[0:00]Don't starve. A complex game with equally complex lore. Sometimes it's hard to understand when certain events happened and what exactly is going on. So, today I'm going to attempt to try to make things a little more clear for everyone. Join me as we visit each notable event in the weird and twisted world of Don't Starve, in an attempt to create a cohesive timeline. This video might be pretty long as there's a lot to cover. So grab yourself a steaming hot plate of monster lasagna and let's dive right in. Our journey, of course, starts with the magician himself, Maxwell. Well, he didn't actually always go by that name. That's his stage name. His real name is William Carter. On July 26th, 1901, he leaves England aboard a ship and moves to the United States. More specifically, New York. Here he truly begins his career as a magician, but he still goes by the name William. His name Maxwell won't make its debut until later in this timeline. On November 11th, 1903, Abigail and Wendy are born to an unknown mother and Jack Carter as their father. Jack is William's brother, which makes Wendy and Abigail his niece. Unfortunately for William, his career as a magician had been flopping pretty hard in New York, and he eventually found himself in a large amount of debt. Jack then sends William a postcard which William notices came from the West Coast, and William, realizing this, decides to ditch the East Coast life and buys a ticket for a train going from New York to San Francisco on August 15th, 1904. August 23rd, 1904, the passenger train that William had been taking struck a circus wagon on its way. William had been spared but only because Wolfgang, the fake strongman, was given powers by William to rescue himself. This was the first instance of Shadow magic being used in the real world, making it notable to the storyline. William treasures this book. He eventually writes to Jack about this book from his place of rescue, which was North Fork, Nevada. Somehow undetermined by the William Carter puzzles, which is the source of all of this information you're hearing by the way, William made his way to San Francisco by June 6th, 1905. This is where he takes on the name Maxwell the Great. Now he may seem much more familiar to those of you watching. This is where he meets up with Charlie, and the two of them begin a very successful career as a magician and his assistant. On April 18th, 1906, it was the last show. Maxwell and Charlie perform their final act. Maxwell attempts to pull shadows out into the real world, but instead, the shadows, rebelling against this intrusion, pull him and Charlie in. Maxwell has now shifted over away from the real world's timeline and into the Constant's timeline, which we will be going over soon. Let's continue with the real world events, however. On that very same day, the San Francisco earthquakes occurred. This event marked the first time a certain familiar scientist, Wagstaff, made his play into this timeline. As he began looting some stuff and doing, you know, bad things. Here he finds a fancy camera that seems to project the constant where it's pointed. This camera confirms that shadows have long been meddling in the real world even before Maxwell, and also serves as Wagstaff's gateway into the constant. How it works is undetermined, but this is where Wagstaff splits himself between the Earth timeline and the Constant's timeline. Unlike Maxwell who is trapped, Wagstaff can move between these two dimensions at will, for now that is. Our next notable event doesn't occur until around the 1910s. We also don't have exact dates, as this all goes based on the animations, rather than the William Carter puzzles. Well, most of them that is. We do get some dates thanks to Winona's short. For example, we know that in 1911, Wickerbottom's library burned down, which is when she was transported to the constant. We also know that in 1914, Wendy wrote in her diary that she kept hearing some strange music. We know thanks to Warley's short that this music is basically a telltale sign of when somebody's about to be shifted into the constant.
[4:16]So it's safe to assume that Wendy was transported around 1914. And finally, back to some big news that most people know. In 1919, the Voxala PR-76 radio was invented by Wagstaff's company in Sydney, Ohio. Unfortunately, not many prototypes get released before the factory is caught on fire. This was surprisingly the last we see of Wagstaff in the real world. So, I'll have some theories on what happened to him kind of soon. But it also is when Winona was taken to the Constant's timeline, as she was a factory worker. And finally, to our last confirmed real world date, 1921. Today, Wilson would be the last confirmed character to be dragged into the Constant. After failing an experiment, he gets a strange message from his Voxala radio. And we all know what happens after this. Whoa. So that's all of the confirmed dates for the real world, but that doesn't exactly cover everything. So let's talk a little bit about the unconfirmed stuff. These will have wider dates as, of course, they aren't confirmed to happen on one day or the other, but they did happen. Let's begin. So, from an undetermined time between 1910 and 1919, Weber and WX were taken into the Constant. We know that it was before 1919, as Wagstaff had to have been alive to hand the spider over to Weber's father, thus triggering the eventual dimension shift from Weber. And WX was created by Wagstaff himself and potentially even dumped into the Constant by him. So it also has to occur before his disappearance in 1919. And then there's the characters that, well, their dates