The Deerclops is probably one of the most annoying yet dangerous boss monsters you will encounter in Don’t Starve Together. It shows up during Winter, and on default world settings your first Deerclops will usually arrive around day 31, but we will go in-depth on the exact spawning values below.
What makes the Deerclops particularly dangerous is the fact that it will not only attack and hunt the player, but it will also target buildings and basically everything that is in its path. Failing to deal with the Deerclops properly could potentially mean losing tons of structures and countless hours of base-building.
Another issue is that it has a very huge Area of Effect attack as well as a particularly painful sanity drain. Thorough preparation will be required to deal with this boss.
Deerclops Stats
Health: 4000
Damage: 75 to the player, 150 to monsters
Attack delay: 4 seconds
Attack range: 8
Walking Speed: 3
Insanity Aura: -400/min in combat, -100/min outside of combat
Special Ability: AoE attack. Destroys structures and trees. Freezes you after two consecutive hits
Loot: 8 Meat, Deerclops Eyeball, Deerclops Sketch
Deerclops Behaviour
Deerclops roams the lands during Winter, usually finding the player eventually when they’re in its path. As with many other monsters and attacks, there will be a sound cue foreboding the appearance of the Deerclops. Your character will comment on said sound, which is another clear sign of its approach. The Deerclops does not necessarily follow the player around, which means that there is a chance to simply evade and escape it. It will however target player buildings with a high priority, making dealing with the Deerclops a high priority.
Furthermore, you could theoretically run away from the Deerclops as soon as you realize that it is coming, but if you are too close in proximity to your own base, it might still target your buildings or simply walk through it in the course of its natural path. Mind that if you try to avoid the Deerclops by entering the Caves, it might be that it will be waiting for you at the exit of a cave.
It has two attacks that are aimed at its current target. One being a large swipe while the other is a pound on the ground. Each attack has the same effect and will have a large Area of Effect (AoE).
The Deerclops’ aggro behaviour is very peculiar. It will target any monster that is close enough to it, and after that will prioritize structures that the player has built and eventually the player if there are no structures to be found.
While the Deerclops does not target walls, it will want to destroy all structures the player has built and as such, might destroy the walls if they are either in its path or are within the large Area of Effect of its devastating attacks. Additionally, combat with monsters or the player might lead to building damage as a type of collateral damage. Lastly, the Deerclops can also damage buildings in its death animation, as upon killing it, it will collapse on nearby structures.
Preparing for a fight against the Deerclops
As a rule of thumb, you should start your preparations about 5 days before the Deerclops spawns.
As the Deerclops dishes out heavy damage, you should have enough armor to tank some hits if you plan to engage in combat. Consider creating about two to three Log Suits as well as two to three Football Helmets for protection. Mind, that the Deerclops has an insane sanity degeneration, so make sure to have enough food to quickly restore your sanity if necessary. 10 pieces of Jerky should do the trick, but having something like Taffy instead also can help.
For the right choice of weapons, refer to the list of hits needed to kill the Deerclops below. Tentacle Spikes or Ham Bats are however a good allrounder weapon.
Fighting the Deerclops means a lot of running around in the winter, so make sure to have one or two thermal stones with you to not suffer freezing damage.
If you choose to put it to sleep, make sure to have a Pan Flute or multiple Sleep Darts in stock.
Depending on the strategy that you use, you might also want to stack up on Gunpowder (19 or 20) or Tooth Traps (66 or 67).
Remember that the Deerclops very aggressively targets buildings, so if you want to fight him, you should avoid doing so near your own base, unless you want to risk having it completely destroyed. It is advisable to create secondary small combat base instead, with the most necessary resources, weapons and armors to fight him. This combat base should ideally be far away from your main base.
Quick reference preparation list:
- 3 Log Suits
- 3 Football Helmets
- 10-20 Dried Jerky
- 1 Tentacle Spike
- 1-2 Thermal Stones
If preferred, you can take with you any or all of these in varying numbers:
- Pan Flute or Sleeping Darts
- Ice Staff
- Gunpowder
- Tooth Traps
- Secondary Base
How to kill the Deerclops
Damage Table
In order to better plan all the strategies focusing on dishing out many hits, here is a table outlining the number of hits needed to kill the Deerclops in Don’t Starve Together with each weapon.
| Weapon | Number of hits |
| Fishing Rod, Bug Net | 942 |
| Lucy the Axe | 295 |
| Shovel, Pitchfork, Hammer, Torch, Walking Cane, Willow’s Lighter | 236 |
| Axe, Pickaxe, Golden Axe, Golden Pickaxe, Boomerang | 148 |
| Spear | 118 |
| Pick/Axe, Bat Bat, Battle Spear | 95 |
| Morning Star | 93 (56 if the Deerclops is wet) |
| Ham Bat | 68-135 |
| Tentacle Spike | 79 |
| Thulecite Club | 68 |
| Tooth Trap | 67 |
| Houndius Shootius | 62 |
| Dark Sword | 59 |
| Blow Dart | 40 |
| Gunpowder | 20 |
These numbers are for characters without a damage modifier. Wolfgang, Wigfrid and co. will need fewer hits, Wendy and Wes more.
