characters in this game. Encountering monsters is a big portion of that, especially fighting them, as well as sitting in darkness with no real light source. Rain is no help, even eating bad or raw foods, or meat from Monsters.

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Using certain weapons (Ice Staff or Fire Staff for example) or reading books can also have a negative effect on a characters Sanity. Using Wormholes or Electric Isosceles has a big effect on Sanity (-15 points). Some characters with special abilities, for example Wendy, will lose Sanity when summoning Abigail. There are several things that can cause Sanity drop, however, let’s focus on what players can do to increase their Sanity to ensure a long-lasting playthrough.

How To Increase Sanity

Thankfully, there are a lot of things that can aid a player’s Sanity while working through the game. In order to provide players an extensive list of items, actions, or whatever they need to get the most out of their survival meters, the graph below will show what they can do. Note that this will be working with the Don’t Starve Together game, and not Don’t Starve, due to the recent release on the Nintendo Switch. Also note that individual players due have their own actions that can increase Sanity, however, since this is a general list, we will be focusing on what all players can do in order to prevent confusion for those quickly looking.

There are also addition actions that players can do to gain Sanity over time. Again this should focus on the Don’t Starve Together game and actions that every player can do, and not individual.

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Don't Starve Together is available on PC and Nintendo Switch.

More: Every Don’t Starve Character, Ranked