aren't so certain. Wigfred, Wes, Warley, Woody, Wolfgang, Willow, Walter, and Wheeler were trapped in the constant on dates that could have been at any time. We only know a few things like that Walter got trapped after Woody, thanks to him stumbling upon his Voxala in his cabin, which was likely Woody's form of entrapment. And we know that Willow had to be sometime after 1911, as she was responsible for Wickerbottom's library burning down. And the thing that makes this timeline even crazier, Walani and Woodlegs, two pirate characters were also somehow transported to the constant. The problem with this is that piracy, at least Caribbean Air piracy utilizing the Jolly Roger, was dead long before Maxwell even made it into the constant. Meaning these characters were ripped from the past. It kind of makes sense, especially if Winona was captured by Charlie before Wilson was captured by Maxwell, but it's still kind of weird. Also to those of you who think Walani isn't a pirate, look at her quotes for the gunpowder keg, which has a distinguished Jolly Roger, or her quote for the Cutlass Supreme. Yeah, this chill gal may not be as chill as you thought. Oh yeah, there's also Wilbur. While we know that Wilbur was taken by Maxwell for some reason, we don't actually know if Walani and Woodlegs were taken. In fact, some of Woodlegs' quotes hint that he actually knows about the creatures of the constant, which would be odd for someone who was kidnapped. But it would be incredibly strange if we had all these strange animal hybrids, you know, pigs, merms, and goats, and then an old guy and a chill surfer gal. So they had to come from somewhere, possibly not connected to the constant we know. Maybe the answer lies behind the mysterious portal of Moon K, as it does seem to connect to some pirate themed dimension. But unless we get a Woodlegs or Walani short, this question will remain open-ended. And the theme of kidnapping still seems the most likely, as Woodlegs quotes can be passed off as experience, since we have no clue how long Woodlegs has been trapped. Please Clay, give us a Woodlegs or Walani short, I'm begging you. You gave Wagstaff a short, come on please. And finally, there's Wanda, and she pretty much gets this line right here. You see, Wanda broke every idea of a timeline as she can be in any time period she wishes, whenever. So she could have entered the Constant literally whenever. But with Wanda covered, that's all the real world events, at least the noticeable ones. Our next timeline, the Constants, is actually more straightforward. It unfortunately comes at the cost of dates, so we'll mark it by a few different things. Pre-Maxwell, Maxwell's reign, Wilson's reign, and finally, Charlie's reign. First, let's look at the Pre-Maxwell timeline. We all know that the constant is weird. We know that officially it was a pretty dead place before Maxwell came along and started just creating stuff. But we do know a few things. An ancient civilization, conveniently dubbed the ancients, resided there. A strange inhuman species that resided in what we now know as the ruins. There's a ton of intricate lore based on these guys, like they were obsessed with the moon, which we now know is a living being. They had connections to the world of Hamlet via a strange event, the apocalypse, and they loved, like really loved nightmare fuel. Much like Maxwell, they really loved to make statues of themselves, so we have somewhat of an idea on what they actually looked like. We also know that this ancient civilization understood electricity, as frazzled wires drop from most of their relics. But most other things are pretty speculative, and this is a timeline video, so we aren't going to touch up on that too too much. Just know that these guys were basically the founders of the Constant. They were there and died out long before Maxwell's reign. Then, there's the merms and the pigs and the goats, who also seemingly existed before Maxwell's reign, but after the ancients obliterated themselves. The merm people don't have a lot of lore, but they are connected to one of the strangest places in the game, the Gorge, where it is assumed that every merm is actually a pig or goat who failed the Ma's challenge. They were then mummified and traveled to the mainland or the Islands of Shipwrecked, or stayed and became traitors to any who dared to take on the challenge. The survivors also were able to take this challenge on in the future, which kind of presents a unique interaction with the timeline. But failure of the Gorge is not cannon. Rather, it's confirmed that they survived the trials and made it through unscathed. This also may be where the survivor, Worth, originated. As she has what are clearly horns on her default skin. Clay has confirmed that these horns are because Word is a merm guard. But then you have to ask the question, why are guards the only ones with goat horns?
