Don’t Starve Together – Reforged Character Tier List

This is a tier list for all vanilla characters in the Reforged mod. This guide assumes that you are playing on the default settings, although most of this should carry over to other game modes as well.

List of Reforged Character Tiers

All credit goes to Baarko!

Before We Begin (+ Ranking Meanings)

Before the guide starts, I must first explain how I will be ranking characters. Since characters have their own classes and uses, I will be ranking the characters based on roles that they can play/are usually played in. For example, no Woodie on healer tier list, no Maxwell on tank tier list, etc. Characters will be ranked from S to F:

• S-Tier: The best of the best, a must have for any serious run.
• A-Tier: Not quite the best, but still very good.
• B-Tier: Decent enough in the role, although probably better in a different role.
• C-Tier: Perks are better suited to another role.
• D-Tier: Perk is essentially useless in this role.
• F-Tier: This character is actively hurting the team and making it harder to win by being in this role.

Physical DPS

Physical DPS refers to characters who output high damage using darts or melee weapons, and is increased by items such as the Nox helm and Jagged armour.

S-Tier

• Wigfrid: Wigrid’s ability to grant the team a 25% damage buff for one hit really helps soften up tankier targets, like Snortoises and Scorpeons, especially when you multi-target with darts, and even more so with Wormwood’s dart that drops from Snortoises. Wigfrid also buffs the Spiral Spear and Blacksmith’s Edge causing them to do much more damage.
• Webber: Webber’s unique perk is that he has 3 baby spiders that attack whatever he attacks. On their own, these spiders do negligible damage, 9 per hit about every 3-5 seconds. What makes him top tier is the Whispering Grand armour. This causes the spiders do start doing ~20 damage a hit, attacking about every second, effectively giving you an extra 60 DPS.
• Wendy: Wendy used to suck in forge. Abigail’s damage was so bad, and considering she competes with Webber for the Whispering Grand armour, it was never worth picking her. In the Reforged mod however, enemies hit by Abigail take 30% more damage, which is massive considering the highest damage modifier before this was the Jagged Grand armour, which gave 20% physical damage, and was acquired later into the game. Abigail is there from the start.

A-Tier

• Wormwood: Wormwood on his own is basically just Wilson but with faster movement speed. What makes him so good is his exclusive drop at the end of the Snortoise round, the Scattertooth. This is a dart weapon that shoots 3 darts at once, each doing 12 damage a shot with no increases. The catch is that it’s a very low range weapon, and even at it’s max range, you’ll only be hitting one of the darts. I had a hard time deciding if Wormwood should be A or B tier, but decided on A tier, because of the fact you can get the Scattertooth to deal 30 damage per bullet, meaning 90 total damage. This is by far one of the highest DPS options in the game, and if you throw it on a Wigfrid, you’ll be getting her 25% damage buff every 3 attacks, since each bullet counts towards the 8 hits she needs to activate her buff. Not an S tier character, since the only reason to pick him is for the Scattertooth however.

B-Tier

• Walter: Walter’s main perk is that he can reduce the cooldowns of your team’s abilities. He also has an exclusive item, his slingshot, that drops when the Snortoises die. This weapon has higher damage than molten darts, a special that increases the damage enemies take, but is unable to multi-target. Cooldown reduction is really only useful on the tank with the Blacksmith’s Edge, and the healer, and most dart users will find higher DPS by multi-targeting. The marked for death debuff is a nice debuff, but not enough to warrant anything above B tier.
• Willow: Willow does slightly more damage with the special abilities of the molten dart and hearthsfire crystals. Bernie also allows willow to deal more damage to a target that is trying to attack her, and granting a bit of tank to the team never hurts.
• Wortox: Now I know what you might say, “Isn’t Wortox a tank?”, and yes, while this is true, we can see with Wigfrid that melee DPS characters exist. Wortox doesn’t have any perks that increase damage. Instead, Wortox heals the team for every 200 damage he deals. Better off played as a tank though.