Mind that killing the Deerclops by burning it with a Fire Dart or a Fire Staff will make the loot burn and subsequently also the Deerclops Eye that drops from it.
It should also be mentioned that you need 4 Sleep Darts to put it to sleep, and 4 hits with the Ice Staff to freeze it.
Kiting Strategy
One of the most effective methods to kill the Deerclops is kiting it. This means that you will try to attack it as many times as possible before it can retaliate while running away whenever it tries to fight back. Kiting also means that you should take some time to study the attack animations of both attacks, in order to figure out when to exactly strike.
With good coordination, you should be able to deal out 3 to 4 hits before the Deerclops can retaliate. However, trying to dish out 4 hits is very risky and it is advisable to stick to 3 hits per opening. Mind that Deerclops’ attacks can freeze you after two hits, so tanking too many hits can quickly become very dangerous.
Treeguard Strategy
One way of dealing with the Deerclops is either finding an area with a Treeguard already spawned or artificially creating and spawning a Treeguard. Treeguards are extremely effective against the Deerclops, as they are tankier and are able to deal a lot of damage. The only issue is the freezing attack, making the spawn of multiple (usually two is enough) Treeguards necessary.
For simplicity, here is a quick strategy on creating one or multiple Treeguards:
Find an area in which you want to engage the Deerclops with lots of room to spare
- Plant as many Evergreen trees as you can. Make sure they are planted as closely together as possible.
- Let them fully grow and start chopping some in order to spawn Treeguards. For reference, each felled tree has a 1.33% chance of summoning a Treeguard.
- Optionally befriend Pigs to help you chop trees faster as they will initiate chopping trees if they see the player doing it
- Mind that if sufficient time has passed in your world, multiple Treeguards can spawn at once.
You can also simply try to look for Treeguards that have spawned naturally as you chop down Evergreen trees that you have found, with the disadvantage that you cannot choose the spot where you will have said Treeguard.
Gunpowder Strategy
One of the easiest strategies that has also proven effective with many other Boss Monsters is the Gunpowder Strategy which works like this:
- Prepare 19-20 units of Gunpowder and a fire source (like a Torch)
- Put the Deerclops to sleep with a Panflute or 4 Sleeping Darts
- Alternatively, freeze him with an Ice Staff (4 hits)
- Place the 19-20 units of Gunpowder as close to the sleeping/frozen Deerclops as possible
- Light the Gunpowder with your fire source and run away
- The explosion will deal a total of 3800-4000 damage.
Using 20 Gunpowders and killing him instantly will make the loot drop burned and subsequently turn the Deerclops Eye to ashes. If you want to have the Deerclops Eye, use only 19 Gunpowder and deal the remaining 200 damage differently.
Important: place all the Gunpowder as one single stack. In Don’t Starve Together, bosses like the Deerclops build up a temporary Explosive Resistance every time they get hit by an explosion. The first blast deals full damage, but any further explosions in the next few seconds deal a lot less. The resistance only fades completely after about 10 seconds without new explosions, so several smaller piles going off one after the other will waste most of your Gunpowder.
Tooth Trap Strategy
Using Tooth Trap for the Deerclopse can be a costly but very effective strategy, as it will essentially entail just placing all the Tooth Traps that you want to use and luring the Deerclops next to them. As many monsters do, the Deerclops will simply walk through the traps and activate them, suffering the damage.
A Tooth Trap can be crafted the following way:
- 1 Log
- 1 Rope
- 1 Hound’s Tooth
As you can see in the table above, you will need about 66-67 Tooth Traps to completely kill the Deerclops. Each Tooth Trap deals 60 damage, which means that 66 Tooth Traps would deal a total of 3960 damage, leaving the Deerclops with only 40 health.
As it can be very costly to create that many Tooth Traps, you could consider simply placing as many as you can afford. The advantage of using Tooth Traps is that you can prepare them beforehand and do not have to quickly react to any spawning Boss Monster.
Make sure to place the Tooth Traps as close together as possible. You can stack them very closely, meaning that a huge monster like the Deerclops will trigger multiple traps in quick succession.