[10:37]Maybe default merms are all pigs who failed the Ma's challenge, and merm guards are goats who failed the Ma's challenge. Either way, we know that merms and goats exist primarily because of the Ma, but they don't have a lot of lore or speculation. Unlike our friends, the pigs. The pigs are a familiar race in the constant, humanoid and rather dumb. However, they originated from a place that we can actually visit in the world of Don't Starve, Hamlet. These pigs have been around seemingly before even the ancients obliterated themselves to the shadows, but one day, the pig king for some reason, decided to split off from the mountaintops of Hamlet and form a colony on the mainland. This created two colonies, the Queen's colony of Hamlet and the King's colony of the mainland. The Queen's colony advanced very well, learning how to wield weapons, wear clothes, build cities, and overall evolved to just become far more hominid-like. Whereas the King's colony seemed to just never evolve, sticking to their old forms and staying rather dumb. Now, whether this was due to their proximity to the now corrupted ancients, or just because the king's rule prevented progress is unknown, but we know that this race has been around for a long, long time. They also were actively and are still actively at war with merms, which is ironic given the origin of merms and how some of them may actually be their own brethren. Oh yeah, also it's implied that the Shadow Ruler has no jurisdiction over Hamlet. As proven by Maxwell's quotes, where he genuinely seems surprised about many of its creatures, which implies that he himself didn't create the creatures of Hamlet. So maybe the entire ecosystem of Hamlet had evolved on its own alongside the pigs, unlike the mainland that was formed by Maxwell. As a fun fact, just a couple weeks ago, I believe that pigs originated from the mainland. until I was corrected in a recent stream. Rog World was made entirely by Maxwell, remember it was barren, that's why the ancients went underground because above ground was desolate, so the pigs must have come from Hamlet. That's actually a very good. You just convinced me. So shout out to Wintroid for causing me not to get clowned on because this makes a lot more sense than what I was originally going to say. To my knowledge, that was most of what happened before Maxwell's reign. As I stated before, the constant was pretty cut and dry before his appearance. Then, him and Charlie made it in. Maxwell claims the throne and becomes the de facto ruler of the Constant, controlling every shadow entity and creating whatever the hell he wants, while Charlie becomes the night monster, praying on any character with a conscious who enters her domain, which is everywhere the light doesn't touch. Then every character is abducted and brought into the constant. West in particular is kind of interesting, as instead of being dumped into the mainland or extra worlds like the others, Maxwell punishes him by holding him hostage in his own personal world, for foiling his plans and taking the place of someone else. Then, Wilson, the main character of the story is brought here. Wilson's journey is a very long one. He travels the world of the mainland constant, explores the seas of Shipwrecked, ventures the mountaintops of Hamlet, before finally finding Maxwell's door. While Maxwell had done a good job of being, well, evil, he wasn't exactly the smartest, and created the doorway to adventure, a door that Wilson bravely took. Now, it's also fair to say that Wilson died a lot during his journey. In fact, it can be theorized that every skeleton on the map is actually Wilson. But it's more likely that it's a variety of other survivors. Something to note here as well is that Maxwell kept all of the survivors in their own iteration of the constant, all within their own realms unable to interact with each other. This is mostly confirmed when we get to Charlie's segment. It should also be mentioned that now is when Wagstaff began to project himself into the constant. Wagstaff is a playable character during Maxwell's reign, so he wasn't doing much, but he was probing around and beginning to understand the world of the constant. So while he wasn't a major player yet, this was his origin story. Wilson successfully makes it through the trials of Adventure Mode and defeats Maxwell, ending his reign for good. Unfortunately for Wilson, the Shadow Throne refused to go un-sat on, so Wilson becomes the new ruler. While Maxwell is cast out into the constant to survive his own hell he created. This marked the start of the reign of Wilson, which, uh, Clay hasn't touched on, like at all. We have no idea when Wilson's reign ended, we just know that he had a seemingly miserable time on the throne. But, I'm not boring, so here's my theory, which was spearheaded by this comment by the way. A fun theory is that Wilson's reign brought forth the events of The Screecher. Again, again, before you think I'm crazy, this is a hell of a lot more interesting than putting a bunch of question marks on the timeline, right? Plus, it could actually make some sense. Wilson on the throne was obviously miserable, and we all know that Wilson is, well, he's bright, since he is the canonical inventor of all the machines you find in the constant. But he's not exactly the smartest emotionally. Being forced to subject themselves to the horrors of the Shadow Throne, the same ones that made Maxwell go from this to this, probably caused him to act irrationally, and perhaps at this point, maybe even not at his own will. The Screecher was born. Remember when I said that each survivor had their own personal constant? Well, perhaps Bill, the protagonist of The Screecher, which was a mod made by Clay themselves, was the unlucky soul to experience Wilson's trauma dumping. Big shout out to this comment on my Screecher video for giving me this idea by the way. It's actually really funny to think about, even if it's not true, which let's be real, it's probably not. But again, more fun than the official answer of question marks. At some point, Charlie took over the throne, banishing Wilson back to the constant. Except Charlie, whether by mistake or on purpose, banished Wilson to the same iteration of the constant he was in, the one where Maxwell resided. The two then reluctantly paired up to build the jury rigged portal. This marked the start