While it isn't exactly uncommon for games in the survival genre to expect players to manage their hunger, Don’t Starve takes this one step further. Many of the different actions and activities you partake in will affect your character's sanity levels too, and it’s vital to pay attention to it. While having zero sanity is not technically fatal in itself, it does cause shadowy manifestations to become corporeal - and hostile.
It’s true that there are certain benefits to being insane (such as to easily obtain beard hair), but it’s equally as important to employ methods to control your fluctuating sanity levels. Fortunately, the game provides you with no shortage of opportunities to do so.
One excellent way to do this is through the foods that you eat. Most meals that you prepare for yourself in your crockpot will incur a small sanity boost by default, but certain meals in particular will increase it more drastically. In this article, I shall be ranking these best foods for doing so, based upon their sanity boosting qualities and the availability of ingredients.
For clarity, all of the recipes listed are available and backward-compatible for the base game of Don’t Starve, but some will require its three DLC’s to be installed to function. In a similar vein, some of the required ingredients may therefore not be found in the base game world.
5. Banana Pops
A tasty treat to soothe both your tastebuds and your soul.
- Hunger: 20
- Health: 12.5
- Sanity: 33
- Spoil time: 3 days
The tropical world of the Shipwrecked DLC introduces a variety of new foodstuffs to reflect its more exotic climate. One of these said foods are bananas, which can be acquired fairly easily from multiple different sources. The best way to find them is by chopping down one of the many jungle trees that can be found (unsurprisingly) in the jungle biome.
Unless you are playing as Wilbur - who will receive a bonus ten sanity from consuming bananas in their raw state - these fruits will typically function in most recipes the same as any other. However, they do have the additional advantage of being an essential component of the dish ‘banana pops’. These tasty treats will not only temporarily lower your body temperature, but also provide a decent sanity boost well worth the trade off of obtaining them.
The other ingredients required for a banana pop are also incredibly easy to access, making them a great resource to exploit. Sanity can be a little tougher to manage in Don’t Starve Shipwrecked, due to the fact that being wet for prolonged periods will make your character go insane faster, so banana pops are a great resource that shouldn’t be overlooked.
While it is also technically possible to find bananas in the base game too, they are much trickier to come by. This is because the trees in which they flower can only be found below the surface level, in either a cave or a ruin. These cave bananas function identically to the ones found in the Shipwrecked isles, but it makes the acquisition of banana pops feel cumbersome by comparison, and thereby far less effective and efficient.
Recipe: at least 1 banana, 1 ice and 1 twig. Filler can be any of the aforementioned, as long as there is no meat.
4. Taffy
Not just for kids, taffy is a great treat for the adults too.
- Hunger: 25
- Health: -3
- Sanity: 15
- Spoil time: 15 days
If you’re looking for a sanity booster that's a little more accessible outside of Shipwrecked, then look no further than taffy. While the sanity you gain from this indulgent classic is a little more modest compared to other foods on this list, it's hard to deny its convenience. Taffy is one of the few in-game foods that can be made from one ingredient and one ingredient alone: honey.
What makes taffy so great is that honey is so easy to come by. All you need is a box box or two stationed within a short walk from your base and you’ll soon be bringing home larger stacks of the stuff than you know what to do with. Better still, honey in its raw state has an incredibly slow spoilage time, meaning that there really is no excuse not to hoard as much as it as you can.
Taffy may take a little longer to cook than the average recipe, but there is nothing stopping you from cooking up a batch in advance. Provided that you eat enough of it and at a semi-regular rate, you will quickly start to notice that managing your sanity becomes much less of a chore. Taffy can also still be safely made if your honey supplies are running a little short as well, as many other foodstuffs can be thrown into the recipe as a filler - providing you with the same sugary outcome.
Due to its relatively small output, it may be useful to pair your taffy consumptions with another secondary means of keeping yourself sane, such as wearing a top hat. This is because it can be a little time consuming to recover larger quantities of sanity through taffy alone. As long as you use it to keep on top of your sanity meter however, this humble confectionery goes a long, long way.
Recipe: At least 3 honey, and 1 non-meat filler - which can be twigs or even more honey!