Deerclops Spawning Rules
When generating your world, you can decide on the amount of Deerclops attacks, but for simplicity, we will only talk about the default values. Bear in mind that other factors like season length will also influence the spawning behavior.
There are a couple of spawning rules for the Deerclops:
- On default settings, the first Deerclops will generally spawn on day 30.8, which is roughly the middle of your first Winter.
- It spawns about 40 tiles away from the player it picked and then makes its way towards them.
- It prioritizes players that have at least 5 structures within 20 tiles around them.
- If nobody is on the surface (e.g. everyone is in the Caves), the spawn is delayed until someone comes back up. It will then spawn 60 seconds later, which is why it sometimes seems to be waiting for you at the cave exit.
- Once it has destroyed at least 5 structures and there are no structures left within 40 tiles, it calms down (you can see it smiling) and despawns once it is offscreen.
- If it was not killed, it comes back 2.8 Winter days after despawning, with the same health it had when it left.
- If it was killed, the respawn timer is 16.8 Winter days. Since a default Winter only lasts 15 days, this means you usually won’t see it again until the next Winter.
- Any Deerclops still around when Spring starts will despawn as soon as it is offscreen.
Loot
The Deerclops only drops meat, a sketch for a purely cosmetic statue, and the Deerclops Eyeball. The Deerclops Eyeball however is very useful and can be used for two particularly strong recipes:
Eyebrella
- Requires:
- 1 Deerclops Eyeball
- 15 Twigs
- 4 Bone Shards
- Has a total durability of 9 days
- Can be repaired with a Sewing Kit (for 55.5% of its durability)
- Provides 240 points of protection from Overheating
- Provides absolute protection from Rain and Lightning
- Has the highest protective stats in the game for weather effects from Spring and Summer
Houndius Shootius
- Requires:
- 1 Guardian’s Horn
- 1 Deerclops Eyeball
- 5 Thulecite
- A structure that can be placed
- Essentially a turret that attacks nearby enemies
- Has 1000 health and deals 65 damage per hit
- Can be repaired with healing items
- Drains 6.25 Sanity per minute on proximity
Summoning a Deerclops with a Hostile Flare
If one Deerclops Eyeball per year is not enough for you, you can summon the Deerclops yourself. Using a Hostile Flare on land during Winter has a 60% chance to spawn a Deerclops near you, as long as there is no Deerclops alive at that moment.
- Requires:
- 3 Flares
- 1 Glommer’s Goop
- Only works on land and only during Winter
- Killing a summoned Deerclops resets its regular spawn timer
- A great way to farm extra Eyeballs for more Eyebrellas or Houndius Shootius
Crystal Deerclops (Lunar Rift)
Once you have opened a Lunar Rift in your world, killing the Deerclops is not necessarily the end of the fight. It will leave a carcass behind, and after a while an Incursive Gestalt can possess it and bring it back as the Crystal Deerclops. If you don’t want to deal with that, simply burn the carcass with a Torch, Lighter or Fire Staff before the Gestalt reaches it.
The Crystal Deerclops is a lot tougher than the regular one:
- Health: 6000
- Deals 75 damage to players plus 30 planar damage
- Has Planar Entity Protection, so regular weapons like the Dark Sword or Ham Bat, as well as Gunpowder, are a lot less effective. Planar weapons such as the Brightshade Sword or Shadow Reaper work much better
- Cannot be frozen with an Ice Staff or put to sleep with Sleep Darts
- Standing in its ice aura slows you down and freezes you, so kiting it the classic way is not recommended
The easiest way to deal with it is fire. Bait it into throwing both ice crystals from its back at you, then set it on fire (a Fire Staff or Fire Darts from range work best). This breaks its eye crystal and stuns it for a few seconds, which is your window to hit it. After the stun it goes into a frenzy with up to three melee attacks in a row, and it only calms down again once it has taken 1200 more damage.
It drops Rot, Ice, Pure Brilliance and a sketch for a Crystal Deerclops Figure. It is also one of the three mutated bosses you need to kill for the Grainy Transmission quest to get a Spark Ark. After the Celestial Scion has been defeated, it drops Nucleation Fluid instead.
Conclusion
The Deerclops is a dangerous monster that can quickly turn hours of work into rubble. It can be considered a challenge to deal with it as well, but with proper preparation it should be more than doable.
Compared with other boss monsters in the game, it has rather low HP. The issue however lies with the fact that you cannot always choose the way you engage it, and it will sometimes simply surprise you in an inappropriate moment.
That being said, choosing to avoid the Deerclops should be possible if implementing the strategies outlined above, but eventually, you will have to face the monster and deal with it.
