Advantages[]
Books[]
Main article: Books
Wickerbottom can craft her Magic 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:
- Horticulture, Abridged - When read, up to 10 plants that grow edible will advance to the next stage. Farm Plants grow completely but cannot give giant plants.
- Applied Silviculture - When read, all plants that do not grow edible advance to the max stage of their growth.
- The Angler's Survival Guide - When read near the Ocean, a shoal of fish spawns nearby.
- Pyrokinetics Explained - Burning or smoldering objects in a radius will be extinguished and Wickerbottom will receive a Fiery Pen with the amount of uses being equal to the amount of objects put out, gets more durability for objects on fire, less for smoldering objects.
- Overcoming Arachnophobia - Creates web that slows mobs on it and lasts for 2 minutes.
- Tempering Temperatures - Sets temperature of all players in radius to 35 and dries them and their items off.
- Lux Aeterna - Creates a beam of light with a radius of approximately 3 tiles, lasts 4 minutes, also causes an earthquake when read in the caves.
- Practical Rain Rituals - Toggles rain on or off; when standing directly on top of farm soil it gets fully saturated with water instantly.
- Lunar Grimoire - The current or following night will be transformed into a full moon, unless it already is.
- Apicultural Notes - Spawns 2 loyal Grumble Bees as followers, up to 16 total.
- Horticulture, Expanded - Similar to Horticulture, Abridged, the limit is increased to 15 (up from 10), farm plants gets their nutrients and tending need maximised.
- The Everything Encyclopedia - Unlocks ability to prototype items 1 tier higher for all players in the radius.
- Lux Aeterna Redux - Same as Lux Aeterna but lasts 2 days.
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.
Bookcase[]
Main article: Bookcase
Science level[]
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 Shadow Magic research machines though.
Others[]
- Wickerbottom's Favorite Food is Surf 'n' Turf, meaning that she gains 15 bonus
when consuming the food.
Disadvantages[]
Insomniac[]
Wickerbottom lacks the ability to sleep due to her being an insomniac. Including restore structures like Tent, Bed Roll, Fur Roll or Siesta Lean-to and Hypnotic effect like Bearger. This means that crafting those Items and Structures would be a waste of resources and the player will need other means to restore Sanity.
Spoiled Food[]
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) | can't eat |
Tips[]
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.
- The "Horticulture" books 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.
- 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.
- "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, 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 Winter's Feast to get presents.
- "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.
- "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 Helm to use several books to make the trap efficient without needing to fight of Shadow Creatures.
- "Horticulture, Abridged" 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.
- "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 Dark Sword in the early game, as it allows the player to craft it using only alchemy engine.
| Characters | |
| Don't Starve |           |
| Reign of Giants |   |
| Shipwrecked |     |
| Hamlet |    |
| Don't Starve Together |       |
| Removed |  |
| Unimplemented |        |
| Other |        Minor Characters |