Sanity | Gameplay basics Don't Starve Guide
Last update: 11 May 2016
The sanity indicator is quite peculiar, and it can influence the perception of the world by your character. As it keeps dropping, your character starts to experience various symptoms of declining mental health:
The display starts to tremble and blur
Colors appear to be more vivid
The character starts to hallucinate and hear whispers
The looks of animals changes (rabbits become beardlings, and summer birds turn into winter birds)
Strange eyes appear in the darkness
When the sanity level drops to 30, the character becomes insane and the animals that so far have been harmless, start to attack. To prevent that from happening, it is a good idea that you acquaint yourself with the below table. You can find there most of the activities that have positive, or adverse impact on your character's sanity.
Single effects
Effect | Impact on Sanity |
Sleeping in a Tent | +50 |
Sleeping on a Straw Roll Killing a Terrorbeak | +33 |
Eating Taffy, Cooked Green Cap, Jerky, Pumpkin Cookie Killing Crawling Horror | +15 |
Eating Garland, Small Jerky, Cooked Blue Cap Shaving Wilson's beard | +10 |
Eating meals cooked in a Crock Pot, not including Taffy, Pumpkin Cookie, Wet Goop, Monster Lasagna Picking Flowers | +5 |
Eating Durian, Dark Petals, Extra Smelly Durian, Monster Jerky Picking Evil Flowers | -5 |
Eating food that's gone off and Meat, Drumstick, Morsel, Frog Legs, Cooked Monster Meat, Cooked Red Cap Digging in a grave | -10 |
Eating Monster Meat I Blue Mushroom Passing through a Worm Hole | -15 |
Eating Monster Lasagna Nocturnal monster attack | -20 |
Eating Green Mushroom | -50 |
Temporary effects
Effect | Mental shift over a minute |
The Aura of an amicable pig (needs to be close) | +25 |
Playing as Maxwell | +20 |
Wearing Tam o' Shanter | +6.7 |
Wearing Top Hat, Dapper Vest | +3.3 |
Wearing Feather Hat, Breezy Vest, Puffy Vest, Amulet | +2 |
Wearing Garland, Winter Hat | +1.3 |
Rainfalls | max -3.3 |
Rearing Spiderhat, One-band Hat | -2 |
Negative aura Night Light | -3 |
Dusk | -5 |
Wearing Night Armor | -10 |
Wearing Dark Sword | -20 |
The negative aura of a Dark Flower and Spider | -25 |
Making friends with the pig using One-band Hat | -25/swinia |
The negative aura of Beardling, Hound, Red Hound, Blue Hound, Tentacle, Spider Warrior, Ghost, Night Hand | -40 |
Utter darkness | -50 |
The negative aura of a Werepig, Treeguard, Crawling Horror, Terrorbeak, | -100 |
The negative aura of a Dearclops, Spider Queen | -400 |