3. Surf 'n' Turf
Nothing spells comfort like two differnt types of meat on your plate.
- Health: 60
- Hunger: 35
- Sanity: 33
- Spoil time: 10 days
The hearty combination of red meat and seafood could be argued as overly decadent by some, but this is not a view shared by the average Don't Starve character. As Surf 'n' Turf is a dish that among other things will raise the players sanity by a respectable thirty-three points, this is a meal to fall back on when the going gets tough. The recipe can prove a little nuanced, and getting the knack of cooking it correctly can take some trial and error, but once you do this dish will make your life considerably easier.
For one thing, Surf ‘n’ Turf can be made with a fair amount of leeway when it comes to its ingredients. Provided that you use the right amounts of both the surf and the turf, the game doesn't specify which animals they need to come from. This makes it an incredibly versatile dish, no matter which of the Don't Starve worlds you're playing in.
Surf ‘n’ Turf is also a great choice for players who don't necessarily want to dedicate their time and resources to making a food that just affects sanity. As this meal will also drastically increase one's health as well as its moderate hunger boost, it can be utilised as a great way to recover and unwind after a day spent killing mobs. This is just as well, as Surf ‘n’ Turf is one of the few dishes that can theoretically include more than one piece of monster meat, without it running the risk of turning into a hazardous monster lasagna.
Recipe: a quantity of meat valuing 2.5 or higher, as well as fish at a rate of 1.5 or higher. If using a filler, then it cannot be ice.
2. Ice Cream
The best of the best in the frozen dessert game.
- Health: 0
- Hunger: 25
- Sanity: 50
- Spoil time: 3 days
There is arguably nothing more comforting than an indulgent bowl of ice cream when you're feeling a little down, and so naturally this is also the case in the world of Don't Starve. Ice cream will boost your sanity meter by a spectacular fifty points, which is more than enough to prevent you from being too down in the dumps. Provided that you aren't getting up to anything too draining, a scoop of ice cream every now and again is all that you'll need to keep the nightmares at bay.
As you can probably imagine, ice cream also does a fantastic job of keeping you cool during those hot and humid summers, giving you a temporary resistance to the heat. Due to the fact that sanity can become even more difficult to manage during the summer season, it gives ice cream a two-in-one boost. Its cooling qualities almost completely negate its short spoilage time, as there really is no reason not to gobble it up there and then.
The only real downside to ice cream is that one of its key components is a bit difficult to get your hands on. While the ice and the sweetener readily present themselves to you, it is the dairy element that can prove harder to find. The easiest way is arguably as a random drop of butter from killing a butterfly, but the chance of this happening is low and too reliant on random chance.
Recipe: 1 ice, 1 honey, 1 dairy. No meats, vegetables or twigs can be used as filler, but fruits are okay.
1. Jerky
Dried and dehydrated for more pleasurable consumption.
- Health: 20
- Hunger: 25
- Sanity: 15
- Spoil time: 20 days
Jerky takes the reigning title as the best food for your sanity due to its overall ease. You don't even need to cook this one, instead only requiring a drying rack and a single piece of raw meat. Each drying rack can only dry one piece of meat at a time, which can seem a little steep for newer players, but it quickly becomes apparent that these racks are not actually that difficult to craft.
Once dried, jerky has an incredibly long lifespan, which can be extended even further if kept in an ice box. This makes it a very convenient snack to stock up on well in advance to use at your leisure.
While the sanity boost you gain from a piece of jerky isn’t as notable as in a meal like surf n turf, it is much more feasible to eat a few of these back to back, effectively exponentially doubling its properties. This means it also makes for a practical snack to carry around with you, for a little pick me up while you're out and about.
The best thing about jerky however, is the fact that the game counts it as an ingredient rather than a meal. This means that it can be thrown into a crockpot and repurposed into another dish, should you so wish. If this isn't enough of an edge to deserve first place on this list, then I don't know what is.
Recipe: 1 meat, dried on a drying rack. Does not require any cooking. Morsel of meat will result in small jerky. Time taken for meat to turn to jerky varies, depending on the weather and the size.