C-Tier

• Wilson: More of a utility character, not suited to dealing high amounts of damage.
• Wes: No perks that benefit dealing damage, really no reason to pick him ever.
• Wurt: Wurt has the ability to make foes wet, either by taking damage or dealing it with a melee weapon, causing them to take more electric damage. The problem with this is that electric damage really isn’t a thing in the forge. You have WX-78’s shock ability, and that’s about it, thus making it so she basically doesn’t have a perk.
• Winona: What I said about Walter’s CDR applies here as well. 10% CDR isn’t enough of a boon to warrant picking her as DPS.
• WX-78, Woodie, and Warly: These characters all can be played as a DPS, but their perks are better suited to other roles.

D-Tier

• Wolfgang: Same with what I said about WX-78 and Woodie, except Wolfgang basically doesn’t have a perk, since with a good team you’ll never go mighty, unless you juggle taking off your armour, but why do all that when you could just play Wigfrid or a DPS who actually does good damage.

Mage

S-Tier

• Maxwell: This should be obvious. Maxwell’s DPS with the fire staff is incredibly high, with no major skill needed to pull this off. Every 300 damage you deal, you summon a group of shadow duelists that do 34 damage each. The trade off for this great perk is that Maxwell’s early game is very slow; you have a bad weapon, bad armour, and little hp. Get past all this, and you’ve got an incredibly high damage character on your hands.

A-Tier

• Wendy: Same reasons for the physical DPS tier list, but with the drawback of taking the fire staff away from a Maxwell player, dramatically lowering the team’s DPS. This works nicely since it means Wendy will be using the Whispering armour, giving her more tank stats and allowing the healer to take the Silken Grand armour.
• Wickerbottom: Ms. Wickerbottom is like the opposite of Maxwell, boasting higher group damage thanks to her empowered spell mechanic allowing the fire staff’s special ability to do even more damage. Same drawbacks as Maxwell, albeit with slightly higher health.

B-Tier

• Willow: Willow’s 10% extra fire damage isn’t enough to warrant giving her the fire staff, especially since only 1 drops per game. Sure Bernie is nice too, but you know what’s even nicer? Killing enemies in a short amount of time.
• Wormwood: Same reasons for the physical DPS tier list, but with the same drawback as Wendy, that being taking away the staff from a Maxwell player.

C-Tier

• Wilson: Same reasons for the physical DPS tier list.
• Winona: While the CDR here does help a bit during the Scorpeon round, it’s not enough to warrant B tier.
• Wes: Same reasons for the physical DPS tier list.
• Warly: Better off played as a healer.

D-Tier

• Wurt: By playing Wurt as a mage, you are essentially saying “I don’t want any perks”, because you aren’t doing melee damage, and you shouldn’t be getting hit, meaning you’ll never be making foes wet, meaning your perk is rendered useless.

Healer

S-Tier

• Wickerbottom: I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Ms. Wickerbottom probably the most played character in the entirety of the Forge. The ability to amplify your heals is such a nice boon, and almost required in certain game modes, not to mention since she’s not focused on dealing damage, she can make use of the Tome of Beckoning and Petrifying Tome, allowing for even more support options.

A-Tier

• Warly: Warly in some aspects outclasses Ms. Wickerbottom, what with his teamwide damage buff and ability to heal on the move. Where Warly falls off is his higher skill requirement. The spice bag Warly causes to drop only sleeps enemies as long as they have healing spores on them, and if they are attacked one too many times, they will disappear. The spice bag also does AoE damage, meaning you might break an unwanted petrification if you’re not careful, but by far the biggest skill requirement is during the Boarrior pit pig wave. Since the spores don’t last very long, you have to time the throwing of your spice bag well. This becomes a lot easier with a petrifying tome however.
• Wendy: No perks that actively benefit healing, but Abigail’s bonus damage is still a very nice boon to the team, plus, she might be able to drag aggro away from Wendy.
• Winona: 10% CDR is helpful for a healer, so Winona having it in her default kit makes this placement pretty obvious.