of Don't Starve Together as every character, except for a select few, entered the portal, and then they were all together. We are now in the last section of the timeline, but it is by far the most action packed. If you made it this far by the way, be sure to leave a like and subscribe if you aren't already. Sorry, I had to do it. I had to do it. Now we begin Charlie's reign. Apparently, Wendy, Wickerbottom, Wilson, Willow, Wolfgang, and Wigfred are boss rushers, as their first action in the constant is to defeat the ancient fuel weaver. They then turn on the gateway and this gateway brings them to the forge, where they must fight through battle master Pugna's trials. The forge seemed to serve as a pseudo trial within the gateway to see if survivors were worthy of exploring its dimensions. The pair eventually defeats Pugna's trial, and then they head through the Molten Gateway into the Gorge, where they take on the Ma's challenge and barely escape mummification, and then are sent back to the constant. Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense why they did all of this just to get sent back anyway, but it happened and we're here now. Something to note about the Gorge is that Mumsy states that another of their kind had passed through the Gorge before. So whether this was in reference to the pigmen and their human attributes, or just a teaser for the character work, well, we'll never know. But it does confirm that something had passed through before them. On returning to the Constant, the survivors learn that things have been changing, rather drastically. Alter, the once dormant celestial deity, had awoken, and a piece of itself had fallen near the mainland, raising the ocean's levels enough to sail on and of course, beginning the war between shadows and lunacy. But they didn't know this yet. The survivors then turn on the archives and learn of the ancient powers. As Gestalt awaken and begin fighting the nightmares of the caves. Charlie, troubled by this discovery, heads up to Lunar Island. Oh yeah, by the way, Charlie's mobile apparently. Clay doesn't explain this much, but I guess we can just assume it's because she was half shadow, and because of this, she naturally can just move while also being the Shadow Queen, unlike Wilson and Maxwell. But anyways, she heads to Lunar Island and uses the tragic torch, a powerful torch once wielded by the ancients themselves, to look at the moon. And lo and behold, it's altered. After the survivors finally pissed the moon off by putting three altars in a triangle, they had to use altars. This is where Wagstaff makes his first appearance after his disappearance in the factory, proving that he is still alive, but not quite stuck within the constant, as he's just a transmission. Where he resides is still a mystery, but for now we know that he isn't in the constant, so it's either the real world or a limbo between both. But remember, he's still considered missing in the real world to our knowledge that is. With Wagstaff's help, the survivors siphon the lunar energy before Alter eventually strikes back by sending down the celestial champion to stop them. The survivors managed to defeat this beast and begin the lunar rifts event, changing their world forever and unleashing lunar hell across it. Near the same time, Charlie manages to fix the broken gateway, unleashing the rifts of the cave. Yeah, they never really touched on how it was used for the Gorge or Forge, but I guess we're just rolling with the whole it was a malfunction theory. Around the time all of this was happening, Wurt talks also makes us aware of a special power that complicates his own timeline. Thanks to the Terraria crossover, Wurt talks is shown to be able to dimension hop. A power far stronger than even Wanda's, as she may be able to time travel, but Wurt talks can straight up just seemingly leave the constant whenever he feels like it. Maybe, I made that up for dramatic effect. I mean, he is a natural born constant member, but it's still interesting to think about. With the rifts of both of the worlds, the caves and the Overworld open, the war between Shadow and Lunar has never been more active. The most recent development being Charlie attempting and succeeding in contacting one of the long since dead ancients, proving that they still have power, and lining us up for something pretty big and exciting. And then, well, that's where our timeline ends for now. What Charlie is plotting with her communications with the ancients is unknown, and what lies in store for the main characters of this play are also unknown as of now. Both timelines are unfinished and Clay is still releasing small bits of lore in their shorts, but to my knowledge, as long as no animations have come out between this video's release, then it is the most up-to-date timeline out there. If enough drastic lore comes out that shifts the timeline significantly, then I'll do a follow-up video, a part two if you will. But if it's just minor stuff, then check the description as I will add it there. This was a very fun but painful video to make. I had to study every short, every puzzle, every comic Clay released, and it took a lot of effort. So if you enjoyed it, be sure to leave a like and subscribe if you aren't already. The lore of Don't Starve is insanely complex, and the timeline gets weirder and weirder, but it's really fun and awesome to theorize. I'm going to work on some more interesting theories. Some of which should be out soon and some of which will focus on specific characters, but for now, that's the end of this video. This has been Polar Lotus, and I hope you have a great day. Bye-bye.
