Don't Starve Together Beta v119632

Don't Starve Together will have a few ways to play with others. So far, local, network and matchmaking play has been confirmed. Many items will be balanced in order to keep the game fair. Big issues like permadeath and PvP will be optional by the server operator. There are different modes of gameplay including "Survival Mode," upon which the world is reset if all players are dead, and "Endless Mode," wherein the world never resets. Mods will be supported, yet some of them that rewrite core code will need to update to the new format. Dedicated, player hosted and LAN servers will be available, and chat will be global or local depending on the server admin's preference.

One change is to sleeping. Normally, when going to sleep, the day would fast-forward to sunrise and replenish health and sanity at the cost of hunger upon waking up. However, when on a server, sleeping will not fast forward to sunrise but will instead leave the player unable to move and not affected by the night monster. This will replenish health and sanity whilst draining hunger faster than normal over time; the rate at which will be dependent on what type of structure or item was used.

Telltale Heart
A Telltale Heart.
Ghosts are a new feature that introduces the ability to live after death, although in a downgraded state. When a player dies, a skeleton spawns where they die, they drop their inventory and become a ghost. As a ghost there is an "afterlife" timer that decreases every second the ghost is doing nothing. However, ghosts can haunt items and structures to stop the timer decreasing, possibly setting the item on fire, or affecting the structure in some other way. When the timer reaches zero, the ghost vanishes and the player dies. A ghost can be resurrected using a Touch Stone, Meat Effigy, Life Giving Amulet or the new craftable item called the Tell-tale heart, crafted with 5 grass and 40 life, meaning the crafter will be damaged for 40 life. When the ghost respawns their inventory will be empty and their hunger and sanity are set to the same as resurrection in the base game. However, their maximum health will be cut down to two thirds the first time they die (i.e. Wilson's health will be set to 100 instead of 150), then down to one third and then capped at 30 health. The health penalty can be partially negated using a Booster Shot. In Survival Mode, other players will suffer a sanity loss upon the death of one player.

Attacking players, giving players items and reviving ghosts is tracked by the game and can impact what other characters say about said player when inspecting them. For example, if Willow were to inspect a harmless Wilson she would say "Hello, Wilson." but had he been attacking someone, she would say, "He looks a bit shifty!".

The map has changed and there is now a fog of war, meaning that what is shown on the map is the version last seen. Furthermore a change to compasses is going to take place. This hasn't been decided yet but it will have a more definitive relation to the map than in the SP game. Some ideas have been to replace the compass with a map that loads all current revealed map onto the item, which can then be given to a player and read like a blueprint. Or maybe to create a map table structure that holds what ever state the map is in for a certain player, allowing others to see this other player's map. This change will probably include the idea of Beacons, which allow a person to keep track of another person's location after losing track of them the normal way, functioning when the player has the beacon in their inventory.

Characters deal 40% less damage than normal while the damage absorption of worn Armor is 25% less than normal, making combat less effective. In addition to this, Golden Tools have half the durability of their single-player counterparts.

The update "In with the new" added Emotes, improved server systems, bug fixes and Wolfgang. To perform an emote you type /(which ever emote you wish to perform) then enter. Some emotes are /cheer, /no, /yes, /bonesaw or /ready, /dance (running on the spot) and /cry. More emotes are being added and the system has been set up so it will be very easy to mod emotes in. The update also added Moon rocks, which can only be used to make fancy walls so far, but are probably going to be more useful in the future.

The update "Stuck in the Middle with Ewe" added a timer to Survival Mode that resets the world when all players are dead, a Jury-Rigged Portal, the new Ewecus mob, and Wendy. LAN support/offline mode, bug fixes, and improvements to mod handling were also implemented. The Telltale Heart was updated and items that cannot be carried between worlds now drop when a player disconnects. WX-78 now loses his upgrades and drops gears upon death. Several changes were made to servers to improve handling and search-ability.

Currently mods on a server are compatible with anyone who joins the server, as long as they don't add textures or sound files, otherwise, it should be fine. Furthermore, mods like AlwaysOnStatus have no effect on the server and therefore will be compatible with anything.