B-Tier

• Willow: Pretty much only here for Bernie’s ability to draw aggro away from Willow.
• Wormwood: Wormwood’s ability to outspeed most enemies means if a dire situation, Wormwood can run around until enemies lose aggro of him, allowing him to cast a heal spell.
• Wes: Being able to revive the healer in half the time can be a game changer, although you know what would be better? Not dying at all, which can be accomplished by having stronger heals or a way to shake off enemy aggro.
• Maxwell: If the fire staff is taken by another teammate, Maxwell can substitute as a decent enough healer. The living staff allows Maxwell to deal damage at a higher rate, though much slower than with the fire staff, allowing his shadow duelists to activate frequently enough. His low hp makes this a dangerous endeavour however.

C-Tier

• None, there are no healers deserving of C tier.

D-Tier

• Wurt: Same reasons for why she’s a bad mage.

F-Tier

• Wilson: You know the saying “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”? This applies here. It’s better to keep the healer and reviver seperate, so as to not lose 2 important members of the team with 1 death.

Tank

There are 2 types of tanks: the main tank (the one who takes the Blacksmith’s Edge), and the side tank (the one who takes over tanking if the main tank dies, essentially a backup in case of emergencies).

S-Tier

• Wortox: Wortox has what every other tank can only dream of having: built in healing. This allows Wortox to not only keep himself alive for longer, but his entire team alive too. If there’s no Woodie on the team, Wortox should play as backup tank, so that he can dish out more DPS, instead of being stuck in the parry animation for most of the game.
• Woodie: Woodie is probably the best tank in the game. He has decent DPS, a way to regain aggro, and the ability to prevent almost every enemy in the game from attacking indefinitely. He’s probably the 2nd most picked character in the game, and for good reason too.
• WX-78: WX-78’s ability to shock enemies is very helpful. Not only is it free damage, but it also cancels many enemies from attacking, such as the Infernal Swineclops and Grand Forge Boarrior. He also has a perk that makes electric damage do more damage, but this is negligible.
• Winona: 10% CDR is all Winona needs to be a good tank, as it allows her to parry more often, so much more so that she can permanently parry a guarding Infernal Swineclops with any head piece item that has CDR.

A-Tier

• No one. No one’s an A tier tank.

B-Tier

• Wolfgang: Wolfgang is by far the worst of the meta tanks. All his perk really is is a bit of time for him to tank more damage, and give the team some time to recover, since if you’ve gone into mighty mode, something has gone wrong. If you really want an emergency button though, just get a Wilson.
• Wigfrid: She draws less aggro when she attacks things, meaning ranged characters are more likely to end up taking aggro. The only time she should tank is if your team all went random, and the only person able to tank is her, in which case she can grab the Blacksmith’s edge and the aggro problems are basically nullified.
• Wurt: Wurt’s only use case is as the side tank with a WX-78 as the main tank, as this allows her to actually make use of her perk. Still, it doesn’t make her any good, as you’d still be better off with pretty much anyone else.
• Wes: Same reasoning as healer tier list: important character being revived faster by everyone is good.

C-Tier

• Warly: Better suited to healing, especially with his low max hp.

D-Tier

• Nobody.

F-Tier

• Wilson: Probably not a good idea to have the reviver on the front lines fighting enemies, especially when those enemies don’t plan on leaving you alone to revive a fallen teammate.

Runner

Lmao imagine running in 2021.

F tier

• Everybody

Final Notes

Don’t let this tier list made by some random person on the internet tell you who to play, play whoever you like. Games are meant to be fun, so if you like Wurt, go ahead and play her. If you want to play Webber as a tank, go for it. I mean it’ll be painful and absolutely horrible, but go for it.

With that, there’s only one thing I have left to say: don’t play runner.